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BIBL 260 Church History I Study Guide for Exam 3 Study Guide for Exam 3 BIBL 260 Church History I Olson Chapter 9: Alexandrians Argue about the Son of God. 1. What did Eusebius declare about the victory of Constantine at the Milvian Bridge? Eusebius, who saw Constantine as a great hero, compared Maxentius to Pharaoh and Constantine to Moses and declared the victory an act of God. 2. What did the Edict of Milan do? Edict of Milan, which officially declared imperial toleration of Christianity (313). From then on he promulgated a series of edicts that restored property to Christians and gradually began to favor Christians and Christianity over other religions. He never did make Christianity the official religion of the empire, however, and he remained Pontifex Maximus, or high priest, of the official pagan religion of the empire until his baptism just before his death in 337. 3. Olson names four important events that occurred during the reign of Emperor Constantine. Describe these events. a. First, as already noted official persecution lifted and being Christian— at least in name— became popular and prudent. Hordes of unconverted pagans flooded into Christian churches merely to gain status in the eyes of the imperial court and the bureaucracy under Constantine. b. Second, Constantine left Rome and built a “new Rome” in the East as the new imperial capital of the empire. He chose the city of Byzantium (today’s Istanbul in Turkey) and renamed it after himself: Constantinople. Throughout his life one of his main projects was to build the most beautiful city the world had ever seen and place at its center his own great palace and cathedral. c. Third, the most divisive schism the Christian church had ever experienced broke out within it during Constantine’s reign. It began in Alexandria and spread to the rest of the empire with special impact in the Greek-speaking Eastern half. It became known as the Arian controversy, and it lasted in stages throughout most of the century. Constantine and his heirs became embroiled in the controversy, taking various sides at different times. d. Fourth, the church held its first ecumenical (universal) council to settle doctrinal and ecclesiastical conflicts: the Council of Nicaea in 325. Constantine called it and presided over it. The formal and official orthodox doctrine of the Trinity was hammered out at the council and expressed in a creed known generally as the Nicene Creed but officially as the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. (Its final version was written at the Council of Constantinople in 381.) It eventually became the universal statement of faith of Christendom and remains so for most branches of Christianity. Revised 07/11/2015 All Rights Reserved 1
BIBL 260 Church History I Study Guide for Exam 3 4. What did Lucian of Antioch emphasize about Jesus? How did this affect his view of the Incarnation? he tended to emphasize the humanity of Jesus Christ rather than his deity and tried to find a way to explain the incarnation of God in Christ without making Jesus himself God or falling back into Paul of Samosata’s adoptionist heresy. that God the Father was actually crucified and died on the cross because Jesus Christ (according to the modalist way of thinking) actually was the Father incarnate! 5. Why did Lucian hate and fear the heresy of Sabellianism? to the idea implicit in Sabellianism that God the Father was actually crucified and died on the cross because Jesus Christ (according to the modalist way of thinking) actually was the Father incarnate! 6. What two things did Origen affirm about the Logos? What was the purpose of his second assertion? Origen strongly affirmed an equality of the Logos with God the Father. Without any doubt Origen believed that the Logos is God’s eternal emanation, shooting forth like a ray of the sun from God and sharing eternally in his glorious nature. On the other hand, Origen also affirmed a subordination of the Logos to the Father in order to account for his mediatorship between the immutable divine nature of God and the corrupt world of nature and history. The Logos, according to Origen, is somehow less than the Father, although he never explained exactly what that means. 7. What did Greek philosophy assume about divinity, and how did this affect the early fathers’ view of God? assumed that divinity is ontologically perfect in such a way that any change at all is impossible for it and improper to attribute to it. Thus God, being divine and therefore absolutely perfect, cannot experience change because to change is always to change either for the better or for the worse, and in either case God would not be God if he could change. 8. Explain the meaning of apatheia and the implications of the incarnation for this Greek idea. 143 Absolute static perfection— including apatheia, or impassibility (passionlessness)— is the nature of God according to Greek thought, and nearly all Christian theologians came to agree with this. 9. What did Arius begin to teach about the Logos? Revised 07/11/2015 All Rights Reserved 2
