Arius as forerunner of mystical theology
Arius, a 4th-century presbyter from Alexandria, is best known for his theological views that sparked the Arian controversy, fundamentally shaping early Christian debates about the nature of Christ and the Trinity. His theology, often labeled Arianism, posited that the Son (Jesus Christ) was a created being, distinct from and subordinate to God the Father. Arius argued that the Son had a beginning in time and was not co-eternal or consubstantial with the Father, emphasizing the Father's absolute transcendence and unity. This view contrasted sharply with what would become orthodox Trinitarian theology, formalized at the Council of Nicaea in 325, which declared the Son to be "of the same substance" (homoousios) with the Father. Arius's insistence on the created nature of the Son stemmed from his commitment to preserving the absolute oneness and incomprehensibility of God, a concern that resonates with later mystical theology's emphasis on divine transcendence and the limits of human understanding.
The connection between Arius’s theology and mystical theology lies in his prioritization of God’s utter transcendence, a theme central to many mystical traditions. Arius argued that the Father was so wholly other—unique, unbegotten, and beyond comprehension—that the Son, as a distinct entity, could not share the same divine essence. This radical emphasis on divine ineffability aligns with mystical theology’s focus on the unknowability of God, as seen in later thinkers like Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Pseudo-Dionysius, writing in the 5th or 6th century, developed a mystical framework where God transcends all categories of being and knowledge, accessible only through negation (apophatic theology). While Arius’s subordinationist Christology was deemed heretical, his instinct to safeguard the mystery and otherness of God prefigures the apophatic impulse in mystical theology, which seeks to approach God beyond rational or dogmatic definitions.
However, Arius’s theology diverges from later mystical theology in its implications for the role of Christ in divine-human mediation. For Arius, the Son’s created and subordinate status made him a bridge between the transcendent Father and humanity, capable of revealing God’s will but not fully embodying divine essence. This view limited the Son’s role in deification (theosis), a key concept in mystical theology, particularly in Eastern Christianity. Mystics like Gregory of Nyssa and later Maximus the Confessor, building on Nicene orthodoxy, emphasized that Christ’s full divinity enables humanity’s participation in the divine nature. Arius’s framework, by contrast, implies a more distant relationship with God, where the Son’s mediation does not culminate in the transformative union central to mystical theology’s vision of spiritual ascent.
Another point of convergence is Arius’s and mystical theology’s shared suspicion of overly anthropomorphic or rationalistic descriptions of God. Arius resisted language that seemed to compromise God’s transcendence, such as suggesting the Son was co-equal in a way that implied multiple gods or diminished the Father’s primacy. Similarly, mystical theologians, particularly in the apophatic tradition, rejected overly definitive claims about God’s nature, advocating instead for a contemplative approach that embraces paradox and silence. For instance, the 14th-century Cloud of Unknowing emphasizes entering a “cloud of unknowing” to encounter God beyond intellectual constructs, an idea that echoes Arius’s reluctance to equate the Son’s essence with the Father’s incomprehensible nature. Yet, where mystical theology often balances apophaticism with cataphatic (positive) affirmations of God’s presence through Christ, Arius’s stricter subordinationism leaned heavily on negation, limiting positive affirmations of divine immanence.
In summary, Arius’s theology, while controversial and ultimately condemned as heretical by orthodox believers, shares significant conceptual overlap with later mystical theology, particularly in its emphasis on God’s transcendence and ineffability. His insistence on the Father’s absolute otherness anticipates the apophatic strain in mystical thought, which prioritizes divine mystery over dogmatic clarity. However, Arius’s subordinationist Christology, which denies the Son’s full divinity, contrasts with mystical theology’s reliance on Christ’s consubstantiality with the Father as the basis for human deification. Thus, while Arius’s ideas resonate with mystical theology’s concern for the limits of human language and understanding, they diverge in their vision of how humanity can encounter and unite with the divine, highlighting both the affinities and tensions between his theology and the mystical tradition.
Thanks for this one. It is a necessary meditation—one that dares to retrieve something often overlooked in the figure of Arius: not his conclusions, which were gravely flawed, but the instinct that birthed them—an instinct toward reverence, toward the utter unknowability of the divine essence. And in that trembling posture before mystery, he unwittingly shares a threshold with the mystics.
Indeed, Arius stands not as a patron of heresy alone but, in a more tragic register, as a theologian of holy caution—one who sought to protect the transcendence of God but, in so doing, severed the lifeline of union. In Arius, we find a man who gazed so intently at the unbegotten light that he shielded his eyes from the Incarnation itself. He feared to diminish the Father’s glory, and so, in a cruel inversion, diminished the glory of God’s most intimate self-revelation.
What this essay draws out—beautifully—is the paradox that has always haunted the mystical tradition: that the God beyond all being has entered time, has spoken in a voice, has suffered in flesh. And if this is true, then divine unknowability is not undone, but deepened. For the mystery is no longer only that God is incomprehensible, but that the incomprehensible has drawn near, not in mere likeness, but in essence.
This is where Arius falters, and where mysticism, when rightly ordered to the Incarnation, rises into fullness. The apophatic tradition never denies the Word made flesh—it kneels before it in silence. It does not subordinate the Son to preserve the transcendence of the Father, but allows the Son’s consubstantiality to unveil the deeper scandal: that ineffable divinity has entered the world, our suffering, our joy, and not ceased to be God.
Christ, in Nicene orthodoxy, is not merely the bridge to the Divine—He is the Divine crossing over to us. And in Him, as Maximus and Gregory insist, we are not just enlightened, we are divinized. Arius, for all his apophatic scruples, could not make that leap. He feared that such intimacy would profane the Holy. The mystics, by contrast, let the Holy consume them.
So yes, there is a shared suspicion—of anthropomorphism, of facile dogma, of the rational mind’s grasping at God—but only one path leads to transfiguration. For mysticism is not merely about revering the abyss. It is about being drawn into it. And for that, one must believe that Christ is not a symbol of the divine—but God Himself, made visible, made vulnerable, made ours. Arius dared to defend the infinite. The mystics dared to love Him.