The Arian Controversy, according to Wikipedia
This article is a criticism of the Wikipedia article on the ‘Arian Controversy,’ retrieved May 2025. It gives the Wikipedia article sentence by sentence and provides comments and quotes from the books on the subject that have been published over the past 50 years:
Hanson, R.P.C. – The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God – The Arian Controversy 318-381 (1987)
Williams, Rowan – Arius, Heresy & Tradition, (2002/1987)
Ayres, Lewis – Nicaea and its legacy, An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (2004)
Anatolios, Khaled – Retrieving Nicaea (2011)
The green blocks quote verbatim from Wikipedia:
When did the Controversy begin?
Wikipedia: The Arian controversy was a series of Christian disputes about the nature of Christ that began with a dispute between Arius and Athanasius of Alexandria, two Christian theologians from Alexandria, Egypt.
I am sure Wikipedia means Alexander of Alexandria. See under “Beginning” of the article. The dispute between Arius and Alexander began in 318. Athanasius became involved only about two decades later:
“There was … no reason to regard Athanasius as a zealous supporter of the doctrine of Nicaea until at earliest his second exile (339-346)” (Hanson, p. 275).
More importantly, the Arian Controversy did not begin in the fourth century. The fourth-century controversy was a continuation of the controversy in the preceding centuries:
“The views of Arius were such as in a peculiar manner to bring into unavoidable prominence a doctrinal crisis which had gradually been gathering … He was the spark that started the explosion, but in himself he was of no great significance” (Hanson, p. xvii-xviii).
“The conflict in the fourth century was one between two theological traditions, both of which were well established by the beginning of the century” (Lienhard).
The Core Issue
Wikipedia: The most important of these controversies concerned the relationship between the substance of God the Father and the substance of His Son.
No. This was not the core issue. For example, the term homoousios (same substance) disappeared from the Controversy soon after Nicaea and only came back into the Controversy in the 350s:
“After Nicaea homoousios is not mentioned again in truly contemporary sources for two decades. … It was not seen as that useful or important” (Ayres, 96).
“What is conventionally regarded as the key-word in the Creed homoousion, falls completely out of the controversy very shortly after the Council of Nicaea and is not heard of for over twenty years” (Hanson).
“Homoousios was in fact a foreign body or stumbling block for all the people attending the council, without distinction, Arians and anti-Arians, and for this very reason it soon disappeared in the following debates” (P.F. Beatrice).
“Athanasius’ decision to make Nicaea and homoousios central to his theology has its origins in the shifting climate of the 350s” (Ayres, p. 144).
“He began to use it first in the De Deeretis … in 356 or 357” (Hanson, p. 438). (See here for more details.)
The core issue was something more fundamental, of which homoousios was only a symptom, namely, the question whether the Son is a distinct Person:
The ‘Arians’ said that he is a distinct Person (hypostasis).
The Nicenes believed He is part of the Father. Therefore, the Father and Son are a single Person (hypostasis), and the Son is homoousios with the Father, meaning that the Father and Son are a single substance:
“Behind the original controversy lie conflicting approaches to the Word’s generation’. To what extent can we think of it as the emergence of one distinct thing from another? How does one understand the distinction between God and Word, Father and Son: is this the distinction of two separate beings?” (Ayres, p. 3).
See here for a discussion.
The Father of Arianism
Wikipedia: The position advanced initially by Arius argued that the Son of God came after God the Father in both time and substance.
By beginning the article by saying what Arius believed, Wikipedia implies that Arius was the founder of Arianism and a key driver in the Controversy. In reality, he was of no great significance:
“The views of Arius were such as … to bring into unavoidable prominence a doctrinal crisis which had gradually been gathering. … He was the spark that started the explosion. But in himself he was of no great significance” (Hanson, p. xvii).
“Arius’ own theology is of little importance in understanding the major debates of the rest of the century (after Nicaea)” (Ayres, 56-57).
“Arius’ own role in the ‘Arian controversies’ was comparatively small” (Lienhard, quoting Adolf Martin Ritter).
“It is virtually impossible to identify a school of thought dependent on Arius’ specific theology” (Ayres, 2).
Arius was not a leader. Ayres divides the participants in the Controversy into four groups. One group is the Eusebians (the followers of Eusebius), and Arius was one of them. In other words, Eusebius was the leader of what is traditionally known as ‘Arianism.’
