Part 1 (1/2)
The Arian Controversy.
by H. M. Gwatkin.
NOTE.
The present work is largely, though not entirely, an abridgement of my _Studies of Arianism_.
The Conversion of the Goths, which gives the best side of Arianism, has been omitted as belonging more properly to another volume of the series.
THE ARIAN CONTROVERSY.
CHAPTER I.
_THE BEGINNINGS OF ARIANISM_.
Arianism is extinct only in the sense that it has long ceased to furnish party names. It sprang from permanent tendencies of human nature, and raised questions whose interest can never perish. As long as the Agnostic and the Evolutionist are with us, the old battlefields of Athanasius will not be left to silence. Moreover, no writer more directly joins the new world of Teutonic Christianity with the old of Greek and Roman heathenism. Arianism began its career partly as a theory of Christianity, partly as an Eastern reaction of philosophy against a gospel of the Son of G.o.d. Through sixty years of ups and downs and stormy controversy it fought, and not without success, for the dominion of the world. When it was at last rejected by the Empire, it fell back upon its converts among the Northern nations, and renewed the contest as a Western reaction of Teutonic pride against a Roman gospel. The struggle went on for full three hundred years in all, and on a scale of vastness never seen again in history. Even the Reformation was limited to the West, whereas Arianism ranged at one time or another through the whole of Christendom. Nor was the battle merely for the wording of antiquated creeds or for the outworks of the faith, but for the very life of revelation. If the Reformation decided the supremacy of revelation over church authority, it was the contest with Arianism which cleared the way, by settling for ages the deeper and still more momentous question, which is once more coming to the surface as the gravest doubt of our time, whether a revelation is possible at all.
[Sidenote: The doctrine of the Lord's person.]
Unlike the founders of religions, Jesus of Nazareth made his own person the centre of his message. Through every act and utterance recorded of him there runs a clear undoubting self-a.s.sertion, utterly unknown to Moses or Mahomet. He never spoke but with authority. His first disciples told how he began his ministry by altering the word which was said to them of old time, and ended it by calmly claiming to be the future Judge of all men. And they told the story of their own life also; how they had seen his glory while he dwelt among them, and how their risen Lord had sent them forth to be his witnesses to all the nations. Whatever might be doubtful, their personal knowledge of the Lord was sure and certain, and of necessity became the base and starting-point of their teaching.
In Christ all things were new. From him they learned the meaning of their ancient scriptures; through him they knew their heavenly Father; in him they saw their Saviour from this present world, and to him they looked for the crown of life in that to come. His word was law, his love was life, and in his name the world was overcome already. What mattered it to a.n.a.lyse the power of life they felt within them? It was enough to live and to rejoice; and their works are one long hymn of triumphant hope and overflowing thankfulness.
[Sidenote: In contact (1) with the vulgar.]
It was easier for the first disciples to declare what their own eyes had seen and their own hands had handled of the Word of Life, than for another generation to take up a record which to themselves was only history, and to pa.s.s from the traditional a.s.sertion of the Lord's divinity to its deliberate enunciation in clear consciousness of the difficulties which gathered round it when the gospel came under the keen scrutiny of thoughtful heathens. Whatever vice might be in heathenism, there was no want of interest in religion. If the doubts of some were real, the scoffs of many were only surface-deep. If the old legends of Olympus were outworn, philosophy was still a living faith, and every sort of superst.i.tion flourished luxuriantly. Old wors.h.i.+ps were revived, the ends of the earth were searched for new ones. Isis or Mithras might help where Jupiter was powerless, and uncouth l.u.s.trations of the blood of bulls and goats might peradventure cast a spell upon eternity. The age was too sad to be an irreligious one. Thus from whatever quarter a convert might approach the gospel, he brought earlier ideas to bear upon its central question of the person of the Lord. Who then was this man who was dead, whom all the churches affirmed to be alive and wors.h.i.+pped as the Son of G.o.d? If he was divine, there must be two G.o.ds; if not, his wors.h.i.+p was no better than the vulgar wors.h.i.+ps of the dead. In either case, there seemed to be no escape from the charge of polytheism.
[Sidenote: (2) with the philosophers.]
