Chapter 5: Bishop in Alexandria
5
Bishop in Alexandria
The Council of Nicaea addressed several important issues that directly affected the situation in the church of Alexandria. In addition to both the Meletian schism and the “Arian controversy,” the great Council also passed legislation respecting the election of bishops and the extent of the episcopal see of the bishop of Alexandria. The Meletian schism was ostensibly resolved by a tenuous compromise, and the Arian question was papered over by a Creed that at least some of the signatories accepted only because of their fear of imperial retribution. Thus there was a semblance of unity, under the influence of Constantine’s indomitable will. But controversy would soon erupt again, and Athanasius would be at or near the storm’s center. Socrates, the early church historian, likened this period to a battle being fought at night, in that neither party understood the agenda of their opponents or the terrain upon which they stood, and yet both sides struck out blindly and violently at each other.204
The Council of Nicaea had stipulated, in its fourth canon, that “a bishop should most certainly be chosen by all the other [bishops] of the province. But if this poses a difficulty, because of an urgent need, or because of the length of the journey, then at least three [bishops] shall meet in one place, and with the votes of those absent having been communicated in writing, they shall proceed to the consecration. The confirmation of what has been done, however, belongs in each province to the metropolitan.”205 This policy may have varied significantly from the long-standing tradition that had been followed in Alexandria, and the conflict between the two traditions may have helped cast Athanasius’s elevation to the episcopate in a poor light. Eusebius reported that “all were at peace” yet “among the Egyptians alone an implacable contention still raged, so as once more to disturb the emperor’s tranquility, though not to excite his anger.”206 Ever the supporter of Constantine, Eusebius reported that the emperor “treated all the contending parties with respect, as fathers, nay rather, as prophets of God.”207 Constantine responded to this contention by summoning the warring parties into his imperial presence and acting as a mediator between them. He exhorted them “not to distract and rend the Church, but to keep before them the thought of God’s judgment. And these injunctions the emperor sent by a letter written with his own hand.”208
Meanwhile, Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis, both of whom had been deposed and exiled for siding with Arius at the Council of Nicaea, had published retractions of their earlier views, and assented to the Nicene Creed. Constantine, pursuing his policy of unity and toleration, had them reinstated in their respective sees.209 They soon began lobbying for the return of Arius himself. Addressing a letter to Constantine, in which he stated his faith in closely guarded terms, Arius affirmed, “We confess in writing before God that we and all those with us believe as it has been submitted.” The telltale Arian phrases and doctrines were omitted as he asserted, “We believe in one God, the Father, all-sovereign: and in Lord Jesus Christ his only-begotten Son who came into existence from him before all ages, God the Word, through whom all things in the heavens and on earth came into existence, who came down and assumed flesh and suffered, rose and went up into the heavens and comes again to judge the living and the dead.”210 Avoiding any precise language about the nature of the Son and the Son’s relationship to the essence of the Father, like that which was used in the Nicene Creed, Arius’s statement camouflaged the true theology of its signatories, and it satisfied Emperor Constantine. Arius and his colleagues were subsequently recalled from exile. The Arians also lobbied the emperor for reentry into the church of Alexandria, but this approach was staunchly opposed by Bishop Alexander.211
The Alexandrian church was deeply enmeshed in controversy as Catholics (the Nicene party), Meletians, and Arians all struggled for control and leadership in the city and in local churches. This three-way strife was exaggerated by Bishop Alexander’s death on April 17, 328. Controversy soon surrounded Athanasius’s election as Alexander’s successor. Athanasius was not elected and inducted into the office until June 8 of the same year. The two-month delay in his elevation signals that much controversy surrounded Athanasius’s election.212 Socrates reported that the Arians held “bitter animosity against Athanasius . . . because he had so vigorously withstood them in the Synod [of Nicaea] while the articles of faith were under discussion. And in the first place they objected to the ordination of Athanasius [as bishop] partly as a person unworthy of the prelacy, and partly because he had been elected by disqualified persons.”213 In the tumult that followed both the Arian and Meletian factions sought to elect a prelate from their own party to succeed Alexander. In his third Festal Letter, Athanasius admitted that controversy attached itself to his elevation as bishop, but he attributed it to the fact that he was considered to be too young to be qualified for the office.214
Since the bishop of Alexandria was both chief cleric of the city and metropolitan (archbishop) over Egypt and Libya, the positon combined the normal duties of a pastor with those of a chief administrator and significant leader in the church. The bishop of Alexandria also had many civil responsibilities and obligations. Athanasius was well qualified for this role because of the years he had spent at the side of his father in the faith, Bishop Alexander. He proved himself to be both an able cleric and an effective administrator.