“Arius too, far from being an original thinker, was simply one more adherent of the dyohypostatic (two hypostases) tradition” (Lienhard).
In fact, some of Arius’ views deviated from the mainstream ‘Arian’ view. For example, the ‘Arian’ Dedication Creed of 341 condemned some of his views:
It “does anathematize doctrines associated … with Arius” (Ayres, p. 120).
For example, the Creed anathematizes all who say: “that either time or occasion or age exists or did exist before the Son was begotten” (Hanson, p. 286).
Time before the Son
Wikipedia: The position advanced initially by Arius argued that the Son of God came after God the Father in both time and substance.
It is not correct to say that Arius believed that the Son of God came after God the Father in time. Arius always said that the Son existed before time and the creation even existed. Therefore, he said ‘There was when the Son was not,’ without mentioning the word “time.” In his view, from the perspective of the Creation, the Son has always existed:
Arius wrote that the Son “exists … before times and before ages” (Hanson, p. 6), and was “begotten timelessly by the Father … before aeons … begotten timelessly before everything” (Hanson, p. 8). (An aeon is “an indefinite and very long period of time.”)
I am not sure what it could mean to say that Arius said that the Son of God came after God the Father in substance. Arius believed that the Father’s substance is different from the Father’s.
The Nicenes and Trinitarians
Wikipedia: This conflicted with the Trinitarian faction initially advanced by Athanasius which argued that the Christ was coeternal and consubstantial with God the Father.
Firstly, this seems to imply that Athanasius developed a new theology. He did not. He followed Alexander.
“Alexander’s theology found its most famous advocate in his successor Athanasius” (Ayres, p. 45).
Secondly, there was no “Trinitarian faction” at the time. The Nicenes were not Trinitarians. In Trinitarian theology, the Father, Son, and Spirit are a single Being existing as three hypostases (Persons). In contrast, in Arius’ time, the Nicenes believed that the Father, Son, and Spirit are a single hypostasis (Person).
“He [Athanasius] had attended the Council of Serdica among the Western bishops in 343, and a formal letter of that Council had emphatically opted for the belief in one, and only one, hypostasis as orthodoxy. Athanasius certainly accepted this doctrine at least up to 359, even though he tried later to suppress this fact” (Hanson, p. 444).
“During this same period [the 350s] the miahypostatic [one hypostasis] tradition is represented most fully by Athanasius” (Lienhard).
“The fragments of Eustathius that survive present a doctrine that is close to Marcellus, and to Alexander and Athanasius. Eustathius insists there is only one hypostasis“ (Ayres, p. 69).
Constantine’s Motive
Wikipedia: Emperor Constantine, through the Council of Nicaea in 325, attempted to unite Christianity and establish a single, imperially approved version of the faith.
Yes, that is what Constantine attempted to do, but his interest was not the ‘truth.’ Before the Council, he wrote a letter and described the matter as trivial.
“In 324 the Emperor Constantine … (who) assumed control of the whole empire, took an interest in the dispute. Constantine wrote to Alexander and Arius telling them to stop quarrelling about what seemed to him to be such a small matter. Soon, however, Constantine began to see their dispute as more serious” (Ayres, pp. 17-18).
His motive was to unite the church because a division in the Church could also cause his empire to divide.
“Constantine’s attitude reflects deeply embedded Roman attitudes about the social function of religion” (Ayres, p. 88).
Council of Nicaea
Wikipedia: Emperor Constantine, through the Council of Nicaea in 325, attempted to unite Christianity and establish a single, imperially approved version of the faith.
A second observation from this sentence is that Nicaea 325 was Constantine’s meeting. It was not a church council. It was a meeting of the Roman government to which bishops were invited.
“The history of the period shows time and time again that local councils could be overawed or manipulated by the Emperor or his agents. The general council was the very invention and creation of the Emperor. General councils, or councils aspiring to be general, were the children of imperial policy and the Emperor was expected to dominate and control them” (Hanson, p. 855).
Cause of the divisions
Wikipedia: Ironically, his efforts were the cause of the deep divisions created by the disputes after Nicaea.
The Nicene Council did not cause the Controversy. The same divisions that existed before Nicaea continued after Nicaea. As stated above, these deep divisions carried over from the third century.
