Against Arius and Eunomius

Arius (250 or 256 – 336) was a Cyrenaic presbyter and ascetic. He was not the founder of Arianism. The opposing sides in the Controversy were already well established before the dispute between Arius and Alexander. The Controversy was inevitable. Arius’ dispute with his bishop initiated the controversy, but Arius, himself, was not important.

Eunomius (died c. 393 AD), one of the leaders of the extreme or “anomoean” Arians, who are sometimes accordingly called Eunomians

Arianism holds that Jesus Christ was not coeternal with God the Father, but was rather created directly by God the Father before anything else, as the true Firstborn.

Book of Questions (PDF), by Gregory of Tatev

Gregory deals with this heresy through his responses to a list of twenty statements attributed to the heretics. I won’t touch on all of these, and will only highlight a few that I find most meaningful.

He gives credit as to his source for his responses:

Refutations and remonstrances of Gregory the Theologian [Nazianzus] from four writings.

Whether Christ was born from being or nonbeing

We say that the Son is the begotten of the Father from the beginning. Because this is the solution to this ambiguous question, and the assertion of the substance of the Father.

By saying begotten from the Father, [the assertion] demonstrates that He [the Son] is not before the Father. And by saying from the beginning, [the Son] cannot be after the Father.

Why does Christ say: “I was sent by the Father,” and: “My Father is greater than me.”

Do not rend the Scripture. Find the explication to your statement in: “The Father who sent me is with me.” And with regard to the other statement: “I and my Father are one. Who sees me, sees my Father. As the Father knows me, I know the Father. Whatever is mine, is from the Father; and whatever is the Father’s, is mine.”

Paul too balances [this]: “Who was in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God” (Phil 2:6).

Gregory offers several such verses, making clear that one cannot take one or two verses as proof without considering all of Scripture. I have come to respect how seriously the early Church Fathers took Scripture. Yes, kind of a dumb statement, I know. But when you are raised thinking that the Bible was just discovered by Luther and Calvin…well…

“God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” [means] not that He [Christ] was abandoned by Himself or by the Father

… [it means] that since we were forsaken and ignored by God for our sins, He [Christ] took upon Himself our appearance, sharing the same nature with us, and becoming head of our members. Interpret in the same way His outcry and tears, His fear, sorrow, praying, and all such things on our behalf. Becoming our head and our tongue, He showed to the Father the weakness of the nature of our members.

Christ offered an example of how we are to live, to respond, to react. He did this for our benefit, not His.

Gregory expands on this initial point by offering eight reasons taken from Gregory the Theologian, all in support of the above statement. A few of these, in brief:

· … because to whatever object He approached by suffering, He redeemed my sufferings.

· … so that through this act He may perfect His submission to the temptation of sufferings.

· … to instruct us

And what about the intercession of the Spirit and the Son that we hear?

… the intercession of the Spirit is this: when we are praying [and] we do not know how to ask for the suitable, but the Spirit silently gives us wisdom to pray suitably.

Understand the intercession of the Son also in this fashion: Since He is our head and we are members [of His body], when He finds us in sin, He cares and suffers for us.

[The Son] counsels us with His hidden wisdom to be patient during temptations, and endure the suffering that He Himself experienced.

… the Son was ignorant of the [last] hour and day, and, therefore, their assertion that the Son is less [than the Father]

God forbid! Not that [the Son] was ignorant, for He said everything that would happen at His death; then how could He be ignorant of the hour?

Also, as Athanasius says: “The Son as a different being does not know the hour and day as the Father does; that is, [the Son] knows as God, not as an angel or man, for His knowledge is one with His Father.”

I see this a little differently – somewhat like the response to “Why have You forsaken Me?” Christ is teaching us not to be anxious in our suffering or even our future, not to plan as if we know the when or how of it, leaving it all to God’s good will.

Conclusion

This last statement from Athanasius sounds similar to what Leo wrote in his Tome, yet Gregory finds it acceptable while he labels Leo a heretic. It just demonstrates, once again, how difficult and even confusing was the conversation that was occurring in the fifth century – and continues as such.