What is Arianism?

Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, died in A.D. 336. He taught that our Lord existed before His incarnation, but was created of God, the highest of His creatures, empowered to create all else; and, that as the highest and most ancient of God’s creatures, He is to be worshipped, but not in full measure as applied to God, the supreme Creator. This perversion of truth obtains more or less with Millennial Dawnists and its offshoot, Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Many are convinced of the Lord's Eternal Sonship but do not rank it among the fundamentals. They point out that its denial may be sincerely done in the belief that it is something that guards the Lord's glory, and that it is not accompanied by any doubt as to His eternal personal Being. We, however, maintain that it is a necessary component of the Doctrine of Christ. To demonstrate this, we will refer to the early contention in the professing church when the greatest challenge to the Truth came from Arius, who denied the Lord's Deity.

Now Arius was not like the modern Unitarian who thinks that the Lord was a mere man. His system taught that the Lord was the first and greatest creature that God made, and the only creature that God made directly. To this great creature God gave the task of creating everything else, so all things, apart from Himself, were created by Him. He was God's representative, and expressed God to every other creature. As God's representative, He was entitled to worship, and as such was rightly addressed as God. One thing only Arius would not accept, and that was the truth that the Lord was of equal substance (or essence) to the Father. He said that he was of similar substance but not of equal substance to God.

These two expressions, "similar substance" and "equal substance", differing in Greek by only a single letter, became the great battleground on which the whole of Christianity depended. Athanasius was the great orthodox champion. Constantine the Emperor favoured Arius, and Athanasius had to go into exile. Only to the Scriptures did both protagonists turn. Every Scripture that showed that the Lord was God, that proved He is the Creator of all things, that showed He must be worshipped and honoured by creatures as though He were the Father, was accepted by Arius as agreeing with his system. What scripture then was left to prove that the Lord was of equal substance to the Father? Mainly the truth of Eternal Sonship — the bulwark of John 5:18, that His Sonship proved His equality to the Father, because of His eternal generation.

Few of the great facts in the history of Christianity since Apostolic days are fraught with a more profound significance than the real nature of the great Arian Heresy. The controversy it raised, the strength it manifested, the influence it secured, and the overwhelming condemnation it earned, have all served to concentrate Christian attention upon the fourth century, and to secure for the life and works of Athanasius the Great the gratitude of all true believers in the Son of God. The victory of the truth in that mighty conflict is witnessed in the Creed of Nicaea. However much open to a certain character of criticism, however much marked by the frailty of human forms of speech, that word under God's hand has been the means of preserving the truth of the Divine Sonship and true Godhead of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ for more than 1600 years. Neither can we recognise as of God any effort that would cast it aside to-day. Just as it embodied the essential truth of Scripture in the day it was framed; so it does now. We change, human opinions come and go; but Divine truth abides, and this ancient creed which protects that truth against human reason and logic is as powerful to-day as ever.

Because this was the root cause of the heresy, as Dr. W. Bright so ably expresses it in his 'life' prefixed to his edition of the Orations of Athanasius against the Arians, "He (Arius) then argued that since a father must needs be prior to a son, the Son of God must once have been nonexistent, and afterwards, at a period inconceivably remote, have been called, by the Divine fiat, 'out of what had not previously existed' … Such was Arianism in its outset: it rested on the assumption that the relation of priority and posteriority attaching to a human parent and child must hold good in regard to a Divine Fatherhood and a Divine Sonship; and (as was afterwards repeatedly observed) it ended by destroying the reality of that Fatherhood and Sonship; inasmuch as no identity of nature could exist between the One Creator and the highest product of His creative Will." p.x.

Thus, whilst Arius denied the true Godhead of the Saviour, he did so by launching his attack against His Divine and Eternal Sonship. He did NOT deny that He was the Son before coming into the world; he denied and opposed that the relation was essentially and intrinsically Divine. For, though humanitarian heresies had preceded, Paul of Samosata having been condemned and deposed in A.D. 270, it was this peculiar subtlety of Arianism that constituted its terrible evil. For the heresiarch not only acknowledged both a pre-existence and a pre-existent sonship of Christ, but was careful to use the word "only-begotten" of His relation to God. Indeed, had he not "embodied these facts in the doctrines he taught no one would have listened to him for an hour, least of all the learned Eusebius of Caesarea and the haughty Eusebius of Nicomedia. The truth that God had verily sent His Son into the world was to them, as to all, heretic and orthodox alike, the only possible meaning of the words of Scripture. The question at issue was, In what sense was this glorious Person the Son of God; was it only in a created sense, supremely great and wonderful, or was it in an essential Sonship, a relation in which He was both substantially and eternally one with the Father?

It was at that time that the Arian controversy was fought out. Arius denied the eternity of the Word. John says, "In the beginning was the Word" -- He always existed. When everything that had a beginning began, the Word was. Arius declared that the Word was the greatest of all beings that ever emanated from God. His opponents insisted that the Word was one with the Father, in one eternal Trinity -- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: one God in three Persons. It was the most tremendous issue the church had ever been called to face, and, for over a century, it was the burning question that provoked heated controversy everywhere. For years the church was almost rent asunder over two words, "homoiosian" and "homoousian." The one word meant "of like substance," the other "of the same substance." The first was the battle-cry of the Arians; the second of the orthodox, headed by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria. So irreconcilable were the contending parties that Constantine at last decided to take a hand in the matter himself, and he called a great church-council, which convened in the city of Nicea, and there debated the question as to what the apostolic teaching really had been. Was Jesus truly God, or was He only the greatest being that God has every brought into existence? Over three hundred bishops met together, and Constantine, sitting on a golden throne, presided as the acknowledged head of the Christian church, at the very time that he still bore the title Pontifex Maximus, or High Priest of the Heathen -- the same title that the Pope bears at the present time.

