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... ARIAS:

A central point of Arianism is that God is removed from the world and unapproachable so that he could not directly create the matter of the universe Himself. Demophilius, the last Arian Archbishop of Constantinople, commented that God "would have been under the necessity of either making everything gods to be worthy of Him, or else everything would have disintegrated by contact with Him." The Son as intermediary is therefore required to bring the world into existence. God is utterly transcendent and inaccessible and cannot be known by any another creature, which for Arius included the Son. The Son is dependent on the grace of God to know the Father and perform his other functions. In spite of the unpopularity of the idea Arius asserted that "God is mysterious to the Son."

Arius boldly asserted a version of subordinationist Christology that the Son "having not existed, attained existence by the Father’s will." The Son is therefore not co-eternal with the Father. According to Arius "there was a time when he did not exist". Though called God the Son is not very God. Arius also denied Christ a human soul. The Son was related to Father through the Fathers will; it is the free gift of grace by the Father to the Son that establishes the relationship at a point in time. Arians believed that Christ was not the only Word or Wisdom of God. To describe Him thus would be imply his share in the divine essence. These essential attributes are to be found solely within the nature of God and which He could give to no other. When the Son is described as Word and Wisdom this is to be understood as but a derivative of the eternal divine Word and Wisdom. Christ is honoured above the rest of creation (which was created by the Son) because he was created directly by the Father; Christ is "only-begotten God, and he is different from any other."

ATHANASIUS:

Athanasius also believed that in God there is no free-will, and was therefore hostile to Arian ideas of obedience and free response. For Athanasius the Son’s earthly mission to earth is never in doubt, nor an alternate outcome possible. Young’s critique that "Arius severed the mediator, from God, Athanasius severed him from the world" is not fair. Athanasius’ God "transcends His transcendence" to be encountered in human form; God’s mystery is known in His revelation as flesh. Christ is still human but reveals the eternal.

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