You say that someone who twists Scripture brings an agenda to the text. Sometimes that’s undoubtedly true. But are you seriously suggesting that a Christian cannot misinterpret Scripture unless he has some hidden agenda?
Why should an incorrect interpretation necessarily be the product of dishonesty, prejudice, or a refusal to be guided by the Holy Spirit?
People can be perfectly sincere and still be mistaken. They can study the same texts, examine the original languages, consider the historical context, pray for guidance, and nevertheless reach incompatible conclusions.
Take the example of marriage that we discussed earlier. The Westminster Confession explicitly permits divorce and remarriage after adultery, whereas Catholic doctrine does not. Presbyterians defend their position from Scripture, particularly Matthew 19:9.
Are you suggesting that the theologians who formulated and defended that position were necessarily approaching Scripture with an agenda? That they could not have been sincerely trying to understand and obey Christ?
And if that’s not what you’re suggesting, then we’re back to my original question: when two sincere Christians arrive at incompatible interpretations of Scripture, how do you determine which one has understood it correctly?
It’s incredibly, unbelievably and unfathomably arrogant to state that the Scripture is obvious and that only someone in bad faith and unwilling to be guided by the Holy Spirit can misinterpret it.
And we are back to square one: HOW DO YOU DETERMINE THAT THE COUNCIL IS SAYING WHAT SCRIPTURE SAYS?
Is a Council binding only insofar as its rulings align with your own interpretation of the Scripture?
If your judgement is binding you, and George’s judgment binds him, and Lucy’s judgment equally binds her, and these three persons reach incompatible intepretation of Scripture, what can possibly foster unity between these three Christians?
You’re confusing two different questions: what made Nicaea’s judgment authoritative, and how that judgment eventually came to be widely accepted.
I readily acknowledge that the Nicene faith had to be defended for decades, that bishops had to be persuaded, and that Scripture played an indispensable role in that process. I’ve never suggested otherwise.
But how does any of that establish that Nicaea’s doctrinal judgment was authoritative only insofar as individual Christians independently agreed with its interpretation of Scripture?
The fact that a decision is resisted doesn’t mean it lacks authority. Otherwise, no authoritative judgment could ever bind anyone who disagreed with it.
And surely the continued existence of Arianism after Nicaea doesn’t prove that the Council lacked authority any more than the continued existence of heresy proves that Scripture lacks authority.
The persistence of disobedience does not invalidate the authority of what is being disobeyed.
More importantly, your account leaves out something essential about Athanasius himself.
In Ad Afros, §2, he explains that Nicaea was convened as an ecumenical council precisely so that subsequent local synods could no longer reopen the question of faith and overturn its judgment.
He then writes/ “But the word of the Lord which came through the ecumenical Synod at Nicæa, abides forever.”
Athanasius doesn’t merely argue that Nicaea happened to offer a faithful interpretation of Scripture. He maintains that its ecumenical judgment possesses a finality that subsequent local synods cannot overturn.
And in De Decretis, §§19–21, he explains why the Nicene Fathers adopted homoousios: the Arians could accept biblical expressions while interpreting them in ways that undermined the doctrine the Council intended to affirm.
So how is the Scripture you are talking about as obvious as you claim It is?
The bishops therefore had to formulate a doctrinal definition that excluded those interpretations.
So yes, the Council’s definition was faithful to Scripture. I’ve never denied that. But the Council did something more than offer another interpretation for Christians to evaluate independently: it made a definitive ecclesiastical judgment concerning the meaning of the apostolic faith.
And what happened in 381?
Another ecumenical council, Constantinople I, reaffirmed Nicaea. Its first canon explicitly declared that the Nicene faith was not to be set aside.
So the historical process you’re describing involved not only biblical interpretation and theological persuasion, but also the Church’s conciliar authority reaffirming and defending a doctrinal definition.
I don’t see why we should pretend that these things were mutually exclusive.
And here’s the point I keep coming back to.
You say that a council binds whenever its teaching agrees with Scripture.
But who determines whether it agrees with Scripture? You keep dancing around this point. Is it your own interpretation of Scripture that determines whether an Ecumenical Council has correctly interpreted Scripture?
If the answer is that each Christian must ultimately decide for himself, then consider the position of an Arian who sincerely believes that homoousios misrepresents Scripture.
On your principle, why wouldn’t he be entitled to reject Nicaea?
You can tell him that his interpretation is wrong. Athanasius could certainly demonstrate why he believed it was wrong. But the Arian could continue appealing to Scripture against both Athanasius and the Council.
Unless the Church’s definitive judgment possesses an authority that is not conditional upon each individual’s agreement with it, what has actually been settled?
I’m not suggesting that councils create doctrinal truth. The truth comes from divine revelation, and the Church is her servant, not her author.
But a doctrine’s truth and the authority by which the Church definitively identifies and teaches that truth are two different questions. You clearly deny the latter, so who else except you is supposed to decide the correct meaning of Scripture? Under this principle, how are you not ultimately making your own judgment the highest earthly authority on the correct interpretation of Scripture? And guess what happens when hundreds of millions of Christians each make their own personal judgment the ultimate authority in determining the meaning of Scripture? Exactly what has happened in the last five centuries: the endless proliferation of sectarian division which is the very opposite of the universality (Catholic means exactly that: universal) of the Church.
But I think your example of Athanasius actually illustrates an important distinction that you’re overlooking.
The Council of Tyre in 335 was not an ecumenical council defining a doctrine of faith. It was a regional synod examining accusations against Athanasius, which resulted in his deposition.
Those accusations and the proceedings themselves were seriously contested, and Athanasius maintained that he had been the victim of a conspiracy.
Now, Catholic teaching has never claimed that every gathering of bishops is infallible, or that ecclesiastical authorities are incapable of making unjust disciplinary decisions.
So how does Athanasius’s refusal to accept an unjust deposition establish that an individual Christian may reject a definitive doctrinal judgment of an ecumenical council?
Those are entirely different situations.
And there’s something else about Athanasius that your account leaves out.
He did not simply reject the judgment of Tyre and declare his own interpretation of Scripture the final authority.
His case was subsequently examined by other assemblies of bishops, including those at Rome and Sardica, which vindicated him.
Athanasius himself recounts these proceedings in the opening section of his Apologia Contra Arianos.
So the historical picture isn’t one of an isolated Christian rejecting the authority of the Church in favour of his private judgment. It’s one of a bishop challenging the legitimacy of particular proceedings and seeking vindication within the Church itself.
And here’s what I find particularly revealing.
The very same Athanasius who refused the judgment of Tyre explicitly defended the definitive authority of Nicaea against subsequent local synods.
In Ad Afros, §2, he argues that Nicaea was convened as an ecumenical council precisely so that local synods could no longer reopen and overturn its decision concerning the faith.
He then writes: “But the word of the Lord which came through the ecumenical Synod at Nicæa, abides forever.”
Why would Athanasius distinguish so sharply between the ecumenical Council of Nicaea and subsequent local synods if, in his view, every conciliar judgment possessed exactly the same merely fallible authority?
His position is perfectly consistent and that is why bhe could reject the unjust proceedings of Tyre while regarding Nicaea’s doctrinal judgment as definitive for the Church.
There is no contradiction whatsoever.
As for Acts 5:29, of course we must obey God rather than men. No one denies that.
But Peter was speaking to the Sanhedrin, which was attempting to stop the apostles from proclaiming Christ. He was not asserting that every Christian has the right to disregard the Church’s definitive doctrinal judgments whenever his personal interpretation of Scripture conflicts with them. Do you think that the conclusions they reached at the Council of Jerusalem wasn’t binding for the whole Church and that it could have been challenged?
And regarding what you said about denying yourself, I think we need to distinguish two things.
I believe you when you say that Scripture has corrected your understanding. But another Christian can sincerely say exactly the same thing and arrive at a conclusion incompatible with yours.
The question is not whether you’re willing to let Scripture correct you. It’s who ultimately determines whether your understanding of what Scripture says is correct.
If you believe that even an ecumenical council’s definitive doctrinal judgment can be rejected whenever you conclude that it conflicts with Scripture, then your own interpretation remains the final court of appeal.
You don’t have to claim to be personally infallible for that to be true. You are, for all intents and purposes, the highest authority, and nobody can correct you on this earth, except yourself if and when you reach another understanding that contradicts your current one. In other words: you are your own oracle. That’s exactly how we ended up with thousands of mutually contradictory denominations.
But I would ask you again one precise thing: how does Athanasius’s rejection of an unjust disciplinary judgment at Tyre justify the rejection of an ecumenical council’s definitive teaching on matters of faith?
Because unless you can establish that equivalence, I don’t think the example supports your argument at all.
I have cited an important father of the Church from 110 AD, so yes when I spoke about the antiquity of the teaching I was correct. You cannot envelop everything in your relativism, stating that a teaching can be traced back to the beginning of the second century is an assertion that can be defended historically, not merely a subjective opinion.
I have to say, I find this an astonishingly presumptuous way of framing the problem.
Not because you acknowledge that you depend on God’s grace. Of course you do. We all do.
The presumption lies in your assumption that the fundamental difference between correct and incorrect interpretations is that one person submits to Scripture while the other imposes his own agenda on it.
Do you seriously believe that a Christian who sincerely submits his will to God, prays for the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and studies Scripture with genuine humility cannot nevertheless misunderstand it?
Because if you believe that, you’re effectively claiming that sincere submission to Scripture guarantees interpretive correctness. And I’d really like to know where Scripture promises such a thing.
And there’s something particularly troubling about it.
Who the hell are you to determine whether another Christian’s interpretation comes from sincere submission to God’s Word or from an agenda he’s imposing on it?
You cannot see into his heart. You cannot know that he has studied less carefully, prayed less sincerely, or submitted himself less completely to God than you have.
He may be just as sincere as you are. He may even be a better biblical scholar than you are. And he may still reach a conclusion that directly contradicts yours.
Yet your argument seems to leave no room for that possibility.
And if your way of determining whether someone has submitted to Scripture is ultimately to compare his interpretation with your own, then you’ve made your own understanding the standard by which everyone else’s fidelity to Scripture is judged.
