Archetypal Heresy: Arianism through the Centuries

150 Pages·2001·0.92 MB·English

by  Maurice Wiles

Wiles, Maurice Regius Professor of Divinity Emeritus, University of Oxford
Archetypal Heresy
Arianism Through the Centuries
Print ISBN 0199245916, 2001
Table of Contents
Preface
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1. What Is Arianism?
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2. The End of Arianism
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3. Maimbourg's Millennium and the Second Death of Arianism
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4. The Rise and Fall of British Arianism
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5. Faith and Historical Judgement in British Arian Scholarship
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6. Epilogue
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Bibliography
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Index
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1 What Is Arianism?
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Maurice Wiles
A Question of Definition
For centuries the Nicene Creed has been a distinctive feature of baptismal liturgies in the
East and of eucharistic liturgies in the West. Fuller than the Apostles' Creed and less
contentious than the Athanasian, it, more than any other set of words, has come to be
seen as the primary symbol of Christian orthodoxy. The Lambeth Quadrilateral described
it as 'the sufficient statement of the Christian Faith'. Yet its fulfilment of such a role is
inevitably problematic. The form in which we express our beliefs is necessarily rooted in
the linguistic and cultural assumptions of the time. No statement from the past can be
more than an indirect determinant of present faith, for it can only fulfil that role through
the medium of a complex interpretative process. These general difficulties apply in a
particularly acute form to the Nicene Creed. For whether we use that phrase to refer to
the creed accepted at the Council of Nicaea itself in ad 325 or to the later, allied creed of
the Council of Constantinople of ad 381, which is the form used in contemporary
eucharistic worship, the creed is a very direct outcome of a theological controversy of the
fourth century. The Council of Nicaea was called to deal with a dispute arising out of a
conflict between the Alexandrian presbyter, Arius, and his bishop, Alexander; and the
Council of Constantinople was intended to put an end to a style of teaching, generally
known to its opponents as 'Arianism'. The Creed has an explicit polemical thrust. There is
nothing particularly surprising in that. The same could be said of much of the New
Testament. Conflict with 'the Pharisees' or with 'the Jews' is a major determining
characteristic of St Matthew's and of St John's gospels, and the polemical intentions of
Galatians and of 1 John against Judaizing and gnosticizing Christians are unmistakable.
But so too is the difficulty stemming from that fact. For it means that re-evaluations of
the Judaism contemporary with the emergence of Christianity are bound to have far-
reaching implications for our understanding of the New
end p.1
Testament. Yet the role of the New Testament in Christian faith as a whole, and long-
established traditions of how it should be understood, have proved a serious hindrance to
the emergence and the acceptance of such re-evaluations. Difficulties of the same kind
apply in the case of the Nicene Creed also. There is a tension between its role as symbol
of normative Christian truth and its close links with a fourth-century controversy, open to
historical reinterpretation. And that tension affects not only the Creed's contemporary
role. It operates in the reverse direction as well; it complicates the attempts of historical
study to achieve a proper understanding of Arius and Arianism.
The study of early Christian doctrine has been transformed by a change in attitude
towards heresy and the heresiarchs. Gone is the picture of the gradual flowering of a
single, consistent vision of Christian truth, developing only in the sense of receiving an
increasing precision of expression, something forced on the church by the need to combat
perversions of that truth deliberately introduced by malevolent heretics. In its place has
come a picture of the Christian church seeking to discover what the truth might be in the
context of always-changing conditions and new problems. In that revised picture the roles
of 'father' and 'heretic' are much less sharply contrasted. Pelagius and Nestorius are not
seen as men of evil will; they are seen rather as Christians determined to defend some
aspect of Christan truth that was genuinely at risk in the teaching of St Augustine or of St
Cyril. Even if their overall presentation of the faith be judged less satisfactory than that of
their ultimately canonized opponents, they were standing out for important Christian
insights to which their orthodox Christian opponents did not do full justice. And where
such conflicts gave rise to ecclesiastical division, such as the Nestorian and Monophysite
churches, it was to the impoverishment of the Catholic Church which defined itself over
against them. Such an attitude does not involve denying the reality of the issues that
divided them. It only involves saying that true insight was not the exclusive prerogative
of one side. As many Catholics and Protestants would claim today in the light of the
changes in attitude to their divisions, it is possible for both sides in such a case to be
enriched theologically and religiously, through a more sympathetic apprehension of the
issues involved in the origins of the dispute between them.
