A brief summary of Trinitarian and Christological belief probably from sometime before A.D. 250 designed to protect the church from heresy.

Pastor of the influential Baucalis Church in Alexandria where Alexander was bishop. Around A.D. 318, Arius challenged Alexandrian teachers by asserting that Christ's divinity was not of the same order of God's, since he was a created Being — sort of half-God, for "the Son has a beginning, but … God is without beginning." He spread his doctrines with simple jingles. His teaching appealed to the common people and former pagans, since it resembled the Gnosticism of their youth. Quarreled with Bishop Alexander at a synod in Alexandria in A.D. 320 and won the partial support of Eusebius, the Bishop of Nicomedia. His heresy spurred the formulation and acceptance of the Nicene Creed. All bishops present, excepting Arius and two others, accepted this creed. Arius and the remaining two bishops were consequently exiled.

(1st General Council, 325)

Called by the Emperor Constantine to settle the question of Christ's divinity raised by Arius. Gave birth to the Nicene Creed. Established that Christ is fully divine, "true God from true God."

(AD 265-330)

Early Christian historian. The biographer of Constantine who represented the emperor as the ideal Christian ruler and envisioned the beginning of a new age of salvation. He also put forward a creed at the Council of Nicea.

A Creed developed in the Council called by Emperor Constantine in 325 largely in response to Arianism. From this council emerged the Nicene Creed, which to this day is the standard of orthodoxy in the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and some other churches:

Like its predecessor, the Evangelical Movement, it was more a movement of the heart than of the head. Unlike the Clapham Sect, the Oxford men were deeply troubled by the direction of English society. They saw the reforms of the government as attacks upon the sanctity of the Church of England and they determined to resist the intrusions of the world. With the Reform Act of 1832 the balance of power in Parliament shifted away from the aristocracy and the Anglican Church into the hands of "profane politicians". The Oxford men felt that the Church of England needed to affirm that its authority did not rest on authority from the state, it came from God. Bishops of the Church were not empowered by social position but by an apostolic commission. Even if the Church were completely separated from the state, the Church of England could still claim the allegiance of