§ 125. SEMI-AKIAJSI8M. G4?
contradictions and philosophical absurdities of their positions. Arianism teaches two gods, an uncreated and a created, a supreme and a secondaiy god, and thus far relapses into heathen polytheism. It holds Christ to he a mere creature, and yet the creator of the world ; as if a creature coukl he the source of life, the origin and the end of all creatures! It ascribes to Christ a pre-mundane existence, but denies him eternity, while yet time belongs to the idea of the world, and is created only therewitli,' so that before the world there was nothing but eternity. It supposes a time before the creation of the pre-exi stent Christ ; thus involving God himself in the notion of time ; which contradicts the absolute being of God. It asserts the unchangeableness of God, but denies, with the eternal generation of the Son, also the eternal Fatherhood ; thus assuming after all a very essential change in God.* Athanasius charges the Arians with dualism and heathenism, and he accuses them of destroying the whole doctrine of salvation. For if the Son is a creature, man remains still separated, as before, from God ; no creature can redeem other creatures, and unite them with God. If Christ is not divine, much less can we be partakers of the divine nature and childi-en of God.*
§ 125. Semi-Aricmism.
The Semi- Arians,* or, as they are called, the Homoiousi-' asts," wavered in theory and conduct between the Nicene
' Mundus non factus est in tempore, sed cum tempore, says Augustine, although I camiot just now lay my baud on the passage. Time is the succession al form of existence of all created things. Now Arius might indeed have said : Time arose with the Son as the first creatuie. This, however, he did not say, but put a time before the Son.
* Of less weight is the objection, winch was raised by Alexander of Alexandria: Since tJie Son is the Logos, the Arian God must have been, until the creation of ihf Son, SA070S, a being without reason.
' Comp. the second Oration against the Arians, cap. 69 ff.
* 'OfiOLuvcnaoToi. The name Husebians is used of the Arians and Semi-Arian?, who both for a time made common cause, as a political party under the lead cf Kuse/iius of Nicomedia (not of Caesaiea), against the Athanasians and Nicer es
G50 THIKD PEKIOD. A.D. 311-590.
orthodoxy and the Ariaii heresy. Their doctrir e makes th€ impression, not of an internal reconciliation of oi)posite8 which in fact were irreconcilable, but of diplomatic evasion, temporizing compromise, flat, lialf and \\aU Juste miluu. They liad a strong footing in the subordination of inost of the ante Nicene fathers ; but now the time for clear and definite decision had come.
Tlieir doctrine is contained in the confession which waa proposed to the council of Nicoea by Eusebius of CiBsarea, but rejected, and in the symbols of the councils of Antioch and Sirmium from 340 to 360. Theologically they were best repiesented first by Eusebius of OiBsarea, who adhered more closely to his admired Origen, and later by Cyril of Jerusalem, who ap])roached nearer the orthodoxy of the Nicene party.
The signal term of Semi-Arianism is homoi-ousion^ in distinction from Jiomo-ousion and hetero-ousion. The system teaches that Christ is not a creature, but co-eternal with the Father, though nut of the same, but only of like essence, and iSubordinate to him. It agrees with the Nicene creed in asserting the eternal generation of the Son, and in denying that he was a created being ; while, with Arianism, it denies the identity of essence. Hence it satisfied neither of the opposite parties, and was charged by both with logical incoherence. Athanasius and his friends held, against the Semi-Arians, that like attributes and relations might be spoken of, but not like essences or substances ; these are either identical or different. It may be said of one man that he is like another, not in respect of substance, but in respect of his exterior and form. If thi Son, as the Semi-Arians admit, is of the essence of the Father, he must be also of the same essence. The Arians argued : There is no middle being between created and uncreated being ; if God the Father alone is uncreated, everything out of him, including the Son, is created, and consequently of different essence, and unlike him.
Thus pressed from bcth sides, Semi-Arianism could not long withstand ; and even before the council of Constantinople it passed over, in the main, to the camp of orthodoxy.'
' Bull judges Semi-Arianism very contemptuously. ' Semi Arianus," says h*