Do you not see the extraordinary , incredible, breathtaking presumption involved in that?
Simply saying that your understanding comes from submission to Scripture rather than from your own will does not make your interpretation infallible. Another Christian can say precisely the same thing about an interpretation that contradicts yours.
That’s why I find this reasoning so deeply flawed. You’re treating a problem of human fallibility as though it could be resolved by dividing interpreters into the humble (and I really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really struggle to see the humility in what you are saying) and the agenda-driven.
But humility does not confer infallibility, sincerity does not eliminate the possibility of error, and invoking the Holy Spirit does not establish that your particular interpretation is correct. Otherwise show me the verse that establishes that one can be an infallible interpreter of Scripture as long as he submits to it. You don’t get to claim sola Scriptura and then make unscriptural claims.
1 John 4:6: “We belong to God, and anyone who knows God listens to us”.
Why would “anyone who knows God” need to listen to the apostles if they could arrive at the correct interpretation of Scripture on their own, simply by approaching the text “without an agenda”?
How do you establish that the Council’s ruling was the only possible interpretation of Scripture, and that every Christian who arrived at a different interpretation was necessarily pursuing an agenda? Until you can substantiate those claims, they remain nothing more than empty assertions.
Scripture is anything but self-evident in its meaning. The fact that the doctrine of the Trinity is consistent with Scripture does not mean that it was the only interpretation anyone could reasonably have drawn from it. The Nicene Fathers had to introduce a term not found in Scripture, homoousios, precisely to establish its correct meaning and rule out competing interpretations.If the meaning of Scripture had been so obvious and unambiguous, why would such a term have been necessary in the first place?
What you wrote here exposes a very serious weakness in your argument.
Of course Scripture, correctly interpreted, cannot lead someone to believe that Jesus is the Antichrist. But how does the fact that some things in Scripture are perfectly clear establish that its meaning is equally clear on every fundamental doctrinal question, the Trinity included? It simply doesn’t.
And the verse you’ve chosen is particularlyunfortunate for your argument, because the Arian controversy illustrates exactly why.
Arius didn’t deny that Jesus was the Christ or the Son of God. Quite the opposite.
In his letter to Alexander of Alexandria, Arius explicitly professes belief in the Son begotten before the ages, through whom God created everything. Yet he also describes that same Son as a creature.
So imagine placing 1 John 2:22 before Arius and asking him whether he believed that Jesus was the Christ and the Son of God.
He could have answered yes without abandoning his theology.
So which is it? Does Arius pass John’s test because he explicitly confesses Jesus as Christ and Son of God, or does he fail because his understanding of those titles is fundamentally wrong?
If he passes, your test fails to exclude Arianism.
If he fails, then merely professing the biblical formula is insufficient. We must determine what that formula actually means, including whether divine sonship entails eternal generation and consubstantiality with the Father.
And that is precisely the controversy Nicaea addressed.
The issue was never whether Scripture clearly teaches that Jesus is the Christ. The issue was what Christians are required to believe about Christ’s divine nature when they confess Him as the Son of God.
Your appeal to 2 Timothy 2:15 doesn’t help either. Saying that Scripture must be interpreted correctly is obviously true. But it tells us nothing about how to establish which interpretation is correct when Christians disagree. Otherwise, the argument becomes circular: the correct interpretation is the one that interprets Scripture correctly.
Nobody disputes that. The entire controversy concerns how we identify it.
I‘m not claiming that Scripture is incapable of communicating clear truths. I’m claiming that the clarity of one biblical proposition doesn’t establish the self-evidence of every theological conclusion that Christians have historically disputed.
And the Arian controversy is an extraordinary demonstration of that distinction.
What I find especially striking is that you’ve chosen a passage that directly addresses our dispute, because, as I said, Arius clearly professes belief in the Son begotten before the ages, through whom God created everything, and yet he still thought He was created.
In other words, even your own example forces us beyond the mere words of the biblical formula and into the question of their authoritative meaning.
As you can see, this conclusion doesn’t follow AT ALL, because Arius believed that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah, and the Son of God.
So no, the meaning of Scripture is nowhere near as self-evident as you suggest. Do you seriously believe Arianism would have gained such widespread support among Christians, including so many bishops, if its doctrines could have been so easily refuted from Scripture?
Like…seriously?
What is broken, irreparably so, is bibliolatry. It is both unbiblical (show me where Scripture actually teaches sola Scriptura) and foreign to the way Christians understood the relationship between the Bible, themselves, and the Church throughout the first fifteen centuries. What is even worse is the presumption involved in believing that one’s own interpretation of Scripture can serve as the ultimate court of appeal—and even as the standard by which one presumes to judge whether others are sincere or merely pursuing an agenda.Christ left us a living Church, not merely a book. Which isn’t even a book in the first place but a collection of distinct writings whose status as canonical and divinely inspired was discerned by the Church over time, with individual books examined and, in some cases, disputed before being recognised as part of Sacred Scripture. Scripture is authoritative because it is divinely inspired, of course, but it was the Church herself that discerned and definitively recognised which writings belonged to the biblical canon.
The Church didn’t derive her authority from a canon she herself had yet to recognise.
Anyway, Arvis, I know I’ve already responded to this, but I’ve decided that we should
After all, the true strength or weakness of an argument can only be established when it is pushed to its absolute limits and subjected to the strongest possible objections.
So I’ve decided to put together a comprehensive analysis where I examine the Arian objections, the Nicene responses, the Arian counterarguments, the subsequent rebuttals, and so on, following each line of reasoning as far as it can possibly go.
By the end, we should be in a much better position to determine whether the orthodox interpretation of Scripture could have been definitively established through Scripture alone (in that case, why did the Fathers use a wholly unscriptural word to settle the question?), or whether something more was necessary: namely, a teaching authority divinely protected from error by the Holy Spirit (as the apostles were at the Council of Jerusalem), capable of definitively establishing the correct meaning of Scripture in matters of faith.
Because that is precisely what is at issue here: whether Scripture, whose meaning is by no means always self-evident, can serve as its own definitive interpreter when equally serious and competing interpretations arise.
I. The real question behind the Arian controversy
The central question is not whether Scripture teaches that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Messiah, the pre-existent Word, the agent of creation, or the one through whom humanity receives salvation.
Arius accepted those propositions.
The disputed question was much more precise: does Scripture necessarily establish that the Son is uncreated, eternally generated, and consubstantial with the Father?
That conclusion may be the correct interpretation of divine revelation, but it doesn’t follow merely from demonstrating that Jesus is called God, that He existed before the world, or that all things were created through Him.
The distinction matters because Arius did not regard Christ as an ordinary creature.
In his letter to Alexander of Alexandria, he acknowledged that the Son existed before time and the ages, that the universe was created through Him, and that He was uniquely begotten by the Father.
At the same time, he denied that the Son was co-eternal or consubstantial with the Father.
A historically serious reconstruction must therefore examine how the anti-Nicene theologians reconciled the extraordinary divine status attributed to Christ with their conviction that the Father alone possesses unoriginated existence.
One qualification is necessary from the outset: there was no single, entirely uniform anti-Nicene theology throughout the fourth century. Arius, Asterius, Eunomius, and the various anti-Nicene episcopal groups did not hold identical positions.
Accordingly, arguments directly documented in Arius’s surviving writings will be distinguished from those developed by later theologians. Where a further response is logically possible but not preserved in an ancient source, it will be identified as a reconstruction.
II. The Father alone is without origin
The anti-Nicene argument begins with the distinction between possessing existence without origin and receiving existence from another.
The Father is the ultimate source of everything.
He receives His existence from no one.
The Son, however, is repeatedly described in Scripture as receiving something from the Father.
Consider the cumulative evidence:
John 17:3: Jesus addresses the Father as the only true God.
John 20:17: Jesus speaks of the Father as His God.
1 Corinthians 8:6: Paul distinguishes the one God, the Father, from the one Lord, Jesus Christ.
John 14:28: Jesus declares that the Father is greater than He is.
John 5:26: the Father grants the Son to have life in Himself.
John 6:57: Jesus says that He lives because of the Father.
1 Corinthians 15:24–28: the Son ultimately subjects Himself to the Father.
An anti-Nicene interpreter could argue that these passages establish a coherent pattern.
The Father is consistently presented as the ultimate source, while the Son receives His existence, authority, life, and mission from Him.
The Nicene theologian may reply that these statements refer either to the Son’s incarnate condition or to His eternal relationship of origin within the one divine nature.
But that explanation introduces a distinction between receiving existence from the Father and possessing the same uncreated nature as the Father.
Why must that distinction be the correct interpretation of the biblical statements?
Why must the Father’s superiority be understood exclusively in terms of personal relations or the economy of salvation, rather than reflecting a difference in ontological status?
These questions are not modern inventions.
Eunomius develops an argument from the Father’s unoriginated existence in his First Apology, particularly §§VIII–XI and XXI–XXVII.
The anti-Nicene formula adopted at Sirmium in 357 also invokes John 20:17 and John 14:28 to defend the Father’s superiority.
III. Begetting doesn’t necessarily establish consubstantiality
The Nicene doctrine depends on a crucial distinction: the Son is begotten, not made, but the anti-Nicene theologian can question whether Scripture necessarily requires the metaphysical interpretation assigned to those terms.
Among human beings, begetting produces an individual sharing the nature of the parent.
Yet God is not a human being.
Divine generation cannot be understood as biological reproduction, material division, or the transfer of portions of divine substance.
Arius explicitly rejected interpretations of divine generation that appeared to involve emanation, division of the divine monad, or the communication of a material portion of the Father.
Eunomius subsequently developed a systematic argument:
God is simple, immaterial, and indivisible.
His essence cannot be divided or transferred as though it were material.
The Son receives His existence from the Father.
The Father’s act of producing the Son therefore cannot simply be understood as communicating a portion of His own substance.
The Son can be uniquely generated by the Father without sharing the Father’s unoriginated essence.
The strongest Nicene answer is that eternal generation involves neither material division nor the transfer of divine parts.
That answer is coherent within Nicene metaphysics.
