Aetius, and How Eudoxius Took Antioch

About this time Aetius brought forward his own peculiar views about the Godhead. He was then a deacon of the church of Antioch, and had been ordained by Leontius. Like Arius, he held that the Son is a created being, that he was created out of nothing, and that he is unlike the Father. He was extremely fond of controversy, very bold in his assertions on theological questions, and quick to resort to a very subtle kind of argument, and so he was counted a heretic even by those who held the same views as himself. When for this reason he had been excommunicated by the heterodox, he pretended that he refused to hold communion with them because they had wrongly received Arius into communion after Arius had perjured himself, declaring to the emperor Constantine that he held the doctrines of the Council of Nicaea. Such is the account given of Aetius. [a]

While the emperor was in the West, news came of the death of Leontius, bishop of Antioch. Eudoxius asked the emperor’s permission to return to Syria to look after the affairs of that church. Permission was granted, and he hurried to Antioch and installed himself as bishop of that city without the approval of George, bishop of Laodicea, of Mark, bishop of Arethusa, of the other Syrian bishops, or of any other bishop to whom the right of ordination belonged. It was said that he acted with the agreement of the emperor and of the palace eunuchs, who, like Eudoxius, favored the doctrines of Aetius and believed that the Son is unlike the Father. Once Eudoxius found himself in possession of the church of Antioch, he dared to uphold this heresy openly. He gathered at Antioch all who held the same opinions as himself, among them Acacius, bishop of Tyre, and rejected the terms “of like substance” and “of one substance,” on the pretext that the Western bishops had condemned them. For Hosius, with some of the priests there, had indeed agreed at Sirmium, though under compulsion, as it is said, to stop using the terms “of one substance” and “of like substance,” in order to put an end to the dispute stirred up by Valens, Ursacius and Germinius; for such terms do not occur in the Holy Scriptures and are beyond the understanding of men. They sent a letter to the bishops, as though these bishops agreed with what Hosius had written on this point, and thanked Valens, Ursacius and Germinius for having given the Western bishops the impulse toward right views. [d]