Religion and Theology: Jesus as Subordinate to the Father - Essay Example

?Religion and Theology: Jesus as Subordinate to the Father. The controversy within Christian doctrine which we now know as the Arian heresy centres on the nature of the Divine Being. In essence this branch of belief holds that the Son Jesus Christ was in some way created by God the Father, and is therefore subordinate to the Father, rather than being co-eternal with God the Father. For modern Christians the concept of the Trinity distinguishes their faith from other monotheistic religions like Judaism and Islam, and sets out a blueprint for the way that God has made Himself known to the world. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are perceived as co-eternal and equal, separate but undivided, making it quite clear that there is no hierarchy between the three so-called “persons” of the Trinity. This definitive position is not negotiable in modern Christianity, and effectively dismisses the any notion that the Son is subordinate to the Father and people often forget that it was reached by long negotiation in the fourth and fifth centuries. It is nevertheless important to understand the issues surrounding this controversy, partly to ensure that modern theologians guard against similar errors in their teachings, and partly to help us understand how the Christian faith acquired its definitive beliefs and rules so that we can continue this long tradition faithfully into the future. In order to understand where the views of Arius came from, and why they originated, it is necessary to look back to the very beginnings of Christianity. As soon as the early Christian Church began to go about its business preaching the gospel and teaching its message across the known world, it ran into problems expressing some of the main tenets of the faith, not least because a number of languages were involved, and the meanings of the key words being used could change from place to place. The good news of the incarnation was on one level a very simple and clear call to accept salvation through faith in Christ, but on another level it was quite a difficult message to explain. Modern theologians have a whole collection of creeds and commentaries to help clarify difficult points, but in the beginning there was only a small collection of texts, gradually becoming fixed into the canon of scripture, and the apostolic succession from the original disciples down to each generation of bishops and priests. Scholars tried to clarify these difficult points in well-intentioned explanations and theories, designed to help believers grasp the fundamental content of the faith. It was clear that the incarnation changed everything once and for all, and that the new faith in Jesus Christ necessarily changed the way that human beings related to God from that moment onwards. The New Testament, with its language of Father, Son and Holy Spirit provided the groundwork for an entirely new conception of God: three in one, combined and yet also separate, a mystery that was almost beyond human understanding. An early issue was how to find a way of describing this holy Trinity: “... the early Christian community struggled with the question of reconciling the oneness of God which they professed with the threefold nature of their religious experience. In the first two centuries different answers stood in juxtaposition, conditioned by the experience and person of Jesus Christ, by the formulation of the gospels, and by the influence of Neoplatonic philosophy.”1 This is an extremely important point which must always be remembered in discussions about Arius: he was not a deliberate heretic challenging the established authority of the Church, but in fact he was just one of many educated Christians trying to understand the mystery of God, and searching for ways to express some difficult theological concepts. Arius was contributing to the process of consolidation of the faith by firming up some of the vague notions that were circulating in his region at the time. In this task he was very successful, and his ideas were positively received in wide areas of the Christian world, even though they were ultimately refuted and outlawed by various official councils that followed in quick succession throughout the fourth and fifth centuries. Arius was born in 256 AD in North Africa, and was part of a circle of presbyters in that area who reflected on the implications of the incarnation, and of the language of Father and Son that was used in the Bible. The city of Alexandria was then, as it is now, a centre for trade and the exchange of ideas from all across the Eastern Mediterranean. The famous patriarch Origen had lived and worked there in the early third century and so there was a tradition of scholarly reflection which Arius saw himself continuing. Origen, too, had attempted to set down some definitive statements about the Divine Being. In the metropolitan centres of Alexandria, Antioch and other places there was an on-going lively debate between philosophers who followed Greek ways of thinking, and Christians who used some of the same language, but defined the terms somewhat differently. What concerned Arius in the fourth century, and what still concerns Christians today, is how best to think about and talk about the nature of God, so as to gain insights for our Christian lives and avoid errors which might confuse or mislead people in search of communion with God. In a very detailed study of the political and theological issues of the fourth century, Ayres argues that modern observers should avoid any hasty and over-simplistic assumptions about the debate between what we now call Arians and other groups because in this early period the terminology was still being worked out, and the doctrinal lines were still in a state of flux: “In many cases the boundaries of right belief remained fluid; the status of the Son providing an excellent example. In such contexts the boundaries of right belief could only be established by polemical interchange and by the attempted performance of a theology’s unity within the community of belief.” 