Several conflicting traditions survive to describe how Athanasius came to the prestigious and important office of bishop of Alexandria. One stems from the Catholic (pro-Nicene) church historians Socrates and Sozomen, and from Epiphanius the heresy-hunter. The second tradition was reported in the Church History of the Arian historian Philostorgius. A third was delivered by Gregory Nazianzen in his Oration 21, “On the Great Athanasius.” Socrates and Sozomen remind their readers that Athanasius had been virtually raised and mentored by Alexander to be his successor. The elderly bishop’s selection was subsequently ratified by a council of bishops, and hence, in their minds, Athanasius had been properly elected and ordained. Sozomen explained the two-month hiatus between Alexander’s death and Athanasius’s elevation on June 8, 328—a sign of significant controversy in the church over his election—by saying that in deep humility, Athanasius had absented himself from the city in order to “escape the honor.”215
Epiphanius writing in his Panarion (ca. 373) described the tumultuous situation with Athanasius’s absence and Alexander’s death. In the absence of Athanasius, and in violation of the Nicene agreement, the Meletians elected a rival bishop named Theonas, who died a few months later. Epiphanius reported, “Athanasius arrived shortly after the death of Theonas, and a council of the orthodox from every place was convened. And thus he was ordained and the See was given to him who was worthy, the one for whom it had been made ready according to God’s will and the testimony and command of [the] blessed Alexander.”216 In this way, Athanasius was thrust into the midst of controversy from the very inception of his episcopate. Epiphanius described him as striving mightily for unity and harmony among the Christians in Alexandria, although without much tangible success. He wrote,
Athanasius now began to be distressed and grieved on account of the division of the church between the Meletians and the Catholic church. He tried persuasion and exhortation, but they would have none of it. He tried force and compulsion, [but they would not obey]. Now he used often to inspect the nearby churches, especially those of the Mareotis. And once when the Meletians gathered for worship, it happened that a deacon from the crowd with Athanasius went in with some others of the people and broke a lamp, as the report has it, and a fight broke out. This was the beginning of a plot against Athanasius, with the Meletians charging and calumniating him and [crying] one thing after another, and the Arians plotting and giving themselves to their cause out of jealousy of the holy faith of God and orthodoxy. And they referred the matter to the emperor Constantine.217
Philostorgius told an interesting though unprovable story that allegedly took place during the election of Athanasius as bishop. He indicated that during a deadlock in the vote for bishop, Athanasius and his supporters broke into the church of Dionysius. Finding several Egyptian bishops there, they barred the doors to prevent interference, and secretly ordained him. In this way, Philostorgius reported, “Athanasius got what he wanted. The other assembly of bishops that was there condemned him for this reason. But when Athanasius had secured his position, he sent the emperor an announcement of his elevation to the archbishopric that was made to seem as though it had come from the city itself. The emperor, thinking that the letter had been written by the city council, endorsed his possession of the episcopal throne.”218 This report presents Athanasius’s elevation to the episcopate in a very negative light, and in that way reflects the Arian plot against him, mentioned by Epiphanius.
Gregory of Nazianzus’s account reported that Athanasius came to the episcopal chair “by the vote of the whole people, not in the evil fashion which has since prevailed, nor by means of bloodshed and oppression, but in an apostolic and spiritual manner, he is led up to the throne of Saint Mark, to succeed him in piety, no less than in office; in the latter indeed at a great distance from him, in the former, which is the genuine right of succession, following him closely.”219 Gregory’s oration continued depicting Athanasius as being conciliatory towards the warring factions in Alexandria, mildly attempting to reconcile them to one another and to the Nicene faith. After a period of leniency and reconciliation many of the clergy who had opposed him (chiefly the Meletians) were received into fellowship. Avoiding the extremes of leniency and harshness, Gregory reported that Athanasius as bishop was
sublime in action, lowly in mind; inaccessible in virtue, most accessible in intercourse; gentle, free from anger, sympathetic, sweet in words, sweeter in disposition; angelic in appearance, more angelic in mind; calm in rebuke, persuasive in praise, without spoiling the good effect of either by excess, but rebuking with the tenderness of a father, praising with the dignity of a ruler, his tenderness was not dissipated, nor his severity sour; for the one was reasonable, the other prudent, and both truly wise; his disposition sufficed for the training of his spiritual children, with very little need of words; his words with very little need of the rod, and his moderate use of the rod with still less for the knife.220
While his praise may seem excessive, even for a eulogy, Gregory leaves the reader with two salient points—that Athanasius was elected to the episcopate with the support of the people and in apostolic and holy manner; and secondly, that he was a moderate, reforming and reconciling leader over the clergy who served under him. Nazianzen’s oration also lauds Athanasius’s personal piety and prayer disciplines, which earned the respect of the holy monks and virgins. Additionally, his deep spirituality and humble demeanor won the respect of the masses. Athanasius was, as Gregory described him, a protector to the widows, father to the orphans, benefactor to the poor, and entertainer of strangers; to the brethren in faith, he was a man of brotherly love, to the sick a physician, and to the healthy a guardian of their health.
