The True Reason for the Council of Ariminum

It is not surprising that the emperor Constantius was led to adopt the term homoiousios, “of like substance,” for it was accepted by many priests who held to the teaching of the Council of Nicaea. Many use the two words without distinction, to convey the same meaning. So it seems to me that the Arians departed far from the truth when they claimed the following. After the Council of Nicaea, they said, many of the priests, among them Eusebius and Theognis, refused to admit that the Son is of one substance with the Father, and Constantine was so angry at this that he condemned them to exile. Afterward, they say, it was revealed to his sister by God, in a dream or a vision, that these bishops held orthodox doctrines and had suffered unjustly. The emperor then recalled them and asked them why they had departed from the Nicene teaching, since they had taken part in the statement of faith drawn up there. They replied that they had not agreed to that teaching from conviction, but out of fear that if the disputes of the time dragged on, the emperor, who was then only beginning to embrace Christianity and was not yet baptized, might be driven back to paganism, as seemed likely, and might persecute the church. They claim that Constantine was pleased with this defense and resolved to call another council; but that death prevented him from carrying out his plan, and the task fell to his eldest son, Constantius. To him, they say, Constantine had pointed out that imperial power would be of no use to him unless he could establish one form of worship throughout his empire; and so Constantius, at his father’s urging, called a council at Ariminum. [a]

This story is easily seen to be a gross fabrication. For the council was called in the consulship of Hypatius and Eusebius, twenty-two years after Constantius had succeeded to the empire on his father’s death. And during those twenty-two years many councils were held, in which the terms homoousios and homoiousios were debated. No one, it seems, ventured to deny that the Son is of like substance with the Father until Aetius started the contrary opinion. This so offended the emperor that, to stop the course of the heresy, he commanded the priests to assemble at Ariminum and at Seleucia. So the true reason this council was called was not the command of Constantine, but the question stirred up by Aetius. And this will become still clearer from what we will relate later.