Arian controversy

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The Arian controversy was a series of Christian disputes about the nature of Christ. It was the greatest internal struggle the Christian Church had so far experienced, and led to the acceptance of the Trinity doctrine, the church’s most fundamental doctrine. It began in 318 as a dispute between Bishop Alexander of Alexandria and a priest in his diocese named Arius, both Christian theologians from Alexandria, Egypt. The most important of these controversies concerned the relationship between the substance of God the Father and the substance of His Son. Arius argued that the Son of God did not always exist and that His substance is different from the Father's. This conflicted with the view advanced by Alexander, and later also by Athanasius, who argued that the Christ is coeternal and consubstantial (of the same substance) with God the Father. Emperor Constantine, through the Council of Nicaea in 325, attempted to unite Christianity and establish a single, imperially approved version of...

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