Arians did not describe the Son as an ordinary created Being.

Summary

To say that ‘Arians’ described the Son of God as a created Being is a distortion because they taught:

1. He is the only Being brought forth by God directly. 

2. He is the only being able to endure direct contact with God. All other beings would be consumed. 

3. He is not part of this universe for He created the entire universe and was begotten outside time.

4. Since God created everything else through His Son, the Son is our Creator.

5. He is our God because He created us, because our experience of God is limited to the Son, and because everything we receive from God, we receive through His Son.

There is, therefore, an infinite distinction between the Son and created beings. There is nobody who can be compared with the Son. But Arius’ enemies claimed that He taught the Son is an ordinary created being. This is a malicious distortion of ‘Arian’ theology.

It is also irrelevant.

Unfortunately, Trinitarian Christianity continues to misrepresent ‘Arianism’.

– END OF SUMMARY –

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Introduction

Authors Quoted

This article series is based on books by world-class scholars of the last 50 years.

Due to research and a store of ancient documents that have become available over the last 100 years, scholars today conclude that the traditional account of the Controversy – of how and why the church accepted the Trinity doctrine – is history written by the winner and fundamentally flawed. In some instances, it is the opposite of the true history.

Following the last full-scale book on the fourth-century Arian Controversy in English, written by Gwatkin at the beginning of the 20th century, only a handful of full-scale books on the Arian Controversy have been published. This article in particular quotes from:

RH = Bishop RPC Hanson
The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God –
The Arian Controversy 318-381, 1987

RW = Archbishop Rowan Williams
Arius: Heresy and Tradition, 2002/1987

LA = Lewis Ayres
Nicaea and its legacy, 2004
Ayres is a Professor of Catholic and Historical Theology

No Arians

Arius did not have followers. Athanasius invented the ‘Arian’ concept as a polemical device.

Arius was already dead when Athanasius wrote. However, he used Arius as a stick to beat his opponents with. He called his opponents ‘Arians’, meaning followers of Arius, and then selectively quoted Arius as an attack on his opponents.

But his opponents were not followers of Arius. Arius did not leave behind a school of disciples. He had very few real followers. Nobody regarded his writings worth copying. His theology played no part in the Controversy after Nicaea. The term ‘Arian’, therefore, is a serious misnomer. The only reason so many Christians believe Arius was important is because they accept Athanasius’ distortions. (Read more)

In reality, Arius was part of a group we may call the ‘Eusebians’; followers of Eusebius of Caesarea and Eusebius of Nicomedia. (Read more) Consequently, this article series often refers to the anti-Nicenes as the Eusebians rather than ‘Arians’.

Purpose

It is often claimed that Arius described the Son of God as a created being.

The purpose of this article is to show that that is a distortion. The Arians did not teach that the Son is a created being. They taught as follows:

‘Arian’ Theology

Brought forth by God

The Son is the only Being brought forth by God directly.

God produced all things through His Son. For Arians, the term ”only” in “only-begotten” indicates that the Son is the only Being that was ever produced directly by God. Therefore, there is nobody like Him. For example, Arius wrote:

“This direct creation means that the Son has nobody like him; the Arians’ favourite title for the Son was unigenitus (only-begotten, John 1:4, 18; 3:16)” (RH, 102).

”The Son holds a unique status because he is a uniquely direct product of the Father’s will.” (Ayres, p. 148)

He is also the greatest being that God could produce.

Not only is He the only being produced directly by God, He received everything that God is able to give:

He is “a perfect creature, not just ‘one among others’; he is the inheritor of all the gifts and glories God can give him.” (RW, 98)

Arius wrote: “The Greater One (the Father) is able to beget someone equal to the Son, but not someone more important or more powerful or greater” (De Synodis, RH, 15).

Our Creator

The Son created this universe and everything in it.

The ‘Arians’ argued that God created all things through His unique Son. Since the Son created this universe with all its creatures, He is the Creator and God of all creatures. That implies an infinite distinction between the Son and the universe, similar to the infinite distinction between any creator and the thing created. For example:

“The Father is the origin of everything made, but the Son brings everything into actual existence.” (RH, 103)

“The Son creates the Spirit and then everything else.” (RH, 101)

The word “through” indicates that, for Arius, the Father is the primary Creator and the Son was His agent (cf. John 1:3; Col 1:16; 1 Cor 8:6; Heb 1:2). 

Direct contact with God

The Son is the only Being able to endure God’s immediate presence. All other beings would be consumed.

Since God made the Son to be the Mediator between God and creation, the Son has been created to be able to come in direct contact with God. Since He is the only Mediator, the Son is the only Being who can endure direct contact with God. This makes an infinite distinction between the Son and the created universe. For example:

“Demophilus, the last Arian bishop of Constantinople before the advent of Theodosius (AD 380), [says] God … ‘could not come in contact with the creation which he intended to make, for he would have been under the necessity either of making everything gods so as to be worthy of him, or else everything would have disintegrated by contact with him. So the Son of God had to become a mediator between God and the things created by him.’” (RH, 101)

This argument may sound strange to modern ears, but it was foundational in Logos Theology, the church’s standard explanation of the Son of God when the Arian Controversy began. See – The Apologists. In this theory, since God could not come in direct contact with the creation, the Logos was necessary to act as the Mediator between God and the created things; firstly to create all things and, thereafter, to be the communication between God and the created things. (RH, 100-101)

Not part of this universe

Since the Son created all things (the universe), He is not part of this universe.

