Posted on by Jack Kilcrease

Post-Nicaea Rejection of Onto-Theology: Part I

The Council of Nicaea repudiated the ontotheological trajectory of the Ante-Nicene tradition. There are a number of theories about the origins and aims of the Arian heresy.1 But perhaps the most cogent way of reading it is simply as the Subordinationist heresy taken to its logical conclusion. Origen, and others within the Ante-Nicene tradition, thought more in terms of the Hellenistic concept of being and degrees of being. As a result, Greek philosophy supplanted the biblical paradigm of creator/creature and then removed God from the system of being. The Greek paradigm also deemphasized the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Without the strict division of creator/creature, Hellenized Ante-Nicene theologians fit the Second Person of the Trinity into a continuum of degrees of being, with the Father at the top and nothingness at the bottom.  

Arianism and Its Rejection

Based on indirect evidence regarding the nature of the Arian heresy, it can be said that much to his credit Arius recognized the importance of the biblical distinction between creator/creature more seriously than his Origenist predecessors in the Church of Alexandria.2  Nevertheless, like Origen, Arius saw the second person of the Trinity as part of the hierarchy of being.  If God as creator is outside the hierarchy of being (in that he is ingenerate), then it logically followed that as generated Christ must be part of the hierarchy of being.  Consequently, Arius reasoned that Christ must be on the creaturely side of the creator/creature division.3  

Moreover, it should be noted that Arius certainly did acknowledge that it is proper to call Jesus the divine Son.4  Nevertheless, from this he drew the conclusion that since Scripture called Jesus divine, it must be the case that creatures can become divine in a metaphorical sense by mirroring God in their actions.5  Jesus saved for Arius by acting in obedience to the Father, thereby showing that when creatures were obedient and corresponded to the will of the supreme being, they too could be elevated to divine status.6  

Arius’s legalistic soteriology was self-justificatory both coram Deo and coram mundo.  Coram Deo, it meant that salvation consisted of a kind of crass works-righteousness.  As George Williams has forcefully argued, coram mundo, the fact that reality was an ontic hierarchy, in which creatures could gain a divine status allowed “Christian” Roman Emperors to maintain something of the old imperial cult, and therefore exercise an unaccountable quasi-divine power. 

By contrast, if Nicene orthodoxy was true and King Jesus was not a creature among creatures, or a being among beings, then his kingdom would relativize all earthly kingdoms and command a higher loyalty.7  This might very well explain why Constantine’s successors tended to be more friendly to the late Semi-Arian and Neo-Arian parties in the post-Nicene Church.8

The Council of Nicaea and later Athanasius completely repudiated the notion of God is the highest instance of being in a continuum of being.  For the Creed of Nicaea, the Son is eternally begotten and of the same substance as the Father.  He is co-equal and co-eternal.9  The diversity and distinctions within the being of the one God is therefore not part of a hierarchy or continuum of a larger system of being, but outside the system of being as its creator.10 

The Council of Nicaea and Emperor Constantine crush the heretic Arius underfoot

Icon from the Mégalo Metéoron Monastery in Greece

The Response of St. Athanasius, the Doctor of Orthodoxy

In his defense of the Council, Athanasius was even more explicit.  Although he accepted Origen’s doctrine of the eternal begottenness of the Son, Athanasius rejected his notion of the eternity of creation.  Therefore, implicitly, Athanasius repudiated the notion that the begetting of the Son had anything to do with God’s act of creation, and hence the establishment of a system of being that God must fit into.11  

Beyond Athanasius’s repudiation of onto-theology with regard to the doctrine of creation, in the area of soteriology he also rejected the legalism of Arius’s soteriology.  Athanasius affirmed that only a God could save fallen humans.12  This logically made both creation and redemption the result of grace alone.  Jesus must be vere Deus, because only a God from outside the system of being did not have to strive with the demonic forces of the old creation as a being among beings, but rather defeated them and atoned for sin.13 

Instead of losing himself by his self-communication through tragic degeneracy, the divine Logos in the person of Jesus could fully give a share in his divine life to humans without losing himself (theosis).14  From the Nicene settlement, John Milbank’s maxim reveals itself to be true: “Only theology overcomes metaphysics.”15

In the late patristic and medieval period, Western and Eastern theologians agreed with each other regarding the basic content of the Nicene Creed (one point of exception being the question of the filoque).16  Both also implicitly agreed with Nicaea’s repudiation of the onto-theology of many of the Ante-Nicene Fathers.  For neither the Greek nor the Latin theologians was God a being among beings, nor simply the highest or first among a series of beings.  Nevertheless, Eastern and Western theologians differed with each other regarding what was the most appropriate way to affirm that the biblical God as the creator is not part of the system of being.  

  1. See Robert Gregg and Dennis Groh, Early Arianism: A View of Salvation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981); Maurice Wiles, Archetypal Heresy: Arianism through the Centuries (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Rowan Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2002). ↩︎
  2. See comment in: J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (New York: Continuum, 2006), 227. ↩︎
  3. Thomas G. Weinandy and Daniel A. Keating, Athanasius and His Legacy: Trinitarian-Incarnational Soteriology and Its Reception (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), 10. ↩︎
  4. G.C. Stead, “The Thalia of Arius and the Testimony of Athanasius,” Journal of Theological Studies 29, no. 1 (1978): 20–52. ↩︎
  5. Gregg and Groh, Early Arianism, 66. ↩︎
  6. Gregg and Groh, Early Arianism, 45. ↩︎
  7. George Williams, “Christology and Church-State Relations in the Fourth Century,” Church History 20, no. 3 (1951): 13-14. ↩︎
  8. Tim Dowley, Introduction to the History of Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2018), 116. ↩︎
  9. Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998), 1:24-28. ↩︎
  10. Athanasius, To the Bishops of Egypt, 15; NPNFb, 4:230-231. ↩︎
  11. Jonathan Hill, The History of Christian Thought (Oxford: Lion, 2003), 63. ↩︎
  12. McGrath, Historical Theology: An Introduction to the History of Christian Thought, 47. ↩︎
  13. Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word, 19-27; NPNFb, 4:46-51. ↩︎
  14. Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word, 20.4-6; NPNFb, 4:47. ↩︎
  15. John Milbank, The Word Made Strange: Theology, Language, Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 44. ↩︎
  16. Alister McGrath, Historical Theology: An Introduction to the History of Christian Thought (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2022), 287. ↩︎

From the draft manuscript for Lutheran Dogmatics: The Evangelical-Catholic Faith for an Age of Contested Truth (Lexham Press).

Cover image from “St. Athanasius, Doctor of the Church,” Catholic News Agency, accessed July 10, 2024, https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/saint/st-athanasius-doctor-of-the-church-472; other image from Luke J. Wilson, “Debunking the Myth: The Council of Nicaea and the Formation of the Biblical Canon,” Medium, November 16, 2023, accessed July 10, 2024, https://medium.com/thesacredfaith/debunking-the-myth-the-council-of-nicaea-and-the-formation-of-the-biblical-canon-2f92d5c0bfc4.