The fruitfulness of such an approach to the history of doctrine cries out for its pursuit in
relation to Arius and Arianism also. But can that be done if the Nicene Creed is both an
explicit repudiation of Arius
end p.2
and the primary norm of Christian orthodoxy? The inherent difficulty of the project is
well illustrated by a document arising out of a Lutheran-Catholic dialogue, devoted to the
status of the Nicene Creed as Dogma of the Church. The Catholic spokesman asserts that
'Arius . . . felt it necessary to appeal to [the] norm [of the Word of God in the Scriptures],
though his doctrinal scheme owed nothing to Scripture', and the Lutheran spokesman
claims that the Arian use of the New Testament subordinationist and adoptionist concepts
and images was heretical, because 'it was opposed, so to speak, to the intention of the
New Testament usage which was to exalt Christ rather than to lower Him'. 1
1 Paul C. Empie and T. Austin Murphy (eds.), Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue 1
(Minneapolis, n.d.), 19 and 14. The date of the meeting at which the document was
agreed was 1965.
The ecumenical helpfulness of such traditionally negative evaluations of Arius' motives
and methods is obvious enough. And that fact can hardly avoid proving a disincentive to
reviewing and revising them.
Nevertheless, once we have acknowledged that doctrinal norms can function only
indirectly, through an interpretative prism, the project will no longer appear an
impossible one. Indeed it has already begun. Robert Gregg and Dennis Groh's book Early
Arianism: A View of Salvation (1981) and Thomas Kopocek's article 'Neo-Arian
Religion: The Evidence of the Apostolic Constitutions' (1985) have forced scholars to
take serious account of the positive religious intentions of the Arian movement in its
earlier and later manifestations in the fourth century. Rowan Williams's more recent
book, Arius: Heresy and Tradition (1987), also gives a highly sympathetic historical
interpretation of Arius and of his teaching, and does so in full awareness of the issues I
have been raising. It opens with the words: ' "Arianism" has often been regarded as the
archetypal Christian deviation, something aimed at the very heart of the Christian
confession.' 2
2 R. D. Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition (London, 1987), 1.
One of the great merits of the book is to show that it is perfectly possible to seek out the
positive Christian insights in the teaching of Arius without prejudging the overall
evaluation to be given to it. Whatever that final evaluation, the process can hardly fail to
deepen our understanding of what was involved in that influential determination of the
content of Christian faith that took place at the Council of Nicaea and in the half-century
that followed it.
But even if the psychological barriers that stand in the way of a changed appreciation of
Arius and the controversy that bears his name
end p.3
can be got out of the way, there remains another serious difficulty in the path of the quest
of the historical Arius. The paucity of the available sources and the complex problems
involved in their interpretation make progress extremely difficult. The critical
reconstruction of those sources has been the subject of intensive study in recent years, but
the picture to be drawn from them remains far from clear. 3
3 See R. Lorenz, Arius Judaizans? (Göttingen, 1978) and G. C. Stead, 'Arius in Modern
Research', JTS ns 45 (1994), 24-36.
It may be that, in view of the nature of those sources, the historical Arius will always
remain as elusive a figure as the historical Jesus.
But though that would be a serious handicap in relation to a better understanding of the
Council of Nicaea itself, which was very specifically directed against Arius, the later
Council of Constantinople (from which our Nicene Creed derives) had in view a whole
range of subsequent 'Arian' writings. Here the available sources are far more abundant.
