chistory_trinity5

The Nicene crisis did not come to an end with the closing of the Council of Nicaea. Arianism proper had, for the moment, been driven underground, but the conflict only served to throw into relief the deep-seated theological divisions in the ranks of the adversaries. The Church’s new relationship to the State, which meant that the success or failure of a doctrine might hinge upon the favor of the reigning emperor, tended to sharpen these divisions. The dispersal of the council’s members marked the commencement of a protracted period of controversy, lasting until the Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381. This period can be divided into four chief phases in the fluctuating controversy. [1]

1.  The first phase, lasting until Constantine’s death in A.D. 337, was a period of widespread reaction against Nicaea. The Arian leaders, who had been exiled, returned, and Eusebius of Nicomedia became leader of an anti-Nicene coalition. Constantine tried to patch things up with Arius in A.D. 332, and swung away from orthodox party whose members refused to compromise. This position remained the official imperial policy until Constantius’ death in A.D. 361, when Julian the Apostate renounced Christianity altogether. While the emperor Constantine was alive, his creed was sacrosanct, but the Eusebians (as we may conveniently call them after their leader) were able to engineer the deposition and exile of their principal opponents, Athanasius of Alexandria, Eustathius of Antioch and Marcellus of Ancyra. [2]

2.  In the second phase, lasting from A.D. 337 to 350, the “Arianizing” emperor Constantius ruled in the East, and the Western emperor, Constans, backed the Nicene cause and protected its leaders. In the East a series of credal statements appeared which ignored Nicaea rather than contradicting it. So, while the Eusebians were openly campaigning to get behind the Nicene creed, the formulae they produced at Antioch (A.D. 341), Philippopolis (A.D. 342) and Antioch again (A.D. 344), were on the whole moderate, omitting the homoousios, but usually critical of Arianism proper and sometimes even conciliatory to the Nicenes. [3]

3.  In the third phase, lasting from A.D. 350 to 361, Constantius reigned as sole emperor and made a determined effort to crush the Nicene doctrine. The genuinely Arian element in the great anti-Nicene party now threw off the mask and succeeded in getting an unadulterated version of their teaching canonized at a series of synods, notably the third council of Sirmium (A.D. 357) and the synods of Nice (A.D. 359) and Constantinople (A.D. 360). This was the situation which lead Jerome to write, “The whole world groaned and marveled to find itself Arian”. At the same time, as a result of the very triumph of extremism, the moderates in the vast amorphous party, called “Semi-Arians”, began to rally under Basil of Ancyra around the compromise formula “of like substance” (homoiousios) [4], saying in one way another that the Son was like the Father. At the synod of Ancyra (A.D. 358) he published the first Homoiousian manifesto. This pronounced that Christ was not a creature but Son of the Father, for “creator and creature are one thing, Father and Son are quite another”; and it condemned other typical Arian theses. But on the other hand, the Son was not simply an “energy” of the Father, as Marcellus was presumed to have taught, but “a substance (ousia) like the Father” (Note that in their terminology ousia approximated the sense of “Person”.). In distinction from all creatures He is really Son. But the likeness between Father and Son is not to be conceived of as identity (tautotes); being another ousia, the Son can be like the Father, but not identical with Him. So the statement speaks of “the likeness of ousia to ousia“, but condemns anyone who defines the Son as homoousios or tautousios with the Father. Thus the formula homoiousios, put under a ban at Sirmium in A.D. 357, was deliberately taken up. A year later in A.D. 359 a Homoiousian memorandum was drafted. Constantius died in A.D. 361, and Julian the Apostate, who renounced Christianity altogether, became emperor.

4.  In the final phase, lasting from A.D. 361 to A.D. 381, Arianism was overthrown and the then dominant “Homoiousians” were gradually converted to accept of the homoousios. [5] The brief pagan reaction under Julian the Apostate at least removed imperial pressure in favor of one form of Christianity against another. At its end what can be called a Neo-Nicene party was prepared to take the lead in the Eastern Church. In 363, Julian the Apostate died in battle and his successor Jovian reverted to orthodoxy for a while. The important development in this final phase was the conversion of the great body of Homoiousian churchmen to the acceptance of the homoousion. The figures largely instrumental in this development were Athanasius and Hilary of Poitiers; the latter spent A.D. 356-359 in exile in Asia Minor and for the first time found himself in direct contact with the Eastern theological debate. [6] Hilary was born of a good family in Gaul about A.D. 315, educated in the Latin classics, converted about A.D. 350 to Christianity, and some three years later was made by popular choice bishop of Poitiers, his birth place. He became leader of the orthodox in Gaul and was in A.D. 359 banished by the Emperor Constantius to Phrygia, where he studied theology and wrote his De Trinitate. [7] At Alexandria, the old lion Athanasius was prepared to make the necessary explanations to unite those who accepted generally the Nicene position.

