Arius: Heresy and Tradition

Arius: Heresy and Tradition. By Rowan Williams. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002. xiii + 378 pages. Rowan Williams became the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury in a traditional liturgical ceremony on 27 February 2003. Before that he was Archbishop of Wales and Professor of Theology at the University of Oxford, where he wrote a book on the theology and ecclesiastical politics of Arius, the priest of Alexandria declared to be heretical by the majority of bishops in the controversy of the Nicene Creed of the fourth century. His 1987 publication has been reprinted and revised by Eerdmans with a twenty-page update on Arius studies since then and seven creedal statements of the times, including those of Arius and others to be compared with that of Nicaea.

There is both an historical and theological approach in this book. There is a review of scholarship on Arius, beginning with John Henry Cardinal Newman in 1833 and Adolf von Harnack in 1894, showing both the importance of Arius' rejection of the trinitarian formulation and the misconceptions that have become associated with his name. For example, there was no "Arian school," but many theological positions opposed to the Nicene consensus, and Arius himself, was a conservative biblical exegete and liturgist with ties to academic intellectual currents of his time rather than a borderline heretic. Fifteen pages of bibliography relate to discussion of more recent studies.

The historical setting is described in detail, with the struggles over the interpretation of the nature of Jesus Christ and salvation in different geographical centers from Carthage and Alexandria to Antioch, Asia Minor, and Byzantium. Philo, Clement, Origen, Methodius, Eusebius, and the Cappadocians emerge in relation to the issue, along with the imperial policy of Constantine. Athanasius is the center of the dispute, and the question of Jesus as eternal and divine being is raised as the key to redemption and soteriology. How does God relate to the world? What is the christological understanding of the Logos in the philosophical spirit of the times? The importance of this metaphysical disputation was due to a profoundly spiritual confrontation that had consequences for the nature and message of the church. The background, politics, and make-up on the Council of Nicaea in 325 portrayed by Archbishop Williams is detailed, complex, and fascinating. The philosophical culture impacting different currents of thought and piety, the more objective or the more mystical, the pagan intellectual legacy tempered by regionalism and local tradition, are shown to be critical theological and non-theological influences.

But more than an historical analysis of theological development in the early church, interesting in itself today for a better understanding of doctrinal origins, Anus: Heresy and Tradition is a lesson in Christian belief at the beginning of a new century. The Nicene Creed, albeit in archaic language and venerable concepts, is normative because it says that it is really God who has appeared to us in Jesus. Only God can save us with a knowledge of eternal life. Arius had an exalted theology of Jesus as Savior and defended a literal rather than a theological reading of scripture, but in refusing the pre-existence of the Logos from eternity and conceiving of Jesus as a semi-divine being, he remained forever part of the ancient world.

The result in modern times of refusing trinitarian perspectives is to reduce faith to a narrow spiritual focus, both in terms of theological creativity and the transforming practice of faith. It proves to be important for the inner life, as well as for the ecumenical conception of the Church Universal. Neither jests about the "iota" difference in homoousias and homoiousias, nor the rationalism that limits theology to an exercise in anthropology are relevant to the passionate conflicts surrounding the trinity in the third century. Nor do they permit us to avoid the task of understanding the issue Arius represents, which is the relation of God to the world and of Jesus to salvation, not salvation from the jaws of Hell but from the bondage of mortality and sin.

There is a new importance to the theme, as it is called to our attention partly out of the spiritual searching of some and partly out of the ecumenical concern of others. It is sometimes forgotten that Arianism predominated over orthodoxy at times, not only at Constantinople but among the Germanic tribes which sacked Rome, and the trinitarian theology was almost totally abandoned in the Protestant West in much of the nineteenth century.

Rowan Williams points to the debt orthodoxy owes to Arius and to the conceptual difficulties Arius helps Christian theology to focus on. The trinitarian definition incorporated and re-worked some of his emphasis and language. Even as Anglican archbishop, Williams calls for an orthodoxy that "continues to be made." His book shows trinitarian thinking to be an open and innovative deliberation on grace. This is true especially in the presence of monotheistic Islam. It is true also because of minimalist theological reflection such as the Jesus Seminar and the lack of interest of many religious professionals. What Christians believe about the divine and the human can be a critical contribution to post-modern and neo-Gnostic varieties of culture which confront the churches at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Arius: Heresy and Tradition helps to clarify many aspects of belief that apply to the present as well as to the past, in an ongoing process of defining the faith. The archbishop calls it a "continuing conversation," which is why his scholarship is sympathetic to one considered to have been the essential heretic.

It is a highly technical and carefully researched volume. There are seventy-one pages of notes and seven pages of a name index, ancient and modern. It is a book for this new Chalcedonian epoch, well worth thinking about.

William J. Nottingham

Christian Theological Seminary

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