Arianism

The Council of Nicaea was called to deal with a dispute arising out of a conflict between the Alexandrian presbyter, Arius, and his bishop, Alexander; and the Council of Constantinople was intended to put an end to a style of teaching, generally known to its opponents as 'Arianism'. The Creed has an explicit polemical thrust. There is nothing particularly surprising in that. The same could be said of much of the New Testament.

Yet the role of the New Testament in Christian faith as a whole, and long-established traditions of how it should be understood, have proved a serious hindrance to the emergence and the acceptance of such re-evaluations. Difficulties of the same kind apply in the case of the Nicene Creed also. There is a tension between its role as symbol of normative Christian truth and its close links with a fourth-century controversy, open to historical reinterpretation. And that tension affects not only the Creed's contemporary role. It operates in the reverse direction as well; it complicates the attempts of historical study to achieve a proper understanding of Arius and Arianism.

The fruitfulness of such an approach to the history of doctrine cries out for its pursuit in relation to Arius and Arianism also. But can that be done if the Nicene Creed is both an explicit repudiation of Arius and the primary norm of Christian orthodoxy? The inherent difficulty of the project is well illustrated by a document arising out of a Lutheran-Catholic dialogue, devoted to the status of the Nicene Creed as Dogma of the Church.

Nevertheless, once we have acknowledged that doctrinal norms can function only indirectly, through an interpretative prism, the project will no longer appear an impossible one. Indeed it has already begun. Robert Gregg and Dennis Groh book Early Arianism: A View of Salvation ( 1981) and Thomas Kopocek article "'Neo-Arian Religion: The Evidence of the Apostolic Constitutions'" ( 1985) have forced scholars to take serious account of the positive religious intentions of the Arian movement in its earlier and later manifestations in the fourth century. Rowan Williams more recent book, Arius: Heresy and Tradition ( 1987), also gives a highly sympathetic historical interpretation of Arius and of his teaching.

'The time', Williams concludes, 'has probably come to relegate the term "Arianism" at best to inverted commas and preferably to oblivion... the sheer uselessness and inaccuracy of the word becomes clearer with every new piece of research in the period'. Here too, then, extensive research goes on, seeking to clarify not only the detail of the story but the basic categories in terms of which the story needs to be told.

It was the creed espoused by many of the leading scientists of the day -by Sir Isaac Newton secretly, by William Whiston vociferously, and by Samuel Clarke discreetly. For them the archetypal heresy was Athanasian orthodoxy, and what the fourth-century Fathers called 'Arianism' was the true embodiment of 'primitive Christianity'.