Schism
Wikipedia: there was no formal schism …
This implies that the Church was a single organization under a single leader. In reality, during the first three centuries, Christianity was a persecuted minority. There was no single organization that could be divided.
In the fourth century, the emperors acted as the head of the Church. The Emperor was the ultimate judge in doctrinal disputes.
“If we ask the question, what was considered to constitute the ultimate authority in doctrine during the period reviewed in these pages, there can be only one answer. The will of the Emperor was the final authority” (Hanson, p. 849).
Therefore, when the Empire became divided between different emperors, the Church also became divided. For example:
In the 340s, the Empire was divided between Eastern and Western emperors. Therefore, the Church also became divided.
In the 350s, the Empire was once again under a single emperor, who forced the Church to unite.
For much of the 360s-370s, the Empire was again divided East and West, allowing the Western and Eastern Churches to drift apart as well.
Furthermore, there seems to be an unjustified emphasis on the Christianity of the Roman Empire. Some of the other European nations also converted to Christianity. The Germanic tribes, chiefly the Goths and the Vandals, had been converted to Christianity through the Arian missionary Ulfilas and had their own church structures.
Duration
Wikipedia: These disagreements divided the Church into various factions for over 55 years, from the time before the First Council of Nicaea in 325 until after the First Council of Constantinople in 381.
However:
As stated above, the Controversy did not begin in the fourth century but continued the third-century Controversy, as reflected, for example, in the dispute between the bishops of Rome and Alexandria in the middle of the third century.
Furthermore, the Controversy did not end in 381. In 381, the Roman Empire made Nicene theology the only legal religion of the Roman nation, but the other European nations remained ‘Arian.’ In the fifth century, the Western Empire fragmented into several kingdoms, and they were all Arians.
“Similarly, older narratives in which a clear end is identified fly in the face of evidence that controversy continued into the fifth century” (Ayres, p. 267).
Therefore, it would be more accurate to say that the Controversy divided the Church for centuries.
Edict of Thessalonica
Wikipedia: Inside the Roman Empire, the Trinitarian faction ultimately gained the upper hand through the Edict of Thessalonica, issued on 27 February AD 380, which made Nicene Christology the state religion of the Roman Empire, and through strict enforcement of that edict.
This is essentially correct. The victory of the Nicene faction did not come at the so-called Second Ecumenical Council of 381, but through a Roman Law published in the preceding year. Theodosius outlawed all non-Nicenes factions, confiscated their churches, and prohibited them from meeting for worship or from living in the cities:
“Immediately after the council ended, at the very end of July 381, Theodosius issued an Edict confirming its conclusions. This Edict is known as Episeopis tradi. The first words are:
‘We now order that all churches are to be handed over to the bishops who profess Father, Son and Holy Spirit of a single majesty, of the same glory, of one splendour, who establish no difference by sacrilegious separation, but the order of the Trinity by recognizing the Persons and uniting the Godhead’” (Hanson, pp. 820-1).
Unitarinism
Wikipedia: However, outside the Roman Empire, Arianism and other forms of Unitarianism continued to be preached for some time (without the blessing of the Empire), but it was eventually killed off.
Depending on the definitions, Arianism was not Unitarianism. The Arians believed in the existence of three divine Beings.
“We have to resist the anachronistic characterization of him (Arius) as an antitrinitarian theologian.” “He writes simply, ‘So there are three hypostaseis,’” meaning “the set of beings that form the object (or objects) of Christian confession. … the three hypostaseis seemingly form a certain unity” (Anatolios, p. 47-48).
Arians
The Dedication Creed, a statement of the Eastern (Arian) Church, says: “They are three in hypostasis but one in agreement” (Hanson, p. 286).
The Eusebians (Arians) confessed “three in hypostasis but one in agreement” (Ayres, p. 118).
The Nicenes were the ‘Unitarians’ because they believed that the Father, Son, and Spirit are a single Person.
“Athanasius’ gut reaction is that there can be only one eternal reality and source, and that proposing more than one hypostasis would imply a dualism” (Ayres, p. 48).
The “clear inference from his (Athanasius’) usage” is that “there is only one hypostasis in God” (Ayres, p. 48).
“Just what the Council intended this expression [homoousios] to mean is set forth by St. Athanasius as follows … That the Son is not only like to the Father, but inseparable from the substance of the Father, that he and the Father are one and the same” (Philip Schaff).