But once again there are serious difficulties to contend with. Richard Hanson, whose The
Search for the Christian Doctrine of God stands towards the study of Arianism as Rowan
Williams's book does towards the study of Arius, explains why the phrase 'Arian
Controversy' does not figure in his main title. It is, he says, 'a serious misnomer. . . . The
epithet "Arian" . . . is scarcely justified to describe the movement of thought in the fourth
century which culminated in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed'. 4
4 R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God (Edinburgh, 1988), pp.
xvii-xviii.
Williams, indeed, in a lengthy review of Hanson's book, argues that Hanson has seriously
under-estimated the unsatisfactory character of the 'Arian' label as applied to these later
fourth-century debates. 'The time', Williams concludes, 'has probably come to relegate
the term "Arianism" at best to inverted commas and preferably to oblivion. . . . the sheer
uselessness and inaccuracy of the word becomes clearer with every new piece of research
in the period'. 5
5 SJT 45 (1992), 102. See also Daniel Williams, who issues a similar warning, speaking
of Arianism as a 'misnomer' (Ambrose of Milan and the End of the Nicene-Arian
Conflicts (Oxford, 1995), 1).
Here too, then, extensive research goes on, seeking to clarify not only the detail of the
story but the basic categories in terms of which the story needs to be told.
It is not my intention in this book to contribute directly to either of these important areas
of research. 'Arianism', however unsatisfactory a category it may be for the understanding
of the fourth century, has certainly existed as a powerful concept throughout Christian
history.
end p.4
That is something which cannot be relegated to oblivion, and that is the 'Arianism' whose
history I shall be attempting to recount. 6
6 Williams's recommendation that 'Arianism', if used at all, should be put in inverted
commas has much to commend it. But it would be tedious to adopt it as a universal
practice in a book with the particular concerns of this one, and I shall follow it only when
the inappropriateness of the designation calls for special emphasis.
It has been seen, with a fair degree of consistency, as, in Williams's words, 'the archetypal
Christian deviation'. But there have been exceptions. Most notably there was a short
period at the beginning of the eighteenth century when it found widespread support in
Britain. Nor did that support come from people of no standing, on the margins of society.
It was the creed espoused by many of the leading scientists of the day—by Sir Isaac
Newton secretly, by William Whiston vociferously, and by Samuel Clarke discreetly. For
them the archetypal heresy was Athanasian orthodoxy, and what the fourth-century
Fathers called 'Arianism' was the true embodiment of 'primitive Christianity'. My aim has
been to trace the ways in which Arianism has been conceived down the ages, with special
attention to its brief revival in the early eighteenth century. But before embarking on that
historical story, we need to consider a little more fully what that original 'Arianism' was
understood to be by those who denounced it with such vehemence, and how those who
were, or were said to be, 'Arians' understood themselves.
A Polemical Construction
Arian, like Christian, was not a self-chosen designation. It was one bestowed by hostile
opponents. But, unlike Christian, it was never accepted by those on whom it had been
imposed. Christ was at the heart of the faith and devotion of the early church. But when
Athanasius says that with the Arians 'Arius takes the place of Christ', 7
7 Con. Ar. 1. 2.
his rhetoric distorts the truth beyond even the normal standards of fourth-century
controversy. Arius was in fact never very central to the concerns of those who came to be
called after his name. The application of the term 'Arian' to cover a range of theological
views of a broadly similar kind seems to have developed through two stages. When
Athanasius first uses the term it is to refer to those in Alexandria who were
excommunicated with Arius and who in their turn sought to exclude Athanasius and his
followers from the church. It was
end p.5
a term of local significance where support for and identification with the cause of Arius
was the basic issue. Those who supported their cause from outside were not called Arians
but 'the Eusebian circle' (ō περ υσ βιōν), associates of the Arians and tarred with the
same heresy. As the conflict got fiercer and Athanasius suffered the severe reverse of
being sent into exile, it was not a large step to extend the use of the term 'Arian' to the
wider body of his opponents. The issue at stake was not solely, or at that stage perhaps
even primarily, theological. Many of the charges levelled against Athanasius were
directed at what was regarded as his oppressive and sometimes violent exercise of
ecclesiastical authority. Nevertheless, his opponents did share a general approach to
theological issues which, though by no means identical with that of Arius, was somewhat
nearer to his than to that of Athanasius. And if the name 'Arian' could be made to stick, it
would serve Athanasius' purposes admirably in the bitter controversy. For Arius had been
officially excommunicated at the Council of Nicaea. The name 'Arian' carried guilt by
association. It was an invaluable polemical tool. His opponents, not unnaturally, were
equally anxious to repudiate the name. Most of them could do so with a good conscience.
