The Acacians Return to the Teaching of Arius

Acacius’s party could not keep quiet. So they met in Antioch with a few others and condemned the decrees they themselves had passed. They decided to strike the word “like” out of the creed that had been read at Ariminum and at Constantinople. They declared that the Son is unlike the Father in every respect, both in substance and in will, and that he came from what had not existed before, just as Arius had taught from the beginning. They were joined by the followers of Aetius, who had been the first after Arius to dare to profess these views openly. That is why Aetius was called an atheist, and those who agreed with him Anomoeans and Exucontians. [a]

Those who held the Nicene teaching demanded of the Acacians how they could say that the Son is unlike the Father and came out of nothing, when their own creed stated that he is “God from God.” They replied that the apostle Paul had declared that “all things are from God,” and that the Son is included in the words “all things”; and that it was in this sense, and in agreement with the sacred Scriptures, that the expressions in their creed were to be understood. Such were the evasions and clever arguments they resorted to. At last, finding that they could offer no effective argument to clear themselves in the eyes of those who pressed them on this point, they withdrew from the assembly after the creed of Constantinople had been read a second time, and went back to their own cities. [d]