When I was about twelve years old, one day just after church a good friend and I got into an argument over whether Jesus was God. “He’s the Son of God,” my friend argued. “How can he be God at the same time?” I stubbornly stuck to my position that he was both, but having no particular interest in theology at the time, I had no idea how to back up my odd-sounding claim.
This was the theological hot topic of the fourth century, when, according to St. Jerome, “the world groaned and marveled to find that it was Arian.” The Arians believed that Jesus was the Son of God, but not God, that while Jesus was still our Savior and God’s most important creation, he was not “with God in the beginning.” This belief was widespread within the Church during the fourth century. While it is well known that all of the Roman emperors save one were Christian after the conversion of Constantine, it is less well known that they were mostly Arian Christians. The Emperor Constantine himself was baptized on his deathbed by an Arian. While the bishops at the Council of Nicea in 325 overwhelmingly upheld the orthodox view of Jesus’s divinity, Arian beliefs persisted.
Hilary of Poitiers (c. 315-368) suffered for his conviction that Jesus was God. He grew up as a pagan in Southern Gaul, and became a teacher of rhetoric. He became convinced of the importance of leading a virtuous life, and decided that polytheism had nothing to offer him. He converted to Christianity around the age of 30 after reading the Pentateuch and the Gospel of John and deciding, “Here is the true God.” He was appointed Bishop of Poitiers by popular acclaim at the age of 35, which was rather unusual since he was a layman with a wife and daughter. He became a vocal defender of the orthodox view of the Trinity against the Arians.
Meanwhile, the Arian-friendly Emperor Constantius was putting great pressure on the Church. When he demanded that all of the bishops in the West sign a condemnation of Bishop Athanasius, another great defender of the Trinity, Hilary refused, and Constantius banished Hilary to Phyrigia in Asia Minor. Refusing to be cowed, Hilary used the time to research and write his greatest work, De Trinitate, and preached so effectively that the Arian bishops in Phrygia begged Constantius to send him home. But no one told him he had to go directly home, so he took a leisurely route through Greece and Italy, preaching as he went.
One of the most admirable qualities of Hilary of Poitiers was his calm demeanor in the face of opposition. He maintained relationships with those who persecuted him, and he maintained intellectual credibility across the Christian spectrum. He is remembered as thoughtful, gentle, humble, and pastoral. It is very easy to associate “standing for the truth” with “being strident, proud, and stubborn.” Hilary reminds us that as Christians, we are called to be both courageous for the truth yet meek and humble before God and men.
Hilary wrote hymns praising the Trinity, hoping the common man would pick up on the theology. This must have worked well, since just about every hymn written for the next 1500 years seems to end with a verse like this (the tune is “Angels from the Realms of Glory,” so start humming):
Glory be to God the Father
Glory be to God the Son
Glory be to God the Spirit
Ever three and ever one.
Consubstantial, co-eternal
While unending ages run.
Finally, while I have no statistics on this, I have the impression that Arian beliefs are once again becoming stronger within Christianity today. Of course, they are prone to reoccur wherever preaching is weak, but I suspect that the modern combination of sola scriptura, relativism and historical apathy – “my reading of the Bible is as good as anyone else’s reading of the Bible” – also tends to produce modern-day Arians.
St. Hilary of Poitiers, pray for us.
I am not quite sure that you can pin modern theological ignorance and heresy on sola scriptura at all here. The principle that the bible contains all we need to know and do for our Christian lives is not the problem. The problem is entirely rooted in the relativism. If I can look at the bible where Jesus said “I and the Father are One.” “If you have seen me you have seen the Father” “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” If I can look at all that and say, well there is no absolute truth in this. Truth for you may be that Jesus is God, but truth for me is that he isn’t then it doesn’t matter whether I claim to hold the bible as my guide or whether I claim to hold the teachings of Godly men of old as my guide. If I reinvent whatever anyone has said to mean what I want it to because there is no absolute truth, then I am no longer actually holding them as the authority but instead myself.
ReplyDeleteHi Frank,
ReplyDeleteYou touch on so many points it's hard to respond in the comments section. I shall focus on the issue of the perspicuity of scripture.
I agree with you that the Bible proclaims the divinity of Christ. But I do not agree that it is so clearly presented that every person who reads the Bible in a vacuum is going to come away with a fully formed notion of the Trinity, or even the idea that Jesus is God. For that, all Christians rely on church tradition in one way or another -- preaching, teaching, liturgy, hymns.
Let me give you a terribly embarrassing example. In grad school, I went to a non-denominational Bible study that was covering John chapter 1. When the teaching opened with "Of course, the 'Word' is referring to Jesus," my head popped up.
I had always thought it referred to the Bible. The Bible is the word of God, right? Right. And you can make it work with a minimum of metaphor. "In the beginning was the Word" -- Sure, God knew what the Bible would say since the beginning of time -- "the Word was with God" -- ditto -- "and the word was God." Hm, a bit harder, but I suppose one could say that the Bible was an accurate reflection of God so that humans could get to know him. And so on.
I quickly decided that the presenters at the study were right, and the the Word was Jesus. But I came away with a very low opinion of my ability to interpret the Bible correctly apart from the traditional teachings of the Church.
In other words, I stand with the Ethiopian who said to Philip, "How can I understand what I am reading unless someone explains it to me?" I expect that if he had not asked Philip for the Christian interpretation of the book of Isaiah, his day would not have ended with a baptism.
I would definitely want to make sure that whoever is explaining the Bible to me knows what they are talking about. How do you measure what is truth. If I don't understand what the Bible is saying, how do I know that someone else does. I think it is the Holy Spirit who is supposed to interpret the Bible for us. I would try to make sure I am listening to the Holy Spirit, whether I am interpretting the Bible myself, or listening to someone else explain it to me. I would want to know that either way I am believing the truth. It would be interesting to see in which groups of people the Arian belief is becoming more prevalent. Are they even studying the Bible, with or without help?
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