But the anti-Nicene challenge remains: what establishes that eternal generation communicates the same uncreated divine nature, rather than producing a unique Son who derives His existence from the Father?
The Son’s uniqueness does not, by itself, settle that question.
Eunomius presses the distinction between the unbegotten divine essence and the Son’s derived existence in First Apology, §§VIII–XVII.
IV. Proverbs 8:22–25: Wisdom created and begotten
One of the strongest original Arian prooftexts was Proverbs 8:22.
In the Greek Septuagint, Wisdom speaks of having been created by the Lord.
This was particularly significant because Christian writers had long associated divine Wisdom with the pre-existent Christ.
The anti-Nicene argument is straightforward:
Christ is identified with God’s Wisdom.
Wisdom speaks of having been created.
Therefore, Scripture provides language for the Son’s origination.
Verses 24–25 additionally speak of Wisdom being brought forth or begotten before the mountains and hills.
Arius could therefore understand the passage as describing a unique origination preceding the rest of creation.
The Son is not an ordinary creature brought into existence within the cosmos, He precedes the cosmos and participates in its creation, but He nevertheless receives His existence from the Father.
Athanasius explicitly identifies Proverbs 8:22 as a central Arian argument in Contra Arianos, II, §§1 and 18–19.
The Nicene response
Athanasius argues that the passage cannot describe the eternal divine nature of the Son as created.
He distinguishes the Son’s eternal generation from His being constituted the beginning of God’s ways for the purposes of salvation, he also distinguishes the passage’s language of creation from its language of generation.
The strongest further anti-Nicene rejoinder
That interpretation requires assigning different theological meanings to expressions appearing in the same passage.
But why should the creation language refer to the economy of salvation while the generation language describes the Son’s eternal relationship with the Father?
The text itself does not explicitly formulate that distinction.
An anti-Nicene interpreter could therefore argue that the passage more naturally describes the Son’s unique pre-cosmic origination.
This final rejoinder is a logical reconstruction rather than a verbatim surviving statement by Arius.
V. Colossians 1:15–17: The firstborn of all creation
Paul calls Christ the image of the invisible God and the firstborn of all creation, he then declares that all things were created in, through, and for Him.
The Nicene interpretation understands firstborn as expressing supremacy over creation rather than membership within the created order, but the anti-Nicene theologian can propose another interpretation: the Son is the first and unique product of the Father’s creative activity, and the Father subsequently brings the rest of creation into existence through Him.
This preserves several propositions explicitly affirmed in the passage:
Christ precedes everything else.
Christ is uniquely related to the Father.
Christ is the image of the invisible God.
Christ is the agent of universal creation.
All things depend upon Him.
Yet none of these propositions necessarily establishes that Christ is uncreated.
Eunomius’ documented interpretation
In First Apology, §XXIV, Eunomius explicitly interprets Colossians 1:15–16 by distinguishing the Father’s essence from His creative operation.
The Son reveals and executes the Father’s creative power, but this does not establish identity of essence.
Eunomius argues that the Son’s being the image of God expresses His uniquely perfect manifestation of the Father’s activity rather than consubstantiality.
The Nicene answer is that the Son’s relationship with the Father cannot be reduced to an external resemblance or delegated function.
The anti-Nicene response is that the designation image does not automatically settle whether the resemblance is essential or functional.
That is precisely what remains disputed.
VI. John 1:1–3: The most formidable challenge to Arianism
John’s Prologue is central to the controversy.
The Word was with God.
The Word was God.
All things came into existence through Him.
The Nicene objection is powerful.
If everything that came into existence was created through the Word, and the Word Himself came into existence, would He not have to cause His own existence?
That would be impossible.
Therefore, the Word must be uncreated.
The anti-Nicene distinction
The anti-Nicene theologian distinguishes two divine acts:
The Father’s unique production of the Son.
The creation of the remaining order through the Son.
The Father is the ultimate cause of everything.
The Son is the unique mediator through whom the Father creates the universe.
On this interpretation, John’s statement concerns creation mediated through the Logos. It doesn’t necessarily describe the Logos’s own origination.
The Son didn’t create Himself, He was produced directly by the Father, and everything else was subsequently created through Him.
This distinction is documented in Eunomius’s theology.
In First Apology, §§XXIV–XXVI, he maintains that the Son receives existence from the Father while the created order comes into existence through the Son.
The crucial issue is therefore the scope of John’s universal language.
Does everything that came into existence necessarily include the Son’s unique origination?
Or does the passage refer to the created order brought into existence through the Logos?
The Nicene interpretation is exceptionally strong.
But the anti-Nicene distinction is not merely a modern invention designed to evade the objection.
It belongs to an actual ancient theological system.
The surviving counterarguments to Athanasius’s objections will be examined in detail in the final appendix.
VII. John 1:1: The Word was God
An Arian need not deny that Scripture calls the Word God.
Arius himself applied exalted divine titles to the Son.
The distinction concerns whether the title God necessarily entails possession of the same unoriginated essence as the Father.
The anti-Nicene argument proceeds as follows:
Scripture gives divine titles to the Son.
The Son nevertheless receives His existence and authority from the Father.
Therefore, the attribution of divine titles cannot simply be assumed to eliminate the distinction between the unoriginated Father and the Son who derives His existence from Him.
This interpretation treats the Son’s divinity as derivative.
He isn’t merely a human prophet or a creature among creatures, He occupies a unique position in the divine economy.
However, this precise interpretation of John 1:1 is a reconstruction from documented Arian premises, not a verbatim surviving exposition of the verse by Arius.
The documentary basis is Urkunde 6 and the surviving fragments of the Thalia.
An important qualification must also be made: the Thalia, as transmitted by Athanasius, sometimes uses stronger language about the Son’s derivative or participatory divinity than the more conciliatory professions preserved in Arius’s letters.
The texts must not be artificially harmonized beyond what the evidence permits.
VIII. Hebrews 1:3: The radiance of divine glory
Hebrews describes the Son as the radiance of God’s glory and the representation of His being.
Athanasius argues that radiance cannot be separated from the light that produces it.
If the Father has always existed, His radiance must also have existed eternally.
This is one of the strongest Nicene arguments.
An important fact about Arius
Arius didn’t simply reject the description of the Son as radiance.
In the surviving fragments of the Thalia, line 24, the Son is expressly called Radiance and Light among his other designations.
The translation includes: “he is also conceived of as Radiance and Light.”
Yet the same collection of fragments presents the Son as receiving His existence through the Father’s will and denies His co-eternity with the Father.
This establishes something historically important.
Arius could employ the imagery of radiance and light without accepting the Nicene inference that the Son must be eternally consubstantial with the Father.
It does not, however, establish that we possess his complete explanation of Hebrews 1:3 or his explicit answer to Athanasius’s argument from the inseparability of light and radiance.
The strongest possible anti-Nicene response
The argument could be reconstructed as follows:
Scripture uses radiance to describe the Son’s relation to the Father.
The image expresses the Son’s unique derivation, glory, and manifestation of the Father.
An analogy does not necessarily transfer every property of its physical source to the divine relationship it illustrates.
Therefore, the imagery does not by itself establish eternal co-existence or identity of essence.
IX. John 10:30 and John 14:10: What kind of unity exists between Father and Son?
Jesus declares that He and the Father are one, and He also says that He is in the Father and the Father is in Him.
These statements are central to Nicene theology.
But what precisely is the nature of that unity?
John 10:30
Athanasius explicitly records the anti-Nicene interpretation.
Father and Son are one because they possess perfect agreement in will, judgment, and purpose.
The Son never acts against the Father.
His obedience and conformity to the Father’s will are complete.
The Nicene reply is that agreement in will is insufficient to explain the uniquely intimate union of Father and Son.
Yet the anti-Nicene interpreter can appeal to John 17:21–23, where Jesus prays that His disciples may be one in a manner analogous to the unity between Father and Son.
If believers can participate in this unity without becoming numerically identical in divine essence, the language of unity does not automatically determine an ontological conclusion.
Asterius offers an interpretation preserved by Athanasius in Contra Arianos, III, §2.
His explanation is that the Father is in the Son because the Son’s words and works proceed from the Father.
The Son is the perfect expression and executor of the Father’s activity.
Athanasius objects that this explanation threatens to reduce Christ’s relationship with the Father to something analogous to the relationship enjoyed by prophets and other servants of God.
The strongest reconstructed anti-Nicene reply is that Christ’s mediation is unique in kind, not merely one example among many.
No prophet is the pre-existent agent of universal creation.
Consequently, the Son’s singularity can be maintained without accepting the Nicene doctrine of consubstantiality.
The interpretation attributed to Asterius is documented; this final elaboration is a reconstruction.
Eunomius also explicitly appeals to Acts 2:36 and other biblical statements about the Son’s derived existence in First Apology, §XXVI.
XI. Jesus’ ignorance, growth, prayers, and suffering
The Gospels present further difficulties.
Jesus grows in wisdom (Luke 2:52).
He declares that the Son does not know the day or hour (Mark 13:32).
He asks questions.
He experiences distress and fear.
He prays to the Father.
He declares that He can do nothing independently.
The Nicene response distinguishes Christ’s human and divine natures.
An anti-Nicene interpreter could accept that distinction as one theological possibility while questioning whether every relevant passage demands it.
Consider Mark 13:32.
The statement doesn’t merely say that Jesus does not disclose the day or hour. It distinguishes what the Father knows from what the Son knows.
If the Son is omniscient by possession of the same divine nature, how should this statement be understood?
The Nicene explanation must account for the relationship between Christ’s divine knowledge and His incarnate human knowledge.
The anti-Nicene interpretation can understand the Son’s knowledge as uniquely extensive but dependent upon the Father’s disclosure.
Athanasius preserves a substantial collection of such objections in Contra Arianos, III, §26, and addresses them in the following sections.
The significant point is not that the Nicene answers are impossible, it is that the biblical statements require interpretation, and the alternative interpretations cannot be dismissed merely by repeating the texts.
The Nicene response distinguishes what God is from the personal relations by which Father and Son are distinguished.
On that account, being unbegotten is a personal property of the Father, not the definition of the divine essence.
