The Arians of the Fourth Century: Their Doctrine, Temper, and Conduct, Chiefly as Exhibited in the Councils of the Church Between A.D. 325 & A.D. 381 Paperback – January 7, 2019

Newman confessed in Apologia: “About 1830 a proposal was made to me by Mr. Hugh Rose, who with Mr. Lyall (afterwards Dean of Canterbury) was providing writers for a Theological Library, to furnish them with a History of the Principal Councils. I accepted it, and at once set to work on the Council of Nicæa. It was to launch myself on an ocean with currents innumerable; and I was drifted back first to the ante-Nicene history, and then to the Church of Alexandria. The work at last appeared under the title of The Arians of the Fourth Century; and of its 422 pages, the first 117 consisted of introductory matter, and the Council of Nicæa did not appear till the 254th, and then occupied at most twenty pages.”I bought The Arians of the Fourth Century simply because this episode intrigued me. But, at the same time, that meant it would take some time to make myself free from certain notion: it must be ill-structured; and that twenty page or so might be worth reading while the rest a trash.I eventually started reading The Arians of the Fourth Century but it was after I had finished reading the two of his collections: Essays Critical and Historical; and Historical Sketches. After reading them, I was wondering why the Church needed such a long time to solve the problem of Arians. The issue was first addressed in the Council of Nicaea in 325 and cleared up in the council of Constantinople in 381. It took 56 years to resolve the problem. Was this really the problem of the Arians? Wasn’t there any wrongdoing at the Church side?In “the ante-Nicene history”, Newman compares the Church of Antioch and the Church of Alexandria: “Antioch is the metropolis of the heretical, as Alexandria of the orthodox party.” In Antioch, “Valens, the favourite bishop of Constantius, exposed the solemnities of the Eucharist in a judicial examination to which Jews and heathen were admitted”. In Alexandria, “they on principle refrained from telling unbelievers all they believed themselves.”As for the Western Church or Latin Church, Newman describes in the final Chapter: “The Western Church enjoyed at this time an almost perfect peace, and sent no deputies to Constantinople.”; and “they petitioned Theodosius to permit a general Council to be convoked at Alexandria, which the delegates of the Latin Church might attend.”I thought the Arians maintained their prominent position throughout the period, but the reality was a little bit different. One heresy generates another heresy. Then, that heresy generates other heresy. They coexist and compete with each other.Newman even explains the mechanism of the way one heresy generates another heresy: e.g. one heresy partly changes the expression from “one in substance” to “like in substance”; then another heresy removes “in substance” from “like in substance.” The purpose of these changes is to “remove mystery.”This volume includes also the comparison of the Jewish view and the Catholic view on the Trinity (Chapter II, Section II and III).To conclude, the title may give the impression that this volume deals with the history of Arians only, but actually it covers many issues. While the story proceeds chronologically, each argument and explanation develop logically.If there is any drawback, Aeterna Press chose the first edition of 1833. This edition does not include Appendix, which was added in the uniform edition of 1871. But it is readable on the internet. I understand the publisher chose the edition of which the table of contents is simple and clear.

I purchased this book to see how this great scandal took place in THE CHURCH ….how was it handled? I hoped to gain insight regarding the present heresies, idolatry, and even Apostacy going on in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church hierarchy now! Written by a great Saint, I trusted this source and it did fulfill my curiosity about who, and what happened with hierarchy, but I had hoped to learn the reaction and action of the laity at that time. How was their faith affected, what did they do, did anyone care? Sadly, this was not addressed. I would recommend this book for the historical aspect from the hierarchical perspective.

