Arius it appears, was a logical thinker, and since there were limits to what he could say due to the fact that the new testament had been peppered with the term "son" - only used it for the sake of argument.
He does not appear to attribute any divinity or heirship to divinity in the sense that a father bequeaths to a literal son.
The following quotes are all available on wikipedia and the sources are usually mentioned:
-------
The Christian Church was divided over disagreements on Christology, or, the nature of the relationship between Jesus and God. Homoousian Christians, including Athanasius of Alexandria,
used Arius and Arianism as epithets to describe those who disagreed with their doctrine of coequal Trinitarianism, a Homoousian Christology representing God the Father and Jesus Christ the Son as "of one essence" ("consubstantial") and coeternal.
Arius emphasized the supremacy and uniqueness of God the Father, meaning that the Father alone is infinite and eternal and almighty, and that therefore the Father's divinity must be greater than the Son's. Arius taught that the Son had a beginning, contrary to Origen, who taught that the Son was less than the Father only in power, but not in time. Arius maintained that the Son possessed neither the eternity nor the true divinity of the Father, but was rather made "God" only by the Father's permission and power, and that the Logos was rather the very first and the most perfect of God's productions, before ages.
It is clear that his opponents who had -after finding themselves unable to argue with him rationally and on a sincere, truthful, and logical plain - had him exiled after bullying and threatening the majority into accepting their opinion via sheer brute force and manipulation of authority - and wanted him dead, and Allah
knows best what actually happened, although, from their behaviour before and after his death, and un-natural glee in their propagandistic descriptions of his death, the hypothesis that he was indeed poisoned does appear to carry more weight than other explanations.
His emperor approved upcoming speech containing rational explanations based on what was available would have made him celebrity number one, and his detractors may have feared that they faced what they had made him face - or at minimum - deposition from their high seats in councils, fine linen, and elaborate superficial special greetings full of undeserved praise.
Scroll to 40 (for background) or 45 minutes onwards to get an idea of the situation i am talking about.
----------
The Homoousian party's victory at Nicaea was short-lived, however. Despite Arius's exile and the alleged finality of the Council's decrees, the Arian controversy recommenced at once. When Bishop Alexander died in 327, Athanasius succeeded him, despite not meeting the age requirements for a hierarch.
Still committed to pacifying the conflict between Arians and Trinitarians, Constantine gradually became more lenient toward those whom the Council of Nicaea had exiled.[16] Though he never repudiated the council or its decrees, the emperor ultimately permitted Arius (who had taken refuge in Palestine) and many of his adherents to return to their homes, once Arius had reformulated his Christology to mute the ideas found most objectionable by his critics. Athanasius was exiled following his condemnation by the First Synod of Tyre in 335 (though he was later recalled), and the Synod of Jerusalem the following year restored Arius to communion.
The emperor directed Alexander of Constantinople to receive Arius, despite the bishop's objections; Bishop Alexander responded by earnestly praying that Arius might perish before this could happen.
Socrates Scholasticus (a bitter enemy to Arius) describes what he claims to be Arius's death as follows:
It was then Saturday, and Arius was expecting to assemble with the church on the day following: but divine retribution overtook his daring criminalities. For going out of the imperial palace, attended by a crowd of Eusebian partisans like guards, he paraded proudly through the midst of the city, attracting the notice of all the people. As he approached the place called Constantine’s Forum, where the column of porphyry is erected, a terror arising from the remorse of conscience seized Arius, and with the terror a violent relaxation of the bowels: he therefore enquired whether there was a convenient place near, and being directed to the back of Constantine’s Forum, he hastened thither. Soon after a faintness came over him, and together with the evacuations his bowels protruded, followed by a copious hemorrhage, and the descent of the smaller intestines: moreover portions of his spleen and liver were brought off in the effusion of blood, so that he almost immediately died. The scene of this catastrophe still is shown at Constantinople, as I have said, behind the shambles in the colonnade: and by persons going by pointing the finger at the place, there is a perpetual remembrance preserved of this extraordinary kind of death.
— Socrates Scholasticus.
While many post-Nicene Christians asserted Arius's death as miraculous—a consequence of his heretical views—several recent writers mention that Arius may have simply been poisoned by his opponents.[36][37][38] Even with its namesake's demise, the Arian controversy was far from over, and would not be settled for decades—or centuries, in parts of the West.
Actually, i believe Arius' logical and sound minded teachings would have taken over the entire apparatus before long or he would have been martyred for sedition had he refused to compromise and come out of exile. His group would have become the ahl as-sunnah wa al jama'ah of the age after deposing the sub-pagans who had hijacked the authority and taken to pushing their irrational doctrines via bullying and ad-hominem slurs.
After Nicaea, the dominant orthodox
worked to conceal the earlier disagreement, portraying "Arianism" as a radical disagreement to the "norm". The Nicaean formula was a rapidly concluded solution to the general Christological debate that did not have prior agreement.[13]
The Trinitarian historian Socrates of Constantinople reports that Arius sparked the controversy that bears his name when St. Alexander of Alexandria, who had succeeded Achillas as the Bishop of Alexandria, gave a sermon stating the similarity of the Son to the Father. Arius interpreted Alexander's speech as being a revival of Sabellianism, condemned it,
and then argued that "if the Father begat the Son, he that was begotten had a beginning of existence: and from this it is evident, that there was a time when the Son was not. It therefore necessarily follows, that he [the Son] had his substance from nothing." This quote describes the essence of Arius' doctrine.