The works of Athanasius of this period also deals with the related questions which the long-continued discussion had brought up. His Letters to Serapion defend the place of the Holy Spirit in the Godhead, which Arianism had rather incidentally challenged, and the Letter to Epictetus, bishop of Corinth, asserts clearly the completeness of the humanity of Christ. An important shift in technical terminology is the use of ousia, essence, for the being of the Godhead, and hupostasis, substance, for its particular expression in Father, Son, and Spirit. The anathemas attached to the Nicene Creed had used the two words as synonyms, which seems on the whole to have been usage that Athanasius preferred. But in his conciliatory Letter to the Bishops of Africa, Athanasius agreed that hupostasis might be used either way, and the general usage has become, as Basil defines it, that ousia indicates the universal and hupostasis the particular. “One ousia and three hypostaseis” is therefore in Trinitarian theology recognized as the equivalent of the Latin phrase, “Three person in one substance.” It is necessary to remember that Greek hupostasis corresponds in etymology but not in meaning to the Latin (and English) substance, which confused the young Jerome when he came to Antioch and found those whom he supposed to be orthodox talking, as it seemed to him, of three divine substances. Ancient Latin being chary of abstract terms, substantia with its concreteness had to serve for the general idea of being until medieval philosophers felt more at home with esse and essentia. [8]

Both Athanasius and Hilary realized that as regards the fundamental issues, the gap between the Homoiousians and the Nicene party was extremely narrow, and that the final success of the latter could be ensured by establishing a rapprochement between them. So in his De Synodis (A.D. 359), Athanasius made a conciliatory gesture, saluting the Homoiousians as brothers (os adelphoi pros adelphous dialegometha) who in essentials were at one with himself. [9] A further practical step of great importance was taken in A.D. 362 at the council of Alexandria, which met under Athanasius’ chairmanship during the détente caused by the death of Constantius (A.D. 361) and the accession of Julian the Apostate. At this council it was formally recognized that what mattered was not the language used but the meaning underlying it. Thus the formula “three hypostases”, hitherto suspect to the Nicenes because it sounded in their ears painfully like “three ousiai“, that is, three divine beings, was pronounced legitimate provided it did not carry the Arian connotation of “utterly distinct, alien hypostases, different in substance from each other”, in other words, “three principles or three Gods”, but merely expressed the separate subsistence to the three Persons in the consubstantial Triad. The opposite formula, “one hypostasis”, so disturbing to anti-Nicenes of every school, was equally approved, its adherents having explained that they had no Sabellian intent but, equating hupostasis with ousia, we merely trying to bring out the unity of nature between Father and Son. By these statesmanlike decision, which incidentally shocked many in the West who saw in “three hypostases” a confession of tritheism, the union between the two parties was virtually sealed, and we can see foreshadowed in it the formula which became the badge of orthodoxy, “one ousia, three hupostaseis“. [10]

This statesmanlike attitude of Athanasius and Hilary was not without effect. Coming at a time when the great body of the Homoiousians were growing increasingly apprehensive of the menace of unmitigated Arianism, it quietened their suspicions that the orthodox party was inveterately Sabellian, and made the Homoousian theology more palatable to them. [11]

Hilary died in A.D. 368 and Athanasius died in A.D. 373. After Roman emperor Jovan suddenly and mysteriously died in Ancyra in A.D. 364, political Arianism was again supported by the emperor Valens, ruler of the Roman East from A.D. 364 to 378. This delayed the victory of the Neo-Nicene party; but it was probably helpful in the long run, since it gave time for the Neo-Nicene party to formulate a clearer statement of its ideas and to consolidate its forces. In A.D. 379 Theodosius came from the West to be emperor, where Arianism had never had any real foothold in the Latin Church. He was baptized in A.D. 380, gave up use of the title pontifex maximus, and made it illegal to depart from the Nicene faith. His recognition of the doctrine of the coequal Trinity as the creed of the Empire, and of its supporters as the officially recognized leaders of the Church, put the seal on the Church’s later development. The Nicene formula, not wholly welcome even to its proponents in A.D. 325, had now become the hallmark of orthodoxy, as it has ever since remained. [12] In A.D. 381, he outlawed heretical churches and sects (the Arians), and put their property at the disposal of the orthodox, and called the (First) Council of Constantinople. At this Council that was held at Constantinople in A.D. 381, the Nicene faith was reaffirmed, and the various Arian and Arianizing deviations were placed under a ban. [13]