Jewish Arians again

Burrus, summarizing the argument of Maurice Wiles, notes: “For Wiles, the viability of Arianism, whether in fourth-century Egypt or eighteenth-century England, was partly dependent on the existence of a worldview that could accommodate ‘spirits’ mediating between divine and earthly realms, and thus also find a place for an ontologically subordinate (but still sovereign) Christ.  Trinitarian orthodoxy—which is arguably no more scripturally grounded or logically coherent than Arianism (and perhaps considerably less so)—rests on the rejection of such a mediating christology and cosmology in favor of the concept of a fully transcendent Son, co-essential and co-eternal with the Father, whose problematic status as a ‘second’ divinity is defended in large part by being represented as under attack.”

Leave the “coherence” question to the side.  This, it seems to me, is key evidence in favor of describing Arianism as a form of Judaizing.  Judaizing is a return to Egypt, the effort to return to the system of the law after the law has died and risen in Christ.  The law was a covenant mediated by angels (Acts 7; Galatians 3; Hebrew 2); insofar as Arianism was a return to a world of mediating angels, it was a Judaizing theology.  Athanasius’ charge is not (as Burrus suggests) hate speech, but a substantive theological claim.