BIBL 260 Church History I Study Guide for Exam 3 Arius and his followers exploited the argument that if Jesus Christ is the incarnation of the Logos and if the Logos is divine in the same sense that God the Father is divine, then God’s nature would be changed by the human life of Jesus in time and God would have suffered in him. But that is impossible. Therefore the Logos who became incarnate in Jesus Christ must not be fully divine but rather must be a great and exalted creature. 10. Explain the Arian slogan “there was [a time] when the Son was not.” Referring to the “generation,” or “begetting,” of the Son by the Father, he wrote that the Son is equal with God the Father “because this generation is as eternal and everlasting as the brilliancy which is produced from the sun. For it is not by receiving the breath of life that He is made a Son, by any outward act, but by His own nature.” And Origen declared of the Logos that “there was not [a time] when He (the Son) was not.” 11. What did Bishop Alexander of Alexandria believe was the problem with Arianism (as well as with the thought of Paul of Samosata)? Alexander accused Arius of teaching that the Logos could have fallen like Satan. He accused Arius also of repeating the adoptionist heresy of Paul of Samosata in a slightly more sophisticated form. The reason Paul’s Christology had been condemned by a synod in 268 was that it had denied the deity of Jesus Christ and rejected the Trinity. Arius’s Christology did the same even if it affirmed a preexistence of the Logos as a great heavenly being— something the bishop of Samosata did not affirm. According to Alexander the difference was slight. In either case God himself has not united with humanity and therefore we are not saved (divinized) by the union. Our very salvation is at stake, Alexander argued. 12. Why, according to Arius, would the Incarnation be impossible if the Logos was divine? Arius and his followers exploited the argument that if Jesus Christ is the incarnation of the Logos and if the Logos is divine in the same sense that God the Father is divine, then God’s nature would be changed by the human life of Jesus in time and God would have suffered in him. But that is impossible. Therefore, the Logos who became incarnate in Jesus Christ must not be fully divine but rather must be a great and exalted creature. 13. What view of salvation did Arius assume? Arius was assuming a view of salvation that emphasized freely conforming to God’s moral standards. 14. How is salvation effected in the orthodox thought of that day? How was the Arian scheme of salvation different? Revised 07/11/2015 All Rights Reserved 3
BIBL 260 Church History I Study Guide for Exam 3 Thus an important difference between the two Alexandrians was that “salvation, for orthodoxy, is effected by the Son’s essential identity with the Father— that which links God and Christ to creation is the divine nature’s assumption of flesh. Salvation for Arianism is effected by the Son’s identity with the creatures— that which links Christ and creatures to God is conformity of will.” 15. What did Arius affirm about the divinity of the Father? How is this different from what he affirmed about the Son (or Logos)? Arians— affirmed a kind of Trinity made up of three “divine” beings (Father, Son and Holy Spirit), only one of whom is truly God. He continued in his profession of faith to affirm unequivocally that only the Father is “without beginning” and that the Son, though a great creature who shares many of God’s attributes, did not exist before he was begotten by the Father. 16. Name the two key elements of Arius’ thought about the Father and the Logos. First, God is by nature removed from creatureliness, and if the Logos became human in Jesus Christ, he must be a creature. Second, salvation is a process of being joined with God by grace and free will, and if Jesus communicates salvation to us, it must be something he accomplished by grace and free will in a manner that we can emulate; and if he was God, then salvation would not be something he could accomplish. 17. Alexander’s summary of Arian thought reads like a modern day group. What modern day group’s main distinctive doctrine reads like Arianism? the main distinctive doctrine of the modern-day Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, which is more popularly known as the Jehovah’s Witnesses (pg 147) 18. Why did Alexander charge that Arius damaged the “immutability” of God? If the Son of God is truly God, then God cannot be immutable as all believe him to be because the Son changed through entering into history and suffering in the flesh of Jesus Christ. Alexander turned the tables on Arius and charged that he in effect denied the immutability of the Father by saying that he was not always Father but only became so by creating a son. 19. Why did Alexander react so vehemently to Arius’ teaching? The simple answer is that they perceived it as threatening salvation itself. (149) 20. What makes Christianity and the gospel unique among monotheistic religions? The status of Jesus Christ in relation to God had always been assumed by Christian leaders and thinkers. Jesus Christ is in some sense God, and that is what makes Christianity and its Revised 07/11/2015 All Rights Reserved 4