The college of bishops through its head the pope made former Anglican John Henry Newman a cardinal and a canonized saint. Secular universities in English speaking countries saw numerous Newman centers being established to encourage students to remain or perhaps become Catholic. There are some 2000 of them in the United States alone. So I turned to Newman’s description of the 4th century Arians with high expectations.I expected the work of a thorough and fair humanist scholar who would point out, in fairness to long-dead Christians who today are called Arians, that Jesus Christ did not dictate a book of scripture with a treatise on the nature of the Trinity. Yes, we are all Nicenes, but Nicaea was itself an embarrassment in which a still unbaptized pagan emperor Constantine demanded and got a creed to serve as his political weapon. Is it not a scandal that Arians were suppressed by their fellow Christians, and not by prayerful discourse, to the point that there are none today? (The Copts deny they are monophysites, much less Arians.)That is not the high-minded approach Newman takes in this book. To the contrary, it is hard to distinguish Newman from that other 13th century bigot, Aquinas, who called for the killing of anyone who disagreed with his scientifically erroneous fabrications of natural law and much else.Newman literally starts off by seeking to prove that Arianism was a Jewish conspiracy. As he contends, the Jews as a race having killed Christ could not stop themselves from also seeking to destroy his divinity, and so inspired false Christian sophists embedded within the churches in Antioch and Alexandria to invent a heresy to demean Christ. From that anti-Semitic start, precisely the kind of blood libel that ultimately led to the Holocaust of the Jewish people, Newman then builds his argument that Arianism was never anything more or less than an attempt to demean Jesus Christ.Despite writing this book as an Anglican scholar, and thus as a son of the Reformation, Newman is indifferent to the freedom of conscience of Arians. At no point does he brook for one moment any doubt about the unChristian means used by the Nicene bishops to suppress the Arian successors of the apostles, not only at Nicaea which led to Arius’ exile but also at the edict of Thessalonika of 380 when the three co-emperors outlawed all religions other than the bishop of Rome’s beliefs, formally called pontiff by this edict. Newman completely misses, or ignores, the impossibility of imagining that the use of Caesar’s power of persecution would be part of Christ’s plan for the proclamation of the Gospel. And if it was the Caesars who appointed the Nicenes to represent the church, what does that say about the claim by the successors of the Nicenes, whose cardinal ranks Newman joined later, that it was God and not the emperors who appointed them successors of the apostles to guard the sacred deposit of faith?It is tempting to excuse Newman as a man of his time, but the truth is that his times were rotten, and a scholar of true heroic virtue, namely a real saint, would have risen above his surroundings. That is what saints are for. Newman did not, at least not in this book, which admittedly he wrote as an Anglican. Even the Roman governor of Milan, Ambrose, upon the death of the Arian bishop of this Western capital, appreciated toleration enough to give a speech for peace, whereupon Nicenes and Arians together made a popular acclamation for the governor himself to become their new bishop. Comparing Ambrose with what his successors did to accused heretics suggests the 4th century was a high point of Christian toleration and freedom of conscience, but the possibility he might have learned something useful about 4th century toleration compared with the later centuries of theocracy did not rank high in Newman’s approach to this subject.This work calls into grave question why Newman is held up as a model for Christians, particularly in universities. If this book were better known, we could hope for student campaigns to erase Newman’s name from all those Catholic student ministries. Why is a rank bigot, who never apologized for it, still held up as a model of virtue?

8 1/2x11, so a bit unwieldy. The column layout is enough to make you seasick. The words are all there, that's why it got 2 stars....

This book was here in lightning speed and I didn't even order special handling or delivery! Thank you! Great product!

This is a great book if you want to understand how early Church doctrine was developed. This book explains the problems and then the solutions.

This criticism is about the format of the book. The print is super small and there are three columns of writing on each page. Each column is equivalent to a page in a normal book. As expected, there are plenty of typing errors. Also, there is no definite break between Newman's citations (which would normally appear at the end of a page or paragraph) and the text. Rather, the text and citations flow right into one another. Sometimes sentences are broken up by the citations and the reader must figure out where to pick up the sentence next. All this being said, it was a lot cheaper than the other options AND the work itself is well-written, informative, and evidence-based. It is definitely not a scholar's edition, however.

Anyone following the titanic struggle in the present church will find it instructive to study the Arian Crisis. Arianism appealed to secular powers who did not want to acknowledge a yet higher authority. The arians won friends among conservative Catholics by offering them seemingly acceptable new ways of defining Christianity. Even the Pope was seduced.Most of the bishops caved in to the new theology and at first the clergy felt they had to go with their bishops. But faithful layman fought back and found a figurehead in the person of Athanasius.The authorities did everything they could to marginalize Athanasius, exiling him five times. But gradually, by intense lobbying both in person and by letter, Athanasius won sufficient support among faithful Catholics for Arianism to be all but forgotten today.

Thanks to the access given to the original printed publication by online download after using the number given on the purchased item (scanned from the original publication), we can read the original itself and are thus led into a fascinating exposition of the intricacies of the 4th Century Arian controversy. As if we were reading the edited book in the 1830s.A humbling reading, revealing the hidden light hiding beneath the controversy.The product's value resides almost wholly in the access it gives to the online original.

solo una specie di pdf leggero senza possibilità di ingrandire o orientare il testo, effettuare ricerche ecc. , praticamente illeggibile.