Arianism, Islam, And The Power of Religious Ideas

An excerpt from, “Is Arius the Father of Islam?” By Matthew Aaron Bennett, The Center For Baptist Renewal, January 10, 2022:

One reason that readers might initially be confused by John of Damascus’s description of Islam as heresy is that until recently, scholars of Islam have largely assumed the historical reliability of the traditional account of Islam. These Islamic traditions tell a story of a prophetic figure named Muhammad who was born into an Arabian city that served as a booming center of trade and a point of pilgrimage for polytheistic pagans. His early years were largely isolated from Christian and Jewish interaction, which makes the apparent references to biblical accounts that feature in the Qur’an all the more miraculous.

Yet, the traditional story of the rise of Islam fails to pass the test of historical reliability due to its late emergence, evident bias, and lack of attestation within extra-Islamic records of the period. Noting the inadmissibility of the purported history of the Qur’an’s composition and context, scholars have turned attention to study of the Qur’an on its own terms. In so doing, several intriguing issues arise that indicate a greater degree of Christian influence on the Qur’an than one might assume from reading the traditions.

Contemporary scholarship is increasingly convincing in its argument that the Qur’an and its author appear to be directly engaged with biblical texts, Christian communities, and Christological arguments. The religious milieu in which the Qur’an was being shaped would have included Nestorians, Jacobites, and Arians. If the Qur’an was influenced by communities espousing heretical Christologies, it is not surprising to find the distorted picture of Jesus at the center of a religion lacking a Christ who can redeem. 

It is likely, then, that the Christological imprecision of these communities was not only heretical; it was also in part responsible for shaping the false religion of Islam. Today’s missionaries must see the gravity of their temptations to take short-cuts. Short-sighted compromises in Christologies ignore the safe paths of orthodoxy as they tap-dance through the landmines of innovation.

An excerpt from, “From Christ to Constantine. The Rise and Growth of the Early Church. (c. A.D. 30 to 337)” By James Mackinnon, Longmans, Green and Co, 1936, Part VII: The Arian Controversy And The Council of Nicaea:

Arianism was the mature fruit of the theory of the subordination of the Son to the Father, which had found not a few exponents and representatives among the earlier theologians. Even Origen had enunciated a form of this theory and was claimed as, in this respect, a forerunner of Arius. The real forerunner of Arius was, however, Lucian, his teacher and the founder of the theological school of Antioch. This school was distinguished by its rational, critical spirit, and its emphasis on the historical and grammatical sense of the Scriptures, in contrast to the allegorising tendency especially characteristic of the Alexandrian school. Of Lucian and his theological opinions our knowledge is misty. He acquired his early theological training in the school of Edessa, became a presbyter and an influential teacher of the Church at Antioch, and suffered martyrdom at Nicomedia under Maximinus Daza in 311. Whether he was a follower of Paul of Samosata is a disputed question, though the general view is that he was. If so, he must have substantially modified Paul’s Christological teaching. Both held that Christ was a creature, but while Paul conceived of Him as a mere man in whom the impersonal Divine Wisdom or Logos manifested itself, Lucian and his school regarded Him as a heavenly being who was created by God out of nothing, in whom the Divine Logos becomes personal, who, at the incarnation, assumed a human body, but not a human soul, and whose mission it was to reveal the Father. But He was not God in the absolute sense and was not eternal. In thus emphasising the creatureliness of the heavenly Christ, they sought to maintain the unity and transcendence of God, which the theology of Antioch derived from the philosophy of Aristotle. 

It was this conception of Christ that Arius set forth in more elaborate form at Alexandria, and thus started what is known as the Arian Controversy. He seems, indeed, to have been involved in controversy from the commencement of his career as deacon of the Alexandrian Church. He is found at first siding with Meletius in the schism which distracted the Egyptian Church over the question of the lapsed during the Diocletian persecution; then changing sides; again reverting to the Meletians; suffering excommunication in consequence thereof at the hands of Bishop Peter, and subsequently being received into communion and ordained presbyter by Peter’s successor, Achillas. He was appointed minister of one of the churches of the city and erelong achieved a high reputation by his learning, his attractive manners, and his austere life. He had, too, the logical faculty needful to assert and defend his opinions, and his readiness to make use of this faculty in theological controversy ultimately brought him into collision with his ecclesiastical superior, Bishop Alexander, with whom he seems, besides, to have had friction on personal grounds. The theological dispute began, according to Socrates, on the occasion of a discourse delivered by Alexander to his clergy on the unity of the Trinity, when Arius ventured to contradict the bishop. In the course of the controversy which ensued, and led to his excommunication, along with his followers among the Alexandrian clergy, by an Egyptian synod held in 321 or 322, the divergence of view between bishop and presbyter became more definite. Alexander maintained the coeternity and equality of Father and Son. Arius, on the contrary, insisted that God alone is eternal and has no equal ; that He created the Son out of nothing ; that the Son is, therefore, not eternal, nor is God eternally the Father, since “there was (a time) when the Son was not” ; that He is of a different substance from the Father and is subject to change ; that He is not truly God, though He was capable of perfection and became a perfect creature—the Logos in a real human body. Christ is thus for him a secondary deity or demigod, who partakes, in a certain measure, of the qualities of both the divine and the human, but is not God in the highest sense. This conception reveals the influence both of the philosophical view of God as transcendent, isolated from the world (Aristotle), and of polytheism which assumed the existence of lower gods under a supreme Being.