It was in the midst of the ecclesiastical disturbances in Alexandria that the so-called “Eusebians” began to mount contention against Athanasius and the legitimacy of his episcopal administration in Alexandria. Socrates, who admitted that he did not completely understand the theological implications of the tumult that was brewing, indicated that no small part of the problem stemmed from the efforts of Eusebius of Nicomedia and those who supported him. This group of clergy, which Athanasius subsequently dubbed “the Eusebians” (literally “those around Eusebius”), opposed Athanasius and his work for two main reasons. First, they showed “bitter animosity” toward him for having opposed them so “vigorously in the Synod [Council of Nicaea] while the articles of faith were under discussion.”221 The second reason was Athanasius’s persistent contention for the Nicene faith and his unwillingness to readmit Arius and the Arians (who, he believed, had not really changed their theological views) into the Alexandrian church. Hence, Eusebius and those allied with him disputed Athanasius’s election to the episcopate, charged him with abuses of his authority with respect to the Meletians, and tried to force him to resume communion with Arius. Socrates reported, “Eusebius therefore wrote to Athanasius, desiring him to re-admit Arius and his adherents into the church. Now the tone of his letter indeed was that of entreaty, but openly he menaced him. And as Athanasius would by no means accede to this, he endeavored to induce the emperor to give Arius an audience, and then permit him to return to Alexandria . . .”222 Athanasius stoutly refused these efforts, and this set him on a collision course with Emperor Constantine’s desire for harmony and unity in the church.
It was during this same time, Socrates reported, that a major theological controversy erupted in the church over the use of the term homoousia (“same substance”). Those who objected to the term believed that it favored the heretical opinions of Sabellius and Montanus, and therefore called those of the Nicene party (who affirmed it) blasphemers and heretics. Those of the Nicene party who advocated for the term homoousia decried their opponents as polytheists and corrupters of the faith. This situation was further complicated by the fact that Eustathius, who had ably defended the “same substance” formula at the Council of Nicaea, was found to be a Sabellian, and therefore heretical on the doctrine of the Trinity. Hence, Socrates explained, “In consequence of these misunderstandings, each of them wrote as if contending against adversaries; and although it was admitted on both sides that the Son of God has a distinct person and existence, and all acknowledged that there is one God in three Persons, yet from what cause I am unable to divine, they could not agree among themselves, and therefore could in no way endure to be at peace.”223
Recent research suggests that we should not too readily assume, as Athanasius himself certainly did, that the Eusebians were Arians in their theology.224 Their opposition to the homoousia (“same substance”) formula of the Nicene Creed and their sympathy for Arius may have simply signaled that Eusebius of Nicomedia and his “fellow Lucianists” sought to hold a middle ground between the Nicene faith and Arianism, and were (like Constantine himself) advocates for peace and harmony in the church. Thus, within a few years of his exile, Arius and his supporters were recalled, reinstated, and their reputations were rehabilitated largely through the efforts of Eusebius and his allies. Hanson rightly saw Eusebius of Nicomedia as the most influential church leader of the period immediately after the Council of Nicaea: “Eusebius,” he wrote, “was a man of strong character and great ability; Eusebius of Caesarea calls him ‘the great Eusebius.’ It was he who virtually took charge of affairs of the Greek-speaking church from 328 until his death.”225
