Col 2:9 Archives » From Daniel to Revelation

The Question

Colossians 2:9 says:

“The entire fullness of God’s nature dwells bodily in Christ” (HCSB).

“In Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form” (NASB).

Somebody asked: How did Arius interpret this verse? And how did Arius view the Greek word Θεότητος, sometimes translated as “God’s nature” and “Deity” in this verse?

The Answer

Arius was not important.

To answer this question, we must firstly forget about Arius:

In the Traditional Account of the Arian Controversy, Arius was important. He developed a new heresy, gained many converts, and his theology dominated the church for much of the fourth century.

But none of that is true. Arius was not important. Not even his fellow ‘Arians’ regarded his writings as worth preserving and he did not leave a school of disciples.

For example, the scholars say:

“Arius’ own theology is of little importance in understanding the major debates of the rest of the century” (after Nicaea). (LA, 56-57) ¹

“We are not to think of Arius as dominating and directing a single school of thought to which all his allies belonged.” (RW, 171) ²

“Those who suspected or openly repudiated the decisions of Nicaea had little in common but this hostility … certainly not a loyalty to the teaching of Arius as an individual theologian.” (RW, 233)

The title ‘Arian’ is a misnomer.

We still refer to the ‘Arian’ Controversy because Athanasius coined the term to insult his opponents by tarring them with a theology that was already rejected:

After Athanasius was exiled for violence against the Egyptian Melitians, he developed “a masterpiece of the rhetorical art,” “the full flowering of a polemical strategy that was to shape accounts of the fourth century for over 1,500 years” (LA, 106-7).

“One key technique in his polemic was to offer an account of Arius’ theology and then present later credal decisions and the writings of his enemies as those of ‘Arians’.” (LA, 431)

In other words, Athanasius used the straw man tactic. He said that his opponents were followers of Arius – which they were not – and then he attacked Arius, pretending that he was attacking his opponents.

Unfortunately, for 1500 years, the church had accepted Athanasius’ polemical strategy. It was only during the last about 100 years that scholars, with better access to ancient documents and much progress in research, can see what really happened. For example, around the year 2000, Lewis Ayres wrote:

“A vast amount of scholarship over the past thirty years has offered revisionist accounts of themes and figures from the fourth century” (LA, 2).

“The four decades since 1960 have produced much revisionary scholarship on the Trinitarian and Christological disputes of the fourth century. It is now commonplace that these disputes cannot simply be understood as … the Church’s struggle against a heretic and his followers grounded in a clear Nicene doctrine established in the controversy’s earliest stages. Rather, this controversy is a complex affair in which tensions between pre-existing theological traditions intensified as a result of dispute over Arius, and over events following the Council of Nicaea.” (LA, 11-12)

The Eusebian View

Since Arius was unimportant, Ayres refers to the anti-Nicenes as ‘Eusebians’. Eusebius of Caesarea is a famous historian and was the leader of the theological mainstream. Therefore, to answer the question above, we must ask how the Eusebians understood Colossians 2:9. In this regard, I quote as follows:

“It is perhaps possible to speak of a broad insistence on the part of many eastern theologians during these years that there is a basic distinction between Father and Son that must be protected in theological formulation. However, at the same time, we consistently see an insistence that there is an ineffable closeness between Father and Son such that the Son’s being can be said to be from the Father in some indescribable sense, and that the Son is (to use one prominent phrase cf. Wisd 7:25; Heb 1:3) ‘the exact image of the Father’s substance’.” (LA, 432)

Ayres describes this as “the broad eastern tradition.” (LA, 432, 5) The majority of the Easterners were anti-Nicenes (Arians). The Dedication Creed of 341, which was formulated by an Eastern Council, will help to explain how the ‘Arians’ understood Col 2:9. Firstly, they opposed Arius’ views. But they also opposed the Nicene Creed because they regarded it as modalist:

“Many of those who … were able to sign up to the ‘Dedication’ creed of 341 at Antioch … probably found both Arius’ language and the Athanasian/Marcellan theology unacceptable. Nicaea appears to have seemed dangerously modalist to many of them.” (LA, 432) ³

That creed said that the Son is “exact image of the Godhead and the ousia and will and power and glory of the Father.” (Read more) Note particularly the word “ousia,” which means ‘substance’. In other words, the Son is the image even of the Father’s substance. Nevertheless, the title ‘Image’ means He is distinct from and subordinate to the Father. The following are further quotes to explain how the ‘Arians’ interpreted Col 2:9:

“The Son is theos because he is image, because the Father has given to him an unparalleled share in his own godhead.” (Eusebius of Caesarea – RW, 171)

“The Son enjoys the most perfect participation imaginable in the life of the Father, and so too the fullest degree of access to the unknowable Father, but this results from the Father’s decision” (Eusebius – RW, 172).

“Many participants supposedly on different sides … (insisted) that one must speak of the Son’s incomprehensible generation from the Father as a sharing of the Father’s very being.” (Ayres, p. 4-5)

So, to summarize the above, and to explain how the Eusebians understood Colossians 2:9, they believed that the Son is ineffably close to the Father, that His being is from the Father in some indescribable sense, that He is the exact image of the Father’s Godhead, and that He shares in the Father’s own Godhead and life.

But they also believed that the Son received all of this from the Father. It is important to note that Col 2:9 says “the entire fullness of God’s nature dwells bodily in Christ” but Col 1:19 says that He received that fullness from the Father:

“It was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him.” (Col 1:19)

In conclusion, forget about Arius. That approach simply perpetuates Arius’ straw man tactic.

Above I quote:

RW = Archbishop Rowan Williams Arius: Heresy and Tradition, 2002/1987

LA = Lewis Ayres Nicaea and its legacy, 2004 Ayres is a Professor of Catholic and Historical Theology

For more information, see – Athanasius invented Arianism

Tag: Col 2:9

How did Arians interpret Colossians 2:9?

The Question

The Answer

Arius was not important.

The title ‘Arian’ is a misnomer.

The Eusebian View

Other Articles

FOOTNOTES