The anti-Nicene theologian can press the question further: what is the biblical warrant for treating unbegottenness as a personal distinction rather than as a property defining the one God?
The Nicene answer involves a sophisticated account of essence, hypostasis, and relation.
That account may be sound, but its truth requires argument; it cannot simply be assumed from the vocabulary of the biblical texts.
XIII. If the Son is eternally begotten, is He really a Son?
The anti-Nicene theologians also challenged the coherence of eternal generation.
Ordinarily, a father is prior to his son as the source of the son’s existence.
If Father and Son are co-eternal, what distinguishes their relationship from that of two co-existing divine beings?
Athanasius records this objection in Contra Arianos, I, §14.
The opponents argued that a Son co-existing eternally with the Father would seem more like a brother than a genuinely begotten Son.
Athanasius answers that divine generation differs fundamentally from human generation.
God’s nature is eternal and perfect; therefore His generation is not an event occurring within time.
But the anti-Nicene theologian can question why eternal generation should be treated as the necessary meaning of the biblical term Son.
It may be a profound theological solution, yet it is not self-evidently the only possible interpretation. Far from it.
A related objection appears in Contra Arianos, I, §§20–21: if the Son is the Father’s perfect image and equal in every relevant respect, why does He not also become the father of another divine son?
Athanasius rejects the inference because divine fatherhood and sonship are personal relations that do not reproduce themselves indefinitely.
Again, this is a coherent Nicene response, but it relies upon a particular understanding of divine persons and generation. A particular understanding that is not the only conceivable interpretation of the texts by any means.
The claim that triadic baptismal language does not by itself entail consubstantiality is a logical reconstruction from his arguments, not an argument quoted verbatim from that document.
Eunomius later developed a hierarchical understanding of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in First Apology, §XXV.
Thus, the anti-Nicene tradition could affirm three distinct divine persons while rejecting the Nicene doctrine that they share one uncreated divine nature.
XV. Why homoousios remained controversial
The word homoousios is not found in Scripture, nor does Scripture explicitly formulate the later technical distinction between one divine essence and three distinct hypostases.
A Nicene theologian can reasonably reply that doctrinal terminology need not appear verbatim in Scripture to express its meaning faithfully, but the anti-Nicene objection concerns something more specific: how can one establish that a particular metaphysical formulation is the uniquely correct interpretation of revelation rather than a theological explanation imposed upon it?
The danger perceived by opponents included the possibility that language of identical substance could imply a material division of God or a collapse of Father and Son into a single person.
Arius explicitly rejected such interpretations in Urkunde 6.
The later anti-Nicene formula adopted at Sirmium in 357 objected to the use of technical substance terminology in doctrinal definitions, partly because such terms were absent from Scripture and because the manner of the Son’s generation exceeded human comprehension.
That formula did not reproduce Arius’s original theology in every respect.
It does demonstrate that the concern about moving beyond biblical terminology remained an important part of subsequent anti-Nicene controversy.
Athanasius, for his part, gives a revealing explanation of the Nicene terminology in De Decretis, §§19–20.
He explains that opponents could accept expressions such as the Son being from God while interpreting them in ways the Nicene Fathers considered incompatible with the apostolic faith.
The Fathers therefore adopted more precise language to exclude those interpretations.
This is particularly significant because the controversy was not simply over whether an expression appeared in Scripture.
It concerned whether an interpretation of that expression preserved the intended doctrine.
XVI. The cumulative anti-Nicene case
The strongest anti-Nicene argument doesn’t depend upon a single isolated prooftext, it claims that Scripture repeatedly distinguishes between:
The Father as the ultimate, unoriginated source.
The Son as the uniquely generated being who receives existence from the Father.
The Son’s existence before the world.
His role as mediator of creation.
His perfect agreement with the Father’s will.
His reception of divine authority.
His uniquely exalted status.
This interpretation attempts to preserve the full range of biblical affirmations without accepting the Nicene conclusion that Father and Son possess one uncreated divine nature.
The Nicene theologian responds by distinguishing eternal generation from creation, divine nature from incarnate condition, and personal relations from essential divine attributes.
Those distinctions form a systematic account capable of addressing the apparently subordinating passages, but the highly disputed question is whether Scripture itself establishes that system as the only permissible interpretation.
The anti-Nicene position is that the biblical data admit a coherent hierarchical interpretation and that the Nicene metaphysical distinctions require further justification.
This doesn’t demonstrate that Arianism is true, obviously, but it does establish the burden of argument facing anyone who claims that the Nicene doctrine follows so transparently from Scripture that a competing interpretation could not reasonably arise.
Appendix: The Strongest Documented Anti-Nicene Responses to the Decisive Nicene Objections
A. John 1:3: How could a created Son be the agent of creation?
The Nicene objection
If everything that came into existence was created through the Word, the Word cannot Himself belong to the category of created things.
Otherwise, He would have had to cause His own existence.
Athanasius formulates this objection in Contra Arianos, II, §§21–22.
The documented anti-Nicene response
The anti-Nicene theologians distinguished the Father’s direct production of the Son from the creation of everything else through Him.
In Contra Arianos, II, §24, Athanasius explicitly attributes to Arius, Eusebius, and Asterius an explanation according to which God produced the Son as an intermediary through whom the rest of creation could subsequently come into existence.
Their explanation involved the idea that ordinary created nature could not endure the Father’s direct creative action.
Athanasius objected that this generates a contradiction: if created nature cannot endure direct production by the Father, how could the Son, who is supposedly created, endure it?
He further argued that the theory generates an infinite regress of intermediaries.
The documented further anti-Nicene arguments
The historical record preserves several responses.
First: the appeal to Moses.
In Contra Arianos, II, §27, Athanasius reports that his opponents appealed to Moses as an example of God acting through a subordinate agent.
Their underlying point was that divine action through an intermediary doesn’t necessarily establish that the intermediary possesses the divine nature.
Athanasius replied that Moses merely ministered, whereas Christ participates in bringing beings into existence.
A possible anti-Nicene rejoinder
Athanasius’s response doesn’t necessarily defeat the original argument, because it addresses a distinction that the anti-Nicene need not dispute.
The point was never that Moses and Christ performed equivalent works. The point was that divine agency exercised through an intermediary does not, in itself, establish that the intermediary possesses the divine essence.
An anti-Nicene could readily concede that Moses merely ministered to Israel, whereas the Son participated in bringing the universe into existence. But why should the difference between their functions necessarily imply that the Son possesses the same uncreated nature as the Father?
That conclusion follows only if one first establishes that God cannot confer upon a uniquely generated being the power to participate in creation. But that is precisely what remains to be demonstrated.
One cannot simply assume that participation in creation is intrinsically incommunicable and then use that assumption to prove that the Son must be uncreated. That would make the conclusion depend upon the very premise the anti-Nicene disputes.
Indeed, 1 Corinthians 8:6 distinguishes the Father, from whom all things exist, from Jesus Christ, through whom all things exist. An anti-Nicene could argue that this distinction is consistent with the Father’s possessing creative power intrinsically while the Son exercises creative agency derived from Him.
This is not an entirely hypothetical line of reasoning. In Contra Arianos, II, §28, Athanasius reports Asterius’s argument that the Son received from the Father the capacity to carry out the work of creation.
The issue, therefore, cannot be settled merely by observing that Moses did not create the universe.
What Athanasius must establish is not simply that the Son performs an incomparably greater work than Moses, but that performing such a work necessarily entails possessing the Father’s uncreated essence.
Until that additional premise is demonstrated, the inference from the Son’s creative activity to His consubstantiality with the Father remains open to challenge (only if one rejects the belief that the Ecumenical Council was divinely protected from error and maintains instead that its doctrinal definitions are authoritative solely because no alternative interpretation of Scripture can be logically and rationally defended).
Second: the argument from unique functions.
In §27, Athanasius also reports that his opponents appealed to the uniqueness of the sun and the earth.
The underlying challenge was that possessing a unique function does not necessarily imply possessing an uncreated nature.
Athanasius responded by distinguishing the functions of created things from the unique creative activity of the Word.
Third: Asterius’s argument from delegated ability.
In §28, Athanasius preserves an argument attributed to Asterius: the Son could receive the ability to create from God, as someone learns a skill from a master.
Athanasius objected that creative power cannot be acquired by a creature in the same way that an ordinary skill can be learned.
He also questioned why God would grant such power to only one created being.
These objections and counterarguments are historically documented.
The anti-Nicene position could abandon the claim that God needed an intermediary because ordinary creation could not endure His immediate creative action.
Instead, it could maintain that the Father freely chose to produce one unique Son and to create everything else through Him.
This avoids both the infinite-regress objection and the suggestion that God required assistance.
Eunomius’s distinction between the Father’s direct production of the Son and the creation accomplished through Him provides a historical basis for such a formulation.
However, this complete response to Athanasius’s regress argument is a logical reconstruction, not a surviving verbatim reply from Arius.
The remaining difficulty concerns the scope of John 1:3.
Does its universal language necessarily include the Son’s unique origination, or does it refer to the created order brought into existence through the Logos?
It is important to recognize that the anti-Nicene distinction between the Father’s direct origination of the Son and the subsequent creation of everything else through Him is not merely a hypothetical response to John 1:3.
It is historically documented.
In Urkunde 6, §§2–4, Arius and his followers explicitly distinguish the Son’s unique origination before the ages from the creation of the ages and all other things through Him.
Moreover, in Contra Arianos, II, §24, Athanasius attributes this very distinction to Arius, Eusebius, and Asterius, even as he vigorously challenges the theological explanation they offered for it.
But the evidence becomes more striking in the writings of Eunomius.
In his First Apology, §26, Eunomius explicitly invokes John 1:3 and immediately affirms that the Son alone was brought into existence directly by the Father.
Eunomius therefore did not overlook John 1:3 or regard it as an obvious refutation of his Christology. He explicitly incorporated the passage into a theological system that distinguished the Son’s unique origination from the creation of all other things through Him.
This does not establish that his interpretation was correct. Nor does it demonstrate that the universal language of John 1:3 unambiguously permits the distinction.
It does, however, establish something enormously important: the anti-Nicene interpretation was not simply an attempt to evade a biblical passage its proponents had failed to consider.
