Some of the sessions of the Council were marked by uproar and violence. Athanasius declares that when the bishops heard extracts read from the Thalia of Arius, they raised the cry of “impious,” and closed their eyes and shut their ears tight against the admission of such appalling blasphemy. There is a legend, indeed, that St. Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, was so carried away by his indignation that he smote Arius a terrific blow upon the jaw for daring to give utterance to words so vile. Theodoretus declares that the Arians drew up the draft of a creed which they were willing to subscribe and had it read before the Council. But it was at once denounced as a “bastard and vile-begotten document” and torn to pieces. Then a praiseworthy attempt was made to begin at the beginning. The proposition was put forward that the Son was from God. “Agreed,” said the Trinitarians; “Agreed,” said the Arians, on the authority of such texts as “There is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things,” and “All things are become new and all things are of God.” “But will you agree,” asked the Trinitarians, “that the Son is the true Power and Image of the Father, like to Him in all things, His eternal Image, undivided from Him and unalterable?” “Yes,” said the Arians after some discussion among themselves, and they quoted the texts: “Man is the glory and image of God,” “For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake,” and “In him we live and move and have our being.” “But will you admit,” continued the Trinitarians, “that the Son is Very God?” “Yes,” replied the Arians, “for he is Very God if he has been made so.” Athanasius tells us that while these strange questions and answers were being tossed from one side of the Council to the other, he saw the Arians “whispering and making signals one to the other with their eyes.” It is to be regretted that we have no independent account. The savage abuse with which Athanasius attacks the Arians in his “Letter to the African Bishops” makes his version of what took place at the Council exceedingly suspect. He speaks of their “wiliness,” and delivers himself of the sarcasm that as they were cradled in ordure their arguments also partook of a similar character.[[97]] Most of the vilification in the opening stages of the Arian controversy—at any rate most of that which has survived—seems to have been on the Trinitarian side.
The word “Homoousion” had at length been uttered and, strangely enough, by Eusebius of Nicomedia, though it was soon to become the rallying cry of his opponents. He had employed it, apparently, to clinch the argument against the Trinitarians, for, he said, if they declared the Son to be Very God, that was tantamount to declaring that the Son was of one substance with the Father. Greatly, no doubt, to his surprise, it was seized upon by his opponents as the word which, of all others, precisely crystallised their position and their objections to Arianism. But before the fight began to rage round this word, the moderates came forward with another suggestion of compromise. Eusebius of Cæsarea read before the Council the confession of faith which was in use in his diocese, after having been handed down from bishop to bishop. The Emperor had read it and approved; perhaps, he urged, it might similarly commend itself to the acceptance of all parties in the Council. The creed began as follows:
“I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things both visible and invisible, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, God of God, Light of Light, Life of Life, the only-begotten Son, the First-born of every creature, begotten of the Father before all worlds, by whom also all things were made. Who for our salvation was made flesh and lived amongst men, and suffered, and rose again on the third day, and ascended to the Father, and shall come in glory to judge the quick and the dead. And I believe in the Holy Ghost.”
Eusebius, in writing later to the people of his diocese, said that when this creed was read out,
“no room for contradiction appeared; but our most pious Emperor, before any one else, testified that it comprised most orthodox statements. He confessed, moreover, that such were his sentiments, and he advised all present to agree to it, and subscribe to its articles with the insertion of the single word ‘one in substance.’”
Indeed, little objection could be taken to the creed of Eusebius, which might have been subscribed to with equal sincerity by Arius and Alexander. But the great problem, which had brought the Council together, would have remained entirely unsettled. The creed was not sufficiently precise. It left openings for all kinds of heresies. The Trinitarians, therefore, insisted upon inserting a few words which should more precisely define the relationship between the Father and the Son and their real nature and substance, and should retain undiminished the majesty and Godhead of the Son. They put forward the simple antithesis “begotten not made” in reference to the Son, whereby the Arian doctrine that the Son was a creature was effectually negatived. And they also adopted as their own the word which has made the Council famous alike with believers and with sceptics—the word “Homoousion.”
Dean Stanley, in his History of the Eastern Church,[[98]] has well said that this is “one of those remarkable words which creep into the language of philosophy and theology and then suddenly acquire a permanent hold on the minds of men.” It was a word with a notable, if not a very remote past. It had been orthodox and heretical by turns, a fact which is not surprising when we consider the vagueness of the term “ousia” and the looseness with which it had been employed by philosophical writers.
“It first distinctly appeared,” says Dean Stanley, “in the statement, given by Irenæus, of the doctrines of Valentius; then for a moment it acquired a more orthodox reputation in the writings of Dionysius and Theognostus of Alexandria; then it was coloured with a dark shade by association with the teaching of Manes; next proposed as a test of orthodoxy at the Council of Antioch against Paul of Samosata, and then by that same Council was condemned as Sabellian.”
Obviously, therefore, it was not a word to command instantaneous acceptance; its old associations lent a certain specious weight to the repeated accusation of the Arians that the Trinitarians were importing into the Church fantastic subtleties borrowed from Greek philosophy, and were encrusting the simple faith and the simple language of Christ and the apostles with alien thoughts and formulæ. Athanasius meets that argument with a “tu quoque,” asking where in Scripture one can find the phrases which Arius had made his own. Modern theologians have replied with much greater force that this importation of philosophy into the Christian religion was inevitable.
“The Church,” says Canon Bright,[[99]] “had come out into the open, had been obliged to construct a theological position against the tremendous attacks of Gnosticism and to provide for educated enquirers in the great centres of Greek learning. She had become conscious of her debt to the wise.”[wise.”]