The Arian Controversy Part 3

The conservatives hardly cared to be reminded of their half unwilling signatures. To Athanasius it may have been a watchword from the first, but it was not so to many others. In the West it was as yet almost unknown. Even Marcellus was more disposed to avoid all technical terms than to lay stress on those which the council sanctioned. Yet all parties had learned caution at Nicaea. Marcellus disavowed Sabellianism; Eusebius avoided Arianism, and n.o.body seems to have disowned the creed as long as Constantine lived.

[Sidenote: Athanasius bishop of Alexandria, A.D. 328.]

The next great change was at Alexandria. The bishop Alexander died in the spring of 328, and a stormy election followed. Its details are obscure, but the Nicene party put forward the deacon Athanasius, and consecrated him in spite of a determined opposition from Arians and Meletians. And now that we stand before the greatest of the Eastern fathers, let us see how his character and training fitted him to be the hero of the Arian controversy.

[Sidenote: Character of Athanasius.]

Athanasius was a Greek by birth and education, Greek also in subtle thought and philosophic insight, in oratorical power and supple statesmans.h.i.+p. Though born almost within the shadow of the mighty temple of Serapis at Alexandria, he shows few signs of Coptic influence. Deep as is his feeling of the mystery of revelation, he has no love of mystery for its own sake, nothing of the Egyptian pa.s.sion for things awful and mysterious. Even his style is clear and simple, without a trace of Egyptian involution and obscurity. We know nothing of his family, and cannot even date his birth for certain, though it must have been very near the year 297. He was, therefore, old enough to remember the worst days of the great persecution, which Maximin Daza kept up in Egypt as late as 313. Legend has of course been busy with his early life. According to one story, Alexander found him with some other boys at play, imitating the ceremonies of baptism--not a likely game for a youth of sixteen. Another story makes him a disciple of the great hermit Antony, who never existed. He may have been a lawyer for a time, but in any case his training was neither Coptic nor monastic, but Greek and scriptural, as became a scholar of Alexandria. There may be traces of Latin in his writings, but his allusions to Greek literature are such as leave no doubt that he had a liberal education. In his earliest works he refers to Plato; in later years he quotes Homer, and models his notes on Aristotle, his _Apology_ to Constantius on Demosthenes. To Egyptian idolatry he seldom alludes. Scripture, however, is his chosen and familiar study, and few commentators have ever shown a firmer grasp of certain of its leading thoughts. He at least endeavoured (unlike the Arian text-mongers) to take in the context of his quotations and the general drift of Christian doctrine. Many errors of detail may be pardoned to a writer who so seldom fails in suggestiveness and width of view. In mere learning he was no match for Eusebius of Caesarea, and even as a thinker he has a worthy rival in Hilary of Poitiers, while some of the Arian leaders were fully equal to him in political skill. But Eusebius was no great thinker, Hilary no statesman, and the Arian leaders were not men of truth. Athanasius, on the other hand, was philosopher, statesman, and saint in one. Few great men have ever been so free from littleness or weakness. At the age of twenty he had risen far above the level of Arianism and Sabellianism, and throughout his long career we catch glimpses of a spiritual depth which few of his contemporaries could reach. Above all things, his life was consecrated to a simple witness for truth. Athanasius is the hero of a mighty struggle, and the secret of his grandeur is his intense and vivid faith that the incarnation is a real revelation from the other world, and that its issues are for life and death supreme in heaven and earth and h.e.l.l for evermore.

[Sidenote: Early years of his rule at Alexandria.]

Such a bishop was sure to meet a bitter opposition, and as sure to overcome it. Egypt soon became a stronghold of the Nicene faith, for Athanasius could sway the heart of Greek and Copt alike. The pertinacious hatred of a few was balanced by the enthusiastic admiration of the many. The Meletians dwindled fast, the Arians faster still.

Nothing but outside persecution was needed now to make Nicene orthodoxy the national faith of Egypt.

[Sidenote: Beginnings of the reaction.]

It will be remembered that Eusebius of Nicomedia was exiled shortly after the council. His disgrace was not a long one. He had powerful friends at court, and it was not very hard for a man who had signed the creed to satisfy the Emperor of his substantial orthodoxy. Constantine was not unforgiving, and policy as well as easy temper forbade him to scrutinize too closely the professions of submission laid before him.

