THE DISTINCTION “UNCREATED-CREATED” OF SAINT ATHANASIUS THE GREAT AND ITS ROLE IN THE REJECTION OF THE ARIAN HERESY

Abstract

In the philosophical-theological context, at the crossroads between the 3rd and the 4th centuries, there were at least two opposite cosmological options that were able to preserve, each in its own way, the simplicity of the Divine Principle: rejecting the concept of the world’s eternity or accepting a second grade/inferior principle as its Creator. The first option was taken over by the Church in general, following the path defined by the Apologists. The second one was the traditional view of Hellenistic philosophy. Beside these, a preacher-priest from the Church of Alexandria, Arius – and the people who were on his side for different reasons (most of them on the line of Gnosticism) – separated themselves from the teachings of the Church and started to deny, beginning in 318 A.D., the eternity of the Logos. The cosmological issue raised by Arius was a crucial one in this theological dispute due to the soteriological consequences that flowed from it, alien to the Revelation and the (Baptismal) Creeds of the Church. Yet, faith and piety were only defendable in this historical context with lexical weapons and philosophical arguments. This situation was well understood by Saint Athanasius of Alexandria. He made the first attempt to extract the doctrine about God from its limited, non-Christian philosophical understanding and started to defend both the temporality of the world and the co-eternity of the Logos (as the Second Person of the Holy Trinity) with the Father.