Concept

Arianism

Intro

In the early 300s, a priest in Alexandria named Arius started teaching that Jesus, the Son of God, was a created being. The highest, the firstborn, the agent through whom God made the rest of creation, but still a creature with a beginning. The famous slogan: there was when he was not. In other words, the Son had not always existed; the Father brought him into being.

If that sounds like a small adjustment to orthodox Christianity, it is not. It is the difference between Jesus is God and Jesus is the most exalted thing God ever made. The first is worship. The second is creature-cult. The whole question of who Jesus is rides on it.

The crisis tore the church apart for most of the fourth century. The First Council of Nicaea in 325 condemned Arianism and produced the Nicene Creed (the one that says Jesus is begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father). But the controversy did not actually end there. It dragged on through Constantine's sons, through Athanasius's repeated exiles, and through several softer compromises (semi-Arianism, Homoianism, Eunomianism) before finally being settled at Constantinople in 381.

The page traces the historical sequence, the biblical texts Arians appealed to (John 14:28, Mark 13:32, Proverbs 8:22, Colossians 1:15), the orthodox response to each, and the modern groups that hold positions structurally similar to Arianism today (most clearly Jehovah's Witnesses, in softer forms some streams of Latter-day Saint and liberal Protestant theology).

In full

The 4th-century Christological position associated with Arius (c. 256-336), a presbyter of Alexandria, that the Son of God is the highest of all creatures, divine in a derivative sense, but ontologically distinct from and subordinate to the Father, having been brought into existence out of nothing by the Father's will before all other creation. The slogan most famously associated with the position, "there was when He was not" (ēn pote hote ouk ēn), denies the eternal coexistence of the Son with the Father. Arianism precipitated the largest doctrinal crisis of the early church, was condemned at the First Council of Nicaea (325), continued in modified forms (semi-Arianism, Homoianism, Eunomianism) for much of the 4th century, and persists in modern restorationist movements that deny Christ's full deity, most notably Jehovah's Witnesses (Watchtower theology) and (in a softer form) some currents of Latter-day Saint and liberal-Protestant Christology.

Core claim

• The Son is a creature. The Son is not eternal; there was a "when" when the Son did not exist. The Father alone is agennētos (unbegotten / uncreated).
• The Son was made out of nothing. Ex ouk ontōn, out of nonbeing, by the Father's will. The Son's beginning preceded the rest of creation, but it is a beginning nonetheless.
• The Son is of a different substance from the Father. Not homoousios (same substance) and (in stricter Arianism) not even homoiousios (similar substance). Eunomius (later in the 4th c.) sharpens this into anomoios, unlike the Father.
• The Son is divine in a derivative sense. As the firstborn of creation and the agent through whom God made all other things, the Son is properly called "god", but as a creature elevated to that status, not as God in the strict ontological sense.
• Subordination is ontological, not merely economic. The Son's submission to the Father (e.g. John 14:28) reflects the Son's lesser nature, not merely an incarnational role.

Biblical appeals

Arians read the NT subordinationist data as strong evidence that the Son is genuinely lesser than the Father:

• John 14:28 ("my Father is greater than I")
• Mark 13:32 (the Son does not know the day or the hour)
• Prov 8:22 (in the LXX: "The LORD created [ektisen] me at the beginning of his way"), Arius read Wisdom in Prov 8 as the pre-incarnate Son
• Col 1:15 ("the firstborn of all creation", prōtotokos pasēs ktiseōs)
• John 1:18 ("only-begotten", monogenēs), read as a temporal beginning of begetting
• 1 Cor 15:28 (the Son finally subjected to the Father)
• John 17:3 ("the only true God" applied to the Father, with Jesus apparently distinguished from this category)
• 1 Tim 2:5 ("one God... and one mediator" with the man Christ Jesus)

The orthodox response is that prōtotokos in Col 1:15 denotes preeminence, not creation; monogenēs in John 1:18 denotes uniqueness of relation, not temporal origin; the LXX of Prov 8:22 is contested (the Hebrew is qanani, "possessed me" / "begot me"); and the subordination texts refer to the incarnate Son's role / human nature, not to His eternal being.