If we ask whence came the great influence of the “great Eusebius,” the question becomes more complicated. His episcopal see was at Nicomedia, where one of Constantine’s favorite imperial palaces was located, so he had frequent and rather immediate access to the seat of imperial power. The early historians also indicate that Eusebius was a favorite pastor of Constantia, the sister of Constantine, and may have exerted significant influence through her patronage and support.226 Eusebius’s significant support may also indicate that the theologians and bishops of the fourth century were not as easily lumped into two opposing camps as Athanasius seems to suggest. For Athanasius, it seemed that one supported the Nicene theology or not, and hence one was either “orthodox” or “Arian.” But in truth, there may have been a significant number of clergy, like Eusebius, who sought to stand in the middle ground between those two extreme opposites, and they may have lent their support to the bishop of Nicomedia. This is certainly the situation implied by Timothy Barnes when he writes, “No fourth-century thinker who is normally regarded as ‘Arian’ or ‘Neo-Arian’ would ever have applied the term to himself. The label was a term of abuse; Athanasius and his allies habitually employed a broad definition that turned all their enemies into ‘Arians.’”227 In a similar fashion, Colm Luibheid urges, “It is essential to recognize, as many apologists refuse to do, the difference between Eusebius’ theological convictions on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the fact that he showed sympathy for Arius . . . [and] had reservations about the homoousion formula.”228 While it is difficult to reconstruct Eusebius’s theology from the few surviving remnants of his writings, his thought does seem to have some significant kinship with that which has been attributed to Arius. In his letter to Paulinus, for example, Eusebius interpreted Proverbs 8:22 as a proof text that the Son is a creature (ktisma) and cannot be considered to be of the same substance as the Father.229 Socrates pointed out that Eusebius of Nicomedia—even in his recantation—did not use the phrase “same substance” (homoousia) and did not use it in his own written works, although he did not formally reject the Nicene Creed.230
While Eusebius’s theological posture may have placed him in a middle ground somewhere between Athanasius and Arius, his ecclesiastical politics clearly turned him into a staunch opponent of Athanasius and his administration in Alexandria. Hence, Theodoret wrote subsequently, “the exiled bishops, employing their customary artifices, abused the benevolence of the emperor, renewed the previous contests, and regained their former power.”231 Eusebius not only returned to the see of Nicomedia, he was eventually elevated to the episcopacy of Constantinople. It was from that location that he “acquired great power in that city, frequently visiting and holding familiar [communication] with the emperor, he gained confidence and formed plots against those who were foremost in the support of the truth.”232 Theodoret, who embraced Athanasius’s theology and accepted his polemical construal of the “Eusebians,” illustrated Eusebius’s subterfuge by pointing to the plot he concocted against Eustathius, bishop of Antioch. Eusebius hired a lewd woman, who had a child out of wedlock, to claim that the bishop was the father of her child. This campaign, said Theodoret, was supported by Eusebius of Caesarea, and bishops Patrophilus, Aetius, Theodotus, and others “who had imbibed the Arian sentiments.”233 A council of bishops was called in Jerusalem, and they succeeded in obtaining the banishment of “this champion of piety and chastity, as an adulterer and a tyrant.”234 In his campaign against the Nicene theology and its chief supporters, Eusebius of Nicomedia (and Constantinople) would become one of the chief ecclesiastical adversaries of Athanasius.
Athanasius’s Exposition of the Faith was probably written in 328, either before or soon after his elevation to the office of the bishop. The brief treatise, which reads like a creed or confession of faith, may have been written as a position paper for his ordination or as a catechetical document to be used in his teaching ministry among the Alexandrians. It is clearly a document that could serve both purposes very well. The fact that the treatise does not explicitly attack the positions of Arius suggests that it may stem from the period leading up to Athanasius’s elevation to the episcopate, and signals that he intended to sound a conciliatory note at the outset of his tenure. Paragraphs 1 and 2 of the Exposition make Arianism untenable by asserting that the Father and Son share the same essence (homoousia) and that the Son is eternal and not created. After affirming the full relationship and full equality of the Father and the Son, and a brief statement about his belief in the Holy Spirit, Athanasius added, “we anathematize doctrines contrary to this.”235 This statement clearly shows an awareness that there are conflicting views circulating in the church, and that they are to be avoided.
