the audacity of individuality

So why did I pick the number 26 to start my list of the most influential thinkers in my life? Why not 25? Well, because I considered this 26th person as sort of a bonus, mainly because this man has had so much influence in the development as a critical thinker despite the fact that we don't really know much about him. What we do know about Arius of Alexandria is only through the works of the theologians that opposed him, notably Alexander of Alexandria and his successor, Athanasius. Arius of Alexandria (256-336 CE) was the son of a historical unknown, Ammonius, and was tutored by a "non-trinitarian" church leader, Lucian of Antioch.

Arius was ordained as a deacon by the the bishop of Alexandria (a very important post in pre-Nicene Christianity), Peter I, despite a previous unfriendly confrontation between the two. However, the reconciliation did not last and Peter I excommunicated Arius, only for Arius to be re-instated six years later by Peter's successor, Achillas, whom Arius had befriended. Achillas held Arius in such high esteem that in 313 CE, he made him presbyter of the Baucalis district in Alexandria, where Arius would continue his studies. That same year Achillas died and Arius had hoped to succeed Achillas office of Patriarch of Alexandria. The office, however, went to Alexander I, who the modern day "Church of Arian Catholicism" calls a "Sebellianist heretic" (Sebellianism is the view that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are "modes" of God, later called "Modalism", rather than the three distinct persons of future orthodoxy), an accusation I have not personally found evidence to support (although it was hardly be unbelievable).

At this point the records begin to get a little sketchy as the orthodox tradition has generally used Arius's indignation with his loss of the prestigious office as an impetus for his later heresies. However, since he was trained by a non-trinitarian church leader and was already stirring up trouble beforehand, it is hardly indubitable that he held the beliefs of the so-called "Arian heresies" much earlier than his failure to attain the Alexandrian patriarchy. Although the details and the specific reason are indefinite, Arius argued that Jesus, as Son of God, was not eternal and was subordinate to God the Father. Arius's heresy was influential to myself mainly as a consciousness-raising experience.

During my time at a conservative Bible College, Arius was, of course, never even mentioned (controversies during the early Christian period are avoided like the Bubonic plague). At said college, however, I searched as genuinely as possible for the absolute truth and held fast to the idea that it could be deciphered from the pages of the Bible. The problem with any student taking a deeper look into the Bible is that he or she will eventually come across some extremely problematic passages. I did. I came across a lot. Hoping for clarity, I dove even deeper - how have the theologians explained these spiritual conundrums? Yet their answers often complicated matters even moreso, or they were cheap tricks and excuses. While there were many of these issues, one became the center of my curiousity - the doctrine of the Trinity, stirred mainly by Mark 13:32:

Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away. But of that day or that hour knows no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.

The usual magic trick for this verse is as follows: when Jesus came down from the heavens, he did not retain his divine omniscience. This, for very obvious and apparent reasons, did not sit well with someone who wanted to believe that Jesus was God incarnate without the casual exceptions or limitations on his Godhood: had Jesus wanted to move a mountain, he could very well have, he simply chose not to (see Mark 8:11-12). Confused, I delve a little more into the abyss of once questionable, but now indisputable, church doctrine. It is here that I found Arius - not in some special "Church Heretics" or even "Church History" course, but rather buried among the rhetoric of untaught histories of Biblical canonization and development of church orthodoxy.

Apparently I was not alone in finding odd passages throughout Scripture that just did not jive with the complicated theological models we now had. If Jesus was truly God incarnate, does it not seem odd that his human form would limit him in such a mundane way? Peter, James, John, and Andrew were not challenging Jesus to create a rock he himself could not lift - they were simply asking when the temple was going to be demolished. This cryptic nature of Jesus, especially in the Gospel of Mark, would be the beginning of much further study and essentially was my door to the world of Biblical criticism. Arius's heresy became a symbol of my continuing search for truth.

Resources

• Catholic Encyclopedia entry on Arius
• Arian-Catholic biography of Arius
• Encyclopedia Britannica entry on Arius
• Catholic Encyclopedia entry on Alexander
• Alexander's Letter Against Arius
• Athanasius' 4 Discourses Against the Arians
• Eusebius' Letter on the Council of Nicea
• Constantine's Opposition to Arius

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 13th, 2007 at 6:26 pm and is filed under christianity, religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.