Eunomius and His Teacher Aetius

About this time Eunomius, who had held the church of Cyzicus in place of Eleusius and who led the Arian heresy, devised yet another heresy besides it. Some have called it by his name; it is sometimes called the Anomoean heresy. Some say that Eunomius was the first who dared to maintain that divine baptism should be performed with a single immersion, and in this way to corrupt the apostolic tradition, which has been carefully handed down to the present day. He invented, they say, a way of discipline contrary to the church’s, and disguised the novelty under an air of gravity and greater severity. He was a craftsman of words and disputes, and he delighted in arguments. Most of those who share his opinions have the same tastes. They do not praise a good life and good character, or mercy toward the needy, unless these are shown by people of their own sect, so much as skill in debate and the power to win an argument. Those who have these accomplishments are counted the most pious of all among them. [a]

Others say, and more truthfully, I believe, that Theophronius, a native of Cappadocia, and Eutychius, both zealous spreaders of this heresy, broke off communion with Eunomius in the following reign and made innovations in Eunomius’s other doctrines and in divine baptism. They claimed that baptism should be given not in the name of the Trinity but in the name of the death of Christ. It appears that Eunomius put forward no new opinion on this subject. From the beginning he was firmly attached to the views of Arius, and so he remained. After he was raised to be bishop of Cyzicus, his own clergy accused him of bringing new things into doctrine. Eudoxius, who governed the Arian heresy at Constantinople, summoned him and made him give an account of his doctrines before the people. Finding no fault in him, Eudoxius urged him to go back to Cyzicus. But Eunomius replied that he could not stay with people who regarded him with suspicion. It is said that he seized the chance to separate, though in taking this step he seems really to have been moved by resentment that Aetius, his teacher, had been refused admission into communion. Eunomius, they add, lived with Aetius and never departed from his original opinions. Such are the conflicting accounts given by various people; some tell the story one way, and some another.

But whether it was Eunomius or someone else who first made these innovations in the tradition of baptism, it seems to me that such innovators, whoever they were, were themselves the only ones in danger, by their own account, of leaving this life without receiving divine baptism. For if, after being baptized in the way prescribed from the beginning, they found it impossible to baptize themselves again, it must be admitted that they introduced a practice they had not themselves undergone, and undertook to give others what had never been given to them, either by themselves or by anyone else. Having laid down their dogma on a principle that did not exist and on a private assumption, they went on to bestow on others what they had not received themselves. The absurdity of this assumption is plain from their own admission. For they agree that the uninitiated have no power to baptize others. Now, in their opinion, anyone who has not been baptized according to their tradition is unbaptized, as one not properly initiated. And they confirm this opinion by their practice, since they rebaptize everyone who joins their sect, even those already initiated according to the tradition of the catholic church. These differing dogmas are the source of countless troubles to religion, and many people are kept from embracing Christianity by the variety of opinion that prevails in matters of doctrine.

The disputes grew stronger every day and spread, as happens at the start of heresies; for they had leaders who lacked neither zeal nor skill with words. Indeed, it appears that the greater part of the catholic church would have been overthrown by this heresy, had it not found opponents in Basil and Gregory, the Cappadocians. A little while afterward the reign of Theodosius began, and he banished the founders of heretical sects from the populous parts of the empire to the more deserted regions. [c]

But so that the readers of my history may not be left ignorant of the exact nature of the two heresies I have chiefly spoken of, I think it necessary to state the following. Aetius the Syrian was the originator of the heresy usually credited to Eunomius. Like Arius, he maintained that the Son is unlike the Father, that he is a created being, and that he was created out of what did not exist before. Those who held these views were formerly called Aetians. But afterward, in the reign of Constantius, when, as we have related, some maintained that the Son is of one substance with the Father and others that he is of like substance with the Father, and when the Council of Ariminum had decreed that the Son is to be considered only like the Father, Aetius was condemned to banishment as guilty of impiety and blasphemy against God. For some time afterward his heresy seemed to have been put down, for no other man of note, not even Eunomius, dared to undertake its defense openly. But when Eunomius was raised to the church of Cyzicus in place of Eleusius, he could no longer keep quiet, and in open debate he brought forward the tenets of Aetius again. So, since the names of the original founders of heretical sects often pass into oblivion, the followers of Eunomius were called by his name, although he merely revived the heresy of Aetius and spread it more boldly than the man who first handed it down. [d]