The Enemy of Christ - The Catholic Church - Authors of Confusion​

"Arianism - named after its most famous proponent, Arius, a priest and theologian from Alexandria - held that Jesus was not divine to the same degree as the Father was divine. He was exalted and anointed to be sure, but not equal in divinity to the Father. Thus, the Council of Nicaea in 325 took up a fundamental question for the Christian faith: Who is Jesus Christ?

Nicaea condemned Arianism and gave us the formula repeated on Sundays at the Holy Mass: God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God. The Nicene Creed employed a term from Greek philosophy, rendered into English as "consubstantial." "Substance" is a term meaning the nature of a thing, its being. Thus, to say that Jesus is "consubstantial" with the Father is to affirm that they have the same nature, same being. The Father and the Son, incarnate in Jesus Christ, are both equally God.

The decision of Nicaea to reach outside the sacred Scriptures to define the relationship between the Father and Jesus, to employ the language and concepts of (pagan) Greek philosophy, was not without controversy. Does divine Revelation need nonbiblical language to express itself properly? Should the Church incorporate philosophical concepts that are not themselves rooted in divine Revelation?

The famous and enduring question puts it directly: What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?

In his long career, Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) returned to that question often. In his notable Regensburg Address, delivered just a few months before his own visit to Turkey in 2006, Benedict argued that it was part of God's providential plan that Revelation would employ the concepts of Greek philosophy:

"Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the Aóyos" (logos). ... Logos means both reason and word - a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist."

The encounter between the biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. St. Paul's vision - the Macedonian man pleading in a dream, "Come over to Macedonia and help us!" (Acts 16:6-10) - can be interpreted as a "distillation" of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between biblical faith and Greek inquiry.

Benedict speaks boldly of the "intrinsic necessity" of biblical faith being expressed in the concepts of ancient Greek philosophy. A term for this is "Hellenism" or "Hellenization" - Greece's official name is the "Hellenic Republic."

Should the Christian faith be Hellenized? Is that not to narrow God's self-revelation into a particular language and culture? The question is complex, and Pope Leo took it up, albeit briefly, in a letter regarding the 1,700th anniversary, released just a few days before he departed Rome. The apostolic letter was entitled In Unitate Fidei (In the Unity of Faith)

"The Fathers confessed that Jesus is the Son of God inasmuch as he is of the substance (ousia) of the Father ... "begotten, not made, consubstantial (homooúsios) with the Father." This definition was a radical rejection of Arius' thesis."

In order to express the truth of the faith, the Nicene Council adopted two words "substance" (ousia) and "consubstantial" (homooúsios) - which are not found in Scripture. The Council's intention in doing so was not to replace biblical statements with Greek philosophy. On the contrary, it used these terms precisely to affirm biblical faith with clarity and to distinguish it from Arius' error, which was deeply influenced by Hellenism. For this reason, the accusation of Hellenization should be directed at the false doctrine of Arius and his followers, not the Fathers of Nicaea.

There is no strict disagreement between Benedict and Leo, but there is certainly a divergence in emphasis. Benedict celebrates the Hellenization of Nicaea, rooting that very Hellenization in the Scriptures themselves, while Leo concedes that the Greek language of Nicaea was a necessary counter to the corrupting Hellenism of Arius and the heterodox party. He speaks of the "accusation of Hellenization" as something to be refuted. That divergence in emphasis will bear watching as the pontificate of Leo XIV develops.

In another discussion of Arianism, there was a point of shared emphasis. The Holy Father explained how Arianism is still a present danger, and echoed John Paul from nearly 40 years ago. In a meeting at the Holy Spirit Cathedral in Istanbul, Leo said:

There is also another challenge, which we might call a 'new Arianism,' present in today's culture and sometimes even among believers. This occurs when Jesus is admired on a merely human level, perhaps even with religious respect, yet not truly regarded as the living and true God among us. His divinity, his lordship over history, is overshadowed, and he is reduced to a great historical figure, a wise teacher, or a prophet who fought for justice but nothing more. Nicaea reminds us that Jesus Christ is not a figure of the past; he is the Son of God present among us, guiding history toward the future promised by God."

There was nearly a direct quotation of one of John Paul's most inspiring addresses - his 1987 talk to the young people of Chile on his way to the first World Youth Day in Buenos Aires. In that stadium in Santiago, he posed to them the same question taken up at Nicaea: Who is Jesus Christ?

"Young Chileans, do not be afraid to look to him! Look to the Lord: what do you see? Is he just a wise man? No! He is more than that! Is he a prophet? Yes! But he is even more! Is he a social reformer? Much more than a reformer, much more! Look at the Lord with an attentive gaze and you will discover in him the very face of God. Jesus is the Word that God had to speak to the world. It is God himself who came to share our existence, the existence of each one of us."

Source: The National Catholic Register (November, 2025)