The matter in question was examined from all sides. Again and again Constantine was called in to quell disturbances; feelings ran so high. On one occasion it is related that a brilliant Arian seemed to have almost silenced opposition, and the great assemblage appeared to be about to cast its vote in favor of the damnable unitarian heresy, when a hermit from the deserts of Africa sprang to his feet, clad chiefly in tiger's skin. This latter he tore from his back, disclosing great scars (the result of having been thrown into the arena among the wild beasts, and his back dreadfully disfigured by their claws), crying dramatically, "These are the brand-marks of the Lord Jesus Christ, and I cannot hear this blasphemy." Then he proceeded to give so stirring an address, setting forth so clearly the truth as to Christ's eternal deity, that the majority of the council realized in a moment that it was indeed the voice of the Spirit of God. Whether this story be actually true or not I cannot say, but it well sets forth the spirit pervading many who were in attendance, most of whom had passed through the terrible persecution of Diocletian. The final result was that the council of Nicea put itself on record as confessing the true deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, "Very God and Very God," "Light of Lights," "perfection of perfection" -- God and man in one blessed Person, nevermore to be separated. Thus was settled once and forever, in a public way, the acknowledged faith of the church of God, which held fast His Word, and did not deny His Name.

Arius held that Christ was the first and noblest of all created beings which God had made and thus denied Christ's Godhead and deity. The council of Nice, Bithynia was called in June, 325, by Constantine to consider this grave error. 318 bishops and a large number of priests and deacons were present. Many bore the marks of suffering from the former persecutions. Constantine acted as moderator and the doctrine of the trinity and the true Godhead of Christ was maintained by this council.

We may observe in passing that this serious and erroneous teaching as to the Person of Christ which Arius promulgated early in the Church's history, and was defeated at the council of Nice, is actively being propagated today by so-called "Jehovah's Witnesses." It is an old lie of Satan to rob Christ of His glory as the Creator and Son of God and should be vigorously resisted, as it was in the Pergamos period when the commendation of the Lord, of holding fast to His Name and not denying the faith, was given.

The difference as to Arianism is much simpler and plainer. Arianism says, that Jesus our Lord was not the true God: and Christianity or the scripture says He was. The question in Arianism was not about trusting at all.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" John 1:1. In this Scripture the true Godhead of our Lord and Saviour is simply and unequivocably affirmed; and all true Christians accept this word as decisive in any and every question relative to His Person. That Jesus is God, in the most full and perfect sense, is the faith of the Church. But that involves the interpretation of the word "Theos." So, that we arrive at this conclusion: Throughout the history of the Church no doubt can be entertained that in this and in other Scriptures, the word "Theos" in its reference to our Lord has been accepted in an interpretation which gives it the most absolute sense and meaning. It may be quite true that the words El, Elohim, Theos, are used in Scripture in references other than to God Himself, the Infinite, Eternal, Self-existent Being; but as Christians we reject any such reference in John 1:1. We receive the word Theos in its reference to the Lord Jesus in the same full and perfect sense and meaning as in its reference to the Father; for did not He Himself say "I and the Father are one," John 10:30? This, then, was the crux of the question before the Nicene Council. Arius would permit the word Theos in its reference to Christ, provided a lower and merely characteristic sense be affixed to it. This the Church rightly, rejected.

The other great heresy in the early church was denying that our Lord was God as well as man. The name Arianism came from Arius, who was a strong defender of the error, although it is generally believed that the same, or similar, doctrines, were held before his time.

Arius was presbyter of the church at Alexandria, and here he came into collision first with Alexander and then with Athanasius, bishops of Alexandria, and kept the church in a state of contention for many years.

The evil doctrines rampant at that time were of many varieties, but the notorious Arius taught that the Son was a secondary God, created by the Father before all worlds, that He was the very highest of all creatures, and that by Him as a subordinate all things were created. This subtle but deadly blow at the full Deity of our Lord was virtually anticipated and condemned in the Colossian Epistle as well as in other parts of scripture. The truths of its first chapter that have been before us in these pages give the direct lie to this damnable doctrine.

It may perhaps be inquired why any mention should be made in these meditations of such false and wicked thoughts of a bygone age. But alas, when evil and perverse things are once spread among the saints, their pernicious influence persists among the people of God both at the time and in succeeding generations. Arius died in A.D. 336, but Arianism and kindred errors, though formally condemned, have never been thoroughly eradicated. During the past sixteen centuries, this hateful teaching has revived over and over again in varying forms under various names.

The evil doctrines rampant at that time were of many varieties, but the notorious Arius taught that the Son was a secondary God, created by the Father before all worlds, that He was the very highest of all creatures, and that by Him as a subordinate all things were created. This subtle but deadly blow at the full Deity of our Lord was virtually anticipated and condemned in the Colossian Epistle as well as in other parts of scripture. The truths of its first chapter that have been before us in these pages give the direct lie to this damnable doctrine.

It may perhaps be inquired why any mention should be made in these meditations of such false and wicked thoughts of a bygone age. But alas, when evil and perverse things are once spread among the saints, their pernicious influence persists among the people of God both at the time and in succeeding generations. Arius died in A.D. 336, but Arianism and kindred errors, though formally condemned, have never been thoroughly eradicated. During the past sixteen centuries, the hateful teaching has revived over and over again in varying forms under various names.