Of One Substance with the Father

I and my Father are one. JOHN 10:30

On the Incarnation never mentions Arius. The controversy that would fill the rest of Athanasius’s life leaves no mark on its pages. But everything in the book points towards it. A treatise that says only the Maker can remake, only the Image can restore the image, only the Life can conquer death, has already decided what it thinks about the Son of God. When Arius began to teach that the Son was a creature, Athanasius did not need to invent a new position. He only needed to defend what he had always believed.

What Arius taught

Arius was a presbyter in Alexandria, admired for his learning and his austere life. He taught that God the Father alone is without beginning. The Son, he said, was brought into being by the Father before all ages, as the first and greatest of creatures, and through Him all other things were made. He was divine in a secondary sense, exalted above every other creature, but He was not God as the Father is God. His followers put it in a phrase that became a slogan: there was a time when He was not.

The Life of Antony records the old hermit’s response to this teaching when he came down to Alexandria to denounce it. He taught the people, Athanasius writes, “that the Son of God was not a created being, neither had He come into being from non-existence, but that He was the Eternal Word and Wisdom of the Essence of the Father.” And therefore, he said, it was impious to say “there was a time when He was not”.

Arius’s view had real attractions. It seemed to protect the oneness of God. It fitted the philosophy of the day, which pictured a supreme God far above the world, reaching down through a chain of lesser beings. And it could quote Scripture. Its supporters pointed to texts where the Son is called the firstborn, or where He says that the Father is greater than He, or to the words of Wisdom in Proverbs, which in the Greek version they read spoke of Wisdom being created at the beginning of God’s ways.

Nicaea

In 325 the bishops gathered at Nicaea and answered Arius with a creed. The Son, they said, is begotten of the Father, only-begotten, that is, from the substance of the Father; God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father. The key word was homoousios, of the same substance or being. It was not a word found in Scripture, and many bishops were uneasy with it for that reason. But the council chose it because every scriptural phrase they tried, the Arians could accept and then quietly reinterpret. Homoousios could not be slipped around. It said plainly that whatever the Father is, as God, the Son is also.

Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God. PHILIPPIANS 2:6

For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. COLOSSIANS 2:9

For the next fifty years that word was fought over. Emperors pressed for vaguer formulas. Councils met and produced creeds that said the Son was like the Father, or like Him in all things, or simply like Him — anything but of one substance. Many bishops signed, some from conviction, some from weariness, some from fear. Athanasius would not.

Why it mattered

In his great Orations against the Arians, written years after Nicaea, Athanasius argued the case at length from Scripture. But his deepest reasons are already visible in On the Incarnation, and they can be put simply.

First, salvation. Only God can save. If the Son is a creature, then we have been rescued by a creature, and our union with Him is union with a creature, not with God. The whole gift of sharing God’s life falls to the ground.

For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. 1 TIMOTHY 2:5

Second, worship. Christians had always worshipped Christ. They prayed to Him, sang hymns to Him, were baptised into His name alongside the Father’s. If He is a creature, then all this is idolatry — the very sin of worshipping the creature rather than the Creator that Paul condemns in Romans. The Life of Antony makes the point sharply: the Arians, it says, “number the Creator, the Lord of all, by whom all things came into being, with those things which were originated.”

Third, revelation. Jesus said that he who had seen Him had seen the Father. That is only true if the Son is not a lesser copy but the very Word of the Father, His own and not another.

He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. JOHN 14:9

No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. JOHN 1:18

How he read the hard texts

Athanasius did not ignore the texts the Arians cited. He answered them with a principle that remains one of the most useful keys to reading the Gospels. Scripture speaks of Christ in two ways, he said: as the eternal Word, and as the Word made flesh. When He hungers, weeps, grows in wisdom or says the Father is greater, He speaks as man, in the nature He took for our sake. When He says that He and the Father are one, He speaks as God. We have already seen the principle in On the Incarnation, where Athanasius says that things are said of Him as man “to shew Him to have a body in truth, and not in seeming.” Hold the two together, and the difficult texts fall into place.

A caution

It must be said honestly that Athanasius fought this battle with a hard tongue. He called his opponents madmen and enemies of Christ, and the Life of Antony speaks of Arian madmen whose words were worse than serpents’ poison. Some of them were cruel men who persecuted his people; others were sincere believers, confused or cautious, who deserved patience. He did not always distinguish. We can hold his doctrine with gratitude and still wish that he had defended it with more gentleness.

In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth. 2 TIMOTHY 2:25

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Read the Nicene Creed slowly and underline every phrase about the Son. Ask what each one guards against.

2. When you pray to Christ or sing to Him, pause to remember that you are worshipping God Himself, not a creature.

3. Take one hard text about Christ’s humanity, such as Mark 13:32, and practise Athanasius’s principle: is this said of Him as God or as man?

4. Consider how you speak about those who disagree with you on important matters. Can you hold firm without contempt?

5. If you have friends who admire Jesus but deny He is God, pray for them by name, and look for a gentle way to ask them who they think He is.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus Christ, You are God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, of one substance with the Father.

I worship You, and I am not ashamed to worship You, for You are not a creature but my Creator and my Saviour.

Give me the courage of Your servant Athanasius to hold the truth when it is costly, and a gentler tongue than he sometimes had.

Keep Your church faithful to the confession of Your glory until You come. Amen.