Abstract / DOI
Sophistry or Bulwark of Faith? John Henry Newman About the Ambivalence of Greek Philosophy in the Arian Controversy. Although John Henry Newman did not use the notion of hellenization he was well aware of an encroachment of philosophy upon Christian faith. His first patristic study ‹The Arians of the Fourth Century› (1833) revealed a close connexion of Arianism with the existing Aristotelic school, especially its use of dialectic methods. At the same time however the Fathers of the Nicene Council employed greek philosophy by inserting the term ‹homousios› into the creed which proved to be the only instrument to refute effectively the Arian teaching of a created Logos. Newman considered the Arian controversy to be a paradigm of the liberal spirit in religion of his own age when the dogmatic principle, as he called it, had to struggle against rationalistic principles as well as indifferentism.