Arius (c. 256–336) was a priest of Alexandria whose teaching triggered the gravest doctrinal crisis of Christian antiquity. His thesis can be summed up in one formula that has become sadly famous: "there was a time when the Son was not." In other words, for Arius, the Word — Christ — is not God from all eternity: he is the first and highest of creatures, drawn out of nothing by the Father before all ages, but a creature nonetheless, of a different substance from God.
The issue was no mere academic subtlety. If Christ is not truly God, then the God who became man, who died and rose again to save us, is only a created intermediary — and Christianity collapses. That is why the Arian controversy mobilized emperors, councils and Fathers of the Church for nearly sixty years, and led in 325 to the convening of the first ecumenical council in history, at Nicaea, by Emperor Constantine.
It was at Nicaea that the Church forged the decisive word: the Son is consubstantial with the Father (in Greek homoousios, "of the same substance"). This term, enshrined in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed which Catholics still recite every Sunday, directly condemns Arius. Yet the heresy did not die with its council: carried by Emperor Constantius II (337–361, sole master of the Empire from 353) and then, in the East, by Valens (364–378) — with brief returns to orthodoxy in between —, it dominated much of the East for half a century, until Saint Jerome could write that "the whole world groaned and was astonished to find itself Arian"[1].
Arius thus became, in the Church's memory, the archetype of the heresiarch: the brilliant, austere, eloquent and popular man whose error — precisely because it seemed reasonable — nearly carried away the entire Christian faith. His shadow still hangs over all those who, today, deny Christ's divinity.
Who was Arius?
Libyan origins and Antiochene formation
Arius's origins are poorly documented, as is often the case for figures of antiquity described only by their adversaries[2]. He is said to have been born around 256, probably at Ptolemais in Cyrenaica — the coast of what is now eastern Libya; the exact place remains disputed, however, the ancient sources only assuring his Libyan origin[3][4]. He thus belonged to the Greek world of North Africa, that of Alexandria, then the intellectual capital of Christianity.
Ancient tradition connects his theological formation with the school of Lucian of Antioch (martyred in 312), a home of literal exegesis and of a theology marked by subordinationism — the idea that the Son is inferior to the Father[5]. Contemporary historians, such as R. P. C. Hanson, judge this link probable but unproven — Arius calling Eusebius of Nicomedia his "co-Lucianist"[6]; others, such as Rowan Williams, question it[7]. What is certain is that Arius shared with the "collucianists" — Lucian's former pupils, including Eusebius of Nicomedia — a common sensibility that would later win him decisive support.
Priest of Baucalis in Alexandria
Tradition says he was first ordained deacon by Bishop Peter of Alexandria after an initial reconciliation, then excommunicated by that same Peter at the end of further disputes; readmitted by his successor Achillas, he was ordained priest by him around 313, receiving charge of the church of Baucalis, one of the most important districts of Alexandria[8]. It was a prominent post: the presbyter of Baucalis preached before a large urban congregation in a city accustomed to passionate theological disputes.
Even hostile ancient sources paint an impressive figure. Tall, ascetic, grave in bearing, Arius led an austere life and enjoyed a reputation for moral severity. Epiphanius of Salamis — who writes half a century later and is no neutral witness — depicts him as a man of very tall stature, with a downcast face, gentle and persuasive in manner, and asserts that he drew as many as seven hundred virgins to his party[9]. This respectability is no anecdote: it partly explains why his teaching spread so fast. We are not dealing with a marginal agitator, but with a reputed, pious and popular preacher.
A formidable talent: doctrine set to music
Arius was among the first to grasp the power of popular communication in the service of a theological thesis. Rather than reserving his teaching for clerics, he versified it and set it to music in a work entitled the Thalia (Θάλεια, "the Banquet"): the work is now lost as such, and only a few fragments of it survive, quoted by his opponent Athanasius[10].
Philostorgius — a historian nonetheless favourable to the Arian cause — reports that after his break Arius further composed, to familiar tunes, songs for sailors, millers and travellers, so that his doctrine would spread on the quays, in the mills and along the roads: a popular repertoire distinct from the Thalia, of which no fragment is preserved[11][12]. This viral diffusion through the streets — and not only through the schools — is one of the reasons Arianism became a mass phenomenon rather than a mere experts' debate. At Alexandria, the question came to be debated even in the shops and squares: is the Son eternal like the Father, or created out of nothing? (The famous duel between "of the same substance" — homoousios — and "of like substance" — homoiousios —, a single iota apart, belongs only to the later debates, from the 350s onward.)