Once restored to his former influence at court, Eusebius became the centre of intrigue against the council. Old Lucianic friends.h.i.+ps may have led him on. Arius was a Lucianist like himself, and the Lucianists had in vain defended him before the council. Eusebius was the ablest of them, and had fared the worst. He had strained his conscience to sign the creed, and his compliance had not even saved him from exile. We cannot wonder if he brought back a firm determination to undo the council's hateful work. If it was too dangerous to attack the creed itself, its defenders might be got rid of one by one on various pretexts. Such was the plan of operations.

[Sidenote: Formation of the Eusebian coalition.]

A party was easily formed. The Lucianists were its nucleus, and all sorts of malcontents gathered round them. The Meletians of Egypt joined the coalition, and the unclean creatures of the palace rejoiced to hear of fresh intrigue. Above all, the conservatives gave extensive help. The charges against the Nicene leaders were often more than plausible, for men like the Caesarean Eusebius dreaded Sabellianism, and Marcellus was practically Sabellian, and the others aiders and abettors of his misbelief. Some even of the darker charges may have had some ground, or at least have seemed truer than they were. Thus Eusebius had a very heterogeneous following, and it would be scant charity if we laid on all of them the burden of their leader's infamy.

[Sidenote: Attacks on: (1.) Eustathius.]

They began with Eustathius of Antioch, an old confessor and a man of eloquence, who enjoyed a great and lasting popularity in the city. He was one of the foremost enemies of Arianism at Nicaea, and had since waged an active literary war with the Arianizing clique in Syria. In one respect they found him a specially dangerous enemy, for he saw clearly the important consequences of the Arian denial of the Lord's true human soul. Eustathius was therefore deposed (on obscure grounds) in 330, and exiled with many of his clergy to Thrace. The vacant see was offered to Eusebius of Caesarea, and finally accepted by the Cappadocian Euphronius.

But party spirit ran high at Antioch. The removal of Eustathius nearly caused a b.l.o.o.d.y riot, and his departure was followed by an open schism.

The Nicenes refused to recognise Euphronius, and held their meetings apart, under the presbyter Paulinus, remaining without a bishop for more than thirty years.

[Sidenote: (2.) Marcellus.]

The system was vigorously followed up. Ten of the Nicene leaders were exiled in the next year or two. But Alexandria and Ancyra were the great strongholds of the Nicene faith, and the Eusebians still had to expel Marcellus and Athanasius. As Athanasius might have met a charge of heresy with a dangerous retort, it was found necessary to take other methods with him. Marcellus, however, was so far the foremost champion of the council, and he had fairly exposed himself to a doctrinal attack.

Let us therefore glance at his theory of the incarnation.

[Sidenote: Character of Marcellus.]

Marcellus of Ancyra was already in middle life when he came forward as a resolute enemy of Arianism at Nicaea. Nothing is known of his early years and education, but we can see some things which influenced him later on.

Ancyra was a strange diocese, full of uncouth Gauls and chaffering Jews, and overrun with Montanists and Manichees, and votaries of endless fantastic heresies and superst.i.tions. In the midst of this turmoil Marcellus spent his life; and if he learned too much of the Galatian party spirit, he learned also that the gospel is wider than the forms of Greek philosophy. The speculations of Alexandrian theology were as little appreciated by the Celts of Asia as is the stately churchmans.h.i.+p of England by the Celts of Wales. They were the foreigner's thoughts, too cold for Celtic zeal, too grand for Celtic narrowness. Fickleness is not inconsistent with a true and deep religious instinct, and we may find something austere and high behind the ever-changing phases of spiritual excitement. Thus the ideal holiness of the church, upheld by Montanists and Novatians, attracted kindred spirits at opposite ends of the Empire, among the Moors of the Atlas and the Gauls of Asia. Such a people will have sins and scandals like its neighbours, but very little indifference or cynicism. It will be more inclined to make of Christian liberty an excuse for strife and debate. The zeal which carries the gospel to the loneliest mountain villages will also fill them with the jealousies of endless quarrelling sects; and the Gaul of Asia clung to his separatism with all the more tenacity for the consciousness that his race was fast dissolving in the broader and better world of Greece. Thus Marcellus was essentially a stranger to the wider movements of his time.

