The Arian Controversy

by Henry Melvill Gwatkin

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-assertion, 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 analyse 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.

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 pass from the traditional assertion 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 superstition flourished luxuriantly. Old worships were revived, the ends of the earth were searched for new ones. Isis or Mithras might help where Jupiter was powerless, and uncouth lustrations 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 worshipped as the Son of God? If he was divine, there must be two Gods; if not, his worship was no better than the vulgar worships of the dead. In either case, there seemed to be no escape from the charge of polytheism.

(2) with the philosophers.

The key of the difficulty is on its other side, in the doctrine of the unity of God, 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 gods 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 God who loved the world and of a Redeemer who had come in human flesh. As this coming is enough to show that God 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 God. 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 worship as they might a God 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 worship may be a hero or a prophet, an angel or a demi-god—anything except a Son of God in human form. We shall have to find some explanation for the scandal of the incarnation.

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 worship, but to defend that worship 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 God, and therefore a second God. Let us see how high a creature can be raised without making hint essentially divine.

His doctrine; Its merits.

The Arian Christ is indeed a lofty creature. He claims our worship as the image of the Father, begotten before all worlds, as the Son of God, 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 God for ever. Is not this a good confession? What more can we want? Why should all this glorious language go for nothing? God 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 worship of him as the Son of God. 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 noble work of missions in that age of deep despair which saw the dissolution of the ancient world.