But this is not the whole story. Besides all these motives, the really decisive issue, its meaning and permanent significance, is the answer to the question, “How is salvation possible, in a world of darkness and mortality?” This alone was the question. This was the question, as we have seen already in the Apostolic Fathers. It was the question ever since, and it was the question in the period of the great Trinitarian and Christological struggles.
Athanasius, the great foe of Arius, formulates that it is possible only under one condition, namely Jesus “was made man that we :might become God.” But this was possible only if the Logos is eternal, if it is really God who has appeared to us, as God is Father only because He is the Father of the Son. Therefore He is without beginning. Eternally the Father has the Son. The Son is Son eternally, as the Son of the Father. And the Father is Father eternally, because He is the Father of the Son.
Only if they are co-eternal can Jesus, in whom the Logos is present, give us eternity. He can make us like God, which always means, make us immortal, and give us eternal knowledge, the knowledge of eternal life. Not even the highest of all created spirits can give us a real salvation. He is less than God, but we are separated from God, we are dependent on God and must return to him So God Himself must save us.
Now this is the religious motive behind the Alexandrian trend in theology. Therefore the West and their allies in the East could not accept the theology of the Alexandrian presbyter Arius. According to him, only God the Father is by Himself and without beginning. The Logos, i. e. , the pre-existent Christ, is a creature. He is one of the creatures He is created out of nothing, and there was a time when He was not. You remember the famous saying of Origen: there was no time in which He was not Against this, the left -wing Origenistic theology says there was a time in which He was not. This time was before our temporal existence, but it was not eternity; the Logos is not eternal. The power of God who works in Jesus is not the eternal Divine power itself but a limited reduced hierarchy. This Logos is strange to the Divine nature, unsimilar in every respect to the Father’s essence. This Logos can neither see nor know the Father completely and exactly. He becomes God only in the way in which every saint can become deified. This deification happened as it happens in every saint, through his freedom. He had the freedom to turn away from God, but he didn’t. This Logos, therefore, is a half-Divine power. This half- Divine power is the soul of Jesus, and it becomes the anxiety and suffering of Jesus …
This means Jesus is not fully man, with a natural human soul. Mary gives birth to this half-God, who is neither God nor man. This was the solution of Arius, a solution which is very well in line with the hero cult of the ancient world; the world is full of half-gods, of deteriorized gods, of gods who even in Heaven (Olympus) are not fully gods but derived forms of God, and one of them is Jesus – but it is not God Himself.
Now this Christology has been rejected in the first and most important of all Christian councils, that of Nicaea, in June, 325. The text of the decision of Nicaea: “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible.” – let me stop here for a moment, because all these words are very important. “Invisible” means the Platonic “ideas.” God is the creator not only of the things on earth, but also the creator of the “essences,” as they appear in Plato’s philosophy. “And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, the only begotten of the essence of the Father, God of God, and Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not made, being of one substance (homoousios) with the Father, by Whom all things were made in Heaven and on earth, who for us men and our salvation came down and was incarnate and was made man. He suffered and the third day he rose again, ascended into Heaven. From thence He comes to judge the quickc and the dead.. . and in the Holy Ghost.” Then it goes on to say: “And those who say there was a time when He was not, or He was not before He was made, and He was made out of nothing, and out of another substance or thing, or the Son of God is created or changeable, or alterable: they are condemned by the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.”
Now this is the first and fundamental Christian confession. I will give you immediately its significance, but before this a few words of comment: The central phrase is “of one substance with the Father” (homoousios to patri). Then the important thing is that nothing else is said about the Holy Ghost. This was the reason for further struggles and decisions Then the condemnations are interesting: The first and all-embracing one: “Those who say there was a time when He was not … are condemned by the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.” Now let me give you, point by point, the significance of this decision for world history and the history of the Church: 1) The main possible Christian heresy was overcome. Christ is not one of the many half-Gods; He is not a hero. He is God Himself appearing in Divine essence within a historical person. – This was the definite negation of paganism. In Arius, paganism again raised its head after it was defeated in the anti-Gnostic struggle, and it raised its head very strongly – Christ, one of the many powers of being – this would have made Christianity one of the many possible religions 2) This fundamental statement was expressed in terms which were more pleasing to Rome and the West than to the East. The East did not like the homoousios; it wanted a ladder of hierarchies. The West, Rome, and her allies in the East, insisted on the homoousios. For this reason the decision of Nicaea was immediately attacked and somehow transformed into something else by the East, in 60 years of struggle and theological work. Only in 381 did this struggle come to an end, and then in terms which pleased the East more than the original formula did, and in new theological interpretations.
