I’m
here this morning to tell you that this question is still vitally important
for the future of Western civilization.In
the fourth century, theologians were settling the Christian understanding
of what Jesus was.How they settled
that question created great misery in Jesus’ name around the world.Our
Unitarian and Universalist understanding of Jesus was inherited from the
losing side in the controversy.That
understanding must be rediscovered and embraced by today’s Christians if
we have any hope of living in a religiously pluralistic society.
Jesus
was an enigma from the moment he was reported to have returned from the
grave promising bodily resurrection and eternal life to his followers.Neither
Jews, Greeks, nor Romans had a way to understand this miraculous event.His
first Jewish followers believed he was the Messiah who was heralding salvation
for the Jewish people.One had to
become a Jew to become a Christian.The
conversion of a Greek acculturated Jew named Saul of Tarsus changed that.Renamed
Paul, he opened the Christian door to non-Jews who didn’t want to be circumcised
and eat kosher foods.
For
the Christian Jews, what separated Jesus from the other prophets was that
he merited worship.But they were
not about to give up their monotheism.From
the beginning monotheism was central to Christianity.Christians
followed in the long Jewish tradition of refusing to sacrifice to the Pagan
gods.That meant that Jesus had to
be greater than the Pagan gods.Even
though he was born of a human mother, he was far greater than the children
of Zeus like Helen or Hercules.If
he wasn’t in some fashion also God then worshipping him would be blasphemous.But
if Jesus was God, how could he also be human?Even
more distressing, how could an omnipotent God die on a cross like a common
criminal, a death of ultimate humiliation?
The
Greeks and Romans had never liked the Jewish refusal to sacrifice to their
gods and didn’t find this new Jewish sect any more likable for their repudiation
of their gods.This unwillingness
became a matter of national security when the German tribes and the Persians
pushed the Roman Empire back.Sacrificing
to the Gods was a civic duty that appeased them and created unity.To
refuse to do so was not just a personal choice, it was treason against
the Empire.
This
lack of civic obligation motivated periodic persecution of Christians for
the first three hundred years of their history.That
started to end only after Emperor Constantine saw a flaming cross in the
sky along with the words, Touto nika, by this conquer, as he marched
his army toward Rome to seize it.A
dream directed him to put the symbol of the cross on his Army’s shields.Rome’s
walls had never been breached but his opponent, Maxentius, came out to
meet him on the battlefield and was routed.Maxentius
was last seen riding into the Tiber in a full suit of armor.
Constantine
became a Christian and began making it the religion of Rome with the Edict
of Milan in 313 ending persecution of Christians.After
he united the Eastern half of the empire with the West in 324, he didn’t
outlaw Paganism, but put his favor and money toward the Christian church.He
hoped to draw his subjects into the new civic religion that could unite
his people.The only disturbance
in his imperial plan was the Arian Controversy roiling in Alexandria.
Arius,
a tall, thin man about sixty at the time, was born in Libya and had been
serving as a priest in the Baucalis district for about 10 years.He
was a popular priest partly because of his habit of converting his sermons
to poetry and singing them.His
talent in creating popular ballads full of vivid imagery and enrapturing
melodies meant that his thinking propagated quickly to other port cities
around the eastern Mediterranean.Admired
for his bravery during the most recent persecutions and praised for his
personal purity, he was a favorite of sailors, dockworkers and young women.
Arius
preached a theology that had been taught in Alexandria for at least a century.Origen,
an early Christian theologian and prolific writer, believed Jesus was eternal
like God, and united with God, but was separate from and less than God--what
became known as the subordinationalist view.
Arius
had taken Origen’s ideas further.He
questioned the divinity of Jesus suggesting that he was not eternal in
the same way God was.Arius preached
that “Before Christ, God was not yet a Father.”Arius
emphasized that he had earned his “adoption as Son and his promotion to
divine status through moral growth and obedience to God.”Jesus
was a savior by example.The good
news Jesus brought was we, too, can follow him and attain eternal life
by growing in wisdom and virtue.We
are also potentially sons and daughters of God.Jesus
was the highest and most perfected example but that didn’t limit us.We,
too, could follow him and trust him to lead us to glory.
