Position · 318

Arianism

The teaching that the Son of God was created by the Father, so that he is not eternal and not God in the same sense as the Father.

Arius, a priest in Alexandria, taught it from c. 318. The Council of Nicaea (325) condemned it and declared the Son “of the same substance” as the Father. The view did not disappear: several emperors favoured Arian or compromise formulas for decades, and Athanasius spent much of his career opposing them.

The Council of Constantinople (381) ended its standing in the empire. Arian Christianity lasted longer among Gothic and other Germanic peoples, some of whom kept it into the 6th and 7th centuries.