The first paragraph of the Exposition of Faith contains a long statement of the full equality of the Father and the Son, without recourse to the Nicene Creed. Athanasius’s confession:
We believe in one Unbegotten God, Father Almighty, maker of all things both visible and invisible, that hath His being from Himself. And in one Only-begotten Word, Wisdom, Son, begotten of the Father without beginning and eternally; word not pronounced nor mental, nor an effluence of the Perfect, nor a dividing of the impassible Essence, nor an issue; but absolutely perfect Son, living and powerful (Heb 4:12), the true Image of the Father, equal in honor and glory. For this, he says, “is the will of the Father, that as they honor the Father, so they may honor the Son also” (John 5:23); very God of very God, as John says in his general Epistles, “And we are in Him that is true, even in His son Jesus Christ: this is the true God and everlasting life” (1 John 5:20): Almighty of Almighty. For all things which the Father rules and sways, the Son rules and sways likewise: wholly from the Whole, being like the Father as the Lord says, “he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9). But He was begotten ineffably and incomprehensibly, for “who shall declare his generation?” (Isa 53:8), in other words, no one can.236
This long and fairly elaborate exploration of the common substance and co-eternality of the Father and the Son was probably engendered (at least in part) by the recent controversy over those same points of doctrine. It is followed by a strong affirmation of the Incarnation (“taking flesh”) of the Word, and the deep theological connection between the Incarnation and the salvation of humanity. Athanasius wrote,
He had descended from the bosom of the Father, took from the undefiled Virgin Mary our humanity, Christ Jesus, whom He delivered of His own will to suffer for us, as the Lord saith: “No man taketh My life from Me. I have power to lay it down, and have power to take it again” (John 10:18). In which humanity He was crucified and died for us, and rose from the dead, and was taken up into the heavens, having been created as the beginning of ways for us (Prov 8:22), when on earth He showed us light from out of darkness, salvation from error, life from the dead, an entrance to paradise, from which Adam was cast out . . .237
In holding the Incarnation of Christ and Christian salvation so closely together, Athanasius seemed to be offering another echo of the dictum of On the Incarnation, which he wrote (perhaps) a decade before: “He became what we are to make us what He is.”
Paragraph 2 of the Exposition explicitly attacks the modalist Christology of Sabellianism, which taught that God was in one Substance, Who went through three separate forms called “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” in chronological succession. Ostensibly while attacking the Sabellians, Athanasius clarified the relationship between the Father and Son in ways that made Arian Christology untenable:
But just as a river, produced from a well, is not separate, and yet there are in fact two visible objects and two names. For neither is the Father the Son, nor the Son the Father. For the Father is Father of the Son, and the Son, [is] Son of the Father. For like as the well is not a river, nor the river a well, but both are one and the same water which is conveyed in a channel from the well to the river, so the Father’s deity passes into the Son without flow and without division. For the Lord says, “I came out from the Father and am come” (John 16:28). But He is ever with the Father, for He is in the bosom of the Father, nor was ever the bosom of the Father void of the deity of the Son . . . All things to wit were made through the Son; but He Himself is not a creature, as Paul says of the Lord: “In Him were all things created, and He is before all” (Col 1:16). Now He says not, “was created” before all things, but “is” before all things. To be created, namely, is applicable to all things, but “is before all” applies to the Son only.238
Apparently once again interacting with the Arian theology, in the third paragraph of the Exposition, Athanasius examined the problematic text from Proverbs 8 (“The Lord created me at the beginning of his work . . .”) that the Arians took to mean that the Son was created by the Father before the beginning of creation. Athanasius argued that the Son, speaking through Wisdom in this passage, was not Himself created, since the Second Person of the Trinity is uncreated and eternal. But Jesus’s physical body was of a creaturely nature—a nature that He shared with us, in assuming our humanity, was created. Athanasius explained, “For it would be inconsistent with His deity for Him to be called a creature. For all things were created by the Father through the Son, but the Son alone was eternally begotten from the Father, whence God the Word is ‘first-born of all creation’ [Col 1:15], unchangeable from unchangeable. However, the body which He wore for our sakes is a creature . . .”239 Following the Septuagint (Greek) version of Jeremiah 31:22, “The Lord created for us for a planting a new salvation, in which salvation men shall go about,” Athanasius interpreted the Virgin Birth of Jesus in human flesh as that “new salvation” that was predicted and created for our benefit. Returning to the text in Proverbs 8:22, he argued, “Nothing new was created in woman, save the Lord’s body, born of the Virgin Mary without intercourse, as also it says in the Proverbs in the person of Jesus: ‘The Lord created me, a beginning of His ways for His works’ (Prov. viii 22). Now He does not say, ‘created me before His works,’ lest any should take the text of [to refer to] the deity of the Word.”240 This was an inventive solution to the problem posed by an Arian reading of Proverbs 8:22 by postulating that, in the Proverbs passage, Wisdom was speaking as the Logos and referring to God’s future plan of salvation through the creation of a human body for the Second Person of the Trinity. This approach had as its primary goal the preservation of the full deity of Christ, and an unwillingness to view the Second Person of the Trinity (the Logos) as a creature; it also sought to make sense of the phraseology of the passage that the Arians cited in support of their alternative view (that Christ is a creature created by the Father).
