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By Archibald Robertson.
St Athanasius the Great Resources Online and in Print
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128 Pages (Part I)
Page 114
This question made an agreement between men like Valens and Basil difficult, but it could be evaded by keeping to the simple homoion, and deprecating non-scriptural precision. Lastly, there were the Anomoeans to be considered. Now the homoion had the specious appearance of flatly contradicting this repellent avowal of the extremists; but to Valens and his friends it had the substantial recommendation of admitting it in reality. 'Likeness' is a relative term. If two things are only 'like' they are ipso facto to some extent unlike; the two words are not contradictories but correlatives, and if the likeness is not essential, the unlikeness is. So far then as the 'Homoean' party rested on any doctrinal principle at all, that principle was the principle of Arius; and that is how Valens forwarded the Anomoean cause by putting himself at the head of the Homoeans. His plan of campaign had steadily matured. The deposition of Photinus in 351 had sounded the note of war, Arles and Milan (353-5) and the expulsion of Athanasius (356) had cleared the field of opponents, George was now in possession at Alexandria, and in the summer of 357 the triumph of Arianism was proclaimed. A small council of bishops met at Sirmium and published a Latin Creed, insisting strongly (1) on the unique Godhead of the Father, (2) on the subjection of the Son 'along with all things subjected to Him by the Father,' and (3) strictly proscribing the terms homoousion, homoiousion, and all discussion of ousia, as unscriptural and inscrutable.
This manifesto was none the less Anomoean for not explicitly avowing the obnoxious phrase. It forbids the definition of the 'likeness' as essential, and does not even condescend to use the homoion at all. The Nicene definition is for the first time overtly and bluntly denounced, and the 'conservatives' are commanded to hold their peace. The 'Sirmium blasphemy' was indeed a trumpet-blast of defiance. The echo came back from the Homoeans assembled at Antioch, whence Eudoxius the new bishop, Acacius, and their friends addressed the Pannonians with a letter of thanks. But the blast heralded the collapse of the Arian cause; the Reaction 'fell to pieces the moment Arianism ventured to have a policy of its own' (Gwatkin, p. 158, the whole account should be consulted). Not only did orthodox Gaul, under Phoebadius of Agen, the most stalwart of the lesser men whom Milan had spared, meet in synod and condemn the blasphemy, but the conservative East was up in arms against Arianism, for the first time with thorough spontaneity. Times were changed indeed; the East was at war with the West, but on the side of orthodoxy against Arianism.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athanasius/athanasius-life-arianism.asp?pg=114