At least in Eunomius’s case, the very passage invoked as a decisive objection to the created status of the Son was explicitly employed within a theological argument affirming that status.
B. Hebrews 1:3: If the Son is divine radiance, how could He have a beginning?
The Nicene objection
The Son is described as the radiance of God’s glory.
Athanasius argues that light cannot exist without its radiance.
Therefore, the eternally existing Father cannot have existed without His Son.
Evidence from Arius’s own writings
The fragments of Arius’s Thalia provide an important piece of evidence.
Arius explicitly attributes the designations Radiance and Light to the Son.
Yet the same fragments present the Son as receiving His existence through the Father’s will and deny His co-eternity with the Father.
This demonstrates that Arius did not regard the radiance imagery as necessarily entailing the Nicene doctrine.
The strongest reconstructed argument
An anti-Nicene theologian could distinguish between the meaning an analogy conveys and every property belonging to the physical reality used in that analogy.
The Son may be called the Father’s radiance because He uniquely manifests divine glory, but does the metaphor necessarily establish that He is co-eternal with the Father?
The Nicene theologian replies that the very point of the analogy is inseparability.
The anti-Nicene theologian could answer that Scripture does not explicitly state that every feature of physical radiance must be transferred to the Son’s divine generation.
The historical evidence establishes that Arius accepted radiance language without accepting co-eternity.
C. The Son as God’s Wisdom and Power
The Nicene objection
Athanasius argues that if God’s Wisdom or Power came into existence, God must once have lacked Wisdom or Power.
That would contradict divine perfection.
Asterius’s documented response
Asterius developed a distinction between:
God’s eternal intrinsic wisdom and power.
The uniquely generated Son, who is called Wisdom and Power because He manifests the Father’s activity.
Athanasius preserves the argument in Contra Arianos, II, §37.
Asterius appeals to 1 Corinthians 1:24 and Romans 1:20.
He argues that God’s intrinsic eternal power must be distinguished from the Son who is designated God’s Wisdom and Power.
Consequently, God did not become wise when the Son came into existence.
The Father was eternally wise.
The Son was produced as the unique personal manifestation of divine wisdom.
The Nicene counterargument
Athanasius objects that this introduces a distinction between God’s true Wisdom and the Son whom Scripture identifies as His Wisdom.
It threatens to reduce Christ’s divine titles to external designations.
The strongest further anti-Nicene rejoinder
The anti-Nicene theologian could insist that Scripture frequently attributes names according to function, participation, or manifestation.
The fact that Christ is called Wisdom doesn’t automatically establish that He is identical with God’s intrinsic wisdom.
The Nicene argument therefore depends upon a particular account of the title’s meaning.
It cannot establish eternal consubstantiality merely by repeating that Christ is called God’s Wisdom.
The distinction advanced by Asterius is documented, the final elaboration of its implications is a logical reconstruction.
D. Divine worship: Why would Christians worship a creature?
The anti-Nicene rejoinder: does worship necessarily establish identity of divine essence?
Athanasius presents a formidable objection to Arian Christology in Contra Arianos, II, §§23–24.
His argument is that Scripture forbids the worship of creatures. In Revelation 22:9, an angel refuses John’s act of worship and directs him to worship God instead. Yet Hebrews 1:6 commands the angels themselves to worship the Son.
Athanasius concludes that the Son cannot belong to the created order: if He were a creature, He would be receiving the very worship that creatures are forbidden to accept.
But a historically informed anti-Nicene theologian could challenge a crucial premise in this argument: that every act described by the biblical language of worship necessarily expresses recognition of the recipient’s uncreated divine essence.
The Greek verb proskyneō, used in Hebrews 1:6, doesn’t invariably denote worship reserved exclusively for God.
In the Septuagint, 1 Chronicles 29:20 employs the same verb when describing the people’s act of prostration before both the Lord and the king.
The distinction is significant. Scripture can describe an outward act of homage toward God and toward a divinely appointed human ruler without thereby implying that the ruler possesses God’s nature.
An anti-Nicene interpreter could therefore argue that the act of proskynesis, considered in isolation, does not establish the ontological status of its recipient. Its meaning must be determined by context.
This would provide a direct answer to Athanasius’s contrast between Hebrews 1:6 and Revelation 22:9.
The angel in Revelation refuses John’s worship because he is a fellow servant, with no authority to receive that particular act of homage. The Son, by contrast, occupies an altogether unique position: He is the Father’s appointed heavenly sovereign, through whom the Father created the world and to whom the Father has subjected the heavenly powers.
On this interpretation, the distinction would not be between a creature who illegitimately accepts worship and another creature who correctly refuses it.
It would be between an angel who has not been appointed to receive such homage and the uniquely exalted Son whom the Father Himself commands the angels to honor.
Paul describes God as exalting Jesus and bestowing upon Him the supreme name, so that every knee should bend and every tongue confess His lordship. Crucially, this universal acknowledgment culminates in the glorification of God the Father.
An anti-Nicene theologian could therefore maintain that the Son receives extraordinary, indeed universal, honor because the Father has conferred this dignity upon Him, and that the honor offered to the Son ultimately glorifies the Father.
The decisive question would then become:
Why must the Father’s command that all angels honor His Son entail that the Son possesses the Father’s uncreated essence? Why could it not express the unique authority conferred upon the Son by the Father?
This distinction has genuine historical support
It is especially important that this is not an entirely modern reconstruction.
In a fragment of a letter dated approximately AD 322–323, Theognis of Nicaea, an early supporter of Arius, distinguishes the veneration accorded to the Son from the worship of the Father.
His surviving words state: “we venerate the Son, because among us it is certain that this glory of his ascends to the Father.”
The fragment is preserved in Latin. Its accompanying statement about worshiping the Father alone includes an editorially reconstructed phrase, but the distinction between venerating the Son and directing His glory to the Father is present in the surviving text.
This is highly relevant.
It demonstrates that an early anti-Nicene theologian could acknowledge the Son’s extraordinary dignity while distinguishing the honor He receives from the worship properly directed to the Father.
The same underlying concern appears in the fourth-century controversy over Christian prayer and doxology.
Consequently, the anti-Nicene distinction between honor directed to the Son and worship ultimately directed to the Father has a documented historical foundation.
The application of that distinction specifically to Athanasius’s juxtaposition of Hebrews 1:6 and Revelation 22:9 remains a reconstruction; the underlying theological distinction itself does not.
The remaining Nicene objection
None of this proves that the anti-Nicene interpretation is correct.
Athanasius could respond that the Son’s reception of universal heavenly worship is fundamentally different from the homage given to an earthly monarch.
He could also appeal to John 5:23, which requires honoring the Son as the Father is honored, and to John 20:28, where Thomas addresses the risen Christ as his Lord and God.
Furthermore, Philippians 2:10–11 echoes Isaiah 45:23, where universal submission belongs to the God of Israel. This makes the passage considerably more difficult to explain as merely an instance of delegated royal honor.
These are substantial Nicene objections.
Nevertheless, the anti-Nicene response exposes an important distinction: the fact that Scripture commands the angels to honor the Son does not, simply by virtue of the word proskyneō, establish that the Son must possess the same uncreated essence as the Father.
To reach that conclusion, Athanasius must establish that the honor accorded to Christ is necessarily divine worship in the strictest sense, rather than the unique homage commanded by God for His supreme heavenly mediator.
That conclusion may be the correct one, but it requires theological interpretation of the relevant passages and their relationship to one another.
The anti-Nicene position therefore cannot be dismissed merely by observing that Hebrews 1:6 commands the angels to worship Christ. The precise theological significance of that command is itself part of what the controversy seeks to determine. Which goes to show that the mere appeal to Scripture cannot and could not risolve the dispute. Which is also exactly why the Fathers used an unbiblical term to establish the correct sense of the Scripture.
ESalvation: Does Scripture Necessarily Require an Uncreated Savior?
The Nicene objection
Athanasius argues that salvation requires more than the forgiveness of sins. Humanity must be united to God and delivered from corruption through participation in divine life. A creature, being itself dependent upon God, cannot accomplish this union. Therefore, the Savior must be the uncreated Word Himself.
Remarkably, Athanasius himself preserves an Arian response: “Yet,” they say, “though the Saviour were a creature, God was able to speak the word only and undo the curse.” ( Contra Arianos, II, §68.)
The objection challenges the assumption that salvation necessarily requires an intrinsically divine mediator. If God possesses the power to remove humanity’s condemnation, why could He not accomplish His saving purposes through a uniquely appointed creature?
Athanasius replies that merely removing the curse would restore humanity to its former condition without permanently overcoming its corruption. Salvation requires a deeper transformation through union with the uncreated Word.
The stronger documented anti-Nicene position
Eunomius develops a theological framework in which the Father is the ultimate source of divine action, while the Son and the Holy Spirit exercise powers derived from Him.
In his First Apology, §§XXV–XXVII, he explicitly maintains that:
The Son is ontologically subordinate to the Father but exercises genuine divine authority in creation, providence, and salvation.
The Holy Spirit, whom Eunomius considers created through the Son, nevertheless possesses the power of sanctification and instruction.
The Son’s authority and subordinate relationship to the Father are supported by passages including Acts 2:36, 1 Corinthians 8:6, John 6:57, John 5:19, and 1 Corinthians 15:28.
The anti-Nicene position can therefore make a substantial biblical argument.
John 17:2 states that the Father gave Christ authority to communicate eternal life. Matthew 10:8 and Acts 9:40 likewise demonstrate that God can exercise life-giving power through agents who do not possess His divine essence.
These examples do not establish that the apostles perform the same saving work as Christ. They establish a narrower but logically important principle: the exercise of a divinely bestowed power does not, by itself, prove that its recipient possesses the uncreated divine nature.
Consequently, the anti-Nicene theologian can distinguish between God as the ultimate source of salvation and the Son as the uniquely appointed mediator through whom God accomplishes it.
The Nicene counterargument and the anti-Nicene rejoinder
Athanasius would insist that this distinction fails to explain how humanity can genuinely participate in divine life.