Western Manifesto at Serdica
“We have received and have been taught this … tradition: that there is one hypostasis, which the heretics (also) call ousia, of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Hanson, p. 301, quoting the Western (Nicene) Manifesto at the Council of Serdica). (See here for details.)
Therefore, scholars now conclude that Athanasius’ theology is unitarian. The same applies to the theology of the Sabellians, which is similar to Athanasius’ theology:
“Studer’s account [1998] here follows the increasingly prominent scholarly position that Athanasius’ theology offers a strongly unitarian Trinitarian theology whose account of personal differentiation is underdeveloped” (Ayres, p. 238).
Sabellians
Ayres refers to “supporters of Nicaea whose theology had strongly unitarian tendencies. Chief among these was Marcellus of Ancyra” (Ayres, p. 431).
Athanasius was similar to Sabellians.
“Although Athanasius’ theology was by no means identical with Marcellus’, the overlaps were significant enough for them to be at one on some of the vital issues—especially their common insistence that the Son was intrinsic to the Father’s external existence” (Ayres, p. 106).
“The fragments of Eustathius that survive present a doctrine that is close to Marcellus, and to Alexander and Athanasius. Eustathius insists there is only one hypostasis“ (Ayres, p. 69).
Modern Trinity Doctrine
The modern Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, as well as all Protestant denominations, have generally followed the Trinitarian formulation, though each has its own specific theology on the matter.
This seems correct. However, modern Trinitarianism deviates from Nicene theology:
“Even modern theologies wishing to uphold a Nicene faith have frequently failed to sustain the theological practices that shaped and made possible that faith” (Ayres, p. 6).
Conclusion
So far, this article has discussed only the introduction in Wikipedia’s article, but has discovered the following errors:
| According to Wikipedia: | In Reality: |
| The Controversy began in the fourth century. | The Controversy continued the controversy of the previous century. |
| The core issue is reflected by the term homoousios. | The core issue was whether the Son is a distinct Person. The Nicenes used the term homoousios to say that the Father and Son are a single substance. |
| Arius was the founder of Arianism and a key driver in the Controversy. | He was of no great significance. Eusebius was the leader of the so-called Arians. |
| Arius argued that the Son of God came after God the Father in time. | Arius claimed that the Son was begotten before time existed. |
| The Nicene Council caused divisions. | The same divisions that existed before Nicaea continued after Nicaea. |
| There was no formal schism. | There was no single organization that could be divided. |
| These disagreements ended at the First Council of Constantinople in 381 | When the Romans in 381 made Nicene theology their sole legal religion, the other nations remained ‘Arian.’ |
| The Nicenes were Trinitarians, believing in three Persons in God. | The Nicenes believed that the Father and Son are a single Person. They were Unitarians. |
| The Arians were Unitarians. | The Arians believed in a trinity of three divine Beings. |
| Modern Trinitarianism follows Nicene theology. | Modern Trinitarianism fails to sustain Nicene theology. |
The reason for all these errors is that Wikipedia follows the traditional account of the Arian Controversy, as was explained by scholars until the end of the 19th century. During the 20th century, research has shown that the traditional account is the account of the winner and a complete travesty. Therefore, compared to the books published during the past 50 years, the Wikipedia article distorts the history of the Controversy.
“A vast amount of scholarship over the past thirty years has offered revisionist accounts of themes and figures from the fourth century” (Ayres, p. 2, writing in 2004).
The “conventional account of the Controversy, which stems originally from the version given of it by the victorious party, is now recognised by a large number of scholars to bea complete travesty” (Hanson).
The traditional account stems from Athanasius’ polemical strategy:
“Athanasius’ engagement with Marcellus in Rome seems to have encouraged Athanasius towards the development of” “an increasingly sophisticated account of his enemies;” “the full flowering of a polemical strategy that was to shape accounts of the fourth century for over 1,500 years;” “a masterpiece of the rhetorical art” (Ayres, p. 106-7).
Since anybody can edit Wikipedia’s article, and since the majority of the Church accepts the traditional account of the Arian Controversy because it supports the traditional Trinity doctrine, I cannot see that Wikipedia’s article will soon be revised to reflect the true history. I tried, but I have been banned from Wikipedia.