2 Arius thought that he perceived a potential error in the way that some bishops in the Church was presenting the incarnated Christ as God the Son, alongside the God the Father as a distinct and separate entity. Influenced by Greek philosophy, and Socratic arguments in particular, Arius reasoned that presenting two different persons and calling them both God could result in people thinking that there was more than one God. Clearly Arius was thinking one step ahead about the implications for believers, of using one set of terminology rather than another. For Arius, the suggestion that there might be two different Christian Gods, namely the Father and the Son, was perhaps the greatest heresy that could be committed, given the frequent exhortations throughout the Old Testament to believe in the one and only true God. Pagans and Greeks alike had a history of worshipping multiple divinities, often set up under a patriarchal god like Zeus, for example, and no doubt Arius was worried that ordinary people would be influenced by these other religions and drift into thinking of the Christian God in a similar way. By homing in on this issue he helped to focus the minds of Church leaders on how to draw the line between logical thinking, based on the current ideas of the day, and divine revelation, as provided in the incarnation and in the scriptures. The solution that Arius found, was to accept the divinity of the Son, but to describe it as a slightly different, and lesser divinity than that of the Father. It may not have seemed such a big deal in those days, because the Son was often thought of as the logos which emanates from God, and like the Holy Spirit is involved in the creation of the world. To some extent it need not concern human beings too much how these persons inter-relate, since they were clearly all present and together long before human beings arrived on the scene. The Arians based their argument on two fundamental points which show a hierarchical relationship between the Father and the Son: “The passible Son was inferior in essence to the impassible Father in that he was (a) generated, and (b) subject to suffering.”3 When interpreting the fine distinctions of meanings used by different Church Fathers, Jacobs identifies a line of analogy in support of the Trinity through the use of two words in the works of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzen, who were known as “The Cappodocians” due to their location in what is now modern Turkey: “The Cappadocians presume successionless duration in God, so that ad intra God is not subject to change or sequence, which they also associate with mutation. Therefore, the Father eternally generates the Son, and the Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father. The Father has always been Father and therefore has always had a Son.”4 This presented a counter-argument to the views of Arius. The Church in the fourth century quite rightly detected the potential for a division of believers along doctrinal lines, consisting of those who demote the Son to a secondary position and those who insist that the three persons of the Trinity are equal. We can see that there were stirrings of schisms in the ways that Eastern and Western branches viewed other key elements of the faith, such as the timing and format of festivals, the need for celibacy (or not!) for priests, etc. This major point on the subordination of the Son within the Trinity was so fundamental that it needed to be decided one way or the other. As it turned out the avenue that Arius was investigating was closed off, in order to protect the unity of the Church. The Trinity was discussed at length by Augustine of Hippo, some hundred years after the death of Arius, especially in his De Trinitate. This work further solidified the orthodox position, and once again refuted the ideas of Arius, drawing a clear line between Platonic ideas and the Christian faith. One important term that is much discussed both in the Patristic writings themselves, and in later theological discussions is that of hypostasis, Greek term meaning person, or substance, which can be applied to the Trinity. Defining and limiting the meaning of such terms became a major preoccupation of church leaders. Cassine and Schwab explain how the Council of Nicea of 325 CE was used as a forum to develop a refined and more technically precise vocabulary for talking about the nature of God, now that the incarnation had revealed further details beyond the knowledge given to the Jews and recorded in the Old Testament. New concepts required new terms, and it was natural that the Church Fathers looked to Greek to find suitable ways of expressing some of the deepest ideas of the new faith. Writing in 2006, a modern theologian comments: “Perhaps, then, it is fair to say that approaching the question of orthodoxy at this point in the history of the field inevitably involves negotiating a complex mix of close textual study and overt theoretical reflection.”5 There has been a continuous struggle to define orthodoxy throughout the history of the Church, and this example of the debate between Arius and others following the views of Athanasius has served as a warning, and sometimes as a model for later theologians.6 The English Anglo-Catholic scholar John Henry Newman, for example, saw parallels between events of the fourth century and the debates going on in England in the nineteenth century.7 The example of Arius has left a legacy for future scholars, showing that new ideas have to be subjected to the authority of the Church, and have to be debated and decided there, rather than being put forward by sub-sets of the community according to their own interpretation and context. The value of Arius was in his demonstration of the usefulness of polemic in settling points of contention.8 This was probably not at all what Arius intended in his lifetime, but it is nevertheless a very important collective achievement in which he played a major part. His sincerely held beliefs were permitted, in the sense that he was free to explore them, but ultimately no individual has the authority to preach and teach what is outside the agreed doctrine of the Church. The Arian controversy tested the church, and provided forced it to come up with a method of deciding points