Duvduv

I came across this link of a church history written by an Arian called Philostorgius around the beginning of the fifth century. From the Table of Contents it looks interesting because the surviving excepts discuss the 4th century events from a non-orthodox perspective.
http://books.google.com/books?id=wYm...istory&f=false

stephan huller

What's the question?

Duvduv

I have no question. I am simply referring to this book since coincidentally i have been wondering about views concerning what happened to the sects in the 4th or 5th centuries.

Duvduv

Unfortunately the pages online are limited, and it doesn't cover much of the details of the history of the Arians.
I found another link that has more: http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/philostorgius.htm

However, it does sound as if the disputes over christology erupted only in the 4th century, which appears rather strange if they had a Christian faith going back at least 200 years, and the fact that there were writers (Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus) focusing on the nature of the trinity appears equally strange in the 4th century considering the conventional view is that such ideas went back a long time.

Duvduv

I can see now how the disputes over the nature of the Christ were not merely obscure theological details. The question over the nature of the Christ strikes at the heart of whether he could be understood to be a NON-HUMAN docetic or angelic being, or an actual physical being in the physical world.

The orthodox needed a way to preclude the possibility of him being non-physical for those sympathetic to Jewish ideas of a physical messiah while at the same time needing a way to emphasize his deity nature in God so as to appeal to the pagans who had those beliefs in their own religion.

Saying the Christ had any kind of ONE NATURE would therefore be insufficient for either audience, and therefore someone like Athanasius or Alexander of Alexandria could not have tolerated this from Arians or Appolonians or anyone else if they were to serve their imperial masters properly in crafting the new religion for the empire.

Duvduv

One thing that stands out is that in the selection of writings is that it is the "orthodox" writers (Alexander of Alexandria) invoke statements from certain epistles and gospels, but invoking these texts does not show up in the the writings attributed to Arians. (http://www.fourthcentury.com/index.php/arius-chart)

However, there is one statement evoking the Great Commission in Matthew in a letter attributed to Arius and Euzoius to Constantine. However, according to what I have found, Euzoius was expelled from the church around 379, and Constantine AND Arius died around 336. So how could Euzoius have written a letter to Constantine as much as 50 years earlier and only be expelled from the church fifty years later?!
The Great Commission is said to be in "the holy GOSPELS" as opposed to Matthew.
In any case, something seems a bit fishy here. Did the orthodox argue that the heretics did not invoke the canonized texts?

andrewcriddle

Euzoius as a young priest was a friend of Arius, he continued active for c 40 years after Arius' death, becoming Arian bishop of Antioch.

Andrew Criddle

Duvduv

In a book written by someone named John Aikin in 1802 called General Biography of the Lives of the Most Eminent Person it indicates that there were supposedly TWO people in the fourth centry named Euzoius. One was a bishop in Antioch associated early on with Arius, while the other a bishop was in the city of Caesarea and was also an Arian who died at the end of the century. He was the one expelled in 379.

mountainman

Now the only problem with the above statement is that we are supposed to believe it. Obviously God spoke to Bullneck in person, and we are the beneficiaries of that conversation. Isn't faith a wonderful thing.

Roger Pearse

After Nicaea, the Arians gained ascendancy in the empire. Constantine's successor, Constantius II, was himself an Arian. The Nicene party, led by the Cappadocian fathers, fought back but it was a long struggle before Arianism burnt itself out (as all fashions do), and its remaining exponents could be expelled.

All the best,

Roger Pearse