Gregory of Nyssa advances a related argument concerning the Holy Spirit: the Spirit’s divine operations demonstrate His divine nature (Contra Eunomium, II, §15).
However, Eunomius had already challenged the underlying identification of divine operation with divine essence in his First Apology, §§XXIII–XXIV.
His distinction allows for the argument that what God accomplishes through an agent does not necessarily establish what that agent is by nature.
This is a historically documented disagreement about the relationship between divine essence and divine operation, although Eunomius’s earlier argument should not be misrepresented as a surviving direct reply to Gregory’s later text.
The resulting anti-Nicene response is that God could communicate divine life through the Son without the Son possessing the Father’s uncreated essence. The Father would remain the ultimate source of salvation, while the Son would be its uniquely authorized mediator.
Whether this account adequately explains salvation is disputed. But its rejection requires demonstrating that participation in divine life necessarily demands an uncreated mediator—not simply assuming that proposition.
The decisive conclusion
Simply put, the biblical passages under discussion do not logically exclude the anti-Nicene alternative.
Scripture teaches that salvation comes from God through Christ. It does not explicitly formulate the additional proposition that the mediator of salvation must necessarily possess the same uncreated essence as the Father.
The anti-Nicene distinction between the ultimate source of salvation and its appointed mediator therefore remains logically conceivable on the basis of these passages, even if the Nicene interpretation is ultimately correct.
If the Nicene conclusion is claimed to follow necessarily from Scripture alone, the burden is to demonstrate that the anti-Nicene distinction is biblically impossible and irrational and illogical.
Final historical assessment
The historical conclusion is quite significant.
The anti-Nicene theologians could accept biblical language that appeared to support Nicene theology while assigning it a different metaphysical meaning.
This is why the Arian controversy cannot be reduced to one party accepting Scripture while the other rejected it, because the disagreement concerned how Scripture’s various statements should be reconciled and which theological conclusions legitimately followed from them.
This consequently establishes something historically important: the disputed texts were capable of sustaining elaborate and mutually incompatible theological arguments, and resolving those disputes required more than merely repeating the same biblical expressions.
The decisive question, therefore, is not merely whether the doctrine of Nicaea can be defended on scriptural grounds. It is whether Scripture, in the absence of an ecclesiastical authority capable of definitively resolving doctrinal disputes, provides a criterion that all competing interpreters must acknowledge as conclusive. The Arian controversy demonstrates precisely why the answer is no: Scripture is nowhere near as straightforward or unambiguous in its meaning as some would have us believe, and competing interpretations cannot always be conclusively settled simply by appealing to the very text whose meaning is in dispute.
Of course it doesn’t matter to you. I have yet to identify what does.
You are attributing to me claims I have never made. Christ is God, and He founded a Church. You, along with many others, maintain that He endowed that Church with neither binding doctrinal authority nor any authoritative role in determining and safeguarding the truth.
You also seem to believe that when Christ promised that the Holy Spirit would come and guide us into all truth, that promise was perfectly compatible with the notion that the Church possesses no authority to establish definitively what divine revelation means, and that no one can deliver a binding judgment concerning the correct interpretation of Scripture.
That is your position, not mine.
If the first fifteen centuries of Christianity carry no weight for you, and if neither does the antiquity of a teaching, so be it.
But what you think of my arguments, and the irritation you display whenever your unbridled relativism is challenged, matter infinitely less to me. And let me be absolutely clear: this is directed at you, and you alone. I don’t feel this way about anyone else here. Ignoring each other would probably be the wisest course of action.
According to the scriptures, Satan was defeated at the Cross; the visit to the dead was part of Jesus’ triumphal march.
Jesus’ whole point was that His Kingdom was coming into this world.
That happened at the start. Second-Temple Judaism had already recognized Two Powers and was beginning to realize that there were Three – the Trinity comes right out of the Old Testament.
Not explicitly. You have never claimed to be God, nor do you claim the Church to be God.
but
Your words say so. What you affirm and assert says so.
(despite your blatant use of AI and ridiculously long posts)
You claim the authority and certainty of God. You cannot be wrong.
You have no right to call anyone not humble. Your words speak more than the content (as does the words or Scripture)
Because it is beyond your comprehension. I do not think as you do, and that is all there is to it. You have neve tried to understand my view, you just assert and justify yours.
Rule no 1 in a discussion (argument)
Understand what you are arguing against.
I have said al that I need to. Take it or leave it (I am sure which you will do)
I will attempt to back out, but I will not leave an insult or false accusation unchallenged.
In other words, what I’m asking you is not whether Jewish sources could accommodate an exalted heavenly figure associated with God’s identity, authority, or even divine name, what I’m asking you is whether those sources necessarily establish that this figure is uncreated, eternally begotten, and consubstantial with God. Those are two very different propositions.
Think about Philo of Alexandria, a first-century Jewish thinker.
I think this demonstrates something directly relevant to your argument: Jewish theological language could attribute extraordinary divine status to an intermediary without thereby establishing the Nicene doctrine.
The scholarly interpretation of Two Powers in Heaven is also considerably more complex than your description suggests.
A relevant piece of evidence comes from 11QMelchizedek (11Q13), a Jewish manuscript from Qumran dated paleographically to approximately 50–25 BC.
In his study Interpretation of Scriptural Texts in 11QMelchizedek and Its Theological Implications (2021), biblical scholar Andrzej Paweł Cekiera examines the remarkable fact that Melchizedek is associated with the Elohim of Psalm 82:1 and receives functions elsewhere attributed to YHWH.
Cekiera acknowledges that this provides substantial evidence for scholars who identify Melchizedek with God Himself. However, he then raises an important question: does the application of divine titles and functions necessarily establish Melchizedek’s identity with YHWH?
He observes that Melchizedek could instead be:“just yet another superior celestial being.” (Page 427)
Let me quote him extensively: “The interpreters who identify Melchizedek with God find strong arguments in lines 9-14, where the judgment during the last tenth jubilee is mentioned. The whole discussion concerns the determination of who the subject of this final אלוהים settlement is. The name “Melchizedek” appears to coincide with the title through the quotation from Is 61:2, in line 9. In both cases, the scriptural phrase “the year of the grace of YHWH” is used, with the abovementioned replacement of God’s name with Melchizedek’s name in the pesher. In II, 10 the author of the pesher clarifies that the quotation from Ps 82:1 also applies to Melchizedek, in which the first use of אלוהים means Melchizedek and the double expression -denotes a heavenly court, i.e. “divine assembly”. For the author of the pesher Melchizedek’s heavenly origin and the function of judge in the presence of other אלהים are beyond doubt. But does this necessarily imply his identification with God Himself? He may as well just be yet another superior celestial being. It is on this assumption that the arguments of the opponents of the hypothesis identifying Melchizedek with God are based”.
Cekiera subsequently sets out the arguments advanced by scholars who reject Melchizedek’s identification with YHWH.
First, Melchizedek acts as an intermediary. In column II of 11Q13, he appears as the agent of eschatological liberation. Cekiera notes that the Hebrew verb shuv (שׁוב), used in the Hiphil form, presents Melchizedek as the agent who brings about the return of those being delivered. This supports an interpretation of his role as mediatorial.
Second, Melchizedek proclaims deliverance on God’s behalf. The interpretation of Isaiah 61:1 suggests that he announces liberation as someone commissioned by another rather than acting independently.
Third, Melchizedek executes God’s judgments. In 11Q13 II, 13, his task is to carry out divine judgment. Cekiera refers here to Claudio Gianotto, who argues that God can remain the supreme judge while delegating the exercise of judicial authority to a heavenly representative.
Fourth, Melchizedek receives assistance from other heavenly beings. The reference in II, 14 is presented as a further argument against identifying him straightforwardly with the transcendent God who rules over all celestial beings.
Fifth, the terminology itself does not necessarily establish ontological identity. Cekiera observes that, in the Qumran writings, Elohim (אלהים) was relatively rarely used specifically for God, whereas El (אל) was commonly employed as a substitute for the divine name YHWH. He explains that Elohim had a broader semantic range and could also designate heavenly or angelic beings.
These are documented scholarly arguments, not Cekiera’s definitive identification of Melchizedek. His study establishes that the interpretation of this pre-Christian Jewish text remains contested. The attribution of divine titles and functions does not, by itself, settle whether Melchizedek is YHWH or a distinct heavenly intermediary.
Source: Andrzej Paweł Cekiera, Interpretation of Scriptural Texts in 11QMelchizedek and Its Theological Implications, The Biblical Annals 11/3 (2021), pp. 426–427, especially p. 427.
This is where another scholarly study becomes particularly important.
In Michael or Yhwh? Toward Identifying Melchizedek in 11Q13 Client Challenge Rick Van de Water examines precisely the same pre-Christian manuscript.
Unlike Cekiera, Van de Water explicitly connects the figure of Melchizedek in 11Q13 with the tradition later designated by the rabbis as the Two Powers in Heaven.
His article addresses the competing interpretations of Melchizedek as either an angelic figure or an identification of YHWH Himself.
Van de Water proposes that these interpretations may be reconciled by understanding Melchizedek as an expression of the theological phenomenon later called the Two Powers in Heaven.
These two studies taken together therefore document something precise: Cekiera documents the competing interpretations of Melchizedek’s status and the textual arguments supporting them, Van de Water independently and explicitly connects this same figure with the Two Powers tradition.
Consequently, there is a documented scholarly basis for examining the Two Powers phenomenon through a pre-Christian Jewish text in which a heavenly figure receives divine titles and exercises divine functions, while the precise ontological implications remain heavily disputed.
You wrote “I say it does” but where is the evidence of that when as it can be shown there were disputes about it? I used the word “Necessarily”.
But the most revealing evidence comes from Arius himself.
