defer to Christ’s own interpretation of the event, in the synagogue in Nazareth, where Luke reports that Christ read from the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah and then announced the prophecy fulfilled in himself. May God’s spirit descend upon you and anoint you for service as well, Athanasius. I pray that it may be so.” Thoroughly disarmed, I could think of no response. Another time, I inquired if he would consider reviewing a chapter in the thesis I am writing on the Incarnation of the Word. He simply asked, “Do you follow John in concluding that ‘the Word became flesh,’ or do you go further and state, as John was careful not to do, that ‘the Word became man?’ For a man is more than flesh; he has a soul—a human soul. Do you posit in Christ a human soul, Athanasius, or a divine one?” Once again I could muster no answer, and simply shrugged, turning away in embarrassment at my inability to engage on the question.
Arius does more than bring home to me the reality of my own intellectual shortcomings. He scratches at the vulnerable space where I hide my doubts, where I encase the questionable elements and troubling entailments of the positions I stake out and strive to defend. He challenges my beliefs at their soft points.
The noon prayers are ended, but I linger to reflect quietly by myself. And for the beggars to disperse.
Chapter 6
Throughout the Mediterranean world as the Edict of Milan was put into practice, the spread of Christianity reached a pace it had not enjoyed in decades. Wholly apart from the cessation of persecutions, Constantine’s own conversion had given the religion increased credibility, and it expanded steadily along with his hegemony. He saw in it a potential for unifying the empire, if only it could overcome its own internal squabbling, which seemed to the Emperor to be on the rise. In a perverse and ironic way, he deemed himself partially responsible for the increased dissention, for he knew that the cessation of Roman oppression had dissolved a significant bond of Christian unity: resistance against a common foe.
In the Egyptian capital, Arius devoted himself not only to preaching but to study, quietly spending as much time as possible at the ancient Temple of Serapis, where an offshoot of the city’s great library was housed. There in the quiet of its marbled reading room, surrounded by thousands of scrolls catalogued to every field of human knowledge, he felt at home. His scholarly mind pored over the Scriptures and the writings of Greek philosophers and Christian thinkers, constantly formulating, discarding, revising and re-formulating his theories—all the while engaged in prayer and living the pious and ascetic lifestyle that had been his hallmark since returning to the city. Beyond the library walls his popularity grew steadily, as Christians from throughout the city and visitors from afar flocked to his church to hear sermons that expounded a more literal reading of Scripture, subtly challenging the allegorical interpretations that had marked Alexandrian thought for over a century and were regularly preached by the priests and catechumens who enjoyed Alexander’s patronage. That Arius did not enjoy the prelate’s favor had proven to be no obstacle at all to the growth of his adoring congregation, now by far the largest in the city.
Convinced that his popularity would be his protection, Arius grew ever bolder in his preaching. On a balmy Sunday morning, as early clouds gave way to brilliant sunshine, he stood outside of his church and greeted the many regular worshippers and inquisitive new visitors who had come to pray and to hear his words. As the crowd gathered, Arius felt an overwhelming sense of responsibility. There had been enough equivocation, enough innuendo in his sermons, enough laying a foundation for the conclusion he now felt ready to lay out. Ascending the pulpit to preach and looking out onto the throngs assembled before him, he knew that Alexander had spies among the congregation, but he was undeterred. Lucian had spent years making critical revisions of the text of the Septuagint to correct its Alexandrian colloquialisms. Now, this morning, Arius set himself to ridding it of the distinctly Alexandrian spin which rendered so much of it as an allegorical witness to Christ, no matter how strained the interpretation. The time had arrived.
“Be on your guard, my brothers and sisters,” he preached in Coptic, “for we must test and prove everything in Scripture, lest we fall prey to the seductive attraction of mystical symbolism. There is unavoidable uncertainty in the allegorical interpretation of Scripture, and any retreat from what the words naturally convey to what furthers the interests of the interpreter is suspect, and a reason for caution. Origen, in his great work Against Celsus, accuses his adversary of falling ‘into the most vulgar of errors, in supposing that in the law and the prophets there is not a meaning deeper than that afforded by a literal rendering of the words.’ But I say to you, the Scriptures were written so that all of God’s people might understand their message, not just a few; for what god would commission his lawgivers to render ambiguous statutes, or his prophets to obscure rather than to reveal?
“Yet false symbolism is all around us, and its adherents dispense it as though it were wisdom imparted to the elect. Let me read but one example, from the Epistle of Barnabas that was written two centuries ago here in Alexandria, a letter that Clement himself accorded the status of authoritative Scripture:
‘Learn then, my children, concerning all things richly, that Abraham, the first who enjoined circumcision, looking forward in spirit to Jesus, practiced that rite, having received the mysteries of the three letters. For [the Scripture] saith, ‘And Abraham circumcised ten, and eight, and three hundred men of his household.’ What, then, was the knowledge given to him in this? Learn the eighteen first, and then the three hundred. The ten and the eight are thus denoted — Ten by I, and Eight by H. You have [the initials of the name of] Jesus. And because the cross was to express the grace [of our redemption] by the letter T, he says also, “Three Hundred.” He signifies, therefore, Jesus by two letters, and the cross by one. He knows this, who has put within us the engrafted gift of His doctrine. No one has been admitted by me to a more excellent piece of knowledge than this, but I know that ye are worthy.’
“Let us leave aside the fact that the quotation is spurious; for nowhere does the Book of Genesis declare that Abraham circumcised 318 men! The encryption here is rather obvious: the letters ‘Iota’ and ‘Eta’ are the tenth and eighth letters of the Greek alphabet, and are the first two letters of Iēsous; while the letter ‘Tau’ represents the number 300, and stands for the cross.
“No doubt Barnabas thought himself quite ingenious, when in fact he should have been quite embarrassed; Genesis was written in Hebrew, not Greek! This is the same error decried by the esteemed bishop Irenaeus, who wrote more than a century ago of the folly of ‘transferring the name Jesus, which belongs to another language, to the numeration of the Greeks.’ But while Abraham could hardly have ‘received the mysteries of the three letters’ in Greek, Barnabas’ readers were familiar only with the Septuagint, so it was rather easy for him to foist this gematrial nonsense on the unwary.
“Yet what is most telling in this passage is the author’s claimed imparting of this special ‘knowledge’ to the ‘worthy.’ Only to the chosen ones is the ‘secret’ mystery revealed; nothing is divulged to the uninitiated. And who among us would not wish to be numbered among the ‘elect’ and therefore somehow special and favored? Do not be fooled, my brothers and sisters. We are all worthy of receiving the truth! And the only ‘secret’ is that those who perpetuate such mystical foolishness are themselves far from the truth.”
Arius could tell that his words were resonating with his listeners, as most of them nodded approvingly. Only a few in the crowd shifted uncomfortably. Did Alexander’s spies realize he was speaking of them? How could they not? Just as the Pharisees knew when Christ’s thinly veiled parables warned the crowds to beware of the teachers of that time, so too they knew now. But it did not matter; Arius could hold back no longer. It was time to plant the seed:
“My friends, we must guard as well against interpretations that press the meaning of Scripture beyond what is supported by the text. Consider Christ’s declaration in John’s gospel, ‘Very truly I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.’ Some see in this a reference to the Mosaic “I AM WHO I AM,” rendered ego eimi ho ōn in the Greek of the Septuagint, the Greek that Christ never spoke. John writes in Greek, and quotes only the ego eimi, only the ‘I am,’ and not the ho ōn, ‘the One who is,’ ‘the Being,’ ‘the existent One.’ According to John, Christ never used these additional words that designate the very name of God;