His system is an appeal from Origen to St. John, from philosophy to Scripture. Nor can we doubt the high character and earnest zeal of the man who for years stood side by side with Athanasius. The more significant therefore is the failure of his bold attempt to cut the knot of controversy.

[Sidenote: Doctrine of Marcellus.]

Marcellus then agreed with the Arians that the idea of sons.h.i.+p implies beginning and inferiority, so that a Son of G.o.d is neither eternal nor equal to the Father. When the Arians argued on both grounds that the Lord is a creature, the conservatives were content to reply that the idea of sons.h.i.+p excludes that of creation, and implies a peculiar relation to and origin from the Father. But their own position was weak.

Whatever they might say, their secondary G.o.d was a second G.o.d, and their theory of the eternal generation only led them into further difficulties, for their concession of the Son's origin from the will of the Father made the Arian conclusion irresistible. Marcellus looked scornfully on a lame result like this. The conservatives had broken down because they had gone astray after vain philosophy. Turn we then to Scripture. 'In the beginning was,' not the Son, but the Word. It is no secondary or accidental t.i.tle which St. John throws to the front of his Gospel, and repeats with deliberate emphasis three times over in the first verse. Thus the Lord is properly the Word of G.o.d, and this must govern the meaning of all such secondary names as the Son. Then he is not only the silent thinking principle which remains with G.o.d, but also the active creating power which comes forth too for the dispensation of the world. In this Sabellianizing sense Marcellus accepted the Nicene faith, holding that the Word is one with G.o.d as reason is one with man.

Thus he explained the Divine Sons.h.i.+p and other difficulties by limiting them to the incarnation. The Word as such is pure spirit, and only became the Son of G.o.d by becoming the Son of Man. It was only in virtue of this humiliating separation from the Father that the Word acquired a sort of independent personality. Thus the Lord was human certainly on account of his descent into true created human flesh, and yet not merely human, for the Word remained unchanged. Not for its own sake was the Word incarnate, but merely for the conquest of Satan. 'The flesh profiteth nothing,' and even the gift of immortality cannot make it worthy of permanent union with the Word. G.o.d is higher than immortality itself, and even the immortal angels cannot pa.s.s the gulf which parts the creature from its Lord. That which is of the earth is useless for the age to come. Hence the human nature must be laid aside when its work is done and every hostile power overthrown. Then shall the Son of G.o.d deliver up the kingdom to the Father, that the kingdom of G.o.d may have no end; and then the Word shall return, and be for ever with the Father as before.

[Sidenote: The conservative panic.]

A universal cry of horror rose from the conservative ranks to greet the new Sabellius, the Jew and worse than Jew, the shameless miscreant who had forsworn the Son of G.o.d. Marcellus had confused together all the errors he could find. The faith itself was at peril if blasphemies like these were to be sheltered behind the rash decisions of Nicaea. So thought the conservatives, and not without a reason, though their panic was undignified from the first, and became a positive calamity when taken up by political adventurers for their own purposes. As far as doctrine went, there was little to choose between Marcellus and Arius.

Each held firmly the central error of the conservatives, and rejected as illogical the modifications and side views by which they were finding their way to something better. Both parties, says Athanasius, are equally inconsistent. The conservatives, who refuse eternal being to the Son of G.o.d, will not endure to hear that his kingdom is other than eternal; while the Marcellians, who deny his personality outright, are equally shocked at the Arian limitation of it to the sphere of time. Nor had Marcellus escaped the difficulties of Arius. If, for example, the idea of an eternal Son is polytheistic, nothing is gained by transferring the eternity to an impersonal Word. If the generation of the Son is materializing, so also is the coming forth of the Word. If the work of creation is unworthy of G.o.d, it may as well be delegated to a created Son as to a transitory Word. So far Athanasius. Indeed, to Marcellus the Son of G.o.d is a mere phenomenon of time, and even the Word is as foreign to the divine essence as the Arian Son. If the one can only reveal in finite measure, the other gives but broken hints of an infinity beyond. Instead of destroying Arianism by the roots, Marcellus had fallen into something very like Sabellianism. He reaches no true mediation, no true union of G.o.d and man, for he makes the incarnation a mere theophany, the flesh a useless burden, to be one day laid aside.