Few had had any close contact with Arius; few had been directly influenced by his
teaching. Every attempt had to be made to undermine the damaging link insinuated by the
imposition of this unjustified title—even the pulling of rank when the bishops at the
Council of Antioch in ad 341 wrote to assure Pope Julius that they 'could not be followers
of Arius, for how could we who are bishops follow a presbyter?'8
8 Athanasius, De Synodis 22.
But all such protestations were of no avail. Athanasius was victor in the battle of the
name. The designation stuck, and it remains to be seen whether Hanson's claim that
'Arian Controversy' is a misleading designation of those fourth-century debates will do
anything to change that fact.9
9 For a fuller discussion of the argument of this paragraph, see my 'Attitudes to Arius in
the Arian Controversy', in M. R. Barnes and D. H. Williams (eds.), Arianism after Arius
(Edinburgh, 1993), 31-43.
Athanasius is not only responsible for creating the concept of Arianism; he is also
responsible for determining how the concept has been understood in the subsequent
history of the church. That understanding has been affected far more by the polemical
account given by Athanasius than by the precise teaching either of Arius himself or of the
so-called Arians. It is Athanasius' account, rather than any necessarily
end p.6
tentative reconstruction of the teaching of Arius or later Arians, that is most important for
our consideration of attitudes to Arianism down the ages.
The description that Athanasius gives of Arianism is remarkably consistent throughout
his various writings. The great bulk of these, including his most sustained account in the
three Orations against the Arians, were written after the death of Arius. Athanasius does
not quote at length from specific Arian writers. He is more inclined to summarize views
or beliefs that he attributes to Arius or to the Arians. There does not seem to be any
significant difference between those two ascriptions. Interchange between the two is part
of his overall strategy of associating his opponents of the moment as closely as possible
with the officially discredited figure of Arius. For our present purpose it is not necessary
to undertake the difficult task of evaluating the accuracy of these accounts. Together they
constitute the picture of Arianism that has dominated the church's understanding of that
phenomenon throughout its history.
The primary feature of Arianism, as Athanasius presents it, is that the status of the Son is
not one of essential Godhead. The Son is not eternal or immutable; he has no exact
vision, understanding, or knowledge of the Father. Put more positively, he is a creature
brought into being from nothing. From this it follows that the Father himself has not
always been Father. Athanasius recognizes that Arians do speak of the Son as god—as
god by participation—and that they qualify their account of him as creature by insisting
that he is unique, utterly unlike any other creature. But these he regards as mere
sophisms.10
10 Con. Ar. 1. 9; Festal Letters 10. 9; 11. 10; Con. Ar. 2. 19.
There are only the two utterly distinct categories of God and the created order; there is no
midway category between them. Arius' attempts to ameliorate his position by language
which suggests that there is, is so much equivocation. It cannot relate to any reality, and
can simply be ignored in practice. God by participation is a possible way of speaking of
that ultimate goal for human life which Athanasius' Alexandrian tradition spoke of as
'divinization'; but if that were the status of the Son, he would be in no position to
communicate salvation to us.11
11 De Synodis 51.
If the Son is not essentially God, then the only alternative is that he is a creature. And that
both precludes him from fulfilling any saving role, and also means that the worship
