Review of Early Arianism: A View of Salvation
Christ created or Consubstantial Comfort?
This was a fascinating read. Wanting to learn more about the origins of Arianism, I was lead to this book through its different approach -- instead of looking at the various philosophical or Judaizing threads of thought that could have fed into the heresy, it looks at the positive spin of it through a different theory of soteriology (or how it is that salvation is accomplished). Basically, Arius was concerned that his ideas about salvation reflected onto Christ, more than that God's oneness was preserved, this book argues. Instead of Arianism being a Late Antiquity attempt to preserve the supposed Jewish One-Personness of God, or to bring into Christianity the Greek philosophical ideas of an unconcerned, uninvolved, absolute Good who creates but does not interact with created matter, Gregg and Groh argue that Arius was trying to graft his theory of salvation, that of absolute subjection to the divine will, onto the person of Christ.
Thus it wasn't, Arius argues, God who became man to save us, but rather a created being who becomes perfect through constantly pursuing God's will. This example He shows us is thus the inspiration for us to achieve the same as He did. We can, if we endure to the end with sufficient success, perhaps become by grace worthy of the appellation of 'God' as Jesus was. Jesus wasn't God by nature but God by grace.
Now, of course these are unorthodox (and unOrthodox) theories, but they share a common thrust of the time period, that of emphasizing the spiritual battle (asceticism, holding fast to tradition, mortifying the flesh, subjecting oneself to God's will, monasticism, striving for heavenly living, etc), so that great rewards can be achieved. It was fairly surprising to see the Orthodox doctrine of Theosis so well represented and evidences to its ubiquity at this early stage of doctrinal clarification throughout history. Not only do we continue to emphasize the real possibility of real and complete spiritual transformation and how awesome the effects of that area, we hold up a whole host of heroes who have exemplified that for us -- the Saints. The Arians thus share a similar concern as we do, that of inspiring people down the path to repentance, spiritual struggle, and divinization. Where we strongly disagree though, is Who Jesus Christ is. He is the eternally begotten unique Son of God who is fully God and has always been, whereas Arius taught He was a created being that God elevated to Godhood because He saw He would always be faithful and He was in fact consistently faithful. With the orthodox, there always remains a chasm between us and each Person fo the Trinity, with Arianism, there always remains a chasm between the Son and the Father.
This book argues that this was the real motivation for Arius and his followers, not to denigrate the Word down to our level, but to emphasize our possibility of fellow created beings (us) to rise to the level He has. I don't think the authors quite make their point as strongly as they think they do. They even seem to admit as much in the last chapter. Soteriology was not the only concern of the Arians, the evidence of influence from antiTrinitarianism from several channels is enough to make it obvious they also highly regarded cosmological, philosophical, and selective Biblical literalism arguments against the natural divinity of the Son. The authors do make a very strong case though, that the popularity of the Arian movement must have been because their salvation theory was so similar to the orthodox and was so easy to understand. Many have puzzled at how complicated a cosmology and double usage of words with different meanings could have caught on to be the empire-shifting force it was, but this should clear that question up significantly.
It's not just because this explains the spread and popularity of Arianism that this is interesting. It is also fascinating for what it reveals about the very early emphasis on the nature of Man and God and how they relate to each other. In order to clarify what the true orthodox teaching was against the false Arian heresy, saints like Athanasius the Great and Pope Alexander of Alexandria clarified a beautiful vision of the love God had and always has toward us, and the unimaginably sweet gift He gives us in salvation. Works like On the Incarnation by St Athanasius have been treasured classics for 1,700 years because of this.
Instead of salvation being primarily an effect of the effort of Man, it is primarily an effect of the choice of God to lower Himself and give us something He always had. If Christ was a created being and worked very hard to achieve His Godhood, this makes it theoretically possible we can too, since we are created like He is. This is the hope of Arianism. But orthodoxy teaches that God took what He Himself was and transformed our flesh to make it like what He is, by absolutely humbling Himself, and always pouring our His love for us. Our task then, is to recognize this, synergize with Him in real effort, and praise and thank Him for the gift. An ultimate Arian arrival would be to pat oneself on the back, ours is to sing out in praise and gratefulness for the eternally kind God.
Not only does the latter, the Orthodox, view better integrate with the evidence of the Scriptures, especially with the stages and steps toward spiritual transformation presented in the Book of the Psalms (for more on that see St Gregory of Nyssa's work on the Psalter), but it should strongly dispel any idea of the Orthodox Church being Semi-Pelagian. There really is no way to honestly describe Orthodoxy as teaching one can earn one's salvation, though this claim is often made by Protestant detractors. One of the most foundational episodes in our history, The First Ecumenical Council (concerned with Arianism), and the entire thrust of salvific teaching disprove this. In fact, one sees much more commonalities with Arianism among strict Protestant groups that emphasize "purity" and "holiness" than with our Faith. This was not the subject of the book, so perhaps it can wait for another work to flesh out.