Terminology - ARIANISM

ARIANISM – The name of a heresy saying which denied the true Divinity of Jesus Christ, so-called after its author, Arius, a presbyter in the Church of Alexandria. This heresy was condemned at the first Ecumenical Council held in Nicea in 325.

Short Summaries of the Ecumenical Councils.

^{Written by Fr. Seraphim Slobodskoy}

There have been seven Ecumenical Councils in the true Orthodox Christian Church:

1. Nicea
2. Constantinople
3. Ephesus
4. Chalcedon
5. Second at Constantinople
6. Third at Constantinople
7. Second at Nicea
   

The Establishment of the Imperial Church

In 312 an event occurred which utterly transformed the outward situation of the Church. As he was riding through France with his army, the Emperor Constantine looked up into the sky and saw a cross of light in front of the sun. With the cross there was an inscription: In this sign conquer. As a result of this vision, Constantine became the first Roman Emperor to embrace the Christian faith. On that day in France a train of events was set in motion which brought the first main period of Church history to an end, and which led to the creation of the Christian Empire of Byzantium.

Constantine stands at a watershed in the history of the Church. With his conversion, the age of the martyrs and the persecutions drew to an end, and the Church of the Catacombs became the Church of the Empire. The first great effect of Constantine’s vision was the so-called ‘Edict’ of Milan, which he and his fellow Emperor Licinius issued in 313 proclaiming the official toleration of the Christian faith. And though at first Constantine granted no more than toleration, he soon made it clear that he intended to favour Christianity above all the other tolerated religions in the Roman Empire. Theodosius, within fifty years of Constantine’s death, had carried this policy through to its conclusion: by his legislation he made Christianity not merely the most highly favoured but the only recognized religion of the Empire. The Church was now established. ‘You are not allowed to exist,’ the Roman authorities had once said to the Christians. Now it was the turn of paganism to be suppressed.

God and Man At Once by Archbishop Dmitri   Attention has been con­centrated upon the fact that Jesus Christ, whom we call Lord, God, and Saviour, was truly God and truly Man. The circumstances of the Lord’s birth in the flesh and His mother’s perpetual virginity testify to the fact that the eternal Word of… Read More