Life of St Athanasius the Great and Account of Arianism

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128 Pages (Part I)

Page 43

The Theology of the Eastern Church was suffering from the effort to assimilate the Origenist theology: it could not do so without eliminating the underlying and unifying idea of Origenism; this done, the overwhelming influence of the great teacher remained, while dissonant fragments of his system, vaguely comprehended in many cases, permeated some here, some there [28] . Meanwhile the school of Lucian had a method and a system; they knew their own minds, and relied on reason and exegesis. This was the secret of their power. Had Arius never existed, Arianism must have tried its strength under such conditions. But the age was ready for Arius; and Arius was ready. The system of Arius was in effect that of Lucian: its formulation appears to have been as much the work of Asterius as of Arius himself. (Cf. p. 155, S:8, ho de 'Ar. metagrapsas dedoke tois idiois. The extant writings of Arius are his letters to Eus. Nic. and to Alexander, preserved by Theodoret and Epiph. Haer. 69, and the extracts from the 'Thalia' in Ath., pp. 308-311, 457, 458; also the 'confession' in Socr. i. 26, Soz. ii. 27. Cf. also references to his dicta in Ath. pp. 185, 229, &c.) Arius started from the idea of God and the predicate 'Son.' God is above all things uncreated, or unoriginate, agen[n]etos, (the ambiguity of the derivatives of gennasthai and genesthai are a very important element in the controversy. See p. 475, note 5, and Lightfoot, Ignat. ii. p. 90 sqq.) Everything else is created, geneton. The name 'Son' implies an act of procreation. Therefore, before such act, there was no Son, nor was God properly speaking a Father. The Son is not coeternal with Him. He was originated by the Father's will, as indeed were all things. He is, then, ton geneton, He came into being from non-existence (ex ouk onton), and before that did not exist (ouk en prin genetai). But His relation to God differs from that of the Universe generally. Created nature cannot bear the awful touch of bare Deity. God therefore created the Son that He in turn might be the agent in the Creation of the Universe--'created Him as the beginning of His ways,' (Prov. viii. 22, LXX.). This being so, the nature of the Son was in the essential point of agennesia unlike that of the Father; (xenos tou huiou kat' ousian ho Pater hoti anarchos): their substances (hupostaseis) are anepimiktoi,--have nothing in common. The Son therefore does not possess the fundamental property of sonship, identity of nature with the Father. He is a Son by Adoption, not by Nature; He has advanced by moral probation to be Son, even to be monogenes theos (Joh. i. 14). He is not the eternal Logos, reason, of God, but a Word (and God has spoken many): but yet He is the Word by grace; is no longer, what He is by nature, subject to change. He cannot know the Father, much less make Him known to others. Lastly, He dwells in flesh, not in full human nature (see above, p. xxviii. and note 2). The doctrine of Arius as to the Holy Spirit is not recorded, but probably He was placed between the Son and the other ktismata (yet see Harnack ii. 199, note 2).

[28] The letter of Alexander to his namesake of Byzantium in Thdt. i. 4, cannot be exempted from this generalisation.

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