power, and his knowledge, and expressly asserted that the Son does not perfectly know the Father, and therefore cannot perfectly reveal him. The Son is essentially distinct from the Father,' and-as Aëtius and Eunomius afterward more strongly expressed it-unlike the Father; and this dissimilarity was by some extended to all moral and metaphysical attributes and conditions.' The dogma of the essential deity of Christ seemed to Arius to lead of necessity to Sabellianism or to the Gnostic dreams of emanation. As to the humanity of Christ Arius ascribed to him only a human body, but not a rational soul, and on this point Apollinarius came to the same conclusion, though from orthodox premises, and with the intention of saving the unity of the divine personality of Christ.

The later development of Arianism brought out nothing really new, but rather revealed many inconsistencies and contradictions. Thus, for example, Eunomius, to whom clearness was the measure of truth, maintained that revelation has made everything clear, and man can perfectly know God; while Arius denied even to the Son the perfect knowledge of God or of himself. The negative and rationalistic element came forth in ever greater prominence, and the controversy became a metaphysical war, destitute of all deep religious spirit. The eighteen formulas of faith which Arianism and Semi-Arianism produced between the councils of Nice and Constantinople, are leaves without blossoms, and branches without fruit. The natural course of the Arian heresy is downward, through the stage of Socinianism, into the rationalism which sees in Christ a mere man, the chief of his kind. To pass now to the arguments used for and against this

error:

1. The Arians drew their exegetical proofs from the passages of Scripture which seem to place Christ in any way in the category of that which is created, or ascribe to the incarnate

1 Ἑτεροούσιος τῷ πατρί.

• Ανόμοιος κατ' ουσίαν. Hence the name Ανόμοιοι, Anomcans.

3 Ανόμοιος κατὰ πάντα,

Such as Prov. viii. 22–25 (comp. Sir. i. 4; xxiv. 8 f.), where personified Wis dom, i. e., the Logos, says (according to the Septuagint): Kupios KTIσév us [Heb

(not the pre-temporal, divine) Logos growth, lack of knowl edge, weariness, sorrow, and other changing human affec tions and states of mind,' or teach a subordination of the Son to the Father.'

Athanasius disposes of these arguments somewhat too easily, by referring the passages exclusively to the human side of the person of Jesus. When, for example, the Lord says he knows not the day nor the hour of the judgment, this is due only to his human nature. For how should the Lord of heaven and earth, who made days and hours, not know them! He accuses the Arians of the Jewish conceit, that divine and human are incompatible. The Jews say: How could Christ, if he were God, become man, and die on the cross? The Arians say: How can Christ, who was man, be at the same time God? We, says Athanasius, are Christians; we do not stone Christ when he asserts his eternal Godhead, nor are we offended in him when he speaks to us in the language of

P, Vulg. possedit me] ἀρχὴν ὁδῶν αὐτοῦ εἰς ἔργα αὐτοῦ· πρὸ τοῦ αἰῶνος ἐθεμελίω σέν με, κ.τ.λ. This passage seemed clearly to prove the two propositions of Arius, that the Father created the Son, and that he created him for the purpose of creating the world through him (εἰς ἔργα αὐτοῦ). Acts ii. 36: Οτι καὶ κύριον αὐτὸν καὶ Χριστὸν ἐποίησεν ὁ Θεός. Heb. 1. 4: Κρείττων γενόμενος τῶν ἀγγέλων Heb. iii. 2: Πιστὸν ὄντα τῷ ποιήσαντι αὐτόν. John i. 14: Ὁ λόγος σάρξ ἐγέ УСТО. Phil. ii. 7-9. The last two passages are of course wholly inapposite, a they treat of the incarnation of the Son of God, not of his pre-temporal existenc and essence. Heb. i. 4 refers to the exaltation of the God-Man. Most plausible of all is the famous passage: pwrÁTOKOS TÁONS Kτlσews, Col. i. 15, from which the Arians inferred that Christ himself is a xríσts of God, to wit, the first creature of all. But πρωτότοκος is not equivalent to πρωτόκτιστος or πρωτόπλαστος: on the contrary, Christ is by this very term distinguished from the creation, and described as the Author, Upholder, and End of the creation. A creature cannot possibly be the source of life for all creatures. The meaning of the expression, therefore, is: born before every creature, i. e., before anything was made. The text indicates the distinction between the eternal generation of the Son from the essence of the Father, and the temporal creation of the world out of nothing by the Son. Yet there is a difference between μovoyevns and wρwтóтokos, which Athanasius himself makes: the former referring to the relation of the Son to the Father, the latter, to his relation to the world.

1 Such as Luke ii. 52; Heb. v. 8, 9; John xii. 27, 28; Matt. xxvi. 39; Mark xiii. 52; &c.

E. g., John xiv. 28: 'O warhp μel(wv nov doriv. This passage also refers not to the pre-existent state of Christ, but to the state of humiliation of the God-Man.

human poverty. But it is the peculiar doctrine of Holy Scrip ture to declare everywhere a double thing of Christ: that he, as Logos and image of the Father, was ever truly divine, and that he afterwards became man for our salvation. When Atha"""" nasius cannot refer such terms as "made," "created," "became," to the human nature, he takes them figuratively for "testified," "constituted," "demonstrated."'

As positive exegetical proofs against Arianism, Athanasius cites almost all the familiar proof-texts which ascribe to Christ divine names, divine attributes, divine works, and divine dig. nity, and which it is unnecessary here to mention in detail.

Of course his exegesis, as well as that of the fathers in general, when viewed from the level of the modern grammati cal, historical, and critical method, contains a great deal of allegorizing caprice and fancy and sophistical subtilty. But it is in general far more profound and true than the heretical.