Athanasius concluded, in his fourth paragraph of the Exposition, “Each text then which refers to the creature [with respect to the Son] is written with reference to Jesus in a bodily sense. For the Lord’s humanity was created as ‘a beginning of ways,’ and He manifested it to us for our salvation. For by it we have our access to the Father. For He is the way (John 14:6) which leads us back to the Father. And a way is a corporeal visible thing, such as is the Lord’s humanity.”241 The Son, therefore, should not be viewed or termed as “created” but as “an offspring. For He [God] created none of the created things equal or like unto Himself. But it is the part of a Father to beget, while it is a workman’s part to create. Accordingly, that a body is a thing made and created, which the Lord bore for us, which was begotten for us, as Paul says, ‘wisdom from God, and sanctification and righteousness, and redemption’; while yet the Word was before us and before all Creation, and is, the Wisdom of the Father.”242
The Exposition ended with a brief affirmation of the full deity of the Holy Spirit, Who “proceeds from the Father, is ever in the hands of the Father Who sends and of the Son Who conveys Him, by Whose means He filled all things.”243 And then Athanasius registered another corrective against the Arian theology that affirms that the Son is a creature: “The Father, possessing His existence from Himself, begat the Son, as we said, and did not create Him, as a river from a well and as a branch from a root, and as brightness from a light, things which nature knows to be indivisible; through whom to the Father be glory and power and greatness before all ages, and unto all the ages of ages. Amen.”244 And with this Exposition, we have a consistent and comprehensive statement of the foundational theology of the new bishop of Alexandria.
204. Socrates, Church History I.23, NPNF, II, 26–27.
205. Arnold, Early Episcopal Career, 45.
206. Eusebius, Life of Constantine III.23, NPNF, vol. I, 526.
207. Ibid.
208. Ibid.
209. Socrates, Church History I.14, NPNF, vol. II, 19–20, and Sozomen, Church History II.14, NPNF, vol. II, 268.
210. Cf. Rusch, Trinitarian Controversy, 61.
211. Sozomen, Church History II.14, NPNF, vol. II, 268. Cf. Socrates, Church History I.26.
212. Hanson, Christian Doctrine of God, 248–49.
213. Socrates, Church History I.23, NPNF, vol. II, 26.
214. Athanasius, Festal Letter 3, NPNF, vol. IV, 503.
215. Sozomen, Church History II.17, NPNF, vol. II, 269.
216. Epaphanius, Panarion 68.7, 251.
217. Ibid.
218. Philostorgius, Church History II.11, 26–27.
219. Oration 21.8, NPNF, vol. VII, 271.
220. Oration 21.9, NPNF, vol. VII, 271–72.
221. Socrates, Church History I.23, NPNF, vol. II, 26.
222. Ibid.
223. Ibid., 27.
224. Gwynn, The Eusebians, and Barnes, Athanasius and Constantius.
225. Hanson, Christian Doctrine of God, 29.
226. Socrates, Church History I.25, NPNF, vol. II, 28; Sozomen, Church History II.27, NPNF, vol. II, 277. They assert, for example, that it was through Constantia’s support and intervention that Arius was recalled by Constantine.
227. Barnes, Athanasius and Constantius, 15.
228. Luibheid, “Arianism of Eusebius of Nicomedia,” 5; quoted in Gwynn, Eusebians, 211.
229. Ibid., 214–15. We examine this letter in chapter 3.
230. Socrates, Church History I.14, NPNF, vol. II, 20.
231. Church History I.19, NPNF, vol. III, 56–57.
232. Church History I.20, NPNF, vol. III, 57.
233. Ibid.
234. Ibid.
235. Exposition of Faith 1, NPNF, vol. IV, 84.
236. Ibid.
237. Ibid.
238. Exposition of Faith 2, NPNF, vol. IV, 84–85.
239. Exposition of Faith 3, NPNF, vol. IV, 85.
240. Ibid.
241. Exposition of Faith 4, NPNF, vol. IV, 85.
242. Ibid.
243. Ibid.
244. Ibid.