Arianism

Arianism The heresy, Arianism, was a semi-popular movement during the early patristic period that was started by the Egyptian theologian Arius. Arius somewhat unknowingly brought about the most significant Trinitarian problem the Catholic Church had ever seen. Arianism had far reaching effects on all of Catholicism, and led to the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea. The Council of Nicaea was the first council of its time and greatly affected how we perceive the trinity today. First, I’d like to focus on the background of the 4th century and how this environment enabled the spread of Arianism. At the time, there where many different religions and many different ways of looking at God. The idea that God could be present in three different forms but at the same time be one person was hard to explain and hard to follow. The duality of Jesus’ humanity and divinity would seem like an oxymoron to a non-catholic lay person. Christianity in its origin was a meshing of Judaism with something completely new. The terminology of the trinity had not been doctrinized and thus, there was no clear cut definition for Catholics recognize. Much of the Catholic arius, council, arianism, church, christ, god, father, catholic, trinity, one, different, bishop, nicaea, constantine, beliefs, word, time, son, first, three, jesus, began, alexandria, spirit, christianity, synod, spread, refused, holy, factions, eventually, emperor, debates, brought, bishops