What did Arianism profess?
To refute a doctrine, one must first expound it honestly, in its strongest version. Arianism was neither absurd nor crude: it was a rigorous, almost philosophical attempt to preserve a point all Christians held sacred — the absolute oneness and transcendence of God. Its error was to preserve it at the price of Christ's divinity.
"There was a time when the Son was not"
The heart of the Arian system lies in one proposition: the Son had a beginning. Since God the Father alone is "unbegotten" (agennêtos), and since the Son is "begotten," it must follow, according to Arius, that he began to exist. Hence the formula that sums it all up:
"There was a time when he was not; and before he was begotten, he was not." — Arian formula, as taken up and struck with anathema by the Council of Nicaea, 325[13]
In Greek: ên pote hote ouk ên ("there was [a time] when he was not"). The Word is therefore not eternal as the Father is. In Arian thought there is a "before" the Son — a "moment" (outside created time) when the Father alone exists.
The Son, a creature drawn out of nothing
The whole doctrine follows from this premise. If the Son began, then he is not of the Father's substance: he is made, not begotten in the proper sense. Arius uses the vocabulary of creation without flinching: the Son is a creature (ktisma), a work (poiêma), drawn out of nothing (ex ouk ontôn, "from what is not")[14]. Admittedly, he is the supreme creature, the one through whom all else was made, infinitely above angels and men; but he remains on the side of creatures, not on the side of God.
Three assertions followed, which Nicaea would condemn one by one:
- the Son is of another hypostasis or substance than the Father (ex heteras hypostaseôs ê ousias);
- the Son is mutable and changeable (treptos, alloiôtos) — capable in principle of progressing or of sinning, even if he never did;
- the Son does not know the Father perfectly, being of an inferior and finite nature.
A radical subordinationism, not mere reverence for the Father
A clarification is needed here, for this is the crux of the matter. All theologians of the early centuries acknowledged a certain priority of the Father: the Father is the source, the Son comes from the Father. This subordinationism of language was common before Nicaea and did not make its author a heretic.
What makes Arius a heretic is that he turns this priority of origin into a priority of nature: the Son is not only "from" God, he is of another rank of being than God. Between the Father and the Son, Arius draws an ontological frontier: on one side the Uncreated, on the other the created — and the Son is on the wrong side of that frontier. It is this rupture that the Church's faith refuses: between the Father and the Son there is no frontier of nature, for they are one God.
What was really at stake: salvation itself
To grasp why the Church fought this battle for sixty years, one must step out of technical vocabulary and ask the question plainly: who saves us?
The Christian answer is that God himself became man to unite us to himself. Saint Athanasius put it in a phrase that has remained famous: the Word "became man so that we might be made God"[15]. Yet only God can divinize; a creature, however lofty, cannot communicate a life it does not possess by nature. If Christ is but a creature, then on the Cross it is a creature who dies, and our salvation never reaches us as far as God.
That is why Athanasius kept repeating that Arianism is not one error among others: it empties the Redemption of its content. A created "saviour" leaves humanity exactly where it was. The matter was therefore not verbal: it decided whether Christianity proclaims that God has joined us, or only that a superior being has shown us the way.
How did the crisis break out?
The conflict with Bishop Alexander (c. 318)
The controversy broke out in Alexandria around 318–320. Bishop Alexander of Alexandria was preaching on the unity of the Trinity and on the eternity of the Son. Arius publicly accused him of confusing the Father and the Son — that is, of falling back into the heresy of Sabellius (modalism, which denies the real distinction of the persons)[16]. In reaction, he forcefully asserted his own thesis: the Son had a beginning; he is a creature.
The debate, at first internal to the Alexandrian clergy, quickly turned bitter. Alexander, prudent, first let the discussion unfold, then, faced with Arius's obstinacy and the growing agitation of the people, he convened a synod.
The Synod of Alexandria and the excommunication (c. 320–321)
Around 320–321, a synod gathering nearly a hundred bishops of Egypt and Libya condemned Arius's propositions and excommunicated him, along with a few clerics who followed him[17]. Alexander then addressed an encyclical letter to the whole episcopate denouncing the new error. In another writing, he summed up the opposing thesis against the received faith:
"They say: God was not always Father; there was a time when God was not Father. The Word of God did not always exist, but was made out of nothing... that is why there was a time when he was not." — Alexander of Alexandria, encyclical letter on the heresy of Arius, c. 319[18]
Far from submitting, Arius played his connections. He left Egypt and sought support in the East, where his "Lucianist" formation won him the solidarity of influential bishops.