The key of the difficulty is on its other side, in the doctrine of the unity of G.o.d, which was not only taught by Jews and Christians, but generally admitted by serious heathens. The philosophers spoke of a dim Supreme far off from men, and even the polytheists were not unwilling to subordinate their motley crew of G.o.ds to some mysterious divinity beyond them all. So far there was a general agreement. But underneath this seeming harmony there was a deep divergence. Resting on a firm basis of historic revelation, Christianity could bear record of a G.o.d who loved the world and of a Redeemer who had come in human flesh. As this coming is enough to show that G.o.d is something more than abstract perfection and infinity, there is nothing incredible in a real incarnation, or in a real trinity inside the unity of G.o.d. But the heathen had no historic revelation of a living hope to sustain him in that age of failure and exhaustion. Nature was just as mighty, just as ruthless then as now, and the gospel was not yet the spring of hope it is in modern life. In our time the very enemies of the cross are living in its light, and drawing at their pleasure from the well of Christian hope. It was not yet so in that age. Brave men like Marcus Aurelius could only do their duty with hopeless courage, and wors.h.i.+p as they might a G.o.d who seemed to refuse all answer to the great and bitter cry of mankind. If he cares for men, why does he let them perish? The less he has to do with us, the better we can understand our evil plight. Thus their Supreme was far beyond the weakness of human sympathy. They made him less a person than a thing or an idea, enveloped in clouds of mysticism and abolished from the world by his very exaltation over it. He must not touch it lest it perish. The Redeemer whom the Christians wors.h.i.+p may be a hero or a prophet, an angel or a demi-G.o.d--anything except a Son of G.o.d in human form. We shall have to find some explanation for the scandal of the incarnation.
[Sidenote: Arius himself.]
Arianism is Christianity shaped by thoughts like these. Its author was no mere bustling schemer, but a grave and blameless presbyter of Alexandria. Arius was a disciple of the greatest critic of his time, the venerated martyr Lucian of Antioch. He had a name for learning, and his letters bear witness to his dialectical skill and mastery of subtle irony. At the outbreak of the controversy, about the year 318, we find him in charge of the church of Baucalis at Alexandria, and in high favour with his bishop, Alexander. It was no love of heathenism, but a real difficulty of the gospel which led him to form a new theory. His aim was not to lower the person of the Lord or to refuse him wors.h.i.+p, but to defend that wors.h.i.+p from the charge of polytheism. Starting from the Lord's humanity, he was ready to add to it everything short of the fullest deity. He could not get over the philosophical difficulty that one who is man cannot be also G.o.d, and therefore a second G.o.d. Let us see how high a creature can be raised without making hint essentially divine.
[Sidenote: His doctrine; Its merits.]
The Arian Christ is indeed a lofty creature. He claims our wors.h.i.+p as the image of the Father, begotten before all worlds, as the Son of G.o.d, by whom all things were made, who for us men took flesh and suffered and rose again, and sat down at the right hand of the Father, and remains both King and G.o.d for ever. Is not this a good confession? What more can we want? Why should all this glorious language go for nothing? G.o.d forbid that it should go for nothing. Arianism was at least so far Christian that it held aloft the Lord's example as the Son of Man, and never wavered in its wors.h.i.+p of him as the Son of G.o.d. Whatever be the errors of its creed, whatever the scandals of its history, it was a power of life among the Northern nations. Let us give Arianism full honour for its n.o.ble work of missions in that age of deep despair which saw the dissolution of the ancient world.
[Sidenote: Its real meaning.]
Nevertheless, this plausible Arian confession will not bear examination.
It is only the philosophy of the day put into a Christian dress. It starts from the accepted belief that the unity of G.o.d excludes not only distinctions inside the divine nature, but also contact with the world.
Thus the G.o.d of Arius is an unknown G.o.d, whose being is hidden in eternal mystery. No creature can reveal him, and he cannot reveal himself. But if he is not to touch the world, he needs a minister of creation. The Lord is rather such a minister than the conqueror of death and sin. No doubt he is the Son of G.o.d, and begotten before all worlds.
Scripture is quite clear so far; but if he is distinct from the Father, he is not G.o.d; and if he is a Son, he is not co-eternal with the Father.
And what is not G.o.d is creature, and what is not eternal is also creature. On both grounds, then, the Lord is only a creature; so that if he is called G.o.d, it is in a lower and improper sense; and if we speak of him as eternal, we mean no more than the eternity of all things in G.o.d's counsel. Far from sharing the essence of the Father, he does not even understand his own. Nay, more; he is not even a creature of the highest type. If he is not a sinner, (Scripture forbids at least _that_ theory, though some Arians came very near it), his virtue is, like our own, a constant struggle of free-will, not the fixed habit which is the perfection and annulment of free-will. And now that his human soul is useless, we may as well simplify the incarnation into an a.s.sumption of human flesh and nothing more. The Holy Spirit bears to the Son a relation not unlike that of the Son to the Father. Thus the Arian trinity of divine persons forms a descending series, separated by infinite degrees of honour and glory, resembling the philosophical triad of orders of spiritual existence, extending outwards in concentric circles.
[Sidenote: Criticism of it.]