Furthermore, Arius and other Eusebians claimed time and again that the Son was begotten “before times and before aeons” (RH, 7). In other words, the Son was begotten before time even existed. If we argue that time began when the universe was brought into being, the Son originates from that which exists beyond the time, space, and matter of this universe; He comes from the unfathomable infinity beyond this finite universe.

Our God

The Father is the only true God but the Son is our God.

For the ‘Arians’, the Logos is the Intermediary and Mediator between God and creation in all things; in creation, revelation of God, and in redemption. God is invisible. We will never be able to experience God directly. The One who we experience is the Son. For beings who receive their existence through Him, He is the Creator and God. He is the Word of God and has all authority in heaven and on earth. Whatever we receive from God, we receive through the Son of God. And whatever worship we give to God, we give through His Son. The Arians referred to Him as “God” (theos). For example:

The Son is “‘God’ as far as the rest of creation is concerned.” (RW, 177)

Arius described the Son as the “only-begotten God” (RH, 14), “the Mighty God [Isa 9:15]” (RH, 15), and as “full of truth and grace, God” (Arius, RH,6)

They described the Son as “our God” because:

Firstly, the Son created us: “The Father is the origin of everything made, but the Son brings everything into actual existence” (RH, 103).

Secondly, our experience of God is limited to His Son for God is invisible, meaning that created beings cannot experience God directly. 

Thirdly, in all things, the Logos is the intermediary and mediator between God and creation. Whatever we receive from God, we receive through the Son of God. He has all authority in heaven and on earth. And whatever worship we give God, we give through His Son.

These concepts create an infinite distinction between the Son and the created things. The Son is above all other beings. In practice, He is the God for all other beings. He is our God, just like the Father is His God (e.g., Rev 1:6; 3:2, 12).

Arianism Misrepresented

Nobody like Him

Although the ‘Arians’ described the Son as created, they ensured that all understood that He is infinitely exalted above the beings who received their existence and all blessings through Him. Eusebius of Caesarea argued. For example:

Arius said that “His only-begotten Son … has nobody like him.” (RH, 105)

The Father “gave him existence alongside himself” (RH, 7), indicating a special close relationship, meaning, reflected by John 1:1 as: “The Word was with God.”

An Ordinary Created Being

Alexander and Athanasius wrote that the Eusebians taught that the Son is an ordinary created being.

Athanasius and Alexander, the bitter theological enemies of Arius and other Eusebians, distorted Eusebian theology by saying that it presents the Son as a creature just like any other creature. Alexander, for example, would write that, for the Eusebians:

“The Son is a creature.” “He is one of the products” (RH, 16).

“When he came into existence, he was then such as is every man” (Hanson, p. 17).

“We are able to become the sons of God as he is.” (RH, 17).

And Athanasius would describe the Arians as teaching:

Athanasius described Arius’ Son as “like all others” and “He is ‘proper’ to [the class of] made and created things” (See A(ii-iii, v-vi), Williams, p. 100-101).

“There are many powers. … Christ is not the true power of God, but he is one of those who are called powers, among which are also the locust and the caterpillar” (Hanson, p. 13).

“The Son is truly a Son of the Father and not just the same as any other created thing.” (Ayres, p. 142)

Since Alexander presented the Arius’ Son as an ordinary created being, he attempted to reduce the impact of Arius’ statement that the Son created all things and interpreted Arius as saying:

“He was made for our sake, in order that God should create us through him as through an instrument” (RH, 16 – Alexander).

This distortion was known in Arius’ day. For example, in a letter, Eusebius of Caesarea took Alexander “to task for unjustly accusing Arius and his friends of teaching that ‘the Son has come into existence from non-existence like one of the mass‘, whereas what they had actually said was that the Son was “a perfect creature, but not as one of the creatures” (RH, 56-57).

A Malicious Distortion

Scholarly Trinitarians describe Athanasius’ misrepresentation of Eusebian theology as malicious.

On pages 104-105, Rowan Williams discusses Athanasius’ quotes of Arius’ works and shows how Athanasius distorts Arius’ words. He concludes:

“The Son is repeatedly assimilated to the level of other creatures, and the phrases ‘like us’ and ‘like all others‘ recur.” In contrast, Arius wrote: “The Son was a ‘perfect creature, yet not as one among the creatures, a begotten being, yet not as one among things begotten.” (RW, 104)

Athanasius says that Arius described the Son as “some kind of being” (A(iii), Williams, p. 100). Williams describes this as “a deliberately contemptuous paraphrase” (Williams, p. 104).

Williams interpreted this as that Athanasius used “unscrupulous tactics in polemic and struggle” (RW, 239). Hanson agrees and wrote:

“Athanasius, a fierce opponent of Arius … certainly would not have stopped short of misrepresenting what he said” (RH, 10)

“Athanasius … may be suspected of pressing the words maliciously rather further than Arius intended” (RH, 15).

Athanasius stated that, as Arius described Him, “the Son was no greater than the locust or caterpillar”. RPC Hanson describes this as a malicious distortion (Hanson, p. 20; cf. RH, 13).

Trinitarian Christianity

Over the centuries, Trinitarian Christianity had continued to misrepresent the ‘Arians’.

Unfortunately, however, after Emperor Athanasius in 380 had made the Trinitarian version of Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire and brutally eliminated all other versions of Christianity from among the Roman people (read more), Trinitarian Christianity accepted Athanasius’ message as gospel truth. The “conventional account of the Controversy … stems originally from the version given of it by the victorious party.” (RPC Hanson) But that conventional account “is now recognized by a large number of scholars to be a complete travesty.”

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