Encyclopedia of Philosophy: ARIANISM AND ORTHODOXY ?

« relation between Jesus and the Godhead led to the development of a set of new concepts for the understanding ofpersonal identity.The Council of Nicaea did not end the disputes about the person and nature of Christ.

The supporters of Ariusrallied, and after Constantine's death in 337 their party secured the favour of his son Constantius.

They rejectedthe Nicaean teaching that the Son and the Father shared the same essence: they objected to this as implying thatthe two were not really distinct from each other, but just two aspects of a single reality.

Instead, they preferredthe formula that the Son's essence was similar to the Father's (homoiousion rather than homoousion).

‘The profaneof every age,' writes Gibbon, ‘have derided the furious contests which the difference of a single diphthong excitedbetween the Homoousians and the Homoiousians.' The derision is misplaced; the presence or absence of the Greekletter iota in the Creed made as much difference as would the presence or absence of ‘not' in a United NationsResolution.

Some Arians were unwilling to admit that the Son's essence was even like the Father's.

In councils inEast and West, Constantius imposed a compromise, and at the dedication of the new church of Sancta Sophia inConstantinople a Creed was recited in which the Son was said to be ‘like' the Father, with the philosophical termousia altogether dropped.

In the time of Constantius and his successors, except for the brief reign of the EmperorJulian who attempted to restore the pagan religion, Arianism was the dominant religion of the Empire.

This state ofaffairs lasted until the accession in 378 of the Emperor Theodosius I who had been brought up in the West in loyaltyto the doctrine of Nicaea.In the meantime, a new dimension had been added to the theological debate.

The formula with which Christianswere baptized spoke of ‘The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit'.

The Holy Spirit mentioned often in the NewTestament was regarded by many Christian thinkers as being divine: so the question arose not only of the relation between Fatherand Son, but also of the relation between each of them and the Holy Spirit.

The formula which came to be preferredin the Greek Church was that they were three separate, but equally divine hypostases.

The word was the onewhich Plotinus had used to refer to the One, the Mind, and the Soul.

The literal Latin equivalent is the word‘substantia'.

It seemed confus¬ing, however, to say that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were three substances, whilethe Son was consubstantial with the Father.

But the double sense of the word ‘substance' is simply a revival of theAristotelian distinction between first substance (e.g.

Socrates) and second substance (e.g.

humanity).

Therelationship between the three members of what came to be called the Trinity was determined by the Council ofConstantinople in 381.That Council reaffirmed the Nicaean understanding of the relation between Son and Father, and reinstated the term‘consubstantial'.

It declared that the Holy Spirit was worshipped along with Father and Son; while the Son wasbegotten of the Father, the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father.

On the relation between the Son and the HolySpirit it was silent.

It did not use the word ‘hypostasis'; and Latin explanations of its doctrine began to prefer theword ‘persona' – a word originally meaning a mask in a stage-play, but the ancestor of our word ‘person'.. »