Arius

• Arius (256 or 260-336) a native of Libya, a priest of Alexandria, and a disciple of Lucian of Antioch.
• This heresy is a typical product of theological rationalism. It satisfied superficial minds to a high degree because it gave a simple and easy answer to the very difficult question of the relationship existing between God the Father and God the Son. This is what attracted many to the heresy.
• In this understanding it is necessary that the Godhead should be not only uncreated but unbegotten.
• Arians believed:

1. The Logos was not eternal but created by God as an instrument for creation of the earth.
2. The Son of God the Logos can not be truly God. He is the first of God’s creatures.
3. He like the others was brought out of nothingness, not from the divine essence.
4. He differs essentially from the Father; He is a secondary God.
5. There was a time when the Son of God was not.
6. He is the Son of God not in the metaphysical, but moral sense of the word.
7. The Logos holds a middle place between God and the world.
8. The Holy Spirit is the first of the creatures of the

• Alexander, Pope of Alexandria summoned nearly one hundred Egyptian hierarchy in a synod in the year 318 at Alexandria. Arius was condemned, and he and his adherents deposed.
• Arius objected the sentence and tried to gain associates among his former fellow-students at Antioch. Eusebius of Nicomedia gave him his full support, himself a disciple of Lucian of Antioch, Arius’ teacher he shared all his ideas. Also Eusebius of Caesarea (semi-Arian) had a midway position between him and Alexander.
• Constantine called the first Ecumenical Council at Nicaea and about 318 bishops participated in the year 325. The sentence of Alexander was not only sustained but confirmed. The council drew up the celebrated Nicaean Creed.
• Arius was exiled at Illyria but recalled in 328.
• The bishops at the Synod of Tyre and Jerusalem in 335 decided to readmit him into the Church and reinstate him into the ranks of the clergy. Constantine ordered a solemn reconciliation by the Bishop of Constantinople, but on the eve of the appointed day, Arius died suddenly (336). See also p. 54.
• Against Arianism in his First Letter to

Logos. He is still less God than the Word.

9. The Logos was made flesh in the sense that He fulfilled in Jesus Christ the function of a soul.

• In other words, Christ, though higher than humanity, was inferior to God, non-eternal, and with a definite beginning. Hewas created ex nihilo, from nothing, before the creation of the world, by nature distinct from the Father; he is the Son of God as all men are sons of God, by adoption. The second creature was the Holy Spirit. The Father alone is true God. Arius’ Writings
• Letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia
• Letter of Alexander of Alexandria
• The Banquet (qa,leia - Thalia): In order to popularize his doctrine, Arius wrote song for the sea and for the mill and for the road and then set them to suitable music. The Thalia contained some of them and was most probably a mixture of verse and prose.
• Letter to Emperor Constantine.
• St. Alexander of Alexandria traced the Arian heresy back to Lucian of Antioch and Paul of Samosata.

Serapion St. Athanasius wrote: - “The Father does all things through the Word in the Holy Spirit. Thus the unity of the Holy Triad is preserved. Thus one God is preached in the Church, ‘who is over all (Ephes. 4,6), and through all, and in all’ – ‘over all’ as Father, as beginning, as fountain, ‘through all’ through the Word; ‘in all’ in the Holy Spirit.” - “For the Son is in the Father, as it is allowed us to know, because the whole Being of the Son is proper to the Father’s essence, as radiance from light, and stream from fountain; so that whoso sees the Son, sees what is proper to the Father, and knows that the Son’s being, became from the Father, is therefore in the Father.” (Or. Arian. 3,3). - There remains no room for subordinationism in such a doctrine of the Logos. If the Son says: “The Father is greater than I”, this means: The Father is the origin, the Son the derivation (Or. Arian. 3,3;4 EP 760/776). Eternally begotten, the Son is of the Father’s essence, He is co-essential to the Father,He is homoousios o`moou,sioj.” - Sts. Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa were the great Church representatives against Arianism.