which Arians offer to him is a form of
end p.7
blasphemous idolatry.12
12 Con. Ar. 1. 8; 2. 43; 3. 16; Ad Ep. Aeg. 13; Ad Adelphium 6.
In Athanasius' view there are two underlying causes behind these Arian errors. The
Arians cannot square the ascription to the Son of essential Godhead either with
monotheism's insistence on a single uncreated being or with the Son's incarnation in time
and human birth.13
13 Con. Ar. 1. 30-4; 3. 16; 3. 27; Festal Letters 10. 9.
But their failure to do so has serious implications in relation to both the Father and the
Son. If the mediatorial function of the Son requires him to be of some mediatorial
ontological status between God and creation, that can only be because the Father is too
high and mighty, too proud—or perhaps too idle—to undertake the work of creation
himself.14
14 Con. Ar. 2. 24.
And in the case of the Son it implies that he was brought into existence only in order to
be the agent of our creation; he was created for our sake, rather than we for his.15
15 Ad Ep. Aeg. 12.
At the root of all these errors is the Arians' inability to grasp what is specifically new in
Christian faith. The account of God that they put forward is incoherent as it stands; but on
one interpretation it is identical with the radical monotheism of Judaism, while the only
other conceivable interpretation of it (one that stresses that the Son is god in some
secondary sense) amounts to a form of polytheism. Accusations that Arians are no better
than Jews alternate with descriptions of them as indistinguishable from pagans. And at
times the two charges stand incongruously together.16
16 e.g. Con. Ar. 3. 67.
Arians did not of course outwardly resemble either Jews or pagans. The majority of their
leaders were Christian bishops, and their writings and their preaching were ostensibly
based on Scripture. But that, in Athanasius' view, was a sham. Quoting Scripture to his
own ends is a characteristic part of the devil's strategy of deception.17
17 Con. Ar. 1. 8.
The Arians' false beliefs constituted a canon of interpretation—or, rather of
misinterpretation—which vitiated their appeal to Scripture.18
18 Con. Ar. 1. 52.
When the Arians appealed to the authority of one of Athanasius' predecessors, Dionysius
of Alexandria, Athanasius begins his reply by pointing out the utter wrongness of their
theological method.
Their heresy has no ground in reason and no clear proof in Holy Scripture, so they are
always resorting to shameless subterfuges and plausible fallacies. And now they have
ventured to slander the Fathers.19
19 De Sententia Dionysii 1.
end p.8
The Arian appeal to reason is sophistic, their appeal to Scripture a pretence, and their
appeal to tradition an insult. Such is the understanding of Arian theology that Athanasius
sought to convey. The success of his attempt can be seen from the fact that as late as the
end of the nineteenth century we still find the same analysis coming from the pen of one
of the foremost British scholars on Arianism, H. M. Gwatkin. He concludes his major
study of the subject with this judgement:
On the one side their doctrine was a mass of presumptuous theorizing, supported by
alternate scraps of obsolete traditionalism and uncritical text-mongering, on the other it
was a lifeless system of unspiritual pride and hard unlovingness. And therefore Arianism
perished.20
20 H. M. Gwatkin, Studies of Arianism (Cambridge, 1882), 266.
Once again the appeal to reason, tradition, and Scripture is acknowledged, and once again
it is dismissed as wholly spurious.
A Sympathetic Reconstruction
Athanasius' root-and-branch denunciation of Arianism has so dominated all later
reflection on the subject that it is a matter of particular importance to try to view the
initial impetus of Arianism in a more positive light. The appeal of Arians to Scripture,
tradition, and reason, whether ultimately successful or not, was certainly no sham, no
deliberate cloak for other, sinister aims. In their eyes it was a sincere and straightforward
account of the grounding of their teaching. It offers, therefore, a good framework for
attempting to grasp Arianism's own self-understanding. The difficulty of the task lies, as
we have seen, in the paucity of the sources relating to Arius and those most closely
associated with him, and in the variety of beliefs to be found among those who came to
be designated 'Arian'. The account that I shall give is bound, therefore, to be somewhat
broadly and impressionistically conceived. I shall draw particularly on the very limited
writings of Arius himself, as the one with the clearest right to the name of Arian. But I
shall draw evidence also from later Arians, whose views were at least reasonably close to
those of Arius himself. The resultant picture will probably not represent the precise view
of any individual thinker. Nor, of course, does the picture offered by Athanasius. But the
evidence does, I believe, enable us to build up, with a fair measure of confidence, a
general view of how those whom Athanasius was
end p.9
denouncing as Arians understood their faith to be based on Scripture, tradition, and
reason.
