Apologetics in the Lion City

Can We Trust That Christian Orthodoxy Got It Right? – Part 4

How False Teachings Helped Orthodoxy Speak More Clearly

“There was a time when the Son was not.”

In the early fourth century, a popular preacher named Arius made that claim—and it gained traction. Arius believed that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was not eternal but created by the Father and therefore subordinate. To preserve the absolute transcendence and uniqueness of God, Arius argued that God could not share His essence with another being—not even His Son.

He saw the Logos (the Word) as a divine intermediary: created by God to accomplish creation and redemption, but not fully God Himself. He leaned on verses like John 14:28 (“The Father is greater than I”) and Proverbs 8:22 (“The Lord created me at the beginning of His work”) to support his view. If the Son were truly begotten, Arius reasoned, He must have had a beginning—and therefore could not be co-eternal.

Arius’s theology fractured the unity of the Trinity. It undermined the Shema—“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one”—which Christian orthodoxy affirms not only as monotheism, but as the indivisible unity of Father, Son, and Spirit.

If the Son is created, He is not coequal.
If He is not coequal, He is not fully God.
And if He is not fully God, then several devastating consequences follow:

• Can Jesus be worshipped? If He is not divine, then worship becomes idolatry.
• Can Jesus bear the full weight of sin? A finite being cannot offer infinite atonement.
• Can the cross reveal the love of God? If Jesus is merely a creature, then the cross is not divine self-giving—it’s divine outsourcing.

Arius’s views didn’t just challenge doctrine. They threatened the very essence of salvation.

The controversy forced the Church to clarify what had always been believed. The bishops asked:

• What have we always confessed?
• What did the apostles teach?
• What does Scripture affirm?

The result was the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. The Nicene Creed declared without ambiguity that Jesus Christ is “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God…begotten, not made, of one substance (homoousios) with the Father.”

Orthodoxy didn’t silence dissent. It clarified truth.

The doctrine of the Trinity is not a philosophical luxury—it’s a theological necessity.

• Coequal means the Father, Son, and Spirit share the same divine authority, glory, and power.
• Consubstantial (homoousios) means they share the same essence—one divine nature, not three.

This matters because:

• God is love. Love requires relationship. The coeternal Trinity means love is eternal—not created.
• God is unity. One God in three persons—distinct, yet indivisible.
• God is salvation. Only the Perfect Son, coequal with the Father, can offer redemption sufficient for all humanity, for all time.

To deny the coequality or consubstantiality of the Trinity is to unravel the gospel itself.

Each heresy distorted the gospel in a different way:

• Arianism denied the full divinity of Christ—offering a Savior who cannot save.
• Docetism denied the full humanity of Christ—offering a phantom who cannot suffer.
• Pelagianism denied the necessity of grace—offering a gospel we earn rather than receive.

Each reimagined the gospel into something safer, simpler, and more controllable. Orthodoxy resisted that. It preserved the mystery, the tension, and the power of the gospel as it was given—not as we might prefer it.

This is the pattern that repeats throughout church history:
Distortion arises. Clarity responds. Orthodoxy endures.

The gospel continues to face distortion in every generation. But orthodoxy remains to guard the gospel, to clarify the truth and to preserve what has always been believed.

It’s a living tradition.