Your paper illustrates the principle that in order to properly understand Christianity one must understand what Jesus actually taught. This requires that we focus on the earliest period of Christianity.
Your paper presents no conclusions about the Arian controversy and implies that the issue remains muddled even today. In my opinion, this is incorrect.
FYI, I am going to briefly summarize the Arian controversy as I understand it. I believe the controversy arose out of the church’s “need” to declare its institutional authority over Christians.
In the first centuries, there were many varieties of Christians, everything from Jewish Christian sects that continued to stress the importance of Jewish Law to gnostic Christians who in my opinion preserved the esoteric core of what Jesus actually taught. Soon after the Council of Nicaea, many of the various iterations (including the gnostics) came under fierce attack by the Roman church.
The roots of the Arian controversy date to the second century when certain theologians deviated from Jesus’ teaching about the immortality of the soul, i.e., immanence. Tatian was one of these, and he was followed by Gregory of Nysa, St Jerome, and Augustine. Each of whom added another brick to the new artificial construct. All of them taught that the soul is created from lowly dust along with the body at conception or birth.
The controversy ignited when a Libyan priest named Arius pointed out the flaw in the church’s new teaching. At issue was the human versus divine nature of Jesus. Arius merely pointed out that by this reasoning the soul of the God-realized avatar Jesus must likewise have been made of lowly dust. This was a problem because it meant that at some point in time the soul of Jesus did not exist. It followed that Jesus, while exalted, could not be on an equal footing with God the father.
Athanasius led the orthodox contingent at Nicaea. He insisted on the absolute equivalence of Father and Son. Even though a vast majority of Christians supported Arius, the anti-Arian bishops held a majority in Council and ruled in favor of Athanasius. No surprise that Arius was condemned as a heretic.
Athanasius gets credit for the new doctrine of the Trinity that emerged from Nicaea. The Trinity idea was not based on Scripture, however, nor divine revelation, but solely on logic. Given the equivalence of Father and Son, the Holy Spirit could not be left out, so its inclusion became a logical necessity. From its inception, the Trinity doctrine was and remains a purely artificial construct.
Despite the ruling, Arianism continued to be very popular because by affirming the humanity of Jesus Arius held out hope for ordinary people. Implicit in Arianism is the gnostic belief that ordinary Christians can follow in the footsteps of the savior. The views of Arius were perfectly compatible with the teaching of immanence, the indwelling of God in all of creation.
The real issue at the heart of the controversy, as the writer Elizabeth Claire Prophet has pointed out, was not the denial of the divinity of Jesus (as the church contended at Niceae and as the Catholic Church still contends) but instead the question: “How is man to be saved? By emulating Jesus? Or by worshipping him?” Today, the Catholic Church emphasizes worship (and obedience) when it should be inspiring Christians (as Jesus did) to pursue sainthood.
The personal triumph of Athanasius at the council was a hollow victory. By scapegoating Arius, the church only magnified its original error of embracing a doctrine of the soul that repudiates the divine presence in all matter.
By asserting the equivalence of Father and Son the church was in effect declaring that the soul of Jesus was different in kind from the souls of ordinary people. This was fateful because it undermined the mystical element in Jesus’ own teachings, and opened up a vast gulf between God and humans.
The new Catholic Encyclopedia clearly states the extent of this chasm: “Between Creator and creature there is the most profound distinction possible. God is not part of this world. He is not just the peak of reality. Between God and the world there is an abyss…”
The abyss was wholly artificial, the creation of the church, yet it was also a self-serving artifice, a means for institutional Christianity to vastly increase its earthly power. Today, Catholic doctrine holds that the church is the sole bridge over the otherwise unbridgeable chasm between God and men.
I would go another step and also argue that the outcome of Niceae was a serious devolution, a step back toward Judaism and the absolute patriarchal rule of the angry jealous god Yaweh. It appears that Christianity was undermined from within by church fathers bent on maintaining control over Christians. To me this smacks of psychopathy at work, namely, the Jewish revolutionary spirit.
This material is drawn from my 2004 book Gnostic Secrets of the Naassenes. Hope it helps!
The definition or redefinition of words and concepts shows the profound importance of the human psycholinguistic complex or constellation. Changing just a few words or definitions can impact many centuries of human history. We can see many changes in our psycholinguistics today, almost all of which are imposed on our communities without our consent or understanding. Diversity is Our Greatest Strength is but one of many examples. It may seem as if nothing is happening when words and concepts change meaning or are weirdly asserted, but when those changes are imposed top-down and asserted by Big Media, you can be sure they portend a foul change is afoot and we will pay dearly for it within a short time. ABN
American Buddhist Net 