It was on behalf of these views that Arius, on being driven from Alexandria, appealed to the bishops of the Eastern Church, especially to his old fellow-student at Antioch, Eusebius of Nicomedia, and to ‘Eusebius of Caesarea, the most erudite bishop of his age, whilst Alexander also sought to justify his views and his action in letters to his fellow-bishops throughout the East.Certain it is that he found many sympathisers, though his claim that all the Eastern bishops agreed with him is evidently an exaggeration, and his appeal produced a powerful impression throughout the East and greatly widened the area of the controversy. “Disputes and contentions,” says Theodoret, “arose in every city and in every village concerning theological dogmas. . . . These were indeed scenes fit for the tragic stage, over which tears might have been shed. For it was not, as in bygone days, when the Church was attacked by strangers and enemies; but now nations of the same country, who dwelt under one roof and sat down at one table, fought against each other, not with spears, but with their tongues.” He strove to gain adherents by popularising his doctrines in a work entitled “Thalia,” or Banquet, of which only a few fragments have been preserved by Athanasius, and in the songs which he wrote for various classes—millers, sailors, travellers, etc. The widespread sympathy which his teaching excited is evidenced by the fact that a synod in Bithynia, over which Eusebius of Nicomedia presided, espoused his cause. Arius, in fact, felt so strong in the sympathy of so large a following that he ventured to return to Alexandria and resume his charge. Though he had previously written to Alexander in a conciliatory  spirit, he had not retracted his specific doctrines, and the controversy raged afresh. It became, in fact, so notorious that it forced the Emperor himself to intervene in the interest of peace.

An excerpt from, “Early Arianism—a View of Salvation Written by Robert C. Gregg and Denis E. Groh” Reviewed By Graham Keith, The Gospel Coalition, March 27, 2020:

The traditional understanding of Arianism has located its centrifugal point in its doctrine of God. The Arians took such a view of the uniqueness of the supreme being and of his being uncaused and without beginning that they had no place to rank the Son of God other than among the creatures. For their part, Gregg and Groh would argue that far from derogating the Son of God, the Arians had a distinctly christological interest. The life of the incarnate Christ attracted them as an example of that moral progress which was to be pursued by all the saints. For according to the Arian view, God’s chosen one possessed sonship not by some natural tie, but by dint of his performance as an obedient creature and by dint of God’s grace, which both anticipated and rewarded his efforts. The moral endeavour and progress which Christ demonstrated could in principle be repeated by other creatures.

At the outset it should be stated that Gregg and Groh confine their reinterpretation to early Arianism, by which they mean Arianism prior to 342 or more precisely the writings of Arius, Asterius the Sophist, and Eusebius of Nicomedia. (These are the three main opponents whom Athanasius attacks in his Orationes contra Arianos, though they by no means represent the whole of the Arian party in this period.) Gregg and Groh recognize that their reinterpretation opens up a wide gulf between early Arians and later Arians, particularly the radicals associated with Aetius and Eunomius—although Philostorgius, the historian of the latter group, viewed the whole tradition as a unity. This gulf would become especially significant on the question of the Son’s mutability. For later it was standard Arian teaching to state that God had in his Son created one being who is incapable of change.

. . .For a parallel we might look to Islam, which has many similarities to Arianism as traditionally understood. Soteriological factors in Islam do not loom as large as in evangelical Christianity with its more pessimistic view of man’s natural condition. The very silence of our sources on Arian soteriological assertions may not constitute the strongest evidence, but it does suggest that here Arianism may parallel Islam. Though I must dissent from the major thesis of this book in preference for the more traditional interpretation, Gregg and Groh present much of value. It is particularly refreshing to note their concern to explain the controversy in the light of exegesis of key biblical texts rather than to rummage around for philosophical borrowings. The book is at its best in elucidating Athanasius’ standpoint, but the Arian counter-soteriology which Gregg and Groh develop is less securely based. Readers will also find some useful insight into the ascetic background in Egypt to the controversy, but it should also be remembered that the origins of Arianism were not exclusively Egyptian. Eusebius of Nicomedia cuts an ascetic figure!

Wikipedia – Eusebius of Nicomedia:

Eusebius of Nicomedia (died 341) was an Arian priest who baptised Constantine the Great on his deathbed in 337.

. . .Distantly related to the imperial family of Constantine the Great, he owed his progression from a less significant Levantine bishopric to the most important episcopal see to his influence at court and the great power he wielded in the church was derived from that source. In fact, during his time in the imperial court, the Eastern court and the major positions in the Eastern Church were held by Arians or Arian sympathizers. With the exception of a short period of eclipse, he enjoyed the confidence both of Constantine and Constantius II. He also served as the tutor of the later Roman emperor Julian, and it was he who might have baptised Constantine the Great on 22 May 337 owing to his familial relationship with the emperor. Also during his time in the imperial court, Arianism became more popular with the royal family. It can be logically surmised that Eusebius had a huge hand in the acceptance of Arianism in the Constantinian household. The Arian influence grew so strong during his tenure in the imperial court that it was not until the end of the Constantinian dynasty and the appointment of Theodosius I that Arianism lost its influence in the empire.

. . .Even outside the empire, Eusebius had great influence. He brought Ulfilas into the Arian priesthood and sent the latter to convert the heathen Goths.