In his Letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia, Urkunde 1, §§3–4, Arius explicitly calls the Son God (theos) while simultaneously denying that the Son is unbegotten or without an origin. From the third paragraph: “We are not able to listen to these kinds of impieties, even if the heretics threaten us with ten thousand deaths. But what do we say and think and what have we previously taught and do we presently teach? — that the Son is not unbegotten, nor a part of an unbegotten entity in any way, nor from anything in existence, but that he is subsisting in will and intention before time and before the ages, full , God, the only-begotten, unchangeable.” Then in chapter 4: “Before he was begotten, or created, or defined, or established, he did not exist. For he was not unbegotten. But we are persecuted because we have said the Son has a beginning but God has no beginning”
In the Letter of Arius and his followers to Alexander of Alexandria, Urkunde 6, §§2–4, they describe the Son as “the perfect creature of God, but not as one of the creatures.” They affirm that the Father brought the Son into existence before the ages and created everything else through Him. Chapter 4: “And God, being the cause of all that happens, is absolutely alone without beginning; but the Son, begotten apart from time by the Father, and created and founded before the ages, was not in existence before his generation, but was begotten apart from time before all things, and he alone came into existence from the Father. For he is neither eternal nor co-eternal nor co-unbegotten with the Father, nor does he have his being together with the Father, as some speak of relations, introducing two unbegotten beginnings. But God is before all things as monad and beginning of all. Therefore he is also before the Son, as we have learned also from your public preaching in the church.”
Even more strikingly, in the confession submitted by Arius and Euzoius to Constantine, Urkunde 30, §§3–4, they explicitly call Christ “God the Word”, affirm that everything was made through Him, and invoke the baptismal formula of Matthew 28:19. Chapter 3: “We believe in one God the Father Almighty, and in the Lord Jesus Christ his Son, who was begotten of him before all ages, God the Word through whom all things were made, both things in heaven and on earth; who descended, and became human, and suffered, and rose again, ascended into heaven, and will again come to judge the living and the dead. We believe also in the Holy Spirit, and in the resurrection of the flesh, and in the life of the coming age, and in the kingdom of the heavens, and in one catholic church of God, extending from one end of the earth to the other.”
Arius could affirm Christ’s divine title, His pre-existence, His unique relationship to the Father, His role in creation, he could even call Him God, without accepting the Nicene understanding of His divine nature.
That is also why simply identifying a second heavenly figure associated with Yahweh doesn’t settle the controversy.
You still need to demonstrate that the figure’s participation in divine authority entails the possession of the Father’s identical, uncreated essence and that this can be argued as a necessary inference (not just a well-grounded interpretation, because even Arianism was well-grounded) from Scripture alone.
Arvis has essentially argued that the meaning of Scripture is “plain enough,” and that those who interpret it differently must either be unwilling to submit to it or have an agenda of their own.
I maintain that this is demonstrably false, as the Arian controversy itself illustrates. Arius accepted that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, and even God, but understood the latter title in a fundamentally different sense from that affirmed at Nicaea.
My argument is that Scripture provides substantial grounds for defending the Arian interpretation. This obviously doesn’t mean that the Arians were correct (i fully and wholeheartedly affirm that the fathers at Nicaea exposed the true meaning of Scripture), what it does mean is that the Nicene interpretation was BY NO MEANS self-evident and the only rationally and biblically defensible interpretation, and that alternative readings could be defended through serious biblical and theological argument.
Consequently, the authority of the Council cannot be established merely by asserting that its conclusions were scriptural, as though Scripture admitted no other rationally defensible interpretation. After all, the Arians also appealed to Scripture and developed sophisticated arguments in support of their position.
The Council’s authority must therefore rest on something more than the supposed obviousness of its interpretation of Scripture: namely, its ecumenical character and the divine protection from error that, according to the Church’s understanding even from back then in the first millenium, ecumenical councils enjoy.
That is precisely my point: the Council did not become authoritative because its interpretation was self-evidently the scripturally correct one. Rather, its authority enabled it to settle a controversy that Scripture alone had not conclusively resolved for the competing parties.
Arvis obviously disagrees and claims that the Council is authoritative because it agrees with (his own interpretation of) the meaning of Scripture, but this is circular reasoning because it assumes that the meaning of Scripture is plain enough, which isn’t true at all, and I think I have provided good arguments to establish this conclusion, both in this post and in the previous one.
I’ve been following your exchange here under the topic of logic and reason, and it is a demonstration of the confusion that exists within Christianity, because of a lack of continuity between the teachings of Jesus and the churches.
Every council that happened in early Christianity affected the teachings of Jesus, but without proper documentation, without a dissenting opinion maintained for us to look at. So, the information we have today is highly tainted by survival bias.
One good example is the creation of a cannon. We have no information of why certain books were discarded, with the dissenting opinion to keep them in. A good example of that course is Enoch. They decided to keep the book of Jude in the Cannon, which mentions Enoch, but they determined that Enoch was too complicated, difficult or contradictory, and so they discarded it. But we don’t know why, and we don’t know what their motives were.
This is the bigger picture that I had hoped to talk about, instead of talking about what this council said, and what that council said, and what is heresy and what is not heresy, but rather what were the major changes and why were they made to Christianity? These changes were large enough to inspire the reformation, and that should be the key point of discussion.
So, when you ask me to prove what Origen taught, I cannot. I can only infer what he taught by what the Roman church found objectionable, but that does not by all means imply we should ignore Origen or Enoch or Arius or Didymus or etc. But rather hold them as possible explanations for the behaviour that we cannot explain today. The church was too quick to call something heresy or the work of the devil, like the fact that earth rotates around the sun.
The first paper that I wrote on this subject was in 2002, but with the advent of AI, the problem has become magnified. Here are the two papers if you are interested.
I am not an expert of the topic but I have got the impression that the writings that were canonized first were generally (in most local churches) accepted as authoritative guides in matters of faith and read in services. The second criteria was related to the teaching of the original Apostles - the canonized scriptures were generally considered to give the same teaching as the Apostles.
Some writings were read in many but not all churches, and the status of the writings were questioned by some. For these writings, it took longer to agree whether they should be included within the library (bible) of the canonized scripture.
Early Christians read and cited also other writings but these other writings did not get the same general trust and status as the canonized writings.
Someone who knows the process better can correct where I have misunderstood the process.
I can’t see how it doesn’t: the Shema excludes any entities from the status of deity other than Yahweh. That means that if Jesus is divine in any way, He must be Yahweh, with the same substance and attributes. There is no room left for any entity that is somehow divine to not be uncreated and consubstantial.
Yeah, we read that in the original, and I scoffed at Philo at the time. He tramples not just the Shema but John 1.
I’d say Arius didn’t take the Shema seriously: there is only one Yahweh, and Arius is making two.
I think I understand your reasoning, i appreciate it too, but I’m not convinced that your conclusion necessarily follows from the Shema itself. I’m just saying that you are being too categorical.
The crucial question is whether Deuteronomy 6:4 establishes not only the uniqueness of YHWH, but also the further proposition that whenever Scripture attributes divinity to another figure, that attribution must necessarily imply possession of YHWH’s own uncreated essence.
I don’t think the text itself establishes that second proposition.
In fact, there is substantial biblical scholarship questioning precisely the assumption that the Shema should be understood primarily as an ontological definition of divinity.
For example, Arnold Huijgen and Arie Versluis, in their study “Our God Is One”: The Unity of YHWH and the Trinity(2018, pp. 213–225), explain that Deuteronomy 6:4 primarily expresses the unique covenantal relationship between YHWH and Israel, rather than defining the ontological status of other beings.
This is particularly significant because these authors explicitly defend Trinitarian theology. Nevertheless, they distinguish the original meaning of the Shema from its subsequent Christological interpretation in 1 Corinthians 8:6 and the theological development of Trinitarian doctrine.
Nathan MacDonald reaches related conclusions in his monograph Deuteronomy and the Meaning of “Monotheism”, emphasizing that the biblical declarations of YHWH’s oneness must be understood in the context of Israel’s exclusive love and allegiance to Him.
An even more explicit interpretation is offered by Leonardo Pessoa da Silva Pinto in The Shema and the Devotion to Only One Deity (2019). After examining the Hebrew text and its literary and historical context, Pinto argues that the Shema originally functioned as a demand for exclusive devotion to YHWH rather than an explicit denial of the existence of every other divine being.
These scholars don’t agree on every aspect of biblical monotheism, but their work demonstrates that the interpretation you are treating as logically unavoidable is not the only academically defensible interpretation of Deuteronomy 6:4.
There is also a relevant distinction within Scripture itself.
Like I told you even privately, in Exodus 7:1, Moses is designated elohim in relation to Pharaoh. Likewise, Psalm 82:6 employs divine terminology for other figures, a passage Jesus explicitly invokes in John 10:34-36.
Obviously, these passages don’t establish that Christ is merely a representative of God but they demonstrate the narrower point that biblical divine terminology does not invariably communicate identity of uncreated essence.
The historical evidence concerning Arius is equally relevant, because as I’ve already shown Arius distinguishes the uniquely unbegotten Father from the Son, whom he regards as brought into existence through the Father’s will.
Nevertheless, in the profession of faith submitted by Arius and Euzoius to Constantine, Christ is explicitly designated “God the Word.”
Thus, we have direct historical evidence that Arius could acknowledge Christ as God while assigning that designation a meaning different from the Nicene understanding of consubstantiality, and it’s not just like because he was clueless or a defiant heretic either.
Regarding the Two Powers in Heaven controversy, I would also be cautious about assuming that it necessarily concerned two equally uncreated divine persons.
David Michael Grossberg’s research offers a different historical reconstruction. In The Evolution of Jewish Monotheism(Cambridge University Press, 2025), he examines Jewish conceptions of divine intermediaries and argues that the rabbinic controversy included opposition to Jewish subordinationist beliefs involving created divine agents.
His reconstruction is not an uncontested scholarly consensus, but it is directly relevant to whether the Two Powers controversy can simply be equated with the recognition of two ontologically equal divine persons.
My point is not that the Shema proves Arianism, or even that Arianism provides the best interpretation of Scripture.
It is that the following inference requires justification:
YHWH is one.
Christ is described using divine language.
Therefore, Christ must necessarily possess the same uncreated essence as the Father.
The conclusion doesn’t unless we first establish that the divine language applied to Christ necessarily denotes precisely that ontological identity.
And that is the very issue the Arians disputed.
I fully recognize that arguments for the Nicene position can be developed from other biblical passages and from Scripture considered as a whole, what I’m saying is that Scripture doesn’t make the nicene reading categorically, unquestionably and self-evidently true.
