2 May 2024 John 15:9-11
How are we saved?
This was the great and penetrating question of St. Athanasius, who is remembered by Catholics in the days between Easter and Pentecost. In the fourth century days of the Arian heresy, Athanasius was the chief defender of Catholic Christianity. He was exiled five times for his efforts, and Catholic teaching did not finally prevail among the ruling classes of the later Roman Empire until the fifth century. It prevailed because Athanasius could answer the question, and Arius couldn’t.
So why was Arianism so popular for so long?
To understand the grip of Arianism it is important to bear in mind that the Roman Empire was not converted all at once. Constantine was only able to make Christianity the religion of his government, not the official religion of the Roman Empire. Many Romans, particularly in the ruling classes, weren’t willing to let go of their paganism all at once. Many were harsh in their criticism of Christianity, some calling Christians dirty hypocrites for bad-mouthing Roman polytheism when it was pretty clear that Christians worshiped three gods – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Arius became as popular as he did because it was thought he had the solution, one that affirmed the monotheism of God the Father, and preserved the roles of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The One, True God, Arius said, was God the Father, inaccessible, unapproachable, Very God over All. Jesus and the Holy Spirit were the semi-divine creatures by whom God the Father accomplished his will. This view had the additional benefit of resembling what pagans had always said about Hercules, the most popular of all the pagan deities in the eastern half of the Roman Empire. Hercules was a demigod, offspring of Jupiter, the king of the gods, and the human Alcmena. Hercules was known for his great strength and his many labors, and was honored in more temples in the eastern Roman Empire than any other pagan deity. Jesus, Son of God and born of a woman, who referred to God the Father as His Father, and did many righteous things, struck many pagans as similar to Hercules, and so comfortable and congenial.
Arius’ views struck many as the perfect way to persuade pagan critics. Hepreserved Christian monotheism, and at the same time gave pagans an on-ramp into Christian teaching by the similarity to Hercules. Arius, in other words, was a conservative, looking for a way to preserve the best in the pagan and Christian worlds, an approach appearing to most as solid and sensible.
Athanasius was the one who struck people as a radical. The Doctrine of the Trinity – One God in Three Persons – looked utterly baffling to fourth century minds. How the certainly human Jesus could be “of the same substance” as the Lord and Creator of the Universe seemed irrational crazy talk, and Arius by comparison looked sane, careful, and utterly reliable.
So why did Athanasius finally win?
It all came down to a single question: How, then, are we saved?
“As the Father loves Me, so also I love you” (John 15:9), Jesus said. If Jesus is “of the same substance” as God the Father, then His love for us is the love of God. If He is not “of the same substance,” then his love is not the love of God, and we are not saved, not yet. Arius’ monotheism was so rigid that there did not appear to be any way in which the love of God the Father – or any other part of him – could reach people, and apart from that there was no salvation, no life everlasting, no heaven.
In the end Athanasius could answer the one most important question, and Arius could not. That is why Athanasius finally won. He knew how we are saved.
We are still being saved the same way: “As the Father loves Me, so also I love you.” God touches us, and therefore so does heaven.
That’s the answer.
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