Do modern day Christians know of Arius and the brith of the Catholic Church?

[Born_Believer]

Well, as the thread title says. I'm curious how many n here know this story, without having to look it up on Google first of course

 

[cooterhein]

I know a good bit of the story. Most Evangelical Protestants don't, but the ones who do tend to be those who got some higher education in a more strictly academic environment, at some type of Christian school.

Arius was a priest from Egypt, he was opposed locally by Athanasius, the emperor Constantine was no religious scholar but he favored Arianism (at least in terms of wanting it to be viewed as an acceptable form of Christianity) and initially exiled Arius at the request of the council that he convened, but later recalled him after Arius wrote him a letter pleading his case and he exiled Athanasius instead. (Athanasius was exiled a total of four times).

At the aforementioned council, which was the first one convened at Nicea, the main issue at hand was mostly being argued about in North Africa while some other regions were not even very familiar with the issue to start with. The people primarily responsible for making it go the way it did were bishops from Syria, and to a slightly lesser extent, Greece and Turkey according to modern state borders. Collectively, five of the first seven ecumenical councils would be held at Nicea and Constantinople (which is now called Istanbul, but of course it wasn't called that when the councils happened). So the point of all that is....this was, more than anything else, the birth of Christian orthodoxy in the most generic sense, and it had more to do with the Eastern Orthodox Church specifically (and with Oriental Orthodoxy prior to their schism) than it did with the Catholic Church as we now know it.

Catholic and Orthodox Christians are way more likely to know about him, but some Evangelical Christians do- and that knowledge is more likely to be found in mainline Protestantism, which is not where I'm at, but I've made a point of knowing some things anyway. Among the Evangelical Christians who do know some things about heretics (and I have some firsthand familiarity with these people), Arius is probably going to be the heretic that's best known to us. I will also add that Arius tends to be assessed (by my people at least) as a reasonable and generally good man, at least in terms of how he treated people. Even when he was being exiled (the first time I think) he took it quite well and didn't seem too upset, and if I'm recalling correctly he was recalled at a later date. He didn't get angry and incite violence, he took his losses like a man and kept on trying to convince important people to be sympathetic to his cause. He had a lot of success too, that first ecumenical council did not put the issue to rest by any means. The debate continued for a couple hundred years after his death- which was gruesome and probably due to poison, but his enemies credited God with striking him down. I'm extremely dubious of that, however. I believe he was assassinated, due to the timing and the circumstances.

There's a lot more that could be said, but I'll wait and see what else you're asking for.

 

[Born_Believer]

I know a good bit of the story. Most Evangelical Protestants don't, but the ones who do tend to be those who got some higher education in a more strictly academic environment, at some type of Christian school.

Arius was a priest from Egypt, he was opposed locally by Athanasius, the emperor Constantine was no religious scholar but he favored Arianism (at least in terms of wanting it to be viewed as an acceptable form of Christianity) and initially exiled Arius at the request of the council that he convened, but later recalled him after Arius wrote him a letter pleading his case and he exiled Athanasius instead. (Athanasius was exiled a total of four times).

At the aforementioned council, which was the first one convened at Nicea, the main issue at hand was mostly being argued about in North Africa while some other regions were not even very familiar with the issue to start with. The people primarily responsible for making it go the way it did were bishops from Syria, and to a slightly lesser extent, Greece and Turkey according to modern state borders. Collectively, five of the first seven ecumenical councils would be held at Nicea and Constantinople (which is now called Istanbul, but of course it wasn't called that when the councils happened). So the point of all that is....this was, more than anything else, the birth of Christian orthodoxy in the most generic sense, and it had more to do with the Eastern Orthodox Church specifically (and with Oriental Orthodoxy prior to their schism) than it did with the Catholic Church as we now know it.

Catholic and Orthodox Christians are way more likely to know about him, but some Evangelical Christians do- and that knowledge is more likely to be found in mainline Protestantism, which is not where I'm at, but I've made a point of knowing some things anyway. Among the Evangelical Christians who do know some things about heretics (and I have some firsthand familiarity with these people), Arius is probably going to be the heretic that's best known to us. I will also add that Arius tends to be assessed (by my people at least) as a reasonable and generally good man, at least in terms of how he treated people. Even when he was being exiled (the first time I think) he took it quite well and didn't seem too upset, and if I'm recalling correctly he was recalled at a later date. He didn't get angry and incite violence, he took his losses like a man and kept on trying to convince important people to be sympathetic to his cause. He had a lot of success too, that first ecumenical council did not put the issue to rest by any means. The debate continued for a couple hundred years after his death- which was gruesome and probably due to poison, but his enemies credited God with striking him down. I'm extremely dubious of that, however. I believe he was assassinated, due to the timing and the circumstances.

There's a lot more that could be said, but I'll wait and see what else you're asking for.

Yeah that's the very basic story but what was Arius' theological teaching? And why did what would become the Catholic Church despise him so much? And still do (taking this from the Catholics I have spoken to).

