“There was when he was not.”
An Arian watchword, explicitly condemned by the Council of Nicaea (325)
The Son of God had a beginning. He is the first and highest creature, made by the Father before time, and God only in a lesser, borrowed sense.
A heresy denies the Gospel or the God it reveals (Galatians 1:8).
Where It Began
Around AD 318, a respected presbyter in Alexandria named Arius began teaching that the Son of God was not eternal. Alexandria was one of the great intellectual centers of the Roman world, and its church prized careful reasoning about God.
Arius wanted to protect the uniqueness of God. If God alone is unbegotten and without beginning, he reasoned, then the Son, who is begotten, must have had a beginning. He concluded that the Father created the Son out of nothing before the ages, and that the Son then made everything else.
His bishop, Alexander of Alexandria, opposed him. A synod in Alexandria deposed Arius around 320, but he found powerful allies, above all Eusebius of Nicomedia. Arius also spread his ideas through popular verse, a work known as the Thalia, and the dispute moved from the study into the streets and docks of the city.
The People Involved
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Why This Is Dangerous
If the Son is a creature, then a creature went to the cross, and no creature can bear the sins of the world. Arianism also calls people to worship one who is not God, and that is idolatry.