of doctrine. Debates on the paradox of the Trinity, and the relationship between the three persons of God, continue into the present time. Recently a debate between Roman Catholic and Orthodox theologians, has arisen, which hinges on the idea of the person, not only in its divine dimension, but also in its application to human personhood.9 The emphasis has shifted somewhat, from the pure being of God, which fascinated theologians in the fourth century, to the lesser kind of personhood that human beings can enjoy, which is no doubt evidence of the more individualistic modern age that we live in nowadays. Theologians are exploring what the implications of the Trinity are for the way that human beings are or can be, through Christ. The Greek Orthodox theologian Zizioulas,10 for example, bases his idea of personhood on these ancient views of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa and many generations of Greek Orthodox scholars. This branch of thinking stresses the relational, and the social nature of personhood: “This newly minted concept of person rests on an understanding of the Christian Trinity mainly as prototype of persons-in-relation.”11 Turcescu detects a Neoplatonic influence in the Cappadocians, which may explain their particular way of understanding personhood.12 Another way of debating these same issues uses the techniques of philosophy, as for example a recent exploration of the person of Jesus Christ, and how divinity and humanity can both apply to this one person: “Incarnation ascribes incompatible attributes, such as finitude and infinity, materiality and immateriality, etc. to one and the same thing, and thus entails contradictions.”13 Lamont explains this very well by means of the concept of “The divine simplicity”, which refers to the indivisible nature of God, or in other words “there is no feature of that nature that is not identical with every other feature of it, and with the divine existence.”14 This over-arching description of the nature of God makes any question of comparing different parts or persons of the divinity invalid. The mystery of the Trinity is such that it makes no sense on a human level, but on a divine level, which is far above the understanding of human beings, it makes perfect sense. At most we can hope to make approximate guesses and parallels which help us to fathom the mystery, but what we still must avoid, is any attempt to water down the Trinity into something more akin to what human beings are accustomed to in earthly life. The legacy of Arius is still with us today: “The increased interest and focus on language in many disciplines in recent years supports the insight that language is fundamental not only to human expression but also to perception. The councils remind us, therefore, that Christians must always be alert to the language they use of Jesus and of God.”15 It has been pointed out also that while Roman Catholic theologians continue to debate these issues, and to study the formulation of Christian doctrine piece by piece through the various councils, there is a distinct lack of knowledge about these issues in many Protestant denominations of Christianity. A failure to understand where and how our key doctrines were first formed can lead to hasty assumptions based on modern ideas that really have no place in orthodox doctrine. These early debates were absolutely crucial in setting down precedents for the following hundreds and even thousands of years and so it is fitting that we should look back on the work of the councils, and the ideas that were so controversial at the time, in order to keep checking that we are still in tune with God’s plan for the world. The story of the Church is one of development and change, with each significant step being worked out through lively debate and discussion. The Arian controversy is as good an example as any of the need for theologians to debate openly and sincerely with each other, even when they have divergent views, before collectively coming to a final position and giving definitive leadership on all kinds of spiritual matters. References Anatolios, Khaled. Athanasius. London and New York: Routledge, 2004. Ayres, Lewis. Nicaea and its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Ayres, Lewis. “The Question of Orthodoxy,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 14 no. 4 (2006): 395-398. Cassini, Charles J. and Schaab, Gloria L. “Transcendentals and Trinity,” The Heythrop Journal L (2009): 658-668. Gavrilyuk, Paul. The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Jacobs, Nathan. “On ‘Not Three Gods’- Again: Can a Primary-secondary Substance Reading of Ousia and Hyostasis Avoid Trithesim?” Modern Theology 24 no 3 (2008): 331-358. King, Benjamin John. Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers: Shaping Doctrine in Nineteenth Century England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Lamont, John. “The Nature of the Hypostatic Union,” The Heythrop Journal XLVII (2006): 16-25. Need, Stephen W. Truly Divine and Truly Human: The Story of Christ and the Seven Ecumenical Councils. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2008. Need, Stephen W. “Response to Horace Six-Means” Conversations in Religion and Theology 8 no. 2 (2010): 166-170. Rostock, Nigel. “Two Different Gods or Two Types of Unity? A Critical Response to Zizioulas’ Presentation of ‘The Father as Cause’ with Reference to the Cappadocian Fathers and Augustine,” New Blackfriars 91 no. 1033 (2010): 321-334. Six-Means, Horace. Review of Truly Divine and Truly Human by Stephen W. Need, Conversations in Religion and Theology 8 no. 2 (2010): 160-166. Torrance, Alexis, “Personhood and Patristics in Orthodox Theology: Reassessing the Debate,” The Heythrop Journal LII (2011): 700-707. Turcescu, Lucian. “ ‘Person’ versus ‘Individual’, and other Modern Misreadings of Gregory of Nyssa,” Modern Theology 18 no. 4 (2002): 527-539. Weedman, Mark. “The Polemical Context of Gregory of Nyssa’s Doctrine of Divine Infinity,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 18 no. 1 (2010): 81-104. Williams, Rowan A. Arius: Heresy and Tradition, revised ed. Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 2001. Read More