Arius (Berber: Aryus; Ancient Greek: Ἄρειος, AD 250 or 256–336) was a Christian presbyter and ascetic of Berber origin, and priest in Alexandria, Egypt, of the church of the Baucalis. His teachings about the nature of the Godhead, which emphasized the Father’s divinity over the Son, and his opposition to what would become the dominant Christology, Homoousian Christology, made him a primary topic of the First Council of Nicea, convened by Roman Emperor Constantine in AD 325.
After Emperor Licinius and Emperor Constantine legalized and formalized the Christianity of the time in the Roman Empire, Emperor Constantine sought to unify and remove theological division within the newly recognized Church. The Christian Church was divided over disagreements on Christology, or, the nature of the relationship between Jesus Christ and God. Homoousian Christians, including Athanasius, used Arius and Arianism as epithets to describe those who disagreed with their doctrine of co-equal Trinitarianism, a Homoousian Christology representing God the Father and Christ the Son as “of one essence” (consubstantial) and coeternal.
Negative writings describe Arius’ theology as one in which there was a time before the Son of God, when only God the Father existed. Despite concerted opposition, ‘Arian’ Christian churches persisted throughout Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, and also in various Gothic and Germanic kingdoms, until suppressed by military conquest or voluntary royal conversion between the fifth and seventh centuries.
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Author: Wikipedia
Keywords: Arianism, Arian, Arius, Arias, Jehovah's witness, Jehovah's witnesses
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