Going international: Eusebius of Nicomedia
Arius found his most powerful protector in Eusebius of Nicomedia, bishop of the city where the emperor resided — a skilful courtier and a theologian of subordinationist leanings[19]. In a surviving letter, Arius sets out his doctrine to him and complains of being persecuted for having said that "the Son has a beginning, while God is without beginning"[20]. Eusebius took up his cause and rallied several bishops of Asia Minor.
A mere parish conflict thus became a fracture across the entire Christian East. Rival synods met, some condemning Arius, others rehabilitating him. The unity of the Church, barely emerged from the persecutions, was torn apart over the question of who Christ really is.
A divided empire that Constantine wants to pacify
Emperor Constantine, who had just reunified the Empire in 324, discovered with concern that his new official religion was dividing. He first sent his ecclesiastical adviser Hosius (Ossius) of Cordoba with a letter to both parties, begging them to be reconciled over what he took to be a quarrel about words[21]. The failure of this mediation convinced him that an assembly of the whole Church was needed. That would be Nicaea.
The Council of Nicaea (325)
Constantine convenes the first ecumenical council
In 325, Constantine convened at Nicaea (today İznik in Turkey), not far from his residence, an assembly of all the bishops of the Empire. It was an unprecedented event: for the first time, the universal Church met in council. Tradition retains the symbolic figure of 318 Fathers — an echo of Abraham's 318 servants (Genesis 14) — historians estimating actual attendance at between 250 and 300 bishops, mostly from the East[22]. The emperor presided over the opening sessions; the young deacon Athanasius, accompanying his bishop Alexander, emerged there as Arius's most redoubtable adversary.
The decisive word: homoousios (consubstantial)
The council sought a formula the Arians could not twist. Every scriptural expression proposed — "of God," "like the Father," "image of the Father" — was accepted by the Arian party, which interpreted it in its own sense. What was needed, then, was a word Scripture does not use as such but which unambiguously expresses the received faith: the Son is of the same substance as the Father, homoousios tô Patri[23].
The term was not new — it had even been suspect in the 3rd century — but it had the decisive advantage of being unacceptable to Arius: one cannot say of a creature that it is "of the same substance" as God. By imposing this word, the council closed every escape route. Faith was no longer a matter of interpretation: the Son is God in the full sense, from all eternity.
The Nicene Creed and the anathema against Arius
The council promulgated a Creed (a profession of faith) proclaiming the Son "God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father"[24]. Then it added an explicit condemnation, enumerating the Arian formulas in order to strike them with anathema:
"But those who say: 'There was a time when he was not,' and: 'Before he was begotten, he was not,' and that he was made out of nothing, or who claim that the Son of God is of another hypostasis or substance, or that he is created, or mutable, or changeable — these the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes." — Symbol of Nicaea, final anathema, 325[25]
Every clause targets a precise thesis of Arius. This text is the official birth certificate of the Church's Trinitarian theology.
Two recalcitrant bishops: the exile of Arius
Almost all the Fathers signed. Only two bishops obstinately refused: Theonas of Marmarica and Secundus of Ptolemais, both Libyans — Arius's homeland. They were deposed and exiled with him[26]. Arius's writings were condemned to the flames, and Constantine ordered their author's exile to Illyria. Eusebius of Nicomedia, who had at first signed half-heartedly, was exiled a few months later for continuing to support the Arians.
At the time, the victory of orthodoxy seemed total. In reality, the war was only beginning.
Arianism after Nicaea: half a century of storm
Nicaea did not extinguish the crisis; it made it imperial. For more than fifty years, the favour of emperors swung from one camp to the other, and the faith of the whole Empire swung with it.
The death of Arius (336)
Around 335, under pressure from Eusebius's party, Constantine let himself be convinced that Arius had signed an acceptable profession of faith, and ordered his solemn readmission into the Church of Constantinople. But on the eve of the appointed day, in 336, Arius died suddenly. Socrates Scholasticus, who holds the account from Athanasius, reports that Arius, proudly crossing the city amid a cortege of Eusebius's partisans, was seized as he approached the forum of Constantinople by a terror born of remorse of conscience, accompanied by a violent disorder of the bowels; led behind the forum, he expired there almost at once in a sudden haemorrhage[27].
