Arianism

Arianism. The main heresy which denied the full Divinity of Christ, so called after its author, Arius. Arius seems to have held that the Son of God was not eternal but created by the Father from nothing as an instrument for the creation of the world; He was therefore not God by nature, but a creature susceptible of change, even though He differed from other creatures in being the one direct creation of God; His dignity as Son of God was given Him by the Father on account of his foreseen righteousness. Earlier scholars saw this teaching as an adulteration of Christian faith by pagan philosophical concerns; recently it has been argued that a major objective of the Arians was to distinguish the Divinity of the Father from that of the Son in order to avoid ascribing the limitations of the Incarnate Son to the full Divinity which they attributed only to the Father.

The teaching of Arius, though condemned by a synod at Alexandria (c.320), spread until Constantine, anxious for peace in the Empire, called a General Council which met at Nicaea in 325. The Council, largely under the leadership of Athanasius, defined the Catholic faith in the coeternity and coequality of the Father and the Son; the famous term ‘homoousios’ was used to express their consubstantiality. Constantine, at first a supporter of the Nicene faith, soon wavered, and in 350 Constantius, an avowed Arian, became sole ruler. Among the Arians three main groups emerged: the ‘Anomoeans’, also known in modern times as ‘Neo-Arians’, pressed the differences between the Father and the Son; the ‘Homoeans’ tried to avoid dogmatic precision by affirming that the Son is similar to the Father ‘according to the Scriptures’; the ‘Semiarians’ favoured the term ‘homoiousios’ as expressing both the similarity and the distinction between the first two Persons of the Trinity. A Homoean formula, drawn up by a Council of Sirmium (357), was accepted by a double Council of E. and W. bishops which met at Seleucia and Ariminum respectively in 359. This crowning victory of Arianism frightened the Semiarians into the ranks of orthodoxy, and with the death of Constantius (361) Arianism lost its chief supporter. In 362 Athanasius held a Council which helped to unite a wide spectrum of opponents of Arianism. In the W. Arius had little direct influence, though for some time a more straightforward biblical form of subordinationism was a powerful force there. The brilliant expositions of the Nicene faith by the Cappadocian Fathers prepared the way for the final victory of orthodoxy at the Council of Constantinople in 381.

Driven from the Empire, Arianism retained a hold among the Teutonic tribes, which prevented their assimilation with their Catholic subjects when they overran most of the W. Empire and caused persecutions in Spain and N. Africa. The conversion of the Franks to Catholicism (496) was the prelude to the disappearance of Arianism.