The Divinity of Jesus
Christ
Objection: “Jesus Christ was no doubt the Son of God, but not
God the Son!”
The modern-day denial of Christ’s divinity has its roots in the
Christological controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries AD. Of the
many heresies that have beset the Church one of the most devastating was
Arianism. During the mid-third century, Lucian of Antioch began teaching
the inferiority and subordination of the Son to the Father. Decades later,
this teaching was picked up and developed by Arius of Alexandria. Using
the analogy of human fatherhood, Arius taught that a father always pre-
dates his son and thus there is a time when the son was not. Applying this
to the Father and the Word, Arius coined the phrase, “There was a time
once when the Word was not.” Therefore, Christ was not co-eternal and not
of the same substance as the Father. Rather, He was only a creature and son
of God by virtue of being “like in substance” to the Father.
Arianism was to sweep across the Christian world at a time when the
Church had just been freed from official Roman persecution. The Arian
whirlwind caught all virtually by surprise. As St. Jerome declared, “The
world awoke and found itself Arian.” The number of bishops who resisted
was only a handful. One of them was St. Athanasius of Alexandria.
With Arianism causing contention and strife throughout the Empire, the
Emperor Constantine agreed to resolve the crisis by summoning a general
council of bishops to meet at Nicaea commencing May 20, 325.
At this
Council, the bishops condemned Arianism and proclaimed Christ as homo-
ousios (consubstantial), that is, “as the same substance” as the Father.
Though condemned, Arianism lingered on for centuries to come. Arius
himself died an impious death in 336 and St. Athanasius continued the
struggle in the face of multiple exiles and excommunications until 373.
Nevertheless, the Church and the world had been preserved from a gross
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