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Concept
Arius
Summary
Arius (əˈraɪəs,_ˈɛəri-; Ἄρειος, Áreios; 250 or 256 – 336) was a Cyrenaic presbyter, ascetic, and priest associated with the doctrine of Arianism. His teachings about the nature of the Godhead in Christianity, which emphasized God the Father's uniqueness and Christ's subordination under the Father, and his opposition to what would become the dominant Christology (Homoousian Christology) made him a primary topic of the First Council of Nicaea convened by Emperor Constantine the Great in 325.
After the Roman Emperors Licinius and Constantine legalized and formalized Christianity, Constantine sought to unify the newly recognized Church and remove theological divisions. The Christian Church was divided by disagreements on Christology - specifically about the nature of the relationship between the first and second persons of the Trinity. Homoousian Christians, including Athanasius of Alexandria, used Arius and Arianism as epithets to describe those who disagreed with their doctrine of coequal Trinitarianism, a Christology representing God the Father and Jesus Christ the Son as "of one essence" ("consubstantial") and coeternal.
Negative writings describe Arius's theology as one imputing there was a time before the Son of God existed—that is, when only God the Father existed. Despite concerted opposition, Arian Christian churches persisted for centuries throughout Europe (especially in various Germanic kingdoms), the Middle East, and North Africa. They were suppressed by military conquest or by voluntary royal conversion between the fifth and seventh centuries.
In the textbook account of the 'Arian' Controversy, Arius was "the founder of Arianism." However, "in the first few decades of the present (20th) century ... seminally important work was ... done in the sorting-out of the chronology of the controversy, and in the isolation of a hard core of reliable primary documents." Consequently, "the four decades since 1960 have produced much revisionary scholarship on the Trinitarian and Christological disputes of the fourth century.
Official source
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