Book review: “Arius: Heresy and Tradition” by Rowan Williams

It’s flippant and inelegant to say that, for seventeen hundred years, Arius has been the bogeyman of Christian theology. But it’s true.

As Rowan Williams notes — with greater literary sophistication — in his in-depth search for the truth about North African presbyter and ascetic Arius: Heresy and Tradition:

“Arianism”’ has often been regarded as the archetypal Christian deviation, something aimed at the very heart of the Christian confession. From the point of view of history, this is hardly surprising: the crisis of the fourth century was the most dramatic internal struggle the Christian Church had so far experienced; it generated the first credal statement to claim universal, unconditional assent, and it became inextricably entangled with issues concerning the authority of political rules in the affairs of the Church…

By the time that the great upheavals within the empire were over, Arianism had been irrevocably cast as the Other in relation to Catholic (and civilized) religion.

These are the opening words of Williams’ book, initially published in 1987. He puts the word “Arianism” in quotes because, he argues, Arius was not the leader or founder of a school of followers who shared a common, coherent set of beliefs.

Instead, he was something of a lightning rod for opposition to a more formalized, centralized movement within Christianity that resulted in the Nicene Creed. It was in that light that Arius was identified as “standing for some hopelessly defective form of belief.”

That, however, was far from true. He was, writes Williams, “a thinker and an exegete of resourcefulness, sharpness and originality.”

 

“A kind of Antichrist”

A second edition of Arius, with a section of updates, was released in 2001, a year before its author was elected to be the senior bishop of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and three years before his collection The Poems of Rowan Williams was longlisted for the Wales Book of the Year award.

A Welsh Anglican and a man of many parts, Williams writes that, in his research, he sought to find the real Arius — not the Arius as defined and demonized by his contemporary opponents, such as Athanasius, the patriarch of Alexandria, and by generations of theologians to the present day. Williams notes:

Arius himself came more and more to be regarded as a kind of Antichrist among heretics, a man whose superficial austerity and spirituality cloaked a diabolical malice, a deliberate enmity to revealed faith…By the early medieval period, we find him represented alongside Judas in ecclesiastical art.

A bogeyman, in other words.

Or, as Williams puts it: “No other heretic has been through so thoroughgoing a process of ‘demonization.’ ”

And, over the centuries, everyone seems to have piled on, such as John Henry Newman, the nineteenth-century Anglican priest and Catholic convert who, like Arius’s early opponent Athanasius, has been canonized as a Christian saint.

 

“Complacent bigotry and historical fantasy”

While still an Anglican and in his early thirties, Newman wrote what Williams calls his “justly celebrated” book The Arians of the Fourth Century, propounding a new and original interpretation of the roots of Arianism.

However, in its opening pages, Newman argues that Arianism was fascinated by the practices and doctrine of Judaism, which he denigrates as a “carnal self-indulgent religion.”

Williams will have none of that. He writes:

One must charitably say that Newman is not at his best here: a brilliant argument, linking all sorts of diverse phenomena, is built up on a foundation of complacent bigotry and historical fantasy.

 

“Conducting a debate”

Over the centuries, theologians and Christian leaders have trotted out arguments, characterized by sloppy thinking and research as well as a lack of respect, to turn Arius into a convenient whipping boy.

The fact is, however, that Arius and others opposed to the Nicene promulgations weren’t outliers but members of the same communion who shared much in terms of theology and philosophy. Williams writes that, in the fourth century, those who were called Arians and those called Catholics “were conducting a debate within a largely common language, acknowledging the same kind of rules and authorities.” And he adds:

We need to grasp how deeply Arius’ agenda — and the rather different concerns of most of his followers — entered into what was to become orthodoxy in the process of the controversy.

Many Nicene apologists through the centuries sought, despite the facts of history, to argue that “Arianism” was a coherent sect, “as if the boundaries of Catholic identity were firmly drawn in advance.” However, Williams writes that the history of Arius and Arianism “reminds us that this was not so, and, indeed, that the fact that it was not so was one of the major elements in the controversy.”

There are, Williams writes, many difficulties in figuring out precisely what Arius believed, as opposed to what his enemies said he believed. But the effort to see the real Arius and to learn the ideas that Arius and other opponents were pushing will help get a better sense of how orthodoxy came to be orthodoxy.

 

The “conversation” of opposing theologies

Rather than the long-held conventional view of a collision between two clear-cut schools of theology, Williams paints a picture of a diverse set of believers and preachers groping toward a faith that made sense. And the result, Williams seems to suggest, is something of an amalgamation of the many.

The long-term credibility and sustainability of the Nicene faith may have something to do with the degree to which is succeeds — usually more or less unwittingly — in subsuming and even deepening the Christian concerns of the teachers it set out to condemn.

Indeed, this “conversation” between different sides of theological debates is something that continues to the present day: “Orthodoxy continues to be made.” It continues to evolve through such conversations.  Williams notes:

“Arianism” was neither a church nor a “connection,” in its own eyes. “Arians” thought of themselves, naturally enough, as Catholics; or, more accurately, the very wide spectrum of non-Nicene believers thought of themselves as mainstream Christians, and regarded Athanasius and his allies as isolated extremists…

 

Caught in a shift

Arius was caught in a shift in focus within the church. He arose at a time when there were two ways of finding the meaning of Christianity.

One was that of a school in which, to use Arius’ words, “keen-eyed men, instructed by God” taught followers their theological insights.

The other was rooted in the organizational structure and hierarchy of the institutional church.

 

“An anachronism”

Williams notes that part of Arius’ tragedy was that (even among his allies) the tradition of such school-centered Christianity was a dying one, and the controversy became an issue of episcopal politics.

Arius was an anachronism, asking that the Constantinian Church resolve its problems as if it were the federation of study-circles presupposed by the profoundly traditional Alexandrian language of [Arius’] Thalia….The Thalia prologue shows very clearly where he believed the pulse of Christian life to be. He asked to be judged by those whose spiritual experience corresponds to his own, and who understand the proper liberty of speculation that belongs to [those taught directly by God].

That, however, was simply not a realistic hope.

Arius’ dispute with the Nicene faction was taking place at a moment when the church was becoming more organized and seeking greater unity, as opposed to the “certain degree of organizational mess” that previously had been the case.

[This shift in Christian understanding] represented a focus of unity in a common practice of worship, centering upon the presence of the symbolic token of continuity and self-identity, the apostolically-validated bishop, rather than a focus in the personality of the teacher or the distinctive ideas of a school.

 

Sincere, believing, thinking

Williams’ book is divided into three parts.

The first deals with the historical events of Arius’ time and with the small amount of his writing that is extant, as opposed to what his opponents said he wrote.

This is the part in which Williams describes Arius as someone who was honestly arguing for his theological insights and who was caught in a change in the focus of the church, especially after the heavy-handed involvement of Emperor Constantine.

The other two parts look at Arius’ theology and philosophy and how those fit into the thinking of his time.

In these two parts, Williams goes into great detail to try to tease out what Arius was actually preaching. These two parts are written for experts and were difficult and ultimately impossible sledding for me.

However, I came away from the book, as I believe any general reader would, with a strong sense of Arius as a historical figure who was a victim of circumstances.

From what Williams writes, Arius was sincere in his beliefs and did not think of himself as a heretic, but as a believing, thinking Christian. He didn’t deserve — and still doesn’t — his demonization.

 

Patrick T. Reardon

11.15.25