The defenders of Nicaea saw in this brutal death, on the eve of his triumph, a judgment of God; Athanasius explicitly compared it to the end of Judas, "falling headlong" (Acts 1:18)[28]. Modern historians read this account with caution: its symbolic charge is obvious; the fact remains that the suddenness of this death, on the eve of rehabilitation, lastingly struck contemporaries. Constantine himself died the following year, in 337, baptized on his deathbed by Eusebius of Nicomedia — a sign that imperial favour had, in the end, leaned to the Arian side.
Athanasius against all
Having become Bishop of Alexandria in 328, Athanasius devoted his life to defending the Nicene word. For this he paid an immense price: five exiles in forty-five years as bishop, driven from his see by pro-Arian emperors, slandered, condemned by councils won over to the adversary[29]. To him applies the later expression, coined about him: Athanasius contra mundum — "Athanasius against the whole world" — the lone man who holds firm when almost the entire episcopate bends. His great Orations against the Arians remain the monument of anti-Arian refutation.
Semi-Arians, Homoeans, Anomoeans: fragmentation
Once Arius was dead, his heirs split into rival schools — which well shows the intellectual fragility of the system:
- the Anomoeans (from anomoios, "dissimilar"), radical Arians, held that the Son is wholly dissimilar to the Father;
- the Homoeans (from homoios, "like"), backed by Emperor Constantius II, contented themselves with saying the Son is "like" the Father, without specifying substance — a formula vague enough to rally everyone;
- the Semi-Arians or Homoiousians proposed that the Son be "of like substance" (homoiousios) and not "of the same substance" (homoousios): a single Greek letter, the iota, separated this formula from orthodoxy — hence the proverb about quarrels reduced to "an iota."
This proliferation of parties proves, by contrast, the solidity of the Nicene word: orthodoxy has one formula; heresy has ten.
"The whole world groaned to find itself Arian"
The lowest point was reached around 357–360. Under Constantius II, twin councils — Rimini (Ariminum) in the West and Seleucia in the East, in 359 — adopted, under imperial pressure and sheer exhaustion, a Homoean formula that dropped the word "substance"; the following year, the Council of Constantinople (360) endorsed this Homoean triumph. Many Catholic bishops signed out of weariness, without measuring the scope of the text. Saint Jerome, writing around 379, summed up this disaster in an unforgettable formula:
"The whole world groaned and was astonished to find itself Arian." — Saint Jerome, Altercatio Luciferiani et Orthodoxi (Dialogue against the Luciferians), chapter 19, c. 379[30]
The sentence says it all: heresy triumphed not by force of argument, but through fatigue, the pressure of power and the ambiguity of formulas. It recalls that a majority — even an episcopal one — does not make truth.
The Council of Constantinople (381) and the victory of Nicaea
Recovery came from the Cappadocian Fathers — Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa — who clarified Trinitarian vocabulary (one substance, three hypostases, that is, three persons) and rallied the East to Nicaea. Under Emperor Theodosius, a convinced Catholic, the Council of Constantinople met in 381, the second ecumenical council. It reaffirmed and completed the Nicene Creed, adding the profession of the divinity of the Holy Spirit against the Pneumatomachians, who denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit[31].
It is this enriched text — the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed — that the Church still proclaims at Sunday Mass. Arianism, as a dominant force in the Empire, was defeated. Yet it would long survive beyond the frontiers, among the Germanic peoples.
Why did Arianism nearly prevail?
It would be wrong to believe that Arianism seduced only weak minds. One must understand why this error was so powerful, for the same springs still operate today.
It flattered reason. The idea of a single, absolutely transcendent God, with a created intermediary to touch the world, seems more "logical" and simpler than the mystery of one God in three persons. Arianism offered a rationalized Christianity, rid of its central paradox.
It leaned on biblical verses. Arius could readily quote the passages where Christ says "the Father is greater than I" (John 14:28), where he is called the "firstborn of all creation" (Colossians 1:15), or where he confesses ignorance of the day of judgment (Mark 13:32). Read in isolation, these texts seemed to prove him right. The Catholic answer was to read them in light of the Incarnation: these limits belong to Christ according to his assumed humanity, not according to his divinity.