Arius’
bishop Alexander didn’t agree.A
church council was called to repudiate Arius, which it did, but in the
process, Arius found he had many allies.And
thus the controversy gained energy.
Enter
Athanasius, a small red haired man, who headed the bishop’s staff.Popular
legend held the bishop met him on a public beach; a boy of a poor family
with little education and no prospects, pretending to be a great preacher
to the waves and sea gulls.Impressed
with the boy’s ability, boldness and charm, he brought him into his household
and raised him to fulfill his ambition of being a bishop.
The
core of the controversy centered on the humanity of Jesus.Athanasius
believed Arius was correct in rejecting the Sabellian view of God and Jesus
being the same undivided reality.Arius’
mistake, Athanasius claimed, was to go to the other extreme and say Jesus
was just a human.
[Jesus]
had to be both fully human and fully divine, argued Athanasius.Could
the death of a mere human being redeem our sins, grant us immortality,
and, eventually, resurrect our physical bodies?Of
course not!But could Omnipotent
God, the Beginning and the End, suffer for our sake without becoming human?
The answer was equally plain.Therefore,
whether or not it seemed “reasonable” to people schooled in Greek philosophy,
Jesus Christ was both true man and true God. (pages 63-4)
Constantine’s
religious advisor Hosius, having heard both arguments would have found
Athanasius more convincing.Hosius’
concern was greater than what was more reasonable.Knowing
intimately people’s propensity for sin, struggling to survive in a hostile
environment, who could believe Jesus mortal?If
Arius’ views held, the church’s role in people’s lives would be to advise,
support and permit diverse and potentially divisive thought.Athanasius’
position could create more theological and political unity and uniformity
by establishing one correct view throughout the empire.So
the first church council of the Roman Catholic Church in Nicaea was called
with the implicit agenda to suppress Arianism.
Constantine’s
involvement aggravated the debate.No
longer was the disagreement between Arius and Athanasius a theological
dispute.With Constantine becoming
involved, the implications for political unity were factored in.What
mattered to Constantine is what is good for the Empire rather that what
is good for the future of the integrity of the church and inter-religious
harmony.
The
Council brought together some two hundred and fifty bishops from across
the empire to Constantine’s summer palace in May of 325.They
met together for the next two months.The
bishops marveled at their change in status.No
longer persecuted, now they had their travel and living expenses paid by
the emperor!The emperor’s patronage
and speeches had a heavy influence on them though Constantine took a demure
position on theological matters.Constantine’s
goal for the council was to allow enough time for the bishops to settle
their disagreements, reject Arianism, and leave united.Unexpectedly,
it had the opposite effect of splitting the Church along Arian/anti-arian
lines for the next fifty years.
Nicaea
earned its place in history because the Nicene Creed was first authored
there.In modified form, it is still
repeated by hundreds of millions of people each week.The
first version of the creed was drafted in a way that both Arian and anti-Arians
could accept to validate their positions.This
wouldn’t settle the controversy.Constantine
suggested the use of the word homoousios to describe the relationship
of the Son to the Father.Ousios
means substance or essence.Homo
means same.Thus the Son would be
of the same substance or essence as the father.This
offended those wishing a rational understanding of Jesus and could thus
flush them out and ex-communicate them when they would not sign the creed.
While
some Arians did reject the word, because it was a philosophical term, its
many shades of meaning gave some room to interpret ousios as, reality,
being or even type.Porphyry had
written that the souls of humans and animals were homoousios.An
extreme Arian might argue that we, too, are homoousios with God
as we are made in God’s image.The
Arians preferred the term homoiousios, which means similar but not
the same.Much blood was let for
the difference of one Greek letter!
