The Arius Method
Singing Away Doctrines You Don’t Like
In the third and fourth centuries, a north African presbyter named Arius believed that Jesus didn’t exist with the Father from all eternity but instead was the most exalted of his creations. To teach otherwise Arius thought a dangerous error, and he knew how to make his point effectively in the churches. Since he was a talented melodist, he composed musical poems (thalia) that taught, “There was a time when the Son was not,” and they became very popular.
Arius knew the power of musical slogans to advertise because they became part of people’s mental furniture. Like his modern counterparts, he knew that if you wish for people to believe something about what you’re selling, repeating it to a tune is the best way to fix it in the mind. If Christians had his opinion about Christ stuck in their minds by catchy “Christian” sources, when they referred to God the Son, it would be Arius’s Christ, not the eternal Son, whom they meant —and this was exactly what Arius was attempting. The First Council of Nicaea, called in AD 325, opposed Arius by teaching that the Son was indeed eternal, being of one substance with the Father.
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S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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