Arianism.
The principal heresy which denied the full Divinity of Jesus Christ, so called after its author, *Arius (q.v.).Arius appears to have held that the Son of God was not eternal but created before the ages by the Father from nothing as an instrument for the creation of the world; He was therefore not God by nature, but a creature, and so susceptible of change, even though different from all other creatures in being the one direct creation of God; His dignity as Son of God was bestowed on Him by the Father on account of his foreseen abiding righteousness. The Arian movement included many who were sympathetic to the approach of Arius, without themselves agreeing with every aspect of his teaching. Earlier scholars tended to see this teaching as an adulteration of Christian faith by essentially pagan philosophical concerns. More recent writers have argued that a major objective of the Arians was to distinguish the Divinity of the Father from that of the Son in order to express the ... ...
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