Life of St Athanasius the Great and Account of Arianism

St Athanasius the Great Resources Online and in Print

Icon of the Christ and New Testament Reader

128 Pages (Part I)

Page 44

Arian Literature. Beside the above-mentioned letters and fragments of Arius, our early Arian documents are scanty. Very important is the letter of Eus. Nic. to Paulinus, referred to above, S:3 (1), pp. xvi., xviii., other fragments of letters, p. 458 sq. The writings [29] of Asterius, if preserved, would have been an invaluable source of information [30] . Asterius seems to have written before the Nicene Council; he may have modified his language in later treatises. He was replied to by Marcellus in a work which brought him into controversy (336) with Eusebius of Caesarea. With the creeds and Arian literature after the death of Constantine we are not at present concerned.

Arianism was a novelty. Yet it combines in an inconsistent whole elements of almost every previous attempt to formulate the doctrine of the Person of Christ. Its sharpest antithesis was Modalism: yet with the modalist Arius maintained the strict personal unity of the Godhead. With dynamic monarchianism it held the adoptionist principle in addition; but it personified the Word and sacrificed the entire humanity of Christ. In this latter respect it sided with the Docetae, most Gnostics, and Manichaeans, to all of whom it yet opposes a sharply-cut doctrine of creation and of the transcendence of God. With Origen and the Apologists before him it made much of the cosmic mediation of the Word in contrast to the redemptive work of Jesus; with the Apologists, though not with Origen, it enthroned in the highest place the God of the Philosophers: but against both alike it drew a sharp broad line between the Creator and the Universe, and drew it between the Father and the Son. Least of all is Arianism in sympathy with the theology of Asia,--that of Ignatius, Irenaeus, Methodius, founded upon the Joannine tradition. The profound Ignatian idea of Christ as the Logos apo siges proelthon is in impressive contrast with the shallow challenge of the Thalia, 'Many words hath God spoken, which of these was manifested in the flesh?'

[29] They appear to have comprised the Arian appeal to Scripture of which (considering the Biblical learning of Lucian and what we hear of the training of Aetius, to say nothing of the exegetical chair held by Arius at Alxa.) their use must be pronounced meagre and superficial. In the O.T. they harped upon three texts, Deut. vi. 4 (Monotheism), Ps. xlv. 8 (Adoptionism), and Prov. viii. 22, LXX. (the Word a Creature). In the N.T. they appeal for Monotheism (in their sense) to Luke xviii. 19, John xvii. 3; The Son a Creature, Acts ii. 36, 1 Cor. i. 24, Col. i. 15, Heb. iii. 2; Adoptionism, Matt. xii. 28; prokope, Luke ii. 52; also Matt. xxvi. 41, Phil. ii. 6, sq., Heb. i. 4; The Son treptos, &c., Mark xiii. 32, John xiii. 31, xi. 34; inferior to the Father, John xiv. 48, Matt. xxvii. 46, also xi. 27 a, xxvi. 39, xxviii. 18, John xii. 27, and 1 Cor. xv. 28 (cf. pp. 407, sq.). In this respect Origen is immeasurably superior.

[30] They are regarded by Athan., a generation after they were written, as the representative statement of 'the case' for Arianism (pp. 459 sq.; 324 sqq., 361, 363, 368, &c., from which passages and Eus. c. Marcell. a fragmentary restoration might be attempted). For what is known of his history (not in D.C.B.) see Gwatkin, p. 72, note; for his doctrinal position see above, p. xxviii.

Previous Page / First / Next Page of the Life of Athanasius

St Athanasius the Great Home Page St Athanasius the Great in Print

Learned Freeware