It had power on its side. After Constantine, several emperors — Constantius II above all, but also Valens — were Arian or pro-Arian, and imposed the doctrine by political coercion, the exile of faithful bishops and the manipulation of councils. Arianism was, in large part, a court heresy.
The lesson the Church drew from this crisis is twofold: the truth of faith depends neither on majorities nor on princes, and sometimes a precise, non-biblical word is needed to defend the biblical meaning — for heretics know how to quote Scripture.
The Catholic refutation
The witness of Scripture
Against Arianism, the Church opposed not speculation but Scripture taken as a whole. Saint John's prologue affirms that "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God" (John 1:1) — not "was a god" nor "was created," but was, from all eternity, and was God. Christ declares: "Before Abraham was, I AM" (John 8:58), appropriating the divine Name of Exodus; and "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30). Saint Paul writes that "in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily" (Colossians 2:9). The "subordinationist" verses invoked by Arius are all to be understood of the humanity of the incarnate Word; they never prove him to be a creature.
Homoousios is not an innovation, but a defence
The subtlest Arian objection was: "your word homoousios is not in the Bible; you are adding to the faith." The Church's answer, formulated by Athanasius, is decisive: the word is new, but the faith it defends is ancient. A precise term was forged precisely because the Arians twisted every biblical term. A council's role is not to invent doctrine, but to draw a boundary heresy can no longer cross. That is the very principle of the development of dogma: the Church says nothing new; she says differently what she has always believed, in order to protect it.
Athanasius: only God can divinize us
The deepest refutation is not philological but soteriological — it concerns salvation. For Athanasius, Arianism is refuted by its consequences: if Christ is a creature, he can neither unite us to God, nor communicate divine life to us, nor be adored without idolatry. Yet the Church has always adored Christ; she has always believed herself saved and divinized by him. The faith of prayer thus condemned Arianism even before the council: one does not pray to a creature, and the Church prayed to Christ. This convergence of worship, Scripture and salvation is the true foundation of Nicaea.
Arianism never dies: its revivals
Defeated in the Roman Empire, Arianism survived and resurfaced in other forms, down to our own day. Denying that Christ is truly God is a permanent temptation of the religious mind.
The Arian barbarian kingdoms
In the 4th century, Bishop Ulfilas (Wulfila, c. 311–383) evangelized the Goths, gave them an alphabet and translated the Bible for them, transmitting a faith of Arian form — the one then dominant at the imperial court[32]. Through this channel, Arianism became the religion of most Germanic peoples: Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Burgundians, Lombards. For two centuries, part of the Christian West was thus Arian, at times persecuting Catholics — the Vandals of North Africa notably. The conversion of the Frankish king Clovis directly to Catholicism (and not to Arianism, c. 496–508) and the rallying of the Visigothic kingdom of Reccared at the Third Council of Toledo (589) marked the gradual end of Germanic Arianism[33].
From Michael Servetus to the Socinians
At the Renaissance and the Reformation, the rejection of the Trinity reappeared. The Spaniard Michael Servetus, an antitrinitarian, was burned at Geneva in 1553 — an episode explored further in the article on John Calvin. In the same century, the Socinians (after Lelio and Fausto Sozzini), in Poland, systematized the denial of Christ's divinity, giving birth to the Unitarian current, which survives to this day. These movements resume, without always knowing it, the intuition of Arius: one single God, and an inferior Christ.
Jehovah's Witnesses: a contemporary Arianism
The broadest revival today is that of Jehovah's Witnesses, founded at the end of the 19th century. Their doctrine is, on this point, literally Arian: Christ is not God, but Jehovah's first creature — identified with the archangel Michael[34]. Their Bible translation even renders John 1:1 as "the Word was a god" — exactly the reading Arius would have wished[35]. Facing them, the Church's answer remains that of Nicaea, seventeen centuries ago: the Son is "true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father." The debate Arius opened is therefore not closed: it is replayed at every door where men come to deny that Jesus is truly God.
For further reading
The case of Arius is inseparable from the first ecumenical council and from the figure of his great opponent. It is better understood alongside the other great Christological controversies and the Reformation figures who, in their own way, reopened the question of Christ's divinity.
- On the defender of Nicaea: Athanasius of Alexandria.
- On the other great heresies of the early centuries: Nestorius and Marcion of Sinope.
- On the heresy that divided the West in the 5th century: Pelagius and grace.
