WI: The Triumph of Arian Christianity

Admittedly, I know very little about this, but is it possible for the Arian interpretation of Christianity to triumph (how?) with Nicene Christianity being regarded as heresy in this scenario. What would this change about the Christian world/faith? (I know for instance that the Arians saw salvation in a different light to the Nicene Christians (Arian salvation via obedience to God vs Nicene salvation " through God's salvific action and the resulting deification of the believer" which can lead to major differences IMHO).
 
You'd need a POD where the Council of Nicaea either doesn't happen entirely or does happens and Arianism becomes orthodoxy.

As far as what changes that would entail...beats me.
 
Arianism is certainly easier to understand than other branches of Christianity, with the question whether Jesus shares substance, spirit or nature with god. And Islam wasn't around yet.
 
If WRE was less Christianized than IOTL at the time it split from ERE (perhaps division happens earlier) and East is Nicaean while West is still largely pagan, WRE still falls, Arian Germanic tribes gradually convert their Roman subjects in former WRE provinces. Could we have Arian West and Nicaean East in such situation?
 

Philip

Donor
, I know very little about this, but is it possible for the Arian interpretation of Christianity to triumph (how?) with Nicene Christianity being regarded as heresy in this scenario.

You need a very early POD. By the time of Nicea, the trend was away from the Arian-like positions.

Arian salvation via obedience to God vs Nicene salvation " through God's salvific action and the resulting deification of the believer

No. Their differences in soteriology are in fine details. The Arians agreed that the Incarnation was essential to God's work in salvation. It is in the details of how the Incarnation accomplished that that they differed.
 
Admittedly, I know very little about this, but is it possible for the Arian interpretation of Christianity to triumph (how?) with Nicene Christianity being regarded as heresy in this scenario.
Eventually, the triumph of any trinitarian conceptions in the IVth century (and onward) depends on imperial favour, maybe more than strict theological controversy. By the time Ancyre/Nicea is organized, Arius is too isolated clerically to really hope being considered worth following as such.
You'd either need an earlier Arian-like equivalent to appear in the II or IIIrd century , along say Marcionism, to really have a chance at being established as a strong current of the "main" Christianity and then being a viable alternative to maintaining the religious unity.

What you could get eventually, as it happened IOTL with the late reign of Constantine but especially with Constans II and Valens, would be the promotion of a middle-way to resolve christology issues : subordinationism was sort of a semi-arianism on some regards (o the point its opponents called it Arianism to discredite it) and it had some success both among Romans and Barbarians (who converted first to this imperially-sanctionned belief. But while it could last ITTL instead of Niceanism, it wouldn't be Arianism and probably wouldn't consider itself as such.


WRE still falls, Arian Germanic tribes gradually convert their Roman subjects in former WRE provinces. Could we have Arian West and Nicaean East in such situation?
It's a common, but problematic, misconception to identify Arianism to Acacianism/Homeanism : apart an accusation of Arianism (in the same way Orthodoxy tended to define heresies with other ones in order to accuse them, such as frequent accusation of Manicheism way within medieval ara), there were essential difference.

First, while Arius stressed the non-divinity of logos and Son, Subordinationism grant them a subordinate divinity to the Father. Then, not only Homoeianism take great care not to detail and precise the relation within Trinity but frowned upon doing so because it was seen as dwelling into matters Men couldn't understand much and blaspheme a lot.

Originally, people like Goths converted to this branch of Christianity, paying lip-service to the emperor. Then while imperial religious policies changed, they kept it as a convenient identitarian marker to distinguish increasingly undistinguishable Romans and Barbarians.
In the West, peoples as Burgundians and Suevi first converted to a Nicean credo before switching to Homoeanism for the same reasons.
Now, let's imagine that western Romania remains largely non-christianized by the Vth century : it would ask for an early IVth PoD with no conversion of Constantine. It's perfectly doable but would have important consequences, such as no formal distinction between anti-trinitarianism, subordinationism and strict trinitarism. A bad way to start the whole thing.
Furthermore (and possibly ignoring the first problem), as an independent western Romania remaining pagan meaning absolutely a set of pagan emperors, Barbarians settling in the west would have little to no incitative converting to Christianity (Homoeian or Homouiousan).Not only Franks, but also Suevi, Burgundians, possibly Alans and Vandals, etc. Eventually, "only" Barbarians and Foedi converted to the Christianity favoured in the East (assuming that EREmperors made NO tentative to christianize the heck out of their western colleagues as they did IOTL when it was necessary) would rise as Christianised peoples other than Romans : either they quickly switch back to Constantinople's own religious policy; either they will more or less isolated religiously.

Note that even if western Romania remains pagan, at the moment you have an association between imperium and Christianity,at least a large part of Roman senatorial and landowning elites would be christianized (as their clients and surrounding populations) in places such as Italy or Africa in connection with Constantinople.

It's not that you don't have any possibility for subordinationist teaching to make their way in the West, but probably more as a limited influence with a Vth century PoD : Alaric II seems to have attempted a conciliatory religious policy in his kingdom before Clovis' conquest, by having sort of compromise between a largely Nicean population and some Homean (which in itself were already a compromise) beliefs.
 
No. Their differences in soteriology are in fine details. The Arians agreed that the Incarnation was essential to God's work in salvation. It is in the details of how the Incarnation accomplished that that they differed.