Do I believe the nicene reading to be absolutely and unquestionably true? My answer is an unqualified yes.
But not because the texts themselves categorically deprive alternative readings of theological and rational dignity. Because they don’t.
But in the OT there is only one Yahweh, and that one Yahweh is identified as the only Lord and as the only Savior. There are many elohim, but only one Lord, the One Who rules the divine council. When Paul calls Jesus “Lord”, it is an assertion that Jesus is Yahweh – and by the Shema, Yahweh cannot be divided. And Paul pretty much says that Jesus is Yahweh with his reference in Philippians 2 to Isaiah 45. So I don’t see any but two options: either there is a God/Lord besides Yahweh, or Jesus is Yahweh – either way, Arius fails.
Now I’m wondering how the vocabulary available to Koine Greek sets parameters to the discussion – including whether any of the Council Fathers was fluent in Hebrew (something I doubt).
I basically always like your arguments and the way you word them, and I agree that the connection between Philippians 2:9–11 and Isaiah 45:23 is theologically significant. I wouldn’t want to minimize it.
My question, however, is whether that connection necessarily establishes the Nicene doctrine of Christ’s uncreated, consubstantial nature, or whether reaching that conclusion requires an additional interpretive step.
I think several considerations show why that distinction matters.
First, the Old Testament itself distinguishes God’s unique sovereignty from the authority exercised by His appointed representatives.
In Exodus 23:20-23, God sends an angel who acts with extraordinary divine authority and in whom God’s own name resides. Yet the angel is presented as one whom God sends.
Similarly, although Scripture identifies YHWH as the ultimate Savior, Nehemiah 9:27 explicitly speaks of saviors whom God raises up to deliver His people.
Neither example establishes Arian Christology, but both demonstrate an important principle: the attribution of divine authority, the divine name, or even saving activity to an agent doesn’t, by itself, establish that the agent possesses God’s uncreated essence.
Second, the Greek word κύριος (Lord) doesn’t invariably designate YHWH either.
Consider Psalm 110:1, where YHWH addresses someone whom David calls his lord. In the Greek Septuagint, κύριοςappears in reference to both figures, although the Hebrew distinguishes YHWH from adoni.
Obviously, Paul’s application of κύριος to Christ carries considerably more theological weight than an ordinary honorific title, particularly in 1 Corinthians 8:6, but the meaning of the word alone cannot settle the ontological question.
Third, consider what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 8:6.
Paul identifies:
One God, the Father, from whom all things exist.
One Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things exist.
This is an exceptionally elevated Christology, and its relationship to the Shema is important. Nevertheless, Paul also distinguishes the Father as the ultimate source from the Son as the one through whom divine activity is accomplished.
That distinction is compatible with the Nicene interpretation, but it doesn’t automatically and necessarily establish consubstantiality.
Moreover, in 1 Corinthians 15:24-28, Paul describes the Son as ultimately subject to the Father.
A Nicene theologian can explain this in terms of the Son’s incarnate mission and the distinction between divine nature and personal relations, but that is precisely an interpretation of Paul’s language, not something established merely by the word Lord as a necessary and straightforward inference.
Fourth, Philippians 2 is particularly revealing because the ancient Arians actually used this passage in their arguments.
Paul unquestionably applies to Christ the universal homage associated with YHWH in Isaiah 45. But the same passage also says that God exalted Christ and bestowed the supreme name upon Him, with the resulting confession directed toward the glory of God the Father.
One possible interpretation understands this as the Father’s conferral of supreme authority upon His uniquely exalted Son, without requiring that the Son possess the Father’s uncreated essence, and this isn’t merely a modern hypothetical objection: in Orations Against the Arians, I, §37, Athanasius explicitly reports the Arians appealing to Philippians 2:9–10 to argue that Christ’s exaltation and reception of divine honor were bestowed upon Him.
Athanasius responds by interpreting the exaltation as referring to Christ’s humanity rather than to an advancement of His eternal divine nature (see §§41–45).
I’m not suggesting that Athanasius had no answer. He certainly did and i fully believe he was correct.
My point is that both parties recognized the relevant passage, yet disagreed about what its language of divine exaltation actually established. The text itself doesn’t explicitly formulate the distinction on which Athanasius’s response depends.
This interpretive possibility has also been recognized in modern scholarship.
In his doctoral thesis, https://etheses.durham.ac.uk/id/eprint/1287/1/1287.pdf (University of Durham, 1998, pp. 92–94, especially p. 93), biblical scholar James F. McGrath explicitly examines the relationship between Philippians 2:6–11 and Isaiah 45:23. McGrath agrees with N. T. Wright that the Christological hymn in Philippians applies to Jesus an acclamation originally addressed to God in Isaiah. However, he challenges Wright’s assumption that a first-century Jewish reader would necessarily have understood this application to mean that Christ was not merely pre-existent but eternally divine.
Drawing on Larry Hurtado’s research into early Jewish monotheism, McGrath points out that first-century Judaism accommodated beliefs about exalted heavenly figures who exercised divine authority as God’s appointed agents or representatives. Some of these figures could even bear the divine name without thereby being regarded as independent deities or as threats to Jewish monotheism. Within this religious framework, the attribution of divine honours and the divine name to Jesus did not necessarily require the conclusion that he shared God’s eternal nature. McGrath also emphasizes the significance of the hymn’s concluding phrase, “to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:11), which he understands as affirming that Christ’s exalted lordship does not diminish the unique glory belonging to God.
McGrath’s argument is historical and exegetical rather than a defence of any particular fourth-century theological position, he doesn’t claim that Christ’s eternal divinity is disproved by Philippians 2, nor does he attempt to vindicate Arius against Nicene orthodoxy. His argument is more precise: the application of Isaiah 45:23 to Christ, however significant for understanding early Christian beliefs about Jesus, doesn’t by itself establish that the author of the hymn conceived of Christ as eternally divine in the later Nicene sense. The passage may be read consistently with Nicene Christology, but that interpretation cannot simply be treated as the necessary or exclusive meaning of the Isaianic allusion within its first-century Jewish context.
Finally, regarding Greek and Hebrew, I think that is a worthwhile historical question. I would hesitate to make a categorical claim about the Hebrew proficiency of every bishop at Nicaea without specific evidence. What matters for our discussion is that the Greek biblical vocabulary itself allowed different interpretations, as the controversy between Arius and Athanasius demonstrates.
So I would respectfully question your proposed dilemma.
The possibilities are not necessarily limited to either a second independent God alongside YHWH or a Son who possesses precisely the same uncreated essence as the Father.
There was also the historically documented subordinationist interpretation: one supreme, unoriginated God, acting through a uniquely exalted Son who derives His existence and authority from the Father.
In short: the Shema, the application of κύριος to Christ, and even the extraordinary language of Philippians 2 do not logically and theologically disprove the value of the Arian reading.
And that is really my central point. I’m not arguing that Nicene Christology lacks biblical support. I’m questioning the much stronger claim that Scripture makes its precise ontological conclusions so dispotically unavoidable that a historically documented alternative can simply be dismissed as logically and theologically incoherent.
This is my central point because all I’m saying is that the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea wasn’t authoritative because it merely re-established the blindlingly obvious meaning of the Scripture that only the uneducated, the defiant heretic or the disingenuous could dispute, Nicaea’s interpretation was authoritative for a very different reason.
Indeed, this should be clear from the controversy itself. Had the biblical texts been sufficient, on their own, to rule out the alternative interpretation, the Nicene fathers would hardly have needed to introduce the extra-biblical term homoousios to settle the matter. And if the Arian reading had been so manifestly mistaken that its errors could be conclusively demonstrated from Scripture alone, it is difficult to explain why it proved so persuasive to so many Christians, including a considerable number of bishops. The very fact that the controversy was so widespread and protracted suggests that the exegetical issues were far less straightforward than later appeals to the supposedly self-evident meaning of Scripture would have us believe.
I just want to add something to this, because Wolfram Kinzig’s analysis of the Council of Nicaea provides good historical grounds for questioning the claim that Nicene Christology was simply the self-evident and inescapable meaning of Scripture.
In The Creed of Nicaea: Old Questions, New Answers, Kinzig explicitly acknowledges that “the biblical evidence is not unequivocal” (p. 233).
His point is not that Nicene theology lacks biblical foundations. Indeed, he recognises the thoroughly biblical language of the creed. Rather, the fourth-century controversies revealed that the biblical evidence required sustained theological interpretation and conceptual clarification. The doctrinal conclusions eventually associated with Nicene orthodoxy were not established merely by pointing to scriptural passages whose meaning no reasonable Christian could dispute.
Kinzig’s account of how the creed acquired normative authority is equally significant. He explains that its wording was established through the conciliar process and that its authority was secured through episcopal subscription, describing it as a creed “whose normativity was established by the signatures of the bishops” (p. 222).
He also observes that the council’s anathemas were pronounced in the name of the Catholic and Apostolic Church, thereby claiming to express the faith of the universal Church in continuity with the apostles (p. 231).
Crucially, as we can see, Kinzig doesn’t confuse that claim with universal acceptance. He explicitly notes that many bishops subsequently rejected the Nicene formula, and he emphasises the role of imperial power in enforcing its authority (pp. 231–233). Nor does he dismiss all opposition to Nicaea as intellectually dishonest or theologically frivolous. He acknowledges that some of its critics acted “for good reasons and with honourable motives” (p. 234), even while recognising the lasting theological significance of the Nicene settlement.
The historical conclusion is therefore a carefully qualified one: Nicaea’s authority cannot be explained solely by an appeal to the supposedly obvious meaning of Scripture. Its normative and authoritative status was also established through an episcopal decision that claimed to articulate the faith of the Catholic and Apostolic Church.
It means that, in his historical reconstruction, the Council’s authoritative determination played a constitutive role in establishing the boundaries of doctrinal orthodoxy, precisely in a controversy where the interpretation of Scripture remained disputed.
Source: Wolfram Kinzig, “The Creed of Nicaea: Old Questions, New Answers,” The Ecumenical Review 75, no. 2 (2023): 215–234.