The Lord is our Redeemer and the conqueror of death and Satan, but there is no room for a second Adam, the organic head of regenerate mankind.

The redemption becomes a mere intervention from without, not also the planting of a power of life within, which will one day quicken our mortal bodies too.

[Sidenote: (3.) Athanasius.]

Marcellus had fairly exposed himself to a doctrinal attack; other methods were used with Athanasius. They had material enough without touching doctrine. His election was disputed: Meletians and Arians complained of oppression: there were some useful charges of magic and political intrigue. At first, however, the Meletians could not even get a hearing from the Emperor. When Eusebius of Nicomedia took up their cause, they fared a little better. The attack had to be put off till the winter of 331, and was even then a failure. Their charges were partly answered by two presbyters of Athanasius who were on the spot; and when the bishop himself was summoned to court, he soon completed their discomfiture. As Constantine was now occupied with the Gothic war, nothing more could be done till 334. When, however, Athanasius was ordered to attend a council at Caesarea, he treated it as a mere cabal of his enemies, and refused to appear.

[Sidenote: The Council of Tyre (335).]

Next year the Eastern bishops gathered to Jerusalem to keep the festival of the thirtieth year of Constantine's reign and to dedicate his splendid church on Golgotha. But first it was a work of charity to restore peace in Egypt. A synod of about 150 bishops was held at Tyre, and this time the appearance of Athanasius was secured by peremptory orders from the Emperor. The Eusebians had the upper hand, though there was a strong minority. Athanasius brought nearly fifty bishops from Egypt, and others, like Maximus of Jerusalem and Alexander of Thessalonica, were willing to do justice. Athanasius was not accused of heresy, but, with more plausibility, of episcopal tyranny. His friends replied with reckless violence. Potammon aimed a bitter and unrighteous taunt at Eusebius of Caesarea. 'You and I were once in prison for the faith. I lost an eye: how did you escape?' Athanasius might perhaps have been crushed if his enemies had kept up a decent semblance of truth and fairness. But nothing was further from their thoughts than an impartial trial. Scandal succeeded scandal, till the iniquity culminated in the dispatch of an openly partizan commission to superintend the manufacture of evidence in Egypt. Maximus of Jerusalem and Paphnutius left the council, saying that it was not good that old confessors like them should share its evil deeds. The Egyptian bishops protested. Alexander of Thessalonica denounced the plot to the Emperor's representative.

Athanasius himself took s.h.i.+p for Constantinople without waiting for the end of the farce, and the council condemned him by default. This done, the bishops went on to Jerusalem for the proper business of their meeting.

[Sidenote: a.s.sembly at Jerusalem.]

The concourse on Golgotha was a brilliant spectacle. Ten years had pa.s.sed since the still unrivalled a.s.sembly at Nicaea, and the veterans of the last great persecution must have been deeply moved at their meeting once again in this world. The stately ceremonial suited Maximus and Eusebius much better than the noisy scene at Tyre, and may for the moment have soothed the swelling indignation of Potammon and Paphnutius.

Constantine had once more plastered over the divisions of the churches with a general reconciliation, but this time Athanasius was condemned and Arius received to communion. The heretic had long since left his exile in Illyric.u.m, though we cannot fix the date of his recall.

However, one winter the Emperor invited Arius and his friend Euzoius to Constantinople, where they laid before him a short and simple confession of their faith. It said nothing of the disputed points, but was not unorthodox as far as it went. Nor were they bishops, that the Nicene creed should be forced upon them. Constantine was therefore satisfied, and now directed them to lay it before the bishops at Jerusalem, who duly approved of it and received its authors to communion. In order to complete the work of peace, Athanasius was condemned afresh on the return of the commission from Egypt, and proceedings were begun against Marcellus of Ancyra.

[Sidenote: First exile of Athanasius.]

Meanwhile Constantine's dreams of peace were rudely dissipated by the sudden appearance of Athanasius before him in the streets of Constantinople. Whatever the bishops had done, they had plainly caused dissensions just when the Emperor was most anxious for harmony. An angry letter summoned the whole a.s.sembly straight to court. The meeting, however, was most likely dispersed before its arrival; at any rate, there came only a deputation of Eusebians. The result was unexpected.

