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Arianism

The Arian concept of the nature of God is that the Father is greater than the Son and that the Son had a beginning. This is what distinguishes Arianism from Trinitarianism.

  • "The main argument of the Arians was that Christ was a Son, and therefore was not eternal, but of a substance which had a beginning. Thus Arius, in his debate with Alexander, urged that: "If the Father begot the Son, he that was begotten had a beginning of existence. From this it is plain that once the son was not, and it follows of necessity that he had his subsistence out of nothing." —Historical Christology, Chapter V - Arianism and the Council of Nicea, by Father John A. Hardon.

The history behind Arianism and the controversy that arose during the time of Constantine and how he got involved is intriguing. You can read about it here: How the 4th Century Church Fathers Declared Jesus Equal to God. Interestingly, Constantine had a key role in the change of Arianism, the orthodox view at the time, to the Athanasian doctrine (previously unorthodox). This occurred at the Synod of Nicaea in A.D. 325. Some years later at the Synod of Constantinople (in A.D. 397) the Holy Spirit was added to the "co-equal, co-eternal, and co-substantive" phrasing and thus established the Trinity doctrine.

Emperor Constantine destroys the writings of Arius. "Reconstructing the life and doctrine of Arius has proven to be a difficult task, as none of his original writings survive. Emperor Constantine ordered their burning while Arius was still living, and any that survived this purge were later destroyed by his orthodox opponents" (Arius in Wikipedia).

  • "In addition, if any writing composed by Arius should be found, it should be handed over to the flames, so that not only will the wickedness of his teaching be obliterated, but nothing will be left even to remind anyone of him. And I hereby make a public order, that if someone should be discovered to have hidden a writing composed by Arius, and not to have immediately brought it forward and destroyed it by fire, his penalty shall be death. As soon as he is discovered in this offense, he shall be submitted for capital punishment." —Part of an edict against Arius and his followers.

Writings attributed to Arius. In one of the three surviving letters attributed to Arius, he says:

  • "And so God Himself, as he really is, is inexpressible to all. He alone has no equal, no one similar [[homoios]], and no one of the same glory. We call him unbegotten, in contrast to him who by nature is begotten. We praise him as without beginning in contrast to him who has a beginning. We worship him as timeless, in contrast to him who in time has come to exist. He who is without beginning made the Son a beginning of created things. He produced him as a son for himself by begetting him. He (the son) has none of the distinct characteristics of God's own being [[kat' hypostasis]]. For he is not equal to, nor is he of the same being [[homoousios - same substance]] as him. . . . The Father in his essence [[ousia - substance]] is a foreigner to the Son, because he exists without beginning. Understand that the Monad (eternally) was; but the Dyad was not before it came into existence. It immediately follows that, although the Son did not exist, the Father was still God. Hence the Son, not being (eternal) came into existence by the Father's will, He is the Only-begotten God, and this one is alien from (all) others." —Arius in Wikipedia.

Please note, assuming the above quote accurately records Arius' teachings on the Father and Son, there is no evidence here that Arius believed the Son to be a created being. Rather, to Arius, the Son was begotten by the Father.

Not created but begotten. It should be understood that Arianism did not declare the Son to be "created" as alleged by many historians. Rather, in Arian's own words, "He [the Father] produced him as a son for himself by begetting him." The term "begotten" has the following dictionary definition:

  • "Something is begotten when it's been generated by procreation — in other words, it's been fathered. A somewhat old fashioned adjective, begotten is the past participle of the verb beget, which means to father or produce as offspring." —Definition of begotten
  • For further discussion on the term "begotten" see The meaning of "begotten."

How the Father could beget (or father) a Son sounds incredible, if not preposterous. However, this was the Arian concept according to Arius himself. EGW also did not consider the Son to be a created being, but a "begotten" one. In this sense, EGW (and the SDA pioneers) had an Arian belief.

  • ST May 30, 1895, par. 3: A complete offering has been made; for “God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son,”—not a son by creation, as were the angels, nor a son by adoption, as is the forgiven sinner, but a Son begotten in the express image of the Father's person.

Early Adventists were Arian. Given that Arius believed the Son to be begotten (admittedly, based on scant evidence), then Arius' position and the early Adventist position were identical.