That quote came from Jensen's 2011 Theological Hermeneutics. I assumed the guy knew what he's talking about. Clearly not so much. My apologies.
 
That quote came from Jensen's 2011 Theological Hermeneutics. I assumed the guy knew what he's talking about. Clearly not so much. My apologies.
The difficulty is that what ended to be called Arianism covers much more than the teachings of Arius, including later and contradicting stuff (when not made up on the spot by his opponents).
The stress on salvation might be true for actual Arianism, tough, as the Son is not able to process salvation on people but as the Father's will. It doesn't mean for Arius and his supporters, that salvation comes from just obedience, but as participation with God, so to speak. Arius didn't disputed the role into this of the Son as a creature.
AFAIK, it was never really well defined, and Arius's belief we know about is either a defense against accusation, or said accusations (mostly hostiles, and stressing sometimes a kinship with Judaism); and later Subordinationists that claimed a continuity with Arius never really managed to sophisticate their beliefs (possibly on purpose, at least partly)

Homeanism, on the other hand, holds the idea that theologians shouldn't go too much into these matters and rather went to some strong biblical litteralism (which to be fair, was as well defining a strong part of western Nicean religious take). Note that this stress on Scripture, rather than theological development, seems to have been quite present as well with Arius and might be a point that managed to live on in Subordinationism, possibly to cut short to christology and theological sophistication (which is, again, not that limited to Subordinationism itself).
 
I've always seen something in the interpretation that "Arianism" in the context of the Germanic tribes was just as much a political and national concept as a religious one, and that "Arianism" in fact was one of the many things that (re-)created the Gothic societies from various German and other groups. To me, therefore, Arianism coming out on top therefore requires the Goths more directly inheriting the Empire, both East and West. Perhaps Alaric declares himself Emperor of the West and from there manages to patch up the leaking edifice that was the Empire after the Great Migration? I honestly don't think that it would be impossible for him to get many of the Germanic chieftains to swear allegiance to the Empire in exchange for their largely autonomous domains ultimately resulting in a situation somewhere between foederati and proto-feudalism. We see that the WRE was able to project power at least until the Vandalic sack of Rome, so different events might result in a different outcome.

What really has to change, though, is the Goths also inheiriting or taking over the East, but managing to establish themselves as Emperor. Perhaps some Ostrogothic chieftan converts to Orthodox Christianity and marries into the Imperial Family and from there manages to alter the line of succession through himself. However he dies childless and the throne passes to his younger Arian brother? Extremely unlikely for this to happen but it is possible that as Emperor he could slowly reverse Arian tendencies. Essentially though this approach would require inventing a character with the political skills of Justinian...


But, in the extremely unlikely but not totally ASB event that this is pulled off, massive butterflies occur. Arian Christianity as mentioned was extremely close to Islam in some respects and furthermore was much easier to understand and to convert members of societies without complex Platonic philosophies. Therefore it is likely IMO that large portions of Arabia, if not its entirety, are converted to Arian Christianity and possibly absorbed into the Empire as client states, agreeing to be Roman so as not to be Persian but largely autonomous. This may change, of course, if and when Validus Callidus, Dux Romanorum, conquers the East and removes the common enemy of the Sassanids...
 
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Philip

Donor
The difficulty is that what ended to be called Arianism covers much more than the teachings of Arius, including later and contradicting stuff (when not made up on the spot by his opponents).

I suspect this is the case. Sometimes Adoptionism is thrown in with Arianism on the flawed basis that both dispute the Nicene formala. Adoptionism often teaches to obedience as the way to salvation on the basis that Jesus was adopted as the Son of God (whether at his baptism, resurrection, or ascension) due to his obedience.
 
I suspect this is the case. Sometimes Adoptionism is thrown in with Arianism on the flawed basis that both dispute the Nicene formala.
It's quite possible : Spanish "adoptianism" is often lumped together with actual Adoptianism (long story short, for spanish "adoptianists" the divine part of Christ was always divine, it's the human part that was adopted) then lumped together with Arianism because Homoenism is lumped together with Arianism.
It's a mix of "it's the same area, so there's a connection" (of course, it's not the same area where we can spot Homeans surviving to Reccared's conversion), opponents giving labels because it's easier to disprove something already recorded and it kinda looks the same, etc.

Long story short, it's an awful mess, even if indeed, Spanish clerics heterodoxal take on Trinity was closer to Nestorianism than Arianism. Which isn't necessarily saying much besides that IXth scholars had access to Nestorian works.

Adoptionism often teaches to obedience as the way to salvation on the basis that Jesus was adopted as the Son of God (whether at his baptism, resurrection, or ascension) due to his obedience.
True, but that might not have been the case with IXth century christology of Spain : the stress seems (again, we have not much of what these people actually believed, and rather their opponent's take on it) to be put much more (if not entierely) on the double but one nature of Christ that humiliated himself and "gave up" on a divine part that was reclaimed/retaken (it's quite sophisticated at this point, and I'm not sure I understood it correctly) by baptism where both natures were fused together, the Father and the Logos adopting the Son (which never ceased to be the Son of all eternity)
 
Not familiar with that text. Does he provide a citation, preferably primary?

It doesn't seem like it.
A note in the next paragraph links to Zizioulas' 1985 "Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church" since the section mentions the Cappadoccian Fathers' response and how they formulated the ousia and hypostasis as a response to Nicene Christianity's dilemma of the explaining the Trinity.
 
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