Arius

ARIANISM: WHO IS JESUS?
PROF. M. M. NINAN
Socianism, Modalism or Oneness
The Father alone is the only true God and alone eternal
The Son did not pre-exist His humanity
The Son was the plan or idea in the mind of God before His earthly life.
The Son is not the Creator of the cosmos, nor was he eternal
The Son received Godship and Lordship from the Father.
The Son acts as God on earth
The Father-Son relationship began at a point in time
The Son is finite, human Messiah
God the Son is not really acceptable
The Son reveals or manifests the Father on earth.
The Son is prayed to and Worshipped by men.
As such we should sustain that at that time of the Christian history, the non-trinitarian, monotheistic
understanding of God as the Father alone remains certain. They were not able to define the
position of Jesus, though early church did worship Jesus even as the disciples in certain occasions
did as mentioned in the gospels.
As such it was not Arius who started the contoversy and it started long before him and he inherited
it from Paul of Samosata who was his teacher. It was an on going theological controversy and if
we look into all the church denominations, we can see that it still is continuing. History tells us that
more than thirty councils were held in Antioch on this subject area alone. It is understandable that
while no consensus was reached the theology of the period indeed was non-trinitarian. There were
in fact over thirty such synods which could not make a final decision on the position of Jesus in
relation to God of Judaism.
Beginning with three synods convened between 264 and 269 in the matter of Paul of Samosata,
more than thirty councils were held in Antioch in ancient times. Most of these dealt with phases of
the Arian and of the Christological controversies. The most celebrated took place in the summer of
341 at the dedication of the golden Basilica, and is therefore called in encaeniis (iv iyrcatviois), in
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