 

[cooterhein]

Yeah that's the very basic story but what was Arius' theological teaching?

Arius' theological teaching was incredibly similar to every other Christian in the world. People who believed in his teaching did not call themselves Arians, they called themselves Catholics or they called themselves Christians. At any given time over the course of about four centuries, there were varying numbers of Catholic bishops that believed in his teaching, and I remember seeing some of them after his death quoted as taking great offense at being called Arians. They said we are bishops, how are you going to say we follow a priest? (A bishop is several steps further up the hierarchy of Catholic teaching authority, they were basically saying I'm in a position where I'm the boss of his boss, so don't name our thing after him).

With that being said, there is one particular part of Arius' teaching that always stuck out as being unique, and he didn't really try to hide it. He emphasized it, put it front and center. That was the idea that "There was a time when Jesus was not." In other words, Jesus was not eternally existent, he is a created being that God created. When was he created? Arius seemed to be fairly certain that he was the first being of any kind that God created (per his interpretation of "firstborn of all creation") and this probably coincided with the creation of the universe or happened immediately or shortly thereafter. I don't think he came down any more specifically than that.

Now, in the early history of Christianity, there was a superabundance of a variety of teachings. I'm talking about the first two-and-a-half to three centuries- yes there was a certain point where that was clamped down, but before that it was kind of a free-for-all. This involved a large variety of interpretations, and there was also the Gnostic movement that introduced a bunch of literature outside the Bible that informed some unique teachings. A great deal of the impetus that led to an ecumenical council at all, was a desire to bring this under control and ensure that all Christians could have some beliefs in common. What made Arius a bit different, however, was this. Pretty much all the other variety was acknowledged as new changes to belief being introduced at a more recent time, while he claimed that his teaching vis a vis the nature of Christ was faithful to the original teaching of Jesus and his disciples. That was the main point of contention- was this teaching truly faithful to some type of unbroken chain of teaching going all the way back to those who lived and walked with Jesus?

So when the First Council of Nicea was convened, about one third of those in attendance were truly familiar with the controversy, and they were pretty much evenly split. This controversy, this argument, wasn't widely known in all places where Christians were, so because of that about two thirds of those present genuinely needed to get some more information before they could make a judgment. (I don't have the source in front of me at the moment so these figures are rough estimates from what I remember). What I definitely remember very clearly though, is that Arius was doing pretty well early on. Much of what he explained about himself over the first couple of days was clearly very similar to what all Christians believed in, and in the early going there was very little to be arguing about. But then a few days in (can't remember exactly how many) he went hard into his explanation of how "there was a time when Jesus was not." And in that exact moment, it all got away from him.

You see, he's coming from Egypt. The largest contingent of bishops (and I think a few other scholars) were from Syria, and in particular from the school of Christian teaching in Antioch. (Not an actual school, but a school of thought with its roots being there). Antioch, where Christians were called Christians for the first time. Antioch, where Paul (formerly Saul) departed from on his first missionary journeys. This was not the first place that the Gospel came to, it was the first place from which the Gospel proceeded from and then went to the rest of the world. These are people with a strong sense of their history, in particular the sense of an unbroken line between themselves and the authentic teaching of Christianity from its earliest source. And when Arius started telling them "there was a time when Jesus was not, and furthermore this is what Christians have understood from the very beginning....unless people deviated from this truth and screwed up," that is when the roughly-two-thirds in general, and the Syrian contingent in particular, pushed back hard. They came in under-informed and undecided, but they made their decision right then. They came back with something like "We, over here, have always believed that Jesus existed from eternity past. He is not a created being, and this idea of yours has never been believed by anyone over here. We never heard your thing until you told us just now."

That was the major turning point, as far as I've been made aware of it.

And why did what would become the Catholic Church despise him so much?

He posed a uniquely legitimate threat to the Catholic understanding of the nature of God and of how Jesus fits into that. And by Catholic, in this context, I probably mean something a bit more like Orthodox. He posed a legit threat to actual Christian orthodoxy, in all phases, whether we're talking about the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, or Oriental Orthodox. (Which were all united at that point in time).

And still do (taking this from the Catholics I have spoken to).

It probably varies a bit, I'm not the best person to answer that though. I could probably dredge up some quotes from a Catholic forum that directly addresses this specific question, if no one else comes along to do this part themselves.

 

[Daniel Hoseiny]

Yeah that's the very basic story but what was Arius' theological teaching? And why did what would become the Catholic Church despise him so much? And still do (taking this from the Catholics I have spoken to).

1. The teaching of Arius mainly consisted of a doctrine that Jesus is not God, but just a supreme creature.
2. Because this teaching contradicted the true Christianity. And according to Christian faith the right God-given dogma is of crucial importance for the salvation of the soul.
And by the way, the Roman-Catholic Church was established in 1054 when it separated itself from the rest of Christianity, today known as the Orthodox Church. The reason for this is that some ambitious Popes of Rome claimed for the supremacy of papal authority over all Christian regions, not just Latin Western part of it.