The Arian Appeal to Scripture
Arius begins his letter of defence to his bishop, Alexander, with a strong affirmation of
the transcendence of God.
We acknowledge one God, alone unbegotten, alone everlasting, alone unbegun, alone
true, alone having immortality, alone wise, alone sovereign.21
21 In Athanasius, De Synodis 16.
Eight attributes are said to characterize God exclusively. The first three come from the
language of Greek reflective thought rather than from Scripture. All have the
characteristic negative form of an initial α-privative: γννητōς, διōς, ναρχōς. All were
already widely used in Christian theological writing. There is nothing surprising or
distinctive in Arius' use of them. What is more noteworthy is that all the remaining five
are direct citations from or clear allusions to Scripture. The first is taken from the high-
priestly prayer of Jesus with its reference to the 'only true' God in John 17: 3. The second
and the fifth both come from the description of God in 1 Tim. 6: 15-16 as 'the blessed and
only sovereign, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, who alone has immortality'; Arius'
use of the longer scriptural phrase, rather than the single word 'immortal', which the
rhetorical form of the passage would more naturally suggest, is clear evidence of the
strong influence of the biblical text. The third comes from a similar doxological passage,
the ascription of glory to the 'only wise' God in the last verse of the epistle to the Romans
(Rom. 16: 27). Finally, the description of God as 'alone good' derives from the words of
Jesus to the rich young ruler that 'no one is good but God alone' (Mark 10: 18).
The God to whom Arius ascribes these attributes in exclusive fashion is clearly the
Father. Arius does not so name him, but his text goes on to speak of God so described as
begetting an only-begotten Son. In applying these attributes exclusively to the Father,
Arius could reasonably have claimed that he was being faithful to the original context of
the scriptural passages from which the phrases have been drawn. In every case the God of
whom the passage speaks is explicitly differentiated from Jesus Christ. The high-priestly
prayer speaks of a knowledge of 'thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou
hast sent'. The King of kings of 1 Timothy is the one who will determine the proper time
for the final appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.
end p.10
In the Romans doxology it is through Jesus Christ that glory is given to the only wise
God. And it is Jesus himself who refuses to be called 'good' on the ground that that
appellation belongs only to God—indeed, only to God the Father, to give the form in
which the text is regularly cited by Arius' Alexandrian predecessor, Origen. It was no
unnatural or forced reading of Scripture to refer these transcendent attributes directly and
exclusively to the Father.
Arius goes on to describe this transcendent God as 'God of law and prophets and New
Testament'. It is not simply that Scripture provides the language for talking about God.
Transcendent as he is, he is still a God who directs the history of his people in
providential ways. That is not a theme that appears very much in early Arian sources. But
there is no suggestion that in general terms the issue was a matter of dispute. Athanasius
cites as Arian teaching the statement that God led the people out of Egypt and gave them
