Church History in Plain Language

by Bruce L. Shelley

These fifty years continued the heated debate over the Arian question. Not long after the Council of Nicaea a moderate group, sometimes called the Semi-Arians, broke away from the strict Arians and attempted to give a new interpretation to the one substance statement. They defended the use of homoios, meaning “similar,” to describe the Word’s relation to the Father. Thus two parties arose. The one led by Athanasius insisted upon using homoousios because they believed that the Word (Christ) was of the “same” nature as the Father. If Christ had not been fully God, they said, he could not have fully saved us. The other party, the Semi-Arians, argued for homoiousios because they held that the Word was a being “like” God the Father. Edward Gibbon, in his memorable history of the fall of the Roman Empire, passed on a sneer that, in this struggle, Christians fought each other over a diphthong. Well, so it was—a diphthong. But that diphthong carried an immense meaning. In one of his books, William Hordern tells a story about a woman touring in Europe, who cabled her husband: “Have found wonderful bracelet. Price seventy-five thousand dollars. May I buy it?” The husband promptly cabled back, “No, price too high.” The cable operator, in transmitting the message, missed the signal for the comma. The woman received a message that read, “No price too high.” She bought the bracelet; the husband sued the company and won. The anecdote reminds us that the importance of a message cannot be ...