- On the modern reopening of the Trinitarian question: John Calvin and the Servetus affair, Martin Luther and the Reformation.
Notes and References
Saint Jerome, Altercatio Luciferiani et Orthodoxi (Dialogue against the Luciferians), ch. 19, written c. 379 — critical ed. Sources Chrétiennes no. 473, A. Canellis, Paris, Cerf, 2003, pp. 158-159; PL 23, 181B. Context: in the wake of the Council of Rimini (359), endorsed at Constantinople (360), where the Homoean formula dropping the word "substance" was imposed on the West. Latin text: "Ingemuit totus orbis, et Arianum se esse miratus est." — hence the translation: "the whole world groaned and was astonished to find itself Arian."
1 30R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy 318-381, Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1988 — the reference work on the Arian crisis: uncertainty of Arius's origins and debated connection with the school of Lucian of Antioch, from the word "co-Lucianist" in Arius's letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia; R. Williams sees in it for his part a possible formula of captatio benevolentiae (Arius, pp. 30-31).
2 6Rowan Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition, London, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1987 (2nd ed. Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2001) — a major study situating Arius in the Alexandrian theological context, questioning the direct link with Lucian of Antioch, and giving (pp. 97-109) the comparative analysis of the fragments of the Thalia preserved by Athanasius.
3 7"Arius", The Catholic Encyclopedia, New York, Robert Appleton Company, 1907-1912 — biographical notice: "Libyan by descent" (said to have been a Libyan by descent — exact birthplace not assured); Meletian party against Peter in 306 then reconciliation and diaconal ordination by Peter; excommunication after further disputes; readmission by Achillas, Peter's successor, who ordained him priest in 313 and entrusted him with the church of Baucalis. On the Thalia ("composed in verse and prose […] which he termed "Thalia"", of which only "a few fragments" survive) and the popular songs ("He is also said to have published songs for sailors, millers, and travellers"). Text: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01718a.htm
4 5 8 12Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion (against heresies), heresy 69, § 3 ("Against the Arians"), written c. 375-377 (ed. K. Holl, GCS 37; Engl. trans. F. Williams, Brill) — physical portrait (very tall stature, downcast face, gentle and persuasive manners) and assertion of the seven hundred virgins led to his party; a polemical account half a century after the facts, to be read with caution.
9Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, De Synodis (Letter on the Synods of Rimini and Seleucia), § 15, 3, c. 359-361 (PG 26, 705C-708C; critical ed. SC 563, pp. 222-226) — preserves the longest surviving fragment of the Thalia of Arius, the main source for reconstructing this work now lost as such (cf. R. Williams, Arius, pp. 97-109).
10Philostorgius, Ecclesiastical History, II, 2 (lost work, preserved through Photius's summary, Library, cod. 40) — after his break, Arius "composed several songs to be sung by sailors, millers and travellers," to tunes suited to each audience; the author, himself an Arian, does not mention in this passage the song known as the Thalia, which only Athanasius's extracts make known. Text: https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/philostorgius.htm
11Symbol of Nicaea, final anathemas, 325 — Denzinger-Hünermann, no. 126 (= DS 126). It is here, and not in the Symbol itself (no. 125), that the Arian formula "There was a time when he was not" (Ên pote hote ouk ên) appears, quoted to be struck with anathema along with its corollaries (drawn from nothing, other hypostasis or substance, created, mutable, changeable). Greek text: "Tous de legontas: Ên pote hote ouk ên... anathematizei hê hagia katholikê kai apostolikê ekklêsia." English translation after the Denzinger edition.
13 25Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, Orationes contra Arianos (Orations against the Arians), I, c. 340-345 — expounds and refutes the Arian vocabulary: the Son as ktisma (creature), poiêma (work), ex ouk ontôn (drawn out of nothing). Text: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2816.htm
14Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, De Incarnatione Verbi (On the Incarnation of the Word), § 54, c. 318 — the famous formula: "He became man so that we might be made God." Original Greek text: "Autos gar enênthrôpêsen, hina hêmeis theopoiêthômen."
15Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History, Book I, ch. 5-7, c. 439-450 — account of the outbreak of the controversy: Arius's accusation of Sabellianism against Bishop Alexander, the Synod of Alexandria and the excommunication, the mediation of Hosius of Cordoba sent by Constantine. Text: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/26011.htm
16 17 21Alexander of Alexandria, encyclical letter Henos sômatos and letter to Alexander of Byzantium (Hê philarchos), c. 319, preserved by Socrates (Hist. eccl., I, 6) and Theodoret (Hist. eccl., I, 4) — summary and condemnation of the Arian theses by the Bishop of Alexandria.