BIBL 260 Church History I Study Guide for Exam 3 gospel unique compared to other monotheistic religions such as Judaism and monotheistic philosophies such as Platonism and Stoicism. 21. How was Arianism more subtle than other forms of “Adoptionism”? They would readily condemn adoptionism, but the subtle subordinationism of the Son of God in Arius’s teaching was more difficult to portray in black-and-white terms. The twenty-eight Arian bishops believed they had every chance of convincing the majority and perhaps even the emperor of the soundness of their position. 22. Around what scandal did the apostolic faith of early Christianity revolve? How does this play out in salvation? apostolic faith of early Christianity revolved around the scandal of the deity of Christ. The reason Christians held on to it tenaciously in the face of pagan ridicule and Roman persecution as well as all kinds of attempts to water it down was that it was the linchpin of the gospel. If it were removed in any way, then the hope for eternal participation in God’s own life and for forgiveness and restoration to the image of God would fall apart. The gospel itself would be wrecked. Olson Chapter 10: the Church Responds at the Council of Nicaea. 1. What is this meeting in Nicaea acknowledged as, and by whom? Orthodox and Catholic— came to acknowledge this meeting in Nicaea in 325 as the first ecumenical council of the church. 2. What did the Emperor Constantine make clear in his opening remarks? Constantine made abundantly clear in his opening remarks that he intended to serve as the “bishop of the bishops” and guide and direct the deliberations to a satisfactory conclusion. 3. What did Nicaea declare about the bishops of Rome and Alexandria? Also the bishop of Alexandria was declared to be a “patriarch” over the bishops of surrounding regions of North Africa, and the bishop of Rome was declared the rightful honorary head of the bishops of the West. 4. What was the main reason for holding the Council of Nicaea? To settled the Arian controversy, and that was what most of the bishops wanted to hear about first and foremost. 5. What did Modalism do in regard to the Trinity? Explain what this implied. Revised 07/11/2015 All Rights Reserved 5
BIBL 260 Church History I Study Guide for Exam 3 It reduced Father, Son and Holy Spirit to three modes or aspects of God and implied patripassianism— the idea that the Father suffered on the cross. 6. What did the Arian bishop, Eusebius of Nicomedia, emphasize about the Son of God? Emphasizing that he is a creature and not equal with the Father in any sense. 7. What was the only way to make clear that Arian subordinationism was heretical? to use extrabiblical terminology that clearly spelled out the unity of Father and Son as equal within the Godhead. 8. Explain the extrabiblical term homoousios. the compound word homoousios— made up of the Greek words for “one” and “substance”— was accepted by the majority of bishops to describe the relationship of the Son of God to the Father. They are “one substance,” or “one being.” The language is reminiscent of Tertullian’s earlier Latin phrase una substantia. 9. What was the Nicene Creed patterned after, and what article was missing (included in later versions)? did not include the third article on the Holy Spirit and the church. That would be added later by the second ecumenical council at Constantinople in 381. The Nicene Creed (known also simply as “Nicaea”) was patterned after the Apostles’ Creed, adding wording to make clear that Arianism is wrong: 10. Why was the distinction “but not made” important in the Nicene Creed? The phrase “begotten not made” is an excellent example of the extrabiblical wording that Alexander insisted was necessary to rule out Arianism. Begotten is a biblical word for the Son of God. The Gospel of John uses it frequently. But not made is never to be found attributed to the Son of God in Scripture. The distinction, however, is all-important. If the Son of God is “made” or “created,” then he is not truly God. Scripture affirms that he is divine and salvation requires that he be divine. 11. What did this Creed do for the Great Church, and to what did it leave the door open? All in all, the creed nailed down orthodoxy for the Great Church against Arianism while leaving the door open to Sabellianism. 12. Attached to the Creed was an “anathema.” What did this anathema do for the first time? Revised 07/11/2015 All Rights Reserved 6
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