Tradition

Arianism

Overview

Arianism (Koine Greek: Ἀρειανισμός, romanized: Areianismós) is a Christological doctrinal tradition that rejects the more widespread traditional notion of the Trinity, teaching that Jesus was created by God and is therefore distinct from God. It is named after its proponent Arius (250 or 256 – 336 AD) and is regarded as heretical by most modern mainstream branches of Christianity. Arianism is held by a minority of modern denominations, although some of these groups espouse related doctrines such as Socinianism, and others avoid the term "Arian" because of its historically negative connotations. Modern denominations sometimes associated with the teaching include Jehovah's Witnesses and some churches within the Churches of Christ (among them the movement's founder, Barton W. Stone).

It is first attributed to Arius, a Christian presbyter who preached and studied in Alexandria, Egypt, though Arianism developed out of various preexisting strands of Christianity that differed from later Nicene Christianity in their Christologies. The term Arian is derived from the name Arius; it was not what the followers of Arius's teachings called themselves, but rather a term used by outsiders. Arian theology holds that Jesus is the Son of God, who was begotten by God the Father, with the difference that the Son of God did not always exist but was begotten/made before time by God the Father. Therefore, Jesus was not coeternal with God the Father, but nonetheless Jesus began to exist outside time.

Arius's trinitarian theology, later given an extreme form by Aëtius of Antioch and his disciple Eunomius of Cyzicus and called anomoean ('dissimilar'), asserts a total dissimilarity between the Son and the Father. Arianism holds that the Son is distinct from the Father and therefore subordinate to him. The nature of Arius's and his supporters' teachings were opposed to the theological doctrines held by Homoousian Christians regarding the nature of the Trinity and the nature of Christ. Homoousianism and Arianism were contending interpretations of Jesus's divinity, both based upon the trinitarian theological orthodoxy of the time.

Homoousianism was formally affirmed by the first two ecumenical councils; since then, Arianism has been condemned as "the heresy or sect of Arius". Trinitarian (Homoousian) doctrines were vigorously upheld by Patriarch Athanasius of Alexandria, who insisted that Jesus (God the Son) was "same in being" or "same in essence" with God the Father. Arius dissented: "If the Father begat the Son, then he who was begotten had a beginning in existence, and from this it follows there was a time when the Son was not." The ecumenical First Council of Nicaea of 325 declared Arianism to be a heresy. According to Everett Ferguson, "The great majority of Christians had no clear views about the nature of the Trinity and they did not understand what was at stake in the issues that surrounded it."

Arianism is also used to refer to other nontrinitarian theological systems of the 4th century, which regarded Jesus—the Son of God and the Logos—as either a begotten creature of a similar or different substance to that of the Father, but not identical (as Homoiousian and Anomoeanism) or as neither uncreated nor created in the sense other beings are created (as in semi-Arianism).

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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But the Nicæan faith having been received by the Gauls, their conqueror, Clovis, followed that communion for the very same reason that the other barbarians had professed the faith of Arius. In Italy, the great Theodoric kept peace between the two parties, and at last the Nicæan formula prevailed in the east and in the west. Arianism reappeared about the middle of the sixteenth century, favored by the religious…
Voltaire, A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 02
The chapter “ARIANISM.” is titled for Arianism; names Arianism.
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It is for this reason, then, that the nature of the Trinity is called simple, because it has not anything which it can lose, and because it is not one thing and its contents another, as a cup and the liquor, or a body and its colour, or the air and the light or heat of it, or a mind and its wisdom. For none of these is what it has: the cup is not liquor, nor the body colour, nor the air light and heat, nor the mind…
of Hippo Augustine, The City of God, Volume I
States what Arianism is; the author is tied to Arianism in the knowledge graph.
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And this custom, coming, I suppose, from apostolical tradition (like many other things which are held to have been handed down under their actual sanction, because they are preserved throughout the whole Church, though they are not found either in their letters, or in the Councils of their successors),--this most wholesome custom, I say, according to the holy Cyprian, began to be what is called amended by his…
of Hippo Augustine, Writings in Connection with the Donatist Controversy
States what Arianism is; the author is tied to Arianism in the knowledge graph.
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Arianism

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