Historical development

• Origins (c. 318-325). Arius, a presbyter of the Baucalis church in Alexandria, came into conflict with his bishop Alexander over the relation of the Son to the Father. Arius's Thalia (a hymnic statement of his theology, surviving in fragments) crystallized the position. The conflict spread quickly across the Eastern empire.
• First Council of Nicaea (325). Convened by Constantine, attended by ~250-300 bishops. The Nicene Creed (325) responded with three pivotal phrases: the Son is "begotten, not made" (gennēthenta ou poiēthenta); "of one substance with the Father" (homoousion tō Patri); and an explicit anathema on "those who say there was when He was not, and that before being begotten He was not, and that He came to be from things that were not, or who declare the Son of God to be of a different essence (hypostasis) or substance (ousia)." Arius and a small minority refused to subscribe and were exiled.
• The mid-4th century crisis (325-381). Despite Nicaea, Arian and semi-Arian parties dominated much of the imperial church for decades, especially under Constantius II. Athanasius of Alexandria, exiled five times across 17 years, became the preeminent defender of Nicaea ("Athanasius contra mundum"). The party landscape: strict Arians (Anomoeans / Eunomians: Son is unlike the Father), Homoians (Son is like the Father, no substance language), Semi-Arians (Homoiousians: Son is of similar substance), Nicenes (homoousios: Son is of same substance).
• The Cappadocian settlement and Constantinople (381). Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa rearticulated Nicene faith in the one ousia / three hypostases grammar that gathered the Eastern majority back to Nicaea. The First Council of Constantinople (381) confirmed Nicaea, expanded the creed (the form Christians today recite as the "Nicene Creed" is properly the Niceno-Constantinopolitan), and added explicit Trinitarian language about the Spirit. Arianism persisted among the Germanic tribes (Visigoths, Vandals, Lombards, Ostrogoths), evangelized largely by Ulfilas (an Arian missionary), into the 6th-7th centuries.
• Modern revivals. The Socinians of the Reformation era anticipated modern non-Trinitarian Christologies. Charles Taze Russell's Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society (later Jehovah's Witnesses) revived a substantively Arian Christology in the late 19th c., identifying the pre-incarnate Christ as the archangel Michael, a created spirit being. Some currents of Latter-day Saint, Christadelphian, and liberal-Protestant Christology hold variants. The Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) has hosted ongoing controversy about so-called eternal functional subordination (EFS / ERAS) of the Son, a position critics call "neo-Arian" or "neo-subordinationist," though defenders insist they affirm full ontological equality and only functional / role subordination.

Tensions

• Subordination vs subordinationism. All sides agree the incarnate Son submits to the Father in the economy of salvation. The dispute is whether this submission is only economic (classical orthodoxy) or ontological / eternal (Arian and semi-Arian positions; some EFS proponents). The line between licit "ordering" within the Trinity and illicit subordinationism is contested.
• The Wisdom-Christology of Proverbs 8. The translation of Prov 8:22, qanah in Hebrew can mean "create" or "acquire / possess / beget", became central to the Nicene-vs-Arian exegesis and is still discussed.
• What "monogenēs" and "prōtotokos" mean. Whether monogenēs (e.g. John 1:14; John 1:18) means "only-begotten" (with temporal connotation) or "unique / one-of-a-kind" (with no temporal claim) is a long-running translation debate.
• The Watchtower NWT translation. The New World Translation's rendering of John 1:1 ("the Word was a god") is contested; the anarthrous theos in the predicate is read by JW translators as indefinite, by mainstream scholarship (Wallace, Harris) as qualitative.
• Whether modern "Arianism" is the same as 4th-c. Arianism. Watchtower theology shares Arianism's denial of the Son's eternal coexistence with the Father and the homoousios, but maps Christ to Michael (a unique move not in 4th-c. Arianism). Whether the label is precise or polemical is debated.

See also

• Trinity, the orthodox response to Arianism
• Christs Deity, the proof-text compendium against the Arian denial of full deity
• Hypostatic Union, the Chalcedonian Christology that presupposes Nicene Trinitarianism
• Modalism, the opposite error (one Person, no real Father-Son distinction)
• Oneness Pentecostalism, agrees with Nicene orthodoxy against Arianism that Jesus is fully God; disagrees with Nicaea on three Persons
• Logos Christology
• Athanasius (entity hub if added)
• Arius (entity hub if added)
• Council of Nicaea (entity / event hub if added)
• Cappadocian Fathers (entity hub if added)
• Passages: John 1.1, John 1.18, John 10.30, John 14.28, Colossians 1.15, Colossians 2.9, Hebrews 1.3, Philippians 2.5-11, Proverbs 8:22