Chapter 9: The First Theological Brawl. It's important to understand that the theologians attained their ascendancy over the Church in stages. It didn't happen all at once. Rather, it took about 150 years after the death of Origen, before the Church regressed to essentially the same situation the Jews were in at the time of Christ. None of the key figures involved in establishing the new class of theologians were purposely trying to harm the Church. Most of them were trying to save the Church from heretics.
Nevertheless, these well-intentioned men created something that was in direct opposition to what Jesus had established for His kingdom. These wars were engendered by two things: first, Christians were speculating on things they should have left alone; and second, they had lost their focus on Christ the King and His kingdom. They were placing theological dogma above kingdom fruit. One theological battle, in particular, came to the center stage. It's generally known today as the Arian controversy.
It concerned the beginning of the Son. The Scriptures merely tell us that Jesus is the only begotten of the Father and that He existed as the Word in the beginning (John 1:1-14). Nevertheless, the Church did have a uniform teaching about the Son and His eternal generation from the Father. They likened the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to our sun. The Father is like the sun itself. The Son is like the beams of light begotten by the sun. The Holy Spirit is like the heat that proceeds from the sun.
If our sun were eternity, then so would be the light and heat that come from it. Similarly, since the Father there is eternal, so are the Son and Holy Spirit. The Scriptures tell us that all the fullness of Godhood, or the divine nature, dwell in Jesus, so He has the same nature as the Father. At the same time, the Scriptures clearly state that the Father is the head of Christ. The Father and Son are equal in nature, yet there is a hierarchy of headship or order within the Trinity.
Now, the second-century Christians never felt that having a complete understanding of the Trinity was one of the essentials of the faith. That's why their statement of belief simply stated, "I believe in only one God Almighty, the Creator of the universe, and His Son, Jesus Christ." How the Brawl started. But the fourth-century Church was considerably different from the second-century Church.
By the fourth century, the Church was filled with amateur theologians who thought they needed to nail down matters that were not explicit in Scripture. To this end, Alexander, the Bishop of Alexandria, had called together all the elders in the city and put forward to them questions about the beginning of the Son and His relationship to the Father.
From the views Alexander expressed during his questioning, one of the elders named Arius became convinced that Alexander held to an unorthodox view of the Father and the Son. It seemed to Arius that Alexander held to a position that is often called Sabellianism or Modalism. Today, it's better commonly known as Oneness Theology. It's the view that the Father and Son are merely different modes of the same person.
So Arius quickly contradicted what Alexander was teaching on the subject, and the two men got into a heated argument. The other elders joined one side or the other, and soon what had begun as a personal controversy engulfed the entire Christian population of Alexandria. From there, it spilled over to other churches. Arius committed the classical theological mistake that I refer to as Newton's Law of Theology. Newton's third law of motion states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
In theology, whenever someone promotes a theological error, someone else usually reacts by going to the opposite extreme, creating a new theological error in response. Arius was so determined to counteract the Oneness error that he swung way too far in the other direction. He ignored what the Church had always taught about the Father and the Son and claimed that because the Son is begotten, it must mean that He came into existence at some point. He also said that the Son was created out of nothing.
Disregarding the Church's teaching that the Son is eternally begotten from the Father as light is begotten from the sun, caught up in his own sense of self-importance, Arius didn't care if he tore the Church apart in his attempt to rescue it from the Oneness error. Just drop it. Constantine was convinced that Christianity was the one true religion, and he wanted to advance its cause.
However, he was chagrined when he learned that as a result of his granting Christians religious freedom, they were now fighting among themselves. So he conferred with one of his most respected bishops in the Church, Hosius of Spain. Hosius explained to Constantine the nature of the controversy, and the solution he recommended was straightforward: tell both sides simply to drop the matter.
So Constantine wrote a letter addressed to Alexander and Arius, and Hosius traveled to Egypt to personally deliver the letter and to encourage the two men to follow the advice in it. The letter said in part, "What then is our advice?
It is this: that it was wrong in the first instance to propose such questions as these, or to reply to them when propounded, for those points of discussion are not required by the authority of any law; rather, they are suggested by the contentious spirit that is fostered by misused free time.
Even though they may be intended merely as an intellectual exercise, they certainly should be confined to the region of our own thoughts and not hastily produced in the popular assemblies, nor unadvisedly entrusted to the general ear, for how very few are there who are able either to accurately comprehend or to adequately explain subjects so sublime and obscure in their nature." That was the voice of wisdom speaking. Just drop it and focus on following Christ.
Don't speculate on matters that aren't specifically defined in Scripture. It was the voice of plain, primitive, fruit-oriented Christianity, but it was one of the last times that voice would be heard. Drop it. But that would have caused all sorts of horrible things to come into the Church. I hear people say today, "Didn't Hosius see what that does to the nature of the Son?" Yes, Hosius understood perfectly well what it does to the nature of the Son. It does nothing.
Whether or not the matter had been dropped, the nature of the Son remains the same. Or are we so foolish as to imagine that our conceptions about the nature of the Son's beginning and His relationship to the Father have any bearing on the reality of those things? The divinity of the Father and the Son, and their true nature and relationship, remain the same regardless of what we ignorant humans may think.
The average unlearned Christian of the second century probably couldn't have given a completely correct explanation of the beginning of the Son or of the relationship of the Father and Son. Some Christians erroneously held to the Oneness error, thinking that the Father was the Son. But no councils were convened, and no one was excommunicated over this error. The second-century Church simply left the matter alone. What were the results?
Did there cease to be a Father and a Son because some Christians misunderstood Jesus' words? Of course not. But as I said, the fourth-century Church was different, so nobody heeded Hosius' advice to drop the whole matter. Although we can't say for certain what would have happened if everyone had agreed to drop the issue, we do know for certain what happened because they refused to drop it. And the damage to the kingdom was catastrophic.