By
the time the council had finished its work, the creed was loaded with a
whole paragraph rejecting core Arian ideas.Arius
was excommunicated along with the bishops who didn’t sign the creed.
That
should have ended the controversy but it didn’t.Constantine,
a few years later, welcomed Arius back into the priesthood and encouraged
Athanasius to give him back his pulpit, much to his chagrin.More
councils were called.Some rewrote
the creed to be Arian and then the next rewrote it to exclude Arianism.At
one point Christians were about evenly divided between Arianism and non-Arianism,
which exacerbated the conflict.Athanasius
was banished and welcomed back five times during his life.What
ended the Arian controversy was the fall of the East as the Roman Empire
began collapsing with the death of the last Arian emperor Valens.
What
defeated Arianism more than anything was a general loss of faith in human
possibility.The advancing Huns and
Visigoths and the rise of Islam put the Roman Empire on the defensive.
The
heart of Arianism was the idea that radical improvements in human behavior
need not await the apocalypse or be limited in this world to a cadre of
religious specialists. With its popular base among city artisans and workers,
sailors and merchants, monks, sodalities of virgins, and young people,
it represented a radical impulse in Christianity: the drive to infuse worldly
existence with the spirit of Christ, and so renew human society. [Valens'
defeat] shocked the optimists and undermined their mass appeal by revealing
that the "City of Man," as St. Augustine was soon to write, could not be
secured. Only the "City of God"-the organized Church--could offer frail
humanity compensation for the loss of its worldly hopes. (p218)
In
the dawn of the 21st Century, and a feared decline of the American
empire, we may be moving into a more pessimistic time.The
optimism about human nature born of the late nineteenth century that energized
our religious movement has worn down during the twentieth century through
two world wars and one cold one.The
optimism of new possibility with the end of communism is fading with the
rise of worldwide fundamentalism.Fundamentalism
and extremism thrive in a world of limited possibilities that looks beyond
this lifetime for redemption.
What
was the result of the turn away from Arianism?A
violent campaign to impose the new order on those outside the Nicene orthodoxy.When
church and state unite, the state becomes the enforcer of orthodox theology
in the cause of social unity.The
history of the Roman Catholic Church is replete with religious wars, crusades
and inquisitions.
But
the Arian tradition of reason in religion has not been lost.We
are legitimate successors to the Arian tradition that encourages growth
in wisdom and virtue.Believing
in the human possibility for inner transformation in this world
is vital to any hope that our future will not be decimated by weapons of
mass destruction.Arian Christianity
that sees Jesus as promoted not eternal makes room for the validity of
other great religious leaders to also be Sons and Daughters of God.This
non-exclusive, non-imperial Christianity can make peace with other religions
rather than be driven to convert or annihilate them.
The
Catholic Church made a wrong turn when it became absorbed into the Roman
Empire and anathematized Arianism.It
started turning back toward a healthier direction with the ecumenical movement
of Vatican II.Meanwhile, Unitarians
have kept the Arian tradition alive.Seeing
Jesus as a beacon of moral progress can help our world move away from holy
war.We pass this tradition on by
demonstrating the value of growing in wisdom and virtuous action - through
our example.
Whether
co-eternal or created,
Whether true man and true God, or man promoted to God,
Jesus’ message for our lives is what matters the most.
Expand
your love beyond yourself,
beyond your family, your neighbor,
your tribe, your nation,
toward its ultimate source.
Care
for those you believe to be less than you.
Feed them.Clothe
them.Shelter them.
Live
unattached to your wealth and possessions.
Share them.Give
them away.
Work
to create a world of justice, equity and peace on earth.
Let
us grow in wisdom and virtue by following Jesus’ great example.
The
historical data, and direct quotes for this sermon came from the book:
When Jesus Became God : The epic fight over Christ's divinity in the
last days of Rome by Richard E. Rubenstein, Copyright @ 1999 by HARCOURT
BRACE & COMPANY New York San Diego London ISBN 0-15-100368-8