2. The theological arguments for Arianism were predominantly negative and rationalizing. The amount of them is, that the opposite view is unreasonable, is irreconcilable with strict monotheism and the dignity of God, and leads to Sabellian or Gnostic errors. It is true, Marcellus of Ancyra, one of the most zealous advocates of the Nicene homoousianism, fell into the Sabellian denial of the tri-personality,' but most of the Nicene fathers steered with unerring tact between the Scylla of Sabellianism, and the Charybdis of Tritheism.

Athanasius met the theological objections of the Arians with overwhelming dialectical skill, and exposed the internal

The Tide and Seueλíwoe in Prov. viii. 22 ff., on which the Arians laid special stress, and of which Athanasius treats quite at large in his second oration against the Arians, he refers not to the essence of the Logos (with whom the copía was by both parties identified), but to the incarnation of the Logos and to the renovation of our race through him: appealing to Eph. ii. 10: "We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works." As to the far more important passage in Col. i. 15, Athanasius gives substantially the correct interpretation in his Expositio fidei, cap. 8 (ed. Bened. tom. i. 101), where he says: pwrótokov cinàr [Παῦλος] δηλοῖ μὴ εἶναι αὐτὸν κτίσμα, ἀλλὰ γέννημα τοῦ πατρός· ξένον γὰρ ἐπὶ τῆς θεότητος αὐτοῦ τὸ λέγεσθαι κτίσμα. Τὰ γὰρ πάντα ἐκτίσθησαν ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς διὰ τοῦ υἱοῦ, ὁ δὲ υἱὸς μόνος ἐκ τοῦ πατρὸς ἀϊδίως ἐγεννήθη· διὸ πρωτότοκός ισ πάσης κτίσεως ὁ Θεὸς λόγος, ἄτρεπτος ἐξ ἀτρέπτου.

1 Comp. on Marcellus of Ancyra below, § 126.

contradictions and philosophical absurdities of their positions. Arianism teaches two gods, an uncreated and a created, a su preme and a secondary god, and thus far relapses into heathen polytheism. It holds Christ to be a mere creature, and yet the creator of the world; as if a creature could be the source of life, the origin and the end of all creatures! It ascribes to Christ a pre-mundane existence, but denies him eternity, while yet time belongs to the idea of the world, and is created only therewith,' so that before the world there was nothing but eternity. It supposes a time before the creation of the pre-existent Christ; thus involving God himself in the notion of time; which contradicts the absolute being of God. It asserts the unchangeableness of God, but denies, with the eternal genera. tion of the Son, also the eternal Fatherhood; thus assuming after all a very essential change in God.' Athanasius charges the Arians with dualism and heathenism, and he accuses them of destroying the whole doctrine of salvation. For if the Son is a creature, man remains still separated, as before, from God; no creature can redeem other creatures, and unite them with God. If Christ is not divine, much less can we be partakers of the divine nature and children of God.'

§ 125. Semi-Arianism.

The SEMI-ARIANS, or, as they are called, the Homoiousiasts, wavered in theory and conduct between the Nicene

1 Mundus non factus est in tempore, sed cum tempore, says Augustine, although I cannot just now lay my hand on the passage. Time is the successional form of existence of all created things. Now Arius might indeed have said: Time arose with the Son as the first creature. This, however, he did not say, but put a time before the Son.

• Of less weight is the objection, which was raised by Alexander of Alexandria: Since the Son is the Logos, the Arian God must have been, until the creation of the Son, aλoyos, a being without reason.

• Comp. the second Oration against the Arians, cap. 69 ff. Ημιάρειοι.

• 'Oμolovoiαotol. The name Eusebians is used of the Arians and Semi-Arians, who both for a time made common cause, as a political party under the lead of Eusebius of Nicomedia (not of Cæsarea), against the Athanasians and Nicer ts.

orthodoxy and the Arian heresy. Their doctrice makes the impression, not of an internal reconciliation of opposites which in fact were irreconcilable, but of diplomatic evasion, temporizing compromise, flat, half and half juste milieu. They had a strong footing in the subordination of most of the ante Nicene fathers; but now the time for clear and definite de cision had come.

Their doctrine is contained in the confession which was proposed to the council of Nicea by Eusebius of Cæsarea, but rejected, and in the symbols of the councils of Antioch and Sirmium from 340 to 360. Theologically they were best represented first by Eusebius of Cæsarea, who adhered more closely to his admired Origen, and later by Cyril of Jerusalem, who approached nearer the orthodoxy of the Nicene party.

The signal term of Semi-Arianism is homoi-ousion, in distinction from homo-ousion and hetero-ousion. The system teaches that Christ is not a creature, but co-eternal with the Father, though not of the same, but only of like essence, and subordinate to him. It agrees with the Nicene creed in asserting the eternal generation of the Son, and in denying that he was a created being; while, with Arianism, it denies the iden tity of essence. Hence it satisfied neither of the opposite parties, and was charged by both with logical incoherence. Athanasius and his friends held, against the Semi-Arians, that like attributes and relations might be spoken of, but not like essences or substances; these are either identical or different. It may be said of one man that he is like another, not in respect of substance, but in respect of his exterior and form. If the Son, as the Semi-Arians admit, is of the essence of the Father, he must be also of the same essence. The Arians argued: There is no middle being between created and uncreated being; if God the Father alone is uncreated, everything out of him, including the Son, is created, and consequently of different essence, and unlike him.

Thus pressed from bath sides, Semi-Arianism could not long withstand; and even before the council of Constantinople it passed over, in the main, to the camp of orthodoxy.'

Bull judges Semi-Arianism very contemptuously.

"Semi Arianus," says he