Arianism, in Christianity, the Christological (concerning the doctrine of Christ) position

that Jesus, as the Son of God, was created by God. It was proposed early in the 4th
century by the Alexandrian presbyter Arius and was popular throughout much of the
Eastern and Western Roman empires, even after it was denounced as a heresy by the
Council of Nicaea (325). Beliefs Arianism is often considered to be a form of Unitarian
theology in that it stresses God’s unity at the expense of the notion of the Trinity, the
doctrine that three distinct persons are united in one Godhead. Arius’s basic premise
was the uniqueness of God, who is alone self-existent (not dependent for its existence
on anything else) and immutable; the Son, who is not self-existent, cannot therefore be
the self-existent and immutable God. Because the Godhead is unique, it cannot be
shared or communicated. Because the Godhead is immutable, the Son, who is mutable,
must, therefore, be deemed a creature who has been called into existence out of
nothing and has had a beginning. Moreover, the Son can have no direct knowledge of
the Father, since the Son is finite and of a different order of existence.