Socrates of Constantinople believed that Arius was influenced in his thinking by the teachings of Lucian of Antioch, a celebrated Christian teacher and martyr. In a letter to Patriarch Alexander of Constantinople Arius' bishop, Alexander of Alexandria, wrote that Arius derived his theology from Lucian. The express purpose of Alexander's letter was to complain of the doctrines that Arius was spreading but his charge of heresy against Arius is vague and unsupported by other authorities. Furthermore, Alexander's language, like that of most controversialists in those days, is quite bitter and abusive.
Moreover, even Alexander never accused Lucian of having taught Arianism; rather, he accused Lucian ad invidiam of heretical tendencies—which apparently, according to him, were transferred to his pupil, Arius.[16] The noted Russian historian Alexander Vasiliev refers to Lucian as "the Arius before Arius".[17]
The Christological debate could no longer be contained within the Alexandrian diocese.
By the time Bishop Alexander finally acted against Arius, Arius's doctrine had spread far beyond his own see; it had become a topic of discussion—and disturbance—for the entire Church.
At this First Council of Nicaea twenty-two bishops, led by Eusebius of Nicomedia, came as supporters of Arius. But when some of Arius's writings were read aloud, they are reported to have been denounced as blasphemous by most participants.[16] Those who upheld the notion that Christ was co-eternal and con-substantial with the Father were led by the priest Alexander......
........
According to some accounts in the hagiography of Nicholas of Myra, debate at the council became so heated that at one point, Nicholas struck Arius across the face. The majority of the bishops ultimately agreed upon a creed, known thereafter as the Nicene creed. It included the word homoousios, meaning "consubstantial", or "one in essence", which was incompatible with Arius' beliefs.
On June 19, 325, council and emperor issued a circular to the churches in and around Alexandria: Arius and two of his unyielding partisans (Theonas and Secundus)[32] were deposed and exiled to Illyricum, while three other supporters—Theognis of Nicaea, Eusebius of Nicomedia and Maris of Chalcedon—affixed their signatures solely out of deference to the emperor. The following is part of the ruling made by the emperor denouncing Arius's teachings with fervor.
"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....."
— Edict by Emperor Constantine against the Arians[33]
.........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 Germanic kingdoms, until suppressed by military conquest or voluntary royal conversion between the fifth and seventh centuries.
It has been amply demonstrated beyond a shadow of doubt that the gospels have been adulterated and modified substantially - to the extent that whole lengthy chapters have been denounced and rejected as apocrypha by bible scholars and compilers (i don't see this as a reason for glee and claiming some sort of tribal victory, rather, i commend them for their honesty on the matter and scholarly methodology).
It is essential therefore to remove the bible from the doubtless and pristine category and and to evaluate based on truthful and sincere reasoning.
The Quran, although missing parts, is the most solid and stable i've found so far.
Nothing remains after pure truth but error mixed into truth,......or total falsehood.
I used aristotle and einstein as examples of revered and celebrated people, even pharaohs, kings, tribal leaders, golden calves, six armed female statues, and many other such lowly beings and items have been falsely taught as being divine - and if someone started such a religion now and taught that to their children, just as groups declare nations and constitutions, then declare the leader as being supreme - besides or above whom there is no other authority, the argument would still stand.
The argument that Prophets are God do not stand up to scrutiny once it is clear that they are subject to God and are His slaves and willing servants, even though God is the light of the heavens and the earth, and Prophets are A light of the world and lamps spreading God's light whilst they are doing God's work in it.
The claim that angels are God do not stand up to sound and rational thought even though they are light - of God's light, and cannot disobey God in anything. They are ruled by different laws and cannot make laws which subject God whereas God makes laws which subject angels.
Regarding the essence of the Spirit, it is not for me to argue with certainty since that has been left purposefully obscured by God, i can ponder and discuss and learn what i can about the Spirit, but i as a human being have no right to draw a fixed conclusion, if i did so, i would be discrediting none but myself since no human can explain the complete nature of the Spirit. I can however say that the holy spirit works through people in activities such as when Prophets are inspired, or when poets or writers or thinkers or workers or even children do or say what God inspires them to do or say.
Please also bear in mind that "Word" and "Spirit" recur in the Quran and bring up many reasons for pondering, as they appear to be purposefully left unexplained, but it has been clarified without ambiguity that Jesus is neither God, nor His begotten son - and the narrations confirm that Jesus did not impregnate his own mother with his own spirit in order to bear himself and go on to DECEIVE people into thinking that he doesn't know when the hour will be. The slave, willing servant, and messenger explanation fit better in terms of rationality and truth since he is human and also capable of sin and repentance just as Adam, Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, Jonah and all other Prophets were.
Our task as humans is to use and evaluate the data before us to arrive at the truth - and to be able to arrive at the truth, one needs to be sincere, rational, and truthful, or face being tricked into following any false or mistaken custom of one's tribe (locality/nation/group).
Bookmarks