Arians

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Awful_Things

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In the book Triumph (the chapter on Constantine), Crocker makes note that councils were little help in resolving the crisis of Arianism as there was little agreement until Nicea. He said that before that, some supported the heresy and others rejected it.

In chatting with our associate, I learned that, even after Nicea, a majority of bishops still supported Arianism for a time.

Both of these facts will be helpful in a conversation I’m having with a Protestant friend. However, I would like cite a source. Any suggestions of what source might document these?
 
Awful_Things said:
In the book Triumph (the chapter on Constantine), Crocker makes note that councils were little help in resolving the crisis of Arianism as there was little agreement until Nicea. He said that before that, some supported the heresy and others rejected it.

In chatting with our associate, I learned that, even after Nicea, a majority of bishops still supported Arianism for a time.

Both of these facts will be helpful in a conversation I’m having with a Protestant friend. However, I would like cite a source. Any suggestions of what source might document these?
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I’m not totally sure what you’re asking for… What is the context of your conversation?
Code: 
As far as "some bishops supporting it" that's sort of irrelevant. We have priests today who support Obama..but that doesn't mean they are following church teaching in doing so.  The church will always hold to the truth, it is up to the members to choose whether or not they will follow it.
Anyway maybe that has nothing to do with what you’re asking… I guess it would just help to know what you’re conversing about:)
 
Awful_Things said:
In the book Triumph (the chapter on Constantine), Crocker makes note that councils were little help in resolving the crisis of Arianism as there was little agreement until Nicea. He said that before that, some supported the heresy and others rejected it.

In chatting with our associate, I learned that, even after Nicea, a majority of bishops still supported Arianism for a time.

Both of these facts will be helpful in a conversation I’m having with a Protestant friend. However, I would like cite a source. Any suggestions of what source might document these?
Click to expand...
Did you try New Advent?
 
AshleyBelle said:
I’m not totally sure what you’re asking for… What is the context of your conversation?
Code: 
As far as "some bishops supporting it" that's sort of irrelevant. We have priests today who support Obama..but that doesn't mean they are following church teaching in doing so.  The church will always hold to the truth, it is up to the members to choose whether or not they will follow it.
Anyway maybe that has nothing to do with what you’re asking… I guess it would just help to know what you’re conversing about:)
Click to expand...
I purposely left out the context of the conversation because I’m not looking for suggestions or insight into the topic, just documentation. I don’t like to refer to historical facts without backing them up with a source. I’m not sure how you know that “some bishops supporting it” is irrelevant since I haven’t given the topic of the conversation. How can one claim something is irrelevant to a topic which is, itself, undisclosed?

I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m trying very hard to keep the thread to go off in a direction other than the original post, which asked for help with documentation, and nothing more.

But, just to satisfy the curious, the conversation is with a Protestant friend who believes in the authority of councils and rejects the authority of the Pope. He believes that leaders of the Church should “humbly submit” to one another in matters of doctrine, except for the idea of the Trinity, the Divinity of Christ, and salvation by Grace, which he believes are the three non-negotiables. The conversation is much more complicated than that, which is why I don’t want to reexplore it all here, and it is going very well, but the above information will be helpful to show 1) the fallibility of councils without the authority of the pope and 2) the error in thinking that the Trinity is so clearly spelled out in Scripture (his view) that it could easily be understood without a infallible leaders.
 
His three non negotiables confuse me. The Trinity and the Divinity of Christ, are um… not seperate topics.
 
notsmart said:
I believe you!🙂

I would hit the search function here and see if there are any past threads on the topic.
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I did try that. Haven’t tried New Advent, as someone suggested.

Also, some of you might find this interesting. This particular pastor friend is the associate pastor at the church where Sarah Palin attends in Alaska.
 
Awful_Things said:
I did try that. Haven’t tried New Advent, as someone suggested.

Also, some of you might find this interesting. This particular pastor friend is the associate pastor at the church where Sarah Palin attends in Alaska.
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Me again! I suggested New Advent and the search feature.

Interesting. I heard some controversial things about their doctrines.

I can try to call my priest. He is in town today.
 
Awful_Things said:
In the book Triumph (the chapter on Constantine), Crocker makes note that councils were little help in resolving the crisis of Arianism as there was little agreement until Nicea. He said that before that, some supported the heresy and others rejected it.

In chatting with our associate, I learned that, even after Nicea, a majority of bishops still supported Arianism for a time.

Both of these facts will be helpful in a conversation I’m having with a Protestant friend. However, I would like cite a source. Any suggestions of what source might document these?
Click to expand...
I think that Davis’ book on the first 7 ecuminical councils is a pretty good source of information.
 
Awful_Things said:
In chatting with our associate, I learned that, even after Nicea, a majority of bishops still supported Arianism for a time.
Click to expand...
Are you by any chance, referring to Semi-Arians - those who stuck to a compromised view of Arianism without adopting Arianism itself?
 
Awful_Things said:
In the book Triumph (the chapter on Constantine), Crocker makes note that councils were little help in resolving the crisis of Arianism as there was little agreement until Nicea. He said that before that, some supported the heresy and others rejected it.

In chatting with our associate, I learned that, even after Nicea, a majority of bishops still supported Arianism for a time.

Both of these facts will be helpful in a conversation I’m having with a Protestant friend. However, I would like cite a source. Any suggestions of what source might document these?
Click to expand...
Hi Awful,

I’ve heard this claim too, but I haven’t any idea whether it is true or not. A quick search on google turned up a number of websites that make that claim (including one that says “St. Jerome tells us that the vast majority of bishops became Arian heretics”) but I didn’t see any realiable sources.
 
I believe the vast majority of bishops were sucked into the Arian heresy. So what?🤷
 
notsmart said:
I believe the vast majority of bishops were sucked into the Arian heresy. So what?🤷
Click to expand...
Try to figure it out on your own. If you don’t see the relevance of this with regard to a discussion of the infallibility of the pope, I’m not sure what good any explanation would do.
 
Hi Awful,

“Arianism” was somewhat distinct from earlier viewpoints, but it did carry on a long tradition of “subordinationism.” Subordinationism was the idea that the Son (and the Holy Spirit) are ontologically subordinate to the Father. Some thought of Jesus as a sort of “super-archangel,” while others considered him to be a sort of offshoot of the divine Being, and so on. Arius took the “angel Christology” viewpoint, but explicitly claimed that Jesus was created from nothing–i.e., he wasn’t really divine in the strict sense. Before the fourth century, the only Christians who weren’t subordinationists were the Modalists, who believed that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were really one person.

Anyway, here are some quotations from a couple Anglican historians to support the contention that before Nicea, some form of subordinationism was the orthodox position.

“‘Subordinationism’, it is true, was pre-Nicene orthodoxy.” [Henry Bettenson, The Early Christian Fathers, p. 239.]

“Indeed, until Athanasius began writing, every single theologian, East and West, had postulated some form of Subordinationism. It could, about the year 300, have been described as a fixed part of catholic theology.” (RPC Hanson, “The Achievement of Orthodoxy in the Fourth Century AD” in Rowan Williams, ed., The Making of Orthodoxy, New York, NY: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989, p. 153.)

There’s more info (pro and con) about this on this blog by a Catholic, David Waltz.
 
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