Dr. Dafydd Daniel
speaker
99 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Dr. Dafydd Daniel’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
Ares is a priest in Alexandria, so just a priest, and he objects to what his bishop, Alexander, is teaching. So he objects to it, and he makes his objections very clear, and then writes to loads of other people to say that this patriarch is a heretic, basically, and should we really be following him? Should we actually maybe organize our own deacons?
It seems that some followers of Ares are even sort of ordaining their own deacons and so on. So a threat to that order, that principle of order within the church. So then both Alexander and Arius are writing all over the place to sort of hundreds of other bishops across Syria, Libya, Egypt, Turkey, in modern day terms, writing to all of them to try and get them on their side.
And of course, then they are then appealing to imperial power, imperial authority to help try and decide this debate. And so in the end, Arius is exiled. And three, two, one, he's thrown out, but he doesn't wish to be thrown out. So he appeals back. And Constantine says, look, can't you just both shake hands and call it a draw or whatever and move on?
And they have their own individual synods to try and decide the answer to the question. And that can't decide it. So then finally, Constantine says, right, well, he's going to organize something just to decide this question once and for all. This question is called disorder through Africa, through Turkey, whatever else.
If people are saying that this is something that they're going to disagree about, then we better try and settle the question. That's why it's the first ecumenical council. It seems to be 315 bishops, extraordinary number of people, and that would then include thousands of priests brought in from across the empire. Only five from the West, interestingly.
Most of these are Eastern bishops, only five from the West. But, you know, they're all coming in to try and decide this question. If we can decide this question, then maybe everyone can just move on and stop arguing about it. I think Constantine's point seems to be if you want to debate some minute point of theology, then you can.
It's incredibly interesting, isn't it, important to remember that we've got Paul's letters as the earliest documents of the Christian religion, and these are writing to these churches in the Eastern world, right? Ephesus, Corinth in Greece, and so on.
So really the Eastern empire, which later will become the Byzantium empire, is the start of Christianity, where Christianity comes from and grows out into the West. So just fewer bishops in the West, fewer Christians in the West. a thriving Greco-Christian culture in these areas of the world, Asia Minor, Alexandria, and so on.
And so later on, we're going to have Jerusalem as an important place, then Constantinople a little bit, a later important place. But at the moment, we've got Antioch in Syria and Alexandria in Egypt, these really key posts in the Christian world. And this is where a concentration of bishops are then across these areas, metropolitan bishops. And then they have their own priests and everything else.
The estimate is really that by 300, 10% of the empire is Christian. So 10 million people. And then by the middle of the fourth century, about half of the empire is Christian. So growing numbers and large numbers to debate these issues with each other. The actual debate, the actual debate between the two is, We all know the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
We've got an issue here then of the Father and the Son. Are they all equal? Are they equal? Is there any differences between them? What's the difference between the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost? Are they the same or different? If you're saying they're really different, then you're saying you've got three gods. So you don't want to have that. You don't want to be a polytheist.
So you want to connect them in some way. So how are you going to connect them and bring them together? Now, Arius' claim is really straightforward semantics, is that the son must be subordinate to the father. Otherwise, it's not a son and it's not a father. So his claim, Arianism is a form of a particular viewpoint that we call monarchianism. So monarchism comes from monarch, right?
Monos, one, and then arche, principle, rule. So one principle rule. A belief then that God is one, that God is not just a being, God is being. God is everything. God is all. God is this essence beyond description, a particular substance, a divine substance, a deity, something above all things. He's created a world completely different from it. It's utterly transcendent from it.
Now, the Christian religion then poses a great threat for these Greek philosophically-minded figures like Ares and others, that you've got this principle of God. How can you then explain that it becomes incarnate? Ares solves it in an interesting way. So Ares' point is that there's the God, God as substance, God that becomes a father when he begets a son.
So Arius's tagline is that there was a time that the sun was not. The sun is not eternal because he hasn't existed always, unlike God. So what the sun is for Arius, in effect, is divine, but not the deity, not the Godhead. It's another level or ranking of divinity between the two.
And so it means the Son is the creator of the world, is the mediator of the world, can become incarnate to save the world. But you leave the Father as pure Godhead, if you like, above it.
Yeah, that's right. So the Son is Jesus. So the Son becomes incarnate then as Jesus in the world and then can exist to save it in the world. So let's put it in these sort of terms. The Son is at home with the Father in heaven or whatever. Now the Son then decides to leave that place and become incarnate as a particular human being. which is Jesus, and then acts to save it.
Well, I mean, one thing I suppose to emphasize about Arianism is that it shouldn't be confused with a later heresy called Sassinianism, which denies the divinity of Jesus. I mean, this is still saying that Jesus is the son of God and is divine. It's just he's a different level of God. He's not the highest God.
So what's the problem with Arius? Well, Arius is suggesting what's called heteroousio, right? So ousio is substance and hetero is different, that the Father and the Son are different substances, different divine substances. So one problem there for Alexander is that that seems to return us to polytheism. We've got more than one God, more than one divine substance.
So this is where you get then the homoousion viewpoint. What that is saying is that the Father and the Son are the same substance. They're equal. Now, what's the problem with saying that? Why is that such a problem? That seems to be okay, right? You say they're the same, they're equal.
Showing 41–60 of 99 · page 3 of 5
← Previous
Next →