the law through Moses, a man.22
22 Con. Ar. 2. 27.
His objection is to the analogous use of that teaching to suggest that God might similarly
in the case of Christ have acted through one who was less than fully divine. There is no
suggestion that there is anything defective in general Arian understanding of God as
active in history. Indeed, the logic of the argument implies that there was not. But if
Arians were as ready as other Christians to ascribe to the transcendent God the
providential guidance of Israel's history of which the Bible speaks, that is not to say that
there is no problem about how the unchangeable God acts in the changing scene of
historical events. The problem emerges within Scripture itself and was felt by every
reflective Christian theologian. Scripture depicts God as active through his angels, or
through his word or wisdom. It was those latter concepts that supplied the primary
medium for subsequent Christian reflection. But how were such concepts to be
understood? If we follow Scripture in speaking of the heavens as made by the word of the
Lord and ordered by his spirit (Ps. 33: 6), are we simply describing the quality of God's
creative activity or are we speaking of distinct divine entities who are the immediate
agents of creation? Not all Christians interpreted their scriptures in the same manner at
this point. But the division was not one that stood between the Arians and Athanasius; it
was a division that separated the opponents of Arius from one another. Marcellus of
Ancyra, another vigorous opponent of Arius, did not regard God's pre-existent word or
wisdom as an entity distinct from the Father. But Athanasius and Arius were at one in
doing so. Both
end p.11
read the Old Testament in the light of the New. The use of 'word' by St John and of
'wisdom' by St Paul (1 Cor. 1: 24) as titles of Christ helped to convince them that the
terms referred not just to a divine attribute but to a distinguishable divine entity, who was
the agent both of creation and of God's direction of the affairs of history. If Marcellus did
not read the text that way, it was, Eusebius suggests, because he was too dominated by
the Old Testament and had failed to do justice to the newness of the New.23
23 Eusebius, De Ecclesiastica Theologica 2. 18.
So if anyone was to be accused of being a Judaizer, failing to reflect in his teaching a
distinctively Christian conception of God, it could be argued that it was Marcellus and
not Arius who merited the accusation.
This same word or wisdom of God, the agent of creation and lord of history, had been
fully embodied as the person, Jesus Christ. That was the central message of the gospel.
But what was the essential nature of this personal word or wisdom who had become
incarnate as Jesus? In Arius' letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia, a second early letter of his,
he speaks of the pre-existent Son as πλ ρης θε ς μōνōγεν ς.24
24 In Theodoret, Church History 1. 5.
The phrase is not easy to translate. Literally it means 'full god only-begotten'. There can
be little doubt that the form of words has been determined by the Johannine prologue. In
v. 1 the Word is said to be θε ς (god), in v. 14 he is described as only-begotten
(μōνōγεν ς) and full (πλ ρης) of grace and truth; in v. 18 only-begotten recurs as part of a
fuller title, some texts reading only-begotten son (υ ς) and some only-begotten god (θε
ς). Whether 'only-begotten god' was the reading of v. 18 known to Arius or whether it
was a composite formation from verses 1 and 18, it is a designation chosen here by Arius
himself and widely used by other Arian writers. The text of St John's gospel left Arius in
no doubt that the Word or Son was a divine entity; he was θε ς. But the same passage
equally clearly implied that there was a differentiation between the application of that
term to the Father and to the Word; the latter was μōνōγεν ς θε ς. A later text in St
John's gospel, to which we have already seen Arius alluding, provides a more specific
clue to the nature of that differentiation. John 17: 3 speaks of 'the only true God and Jesus
Christ'. Christ is undoubtedly θε ς where he is to be distinguished from the Father is
precisely that the Father alone is true God ( ληθιν ς θε ς). The distinction is the same as
that which is present in the prologue, but it is made more specific. So there is no case for
suggesting that the distinction in John 17: 3
end p.12
applies only to Christ as human. That would be to wrench the saying away from its
context in the gospel, since the parallel distinction in the prologue must refer to the pre-
existent Word.
What then is the relationship between the Word and the Father, between god and true
God? Is the question, we may be inclined to ask, one for which Scripture provides any
material that might enable us to deal with it? If we are tempted to give the answer 'No',
Arius and Athanasius were at one in returning a positive answer; and they were equally at
one in agreeing where that material was primarily to be found. The eighth chapter of the
book of Proverbs speaks explicitly of the origination of Wisdom:
The Lord created me the beginning of his ways for his works,
long ago before all else that he made.
I was formed in earliest times,
at the beginning, before earth itself.
I was born when there was yet no ocean,
when there were no springs brimming with water.
Wisdom is spoken of as created (κτζω), as formed ( ), and as born (γενν ω).
Wisdom derives its being from God, and the languages of creation and begetting are