18"Arianism", The Catholic Encyclopedia, New York, Robert Appleton Company, 1907 — overall account of the Arian heresy: school of Antioch and Lucian ("Eusebius the historian, Eusebius of Nicomedia, and Arius himself, all came under Lucian's influence"); Arius's letter "to the Nicomedian prelate"; Constantine treating the controversy as an "idle dispute about words". Text: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01707c.htm
19Arius, letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia, c. 318-320, preserved by Theodoret (Ecclesiastical History, I, 4) and Epiphanius (Panarion, 69, 6) — Arius sets out his doctrine there, complains of being persecuted for teaching that "the Son has a beginning, while God is without beginning," and calls Eusebius his "co-Lucianist" (sylloukianista, συλλουκιανιστής, sylloukianistês), an indication of their common formation in the school of Lucian of Antioch.
20"The First Council of Nicaea", The Catholic Encyclopedia, New York, Robert Appleton Company, 1911 — convocation by Constantine, traditional number of 318 Fathers (actual estimate 250-300), adoption of the term homoousios, condemnation of Arius, refusal and deposition of Bishops Theonas of Marmarica and Secundus of Ptolemais. Text: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11044a.htm
22 23 26Symbol of Nicaea, 325 — profession of faith of the first ecumenical council: the Son "begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father." Reference edition: Denzinger-Hünermann, Symboles et définitions de la foi catholique, no. 125 (= DS 125).
24Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History, Book I, ch. 38, c. 439-450 — account of the sudden death of Arius at Constantinople in 336, on the eve of his readmission, as reported from a letter of Saint Athanasius to Serapion; passage summarized here in paraphrase after the English NPNF translation (P. Schaff and H. Wace), for lack of an identified French translation at hand. Text: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/26011.htm
27Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, Letter 54 to Serapion, on the death of Arius, § 3-4, c. 340 — Athanasius reports the sudden death of Arius and compares it to that of Judas (Acts 1:18: "falling headlong, he burst open in the middle"), seeing in it a divine judgment on the heresy. The hagiographical character of the account is noted by modern criticism. Text: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2806054.htm
28"St. Athanasius", The Catholic Encyclopedia, New York, Robert Appleton Company, 1907 — episcopate of Alexandria (328-373), five successive exiles under pro-Arian emperors, tireless defence of the Nicene Creed. Text: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02033a.htm
29Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, second ecumenical council, Constantinople, 381 — Denzinger-Hünermann, no. 150 (= DS 150). Reaffirms the consubstantiality of the Son and proclaims the divinity of the Holy Spirit; it is the Creed recited at Sunday Mass.
31"Goths" and "Arianism", The Catholic Encyclopedia, New York, Robert Appleton Company, 1907-1909 — Arian evangelization of the Goths by Ulfilas, diffusion of Arianism among the Germanic peoples (Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Burgundians, Lombards), and the end of Germanic Arianism with the conversion of the Franks (Clovis) then the Third Council of Toledo (589) under the Visigothic king Reccared.
32 33The Watchtower, 1 April 2010, article "Is Jesus the Archangel Michael?" (Engl. ed. p. 19): "So Michael the archangel is Jesus in his prehuman existence. After his resurrection and return to heaven, Jesus resumed his service as Michael, the chief angel." Pages checked on 4 October 2026 (doctrine unchanged): https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/wp20100401/Is-Jesus-the-Archangel-Michael/ and https://www.jw.org/fr/bibliothèque/revues/wp20100401/Jésus-est-il-larchange-Mikaël/ (French title: "Jésus est-il l'archange Mikaël ?"). See also the official jw.org page, "Who is the Archangel Michael?": https://www.jw.org/fr/la-bible-et-vous/questions-bibliques/archange-michel/
34The Holy Scriptures — New World Translation, Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, revised edition — renders John 1:1 as "the Word was a god," a reading rejected by nearly all Hellenists and by the grammar of Johannine Greek, but consistent with the subordinationist Christology of Jehovah's Witnesses, who identify Christ with God's first creature and with the archangel Michael. Text checked online on 4 October 2026: https://www.jw.org/fr/bibliothèque/bible/bi12/livres/Jean/1/
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