A lesson from history is instructive as to how precarious the Church's existence has been at times in history. And how holy men who loved Jesus and his Ekklesia dealt with much worse things than the corrupt, immoral behavior of Popes.
There would be no Gospel to proclaim but for men like St. Athanasius who stood athwart the tide and defended what we presume as orthodoxy today but was very nearly lost forever. So Jesus's promise in Matthew 16:18 stands kept to this day. All of this occurred WITHIN the structure and governance of the Ekklesia. No rebellion. No revolution. Gospel restored and preserved. Ekklesia intact. Unlike the so-called "Reformation," the Arian threat to the Gospel and the Ekklesia was defeated within the structure and governance of the Ekklesia. Instead of unraveling, it pulled together.
Let's look at just how existential Arianism was to the Gospel and the Ekklesia.
The Arian heresy stands as perhaps the greatest internal crisis the Church has ever faced, a battle not merely over governance or discipline, but over the very identity of Jesus Christ.
Arianism, named for the Catholic priest who was most closely associated with its ideas, affirmed a created, finite nature of Christ rather than equal divinity with God the Father. This error strikes at the very heart of salvation itself, for if Christ is not truly God, His sacrifice cannot redeem; if He is not truly man, there is no one to be redeemed through Him.
The Arian heresy was an existential threat to the faith of Christendom, spreading so widely in the eastern parts of the Empire that it endangered civil as well as religious peace.
Constantine, witnessing the extent to which the Arian controversy was troubling and endangering the unity of the Church, felt compelled to intervene in religious affairs and so in 325 he called for a council of the Church in the city of Nicea, where bishops from throughout the Empire would assemble to settle the issue.
It is important to appreciate that the controversy was not merely a theological skirmish among ivory-tower scholars. It was ripping entire communities, dioceses, and regions apart.
There were twenty Arian sympathizers among the more than 300 bishops present at the Council of Nicaea. The champion of orthodoxy was St. Athanasius of Alexandria, only a young deacon at the time, who stood nearly alone against the Arian tide.
To combat the Arian heresy, the Council formulated the Nicene Creed, which was required of all Christians to learn and memorize, to be recited at all Eucharistic services in perpetuity. It seemed like a decisive victory. It was not.
The formal condemnation at Nicaea did not extinguish Arianism. It detonated it.
Even though the Council of Nicaea strictly defined Christianity as a Trinitarian religion, the Arian heresy continued to grow and spread for decades. Having been defeated in the hierarchy of the Church, the Arians turned to civil politics as a means of gaining power over ancient Christianity.
After two years, Arius declared he had repented. He and the bishops excommunicated with him returned to the Church and then secretly expanded their influence, teaching their doctrine, and retaliating against opponents.
The political dimension cannot be overstated. Because of the influence of the Arian bishop Eusebius upon Constantine the heresy became so well established in the see of Constantinople that for fifty years, from the death of Constantine until the reign of Theodosius the Great, every bishop of Constantinople was Arian.
When a series of pro-Arian emperors arrived on the scene, Arianism spread like wildfire. After the murder of Constantius's brother Constans in 350, the empire was consolidated under the rule of Constantius and it appeared that the entire Christian world had fallen into Arian hands.
St. Jerome's famous cry from the period captures the devastation: "The whole world groaned, and marveled at finding itself Arian!" St. Athanasius was in exile off and on for thirty-one years.
Five times exiled by Arian emperors, yet never recanting, never compromising. History gave him the title Athanasius contra mundum (Athanasius against the world).
Upon his return to Alexandria from his last exile in 365, St. Athanasius received such popular acclaim that the Arian Emperor Valens, now ruling the Empire, feared an uprising should he banish him again. For the remaining eight years of his life, he was allowed to perform quietly the duties of his office.
His witness is a profound lesson: one man, grounded in truth, can outlast an empire's error.
Even as Arianism was being beaten back in the Roman Empire, it was spreading outward into the Germanic tribes. Some emperors favored the Arians for political reasons; others, faithful to the Church, opposed them, but even in exile the Arians continued to spread their heresy, and many of the barbarian tribes became converts to Arian Christianity.
The followers of Arianism spread Arian Christianity among the Heruli, the Vandals, and the Ostrogoths. This meant that as the Roman Empire collapsed and Germanic kingdoms rose across Europe, Arian kings ruled over Catholic populations, creating centuries of tension, persecution, and missionary effort.
The definitive imperial end of Arianism came with Emperor Theodosius, whose Edict of Thessalonica in 380 declared Nicene Christianity the official religion of the Empire. Arianism continued to be a recurring problem in the ancient Church for the following two centuries. It was not fully extinguished in the West until the conversion of the Visigoth king Reccared to Catholicism in 589.
Threat defeated. Ekklesia intact. Jesus's promise fulfilled.
