Читать книгу Catholicism For Dummies - Rev. Kenneth Brighenti - Страница 91

Arianism was the most dangerous and prolific of the heresies in the early Church. (By the way, the Arianism that we’re referring to isn’t about modern-day skinheads with swastikas and anti-Semitic prejudices.) Arianism comes from a cleric named Arius in the fourth century (A.d. 250–336), who denied the divinity of Jesus. Whereas Docetism denied His humanity, Arianism denied that Jesus had a truly divine nature equal to God the Father.

Arius proposed that Jesus was created and wasn’t of the same substance as God — He was considered higher than any man or angel because He possessed a similar substance, or essence, but He was never equal to God. His Son-ship was one of adoption. In Arianism, Jesus became the Son, whereas in orthodox Christianity, He was, is, and will always be the Son, with no beginning and no end. Arianism caught on like wildfire because it appealed to people’s knowledge that only one God existed. The argument was that if Jesus was also God, two gods existed instead of only one.

Emperor Constantine, living in the Eastern Empire, was afraid that the religious discord would endanger the security of the realm. He saw how animate and aggressive the argument became and ordered that a council of all the bishops, the patriarchs, and the pope’s representatives convene to settle the issue once and for all. The imperial city of Nicea was chosen to guarantee safety. In Nicea, the world’s bishops decided to compose a creed that every believer was to learn and profess as being the substance of Christian faith. That same creed is now recited every Sunday and Holy Day at Catholic Masses all over the world. It’s known as the Nicene Creed, because it came from the Ecumenical Council of Nicea in A.d. 325.

The punch line that ended the Arianism controversy was the phrase “one in being with the Father” in the Nicene Creed (the phrase that has recently been replaced by “consubstantial with the Father”). The more accurate English translation of the Greek and Latin, however, is consubstantial or of the same substance as the Father. This line boldly defied the Arian proposition that Jesus was only similar but not equal in substance to the Father in terms of His divinity.