Guidelines for Discerning the Doctrines of Arius

Abstract

The essence of Christianity, said Romano Guardini, is its affirmation of the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ; the denial of this truth undermines the foundation of ecclesial faith. So how can this denial of the foundation of the profession of faith come about? This paper analyses the doctrine of Arius and points to two influences: one philosophical and the other political. We leave aside the supposed biblical foundations, which not only start from a quotation from the Old Testament but also ignore the explicit affirmations of divinity present in the New Testament. We are more interested in the influences of the Oracles of Chaldea and the political assumptions of the imperial monarchy. Both predisposed Arius to deny the divinity of the second and third persons of the Trinity and to affirm a single creative and ordering principle of all creation. The second and third persons are “counted” among creatures. In this way, the monarchical doctrine of the microcosm in the image of the macrocosm is established.