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zmb's review against another edition
4.0
The Archbishop's book takes Arius seriously as a theologian and philosopher, and examines his history and the context in which he worked. His history is painstakingly elucidated from the few surviving pre-Nicene documents, but the actual council seems to get kind of a short shrift.
But that's because the meat of the book is about Arius's theology and Arius's context. The theology is, again, painstakingly recreated, from the few passages we have, mostly from Athanasius's posthumous attacks on Arius. The context is highly important - Williams shows how Arius identified the same problems inherent in Middle Platonism (and their Christian contemporaries) as the Neoplatonists did, and used Neoplatonist ideas to synthesize a uniquely Christian system. He has his own critiques of Arius's system from a Nicene standpoint, but he seems to respect Arius as a system-builder more than, say, Athanasius who effectively attacked that system but didn't really build his own.
To get back to the history, unfortunately for Arius, he came up with his system (which attracted relatively little support, though there were plenty of fellow anti-Niceneans) at the same time that Constantine decided that unity was the most important thing his new Church could give him. In the post-Nicene history, Constantine comes off as exiling basically whomever he thinks is a threat to that unity - first Arius, then a prominent pro-Nicenean who apparently insulted his mother, then the most pro-Nicene party of Alexander and Athanasius after they refused to receive Arius back. One is left to wonder what might have happened if Arius had not died suddenly when he was about to be reinstated.
The theological conclusion is somewhat less impressive, I think. After warning against drawing tortured analogies to contemporary problems - a common affliction for those discussing Arius - he goes on to draw a tortured analogy to a (vaguely) contemporary problem - the German church in the 1930s.
But that's because the meat of the book is about Arius's theology and Arius's context. The theology is, again, painstakingly recreated, from the few passages we have, mostly from Athanasius's posthumous attacks on Arius. The context is highly important - Williams shows how Arius identified the same problems inherent in Middle Platonism (and their Christian contemporaries) as the Neoplatonists did, and used Neoplatonist ideas to synthesize a uniquely Christian system. He has his own critiques of Arius's system from a Nicene standpoint, but he seems to respect Arius as a system-builder more than, say, Athanasius who effectively attacked that system but didn't really build his own.
To get back to the history, unfortunately for Arius, he came up with his system (which attracted relatively little support, though there were plenty of fellow anti-Niceneans) at the same time that Constantine decided that unity was the most important thing his new Church could give him. In the post-Nicene history, Constantine comes off as exiling basically whomever he thinks is a threat to that unity - first Arius, then a prominent pro-Nicenean who apparently insulted his mother, then the most pro-Nicene party of Alexander and Athanasius after they refused to receive Arius back. One is left to wonder what might have happened if Arius had not died suddenly when he was about to be reinstated.
The theological conclusion is somewhat less impressive, I think. After warning against drawing tortured analogies to contemporary problems - a common affliction for those discussing Arius - he goes on to draw a tortured analogy to a (vaguely) contemporary problem - the German church in the 1930s.
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