Arian Conclusions

.... Anyway, this is how the matter faired with the Arian branch of research, after they went through their procedure of accepting some of the Scriptures and rejecting others through novel interpretations, according to his own, subjective opinions:

.... Having a strictly monotheistic premise, the Arians accepted the Father as the one true God, which they saw as the ‘strongest case’. But this left them with a problem concerning the divine claims of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.

.... First let’s look at what they did in the case of Jesus. The Arians responded by taking a deposing view of Christ. Jesus was not God, they would say, but the Son of God. Perhaps He was a created being. Now in order to justify this position today, modern Arians hold that the term ‘Son of God’ is used more often in Scripture in referring to Jesus than the term ‘God ‘ had ever been. So this belief is based on preponderance rather than conclusiveness and it does not take all of the Scriptures into consideration.

.... Meanwhile it was not lost to the Trinitarian school of thought that the term ‘God’ had indeed been applied to Christ and should not be discounted from their understanding of Him, nor from their understanding of the person of God.

.... At this point we should also carefully note that the Arians had come full circle. They had started with strict monotheism, trying to disprove the pagans, but now Jesus was being viewed as a sub-god. So a caste-like system of polytheism had reemerged at last.

.... Next the Arians needed a way to explain away the Holy Spirit’s Scriptural claims to Divinity, and in order to do this they went in two directions. At first, the Holy Spirit was also considered a sub-god as well, just as they had believed Jesus to be. With this, the old pagan concept of the ‘triumverate’ had fully returned in a quasi-Christian garb. But in modern times this understanding would evolve again:

.... The modern successors of Arius now claim that the Holy Spirit isn’t a person at all, but only an non-personal force, a created power, or a divine influence – basically a non-entity, an ‘it’. Or perhaps the Holy Spirit might be a synonymous name for God, like ‘Jack’ may be a synonymous name for ‘John’. And to reach this conclusion they, too, are depending on arguments based on ‘preponderance’ and on novel scriptural interpretations.

.... The number of common people who followed Arius began to increase, especially in the area around Alexandria, yet in other seats of learning throughout the ancient world, where Scriptures were available to the people, the Arians doctrines were never held in esteem. But if you’re familiar with groups today such as the Way International or Jehovah’s Witnesses, then you’ve probably recognized that Arius’ basic doctrines have survived. This is the historical root from which their doctrine comes.