"Eternal Son"denied

Arius of Alexandria

  • Arius of Alexandria; A.D. 250 or 256-336. Born in North Africa, he was a presbyter of the church of Alexandria and a very popular preacher. His presentation of the question who is Jesus in relation to God the Father was the occasion for disputes in Alexandria with his bishop, Alexander, and others such as Athanasius – and threatened to split the church. At the same time, the Emperor Constantine wanted a united Christian religion as a bonding force within his empire and called the Council of Nicaea (325 AD) whose impact on the notion of a single Christian orthodoxy in theology is still felt today.
  • Universal Creed backed by State Rule. The Council of Nicea represented a totally new milestone in the history of Christianity - the imposition or enforcement of a universal creed or statement of belief, backed by the power of the Roman state. Constantine locked all the bishops up in a room, in a kind of pressure cooker situation, and did everything he could to bring the bishops to an agreement, by any means possible, instead of allowing the doctrinal controversy aroused by Arius to work itself out naturally over the course of time.
  • Doctrinal Dogmatism. The dark legacy of the Council of Nicea, and the tendency within Christianity that it seems to have birthed, is a tendency towards doctrinal dogmatism, as well as the doctrinal bullying of those who are of a different persuasion. Religion and politics got into bed with one another at the Council of Nicea, to the great detriment of both.
  • The heart of the controversy was over the nature of Christ. Arius opposed the trinitarian view of the nature of Christ. Contrary to the belief of what some say today, Arius believed that Christ was the literal Son of God, begotten of God the Father back in the days of eternity past, which is way beyond the capacity of man to comprehend how far back it was. Nevertheless, according to Arius, the Son of God had a beginning, since he was begotten.
  • Why Study Arius of Alexandria with Mary Cunningham. Duration 14:46.
  • What Did Arius Really Believe? Duration 20:34.

The Nicene Creed

In A.D. 325, emperor Constantine convened a council at the city of Nicaea to stop Christian squabbling over the nature of God and to establish once and for all, by majority vote, what Christians must believe to be saved. The debate over Arian versus Athanasian views on the nature of God were settled here. "The Nicene Creed" was the result and remains the official statement of Christian faith recited every Sunday in many Christian churches. Some Protestant churches use a simplified version known as the "Apostles' Creed." Both versions reject the idea of one God while claiming to embrace it. Simply put, the doctrine, and "mystery," of the holy trinity holds that while there is in fact only one God, "he" consists of three distinct, yet indivisible parts: "God the Father," "God the Son," and "God the Holy Spirit." If it made sense, there would be no need for faith to believe it. This is true of many religious doctrines. After Nicaea, the belief in only one God, instead of the triune God, became a heresy that could get you killed.

After Nicene, a series of council meetings followed (for over four centuries) to resolve the many controversies trinitarianism brought with it, including:

  • [325] Nicea I: Is the Son eternal?
  • [381] Constantinople I: Is the Holy Spirit the Third Person?
  • [431] Ephesus: Was Mary the bearer of Christ's divine nature (theotokos)?
  • [451] Chalcedon: Did Christ have one or two natures? How?
  • [553] Constantinople II: How can we interpret the dual natures without dividing Christ into two?
  • [681] Constantinople III: Did Christ have one or two wills? (monothelitism versus dyothelitism controversy)
  • [787] Nicea II: Can icons of Christ be worshiped? How?

Arian Christian nations and the Little Horn

It is a historical fact that the three nations uprooted in the prophecy of Daniel 7 (i.e. Ostrogoths, Vandals and Heruli) were Arian Christian nations.

  • How the ‘Little Horn’ Uprooted the 3 Arian ‘Horns’. In the rise and development of Arianism early in the fourth century and the challenge it presented to the papacy, we find the causes leading to the plucking up [or uprooting] of the three of the kingdoms of Western Rome by the papal power.
  • The Ten Horns, the Little Horn, and the Three Uprooted Horns. The ten nations were Alemanni, Anglo-Saxons, Franks, Burgundians, Visigoths, Suevi, Ostrogoths, Heruli, Bavarians and the Vandals. (However, the Lombards over the Bavarians is favored by another researcher.) The three that disappeared were the Ostrogoths, Vandals and Heruli.
  • From Wikipedia on Visigoths: "The Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Vandals were Christianized while they were still outside the bounds of the Roman Empire; however, they converted to Arianism rather than to the Nicene version (Trinitarianism) followed by most Romans, who considered them heretics."
  • From Wikipedia on Heruli: Originally polytheistic, "by the time of Justinian, Procopius reports that many Heruli had become Arian Christians."

See also

The following is taken from, A research paper on the history of the trinity doctrine within the early Christian Church and within Seventhday Adventism, with quotations from Robert H. Pierson, president of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists (1966-1979).

  • Pierson. "Perhaps no other truth in all of Holy Scripture comes to us so marked with the blood of controversy as does the Bible doctrine of the Trinity. History records that ancient nations staked their very existence upon their conception of the Godhead." (Robert H. Pierson, The Message, January 1948, 'God the Father').
  • Pierson - Ibid. "Three kingdoms, the Heruli, the Vandals, and the Ostrogoths, were blotted from existence during the latter part of the fifth and the early part of the sixth centuries because they refused to accept the orthodox teaching of the ruling [Catholic] church concerning this dogma. Clergymen have been persecuted, exiled, and slain as the tide of favor regarding certain aspects of this subject ebbed and flowed in the early church."

In the above quote, Pierson gets his centuries mixed up. The conquest of the three kingdoms occurred during the latter part of the fourth and early part of the fifth centuries.

  • "The Heruli, Vandals, and Ostrogoths were eliminated by the year 538 AD. This power was to arise between 476 AD and 538 AD. These conquests strengthened the hand of the Papacy, which was established by the year 538 AD. In that year, Vigilus, the bishop of Rome, ascended the papal throne under the protection of the Roman general Belisarius. The date for the establishment of papal Rome as an independent power can thus be pinned at 538 AD." —Walter Veith, "It was to uproot three horns."

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