Instead of attempting to defend the council of Tyre, Eusebius of Nicomedia suddenly accused Athanasius of hindering the supply of corn for the capital. This was quite a new charge, and chosen with much skill. Athanasius was not allowed to defend himself, but summarily sent away to Trier in Gaul, where he was honourably received by the younger Constantine. On the other hand, the Emperor refused to let his place be filled up at Alexandria, and exiled the Meletian leader, John Archaph, 'for causing divisions.' To Constantinople came also Marcellus. He had kept away from the councils of Tyre and Jerusalem, and only came now to invite the Emperor's decision on his book. Constantine referred it as usual to the bishops, who promptly condemned it and deposed its author.

[Sidenote: Death of Arius.]

There remained only the formal restoration of Arius to communion at Constantinople. But the heretic was taken ill suddenly, and died in the midst of a procession the evening before the day appointed. His enemies saw in his death a judgment from heaven, and likened it to that of Judas. Only Athanasius relates it with reserve and dignity.

[Sidenote: Policy of Constantine.]

Upon the whole, Constantine had done his best for peace by leaving matters in an uneasy suspense which satisfied neither party. This seems the best explanation of his wavering. He had not turned Arian, for there is no sign that he ever allowed the decisions of Nicaea to be openly rejected inside the churches. Athanasius was not exiled for heresy, for there was no question of heresy in the case. The quarrel was ostensibly one of orthodox bishops, for Eusebius had signed the Nicene creed as well as Athanasius. Constantine's action seems to have been determined by Asiatic feeling. Had he believed the charge of delaying the corn-s.h.i.+ps, he would have executed Athanasius at once. His conduct does not look like a real explosion of rage. The merits of the case were not easy to find out, but the quarrel between Athanasius and the Asiatic bishops was a nuisance, so he sent him out of the way as a troublesome person. The Asiatics were not all of them either Arians or intriguers.

It was not always furtive sympathy with heresy which led them to regret the heresiarch's expulsion for doctrines which he disavowed; neither was it always partizans.h.i.+p which could not see the innocence of Athanasius.

Constantine's vacillation is natural if his policy was to seek for unity by letting the bishops guide him.

CHAPTER IV.

_THE COUNCIL OF SARDICA._

[Sidenote: Death of Constantine, May 22, 337.]

Constantine's work on earth was done. When the hand of death was on him, he laid aside the purple, and the ambiguous position of a Christian Caesar with it, and pa.s.sed away in the white robe of a simple convert.

Long as he had been a friend to the churches, he had till now put off the elementary rite of baptism, in the hope one day to receive it in the waters of the Jordan, like the Lord himself. Darkly as his memory is stained with isolated crimes, Constantine must for ever rank among the greatest of the emperors; and as an actual benefactor of mankind, he stands alone among them. Besides his great services to the Empire in his own time, he gave the civilization of later days a new centre on the Bosphorus, beyond the reach of Goth or Vandal. Bulgarians and Saracens and Russians dashed themselves in pieces on the walls of Constantinople, and the [Sidenote: A.D. 1204.] strong arms of Western and crusading traitors were needed at last to overthrow the old bulwark which for so many centuries had guarded Christendom. Above all, it was Constantine who first essayed the problem of putting a Christian spirit into the statecraft of the world. Hard as the task is even now, it was harder still in times when the gospel had not yet had time to form, as it were, an outwork of common feeling against some of the grosser sins. Yet whatever might be his errors, his legislation was a landmark for ever, because no emperor before him had been guided by a Christian sense of duty.

[Sidenote: Division of the Empire.]

The sons of Constantine shared the Empire among them 'like an ancestral inheritance.' Thrace and Pontus had been a.s.signed to their cousins, Dalmatius and Hannibalia.n.u.s; but the army would have none but Constantine's own sons to reign over them. The whole house of Theodora perished in the tumult except two boys--Gallus and Julian, afterwards the apostate Emperor. Thus Constantine's sons were left in possession of the Empire. Constantine II. took Gaul and Britain, the legions of Syria secured the East for Constantius, and Italy and Illyric.u.m were left for the share of the youngest, Constans.