Life of St Athanasius the Great and Account of Arianism

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128 Pages (Part I)

Page 48

Aristotle himself teaches a higher logic than this. But at this date Aristotelianism proper was extinct. It only survived in the form of 'pure' logic, adopted by the Platonists, but also studied for its own sake in connection with rhetoric and the art of arguing (cf. Socr. ii. 35). Such an instrument might well be a cause of confusion in the hands of men who used it without regard to the conditions of the subject-matter. An illogical compromise between the theology of Paul of Samosata and of Origen, the marvel is that Arianism satisfied any one even in the age of its birth. What has been said above with regard to the conception of God in the early Church may help to explain it; the germ of ethical insight which is latent in adoptionism, and which when neglected by the Church has always made itself felt by reaction, must also receive justice; once again, its inherent intellectualism was in harmony with the dominant theology of the Eastern Church, that is with one side of Origenism. Where analogous conditions have prevailed, as for example in the England of the early eighteenth century, Arianism has tended to reappear with no one of its attendant incongruities missing.

But for all that, the doom of Arianism was uttered at Nicaea and verified in the six decades which followed. Every possible alternative formula of belief as to the Person of Christ was forced upon the mind of the early Church, was fully tried, and was found wanting. Arianism above all was fully tried and above all found lacking. The Nicene formula alone has been found to render possible the life, to satisfy the instincts of the Church of Christ. The choice lies--nothing is clearer--between that and the doctrine of Paul of Samosata. The latter, it has been said, was misunderstood, was never fairly tried. As a claimant to represent the true sense of Christianity it was I think once for all rejected when the first Apostles gave the right hand of fellowship to S. Paul (see above, p. xxii.); its future trial must be in the form of naturalism, as a rival to Christianity, on the basis of a denial of the claim of Christ to be the One Saviour of the World, and of His Gospel to be the Absolute Religion. But Arianism, adding to all the difficulties of a supernatural Christology the spirit of the shallowest rationalism and the fundamental postulate of agnosticism, can surely count for nothing in the Armageddon of the latter days,

Spiacente a Dio ed a' nemici suoi.

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