ARIUS THE PRIEST.

Arius (250-336), son of Ammonius, was a popular, ascetic (abstinence from Worldly pleasures), Christian Priest appointed Presbyter (overseer) of Berber (North Africa) origin, for the district of Baucalis, Alexandria, Egypt, in 313 CE. The Egyptian Church is more than 1,900 years old, and most likely the oldest Christian church in the World, and is believed to be founded by the apostle Mark at around 42 CE.
A great multitude of common native Egyptians (as opposed to Greek or Jews), who spoke Coptic language, embraced the Christian faith. There were also Alexandrian Jews such as Theophilus, whom the apostle Luke addresses in the introductory chapter of his Gospel.
Reconstructing the life and doctrine of Arius has proven to be difficult task as none of his originals writings survive. Emperor Constantine ordered their burning while Arius was still living.
Arius had been a student at the exegetical school of Lucian's private academy in Antioch. Lucian was a Christian Presbyter, noted for his scholarship and ascetic piety. Arian inherited from him a modified form of the teachings of Paul of Samosata. He taught that God the Father and the Son of God did not always exist together eternally. Arian taught that the Word was a divine being created by God the Father before the Creation of the World, made Him a medium through whom everything else was created, and that the Son of God is subordinate to God the Father. A verse of Proverbs was used as a proof of the statement, "The Lord created Me first of all, the first of His Works, long ago. I was made in the very beginning, at the first, before the World began. I was born before the oceans, when there were no springs of water. I was born before the mountains, before the hills were set in place, before God made the earth and its fields or even the first handful of soil. I was there when He set the sky in place, when he stretched the horizon across the ocean, when He placed the clouds in the sky, when He opened the springs of the ocean and ordered the waters of the sea to rise no further than He said. I was there when He laid the earth's foundations. I was beside Him like an architect, I was His daily source of Joy, always happy in His Presence -happy with the World and pleased with the human race." Prov. 8
Arian is notable for his role in the Arian controversy, a great fourth-century theological conflict that rocked the Christian World and led to the calling of the first ecumenical council of the Church. This controversy centered upon the nature of the Son of God, and his precise relationship to God the Father. It involved most church members -from simple believers, priests, and monks to bishops, emperors, and members of Rome's imperial family. Two Roman emperors, Constantius II and valens, became Arians, as did prominent Gothic, Vandal, and Lombard warlords both before and after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
Arius made the following logical argument: "If the Father begat the Son, he that was begotten had a beginning of existence -from this it is evident, that there was a time when the Son was not. It therefore necessarily follows, that He had his substance from nothing." The other notion that Christ was co-eternal and con-substantial with the Father was led by the young archdeacon Athanasius. Each notions appealed to Scripture to justify their respective positions. Arius maintained that the Son of God was a Creature, made from nothing; and that He was God's First Production, before all ages. And he argued that everything else was created through the Son. Thus, only the Son was directly created and begotten of God; furthermore, there was a time that He had no existence. He was capable of His own free will, and thus "were He in the truest sense a Son, He must have come after the Father, therefore the Time obviously was when He was not, and hence He was a finite being."
After his condemnation in 321 CE, Arius withdrew to Palestine with the support of Eusebius of Caesarea.
Eusebius of Caesarea was a Greek historian of Christianity, exegete (to lead out), and polemicist. He became Bishop of Caesarea Maritima about 314 CE. Together with Pamphilus (chief among biblical scholars and was from a very rich and honorable family of Beirut), he was a scholar of the Biblical canon and is regarded as an extremely well learned Christian of his time. Little is known about the life of Eusebius. By the 3rd century, Caesarea had a population of about 100,000. It had been a Gentile city since Pompey had given them the control of the city during his command of the Eastern provinces in the 60s BC. They retained control of the city for the 3 centuries to follow, despite Jewish petition for joint governorship. Gentile government was strengthened by the city refoundation under Herod the Great (37- 4BC), when it had taken on the name of Augustus Caesar. In addition to gentile settlers, Caesarea had large Jewish and Samaritan minorities. No Bishops are attested for the Town before about 190. Caesarea became a center of Christian learning.
Arians do not believe in the traditional doctrine of the Trinity. A letter from Arius to the Arian Eusebius of Nicomedia (died in 341) states the core of the belief of the Arians:
"Some of them say the Son is an eructation, others that He is a production, others that He is also unbegotten. These are impieties to which we cannot listen, even though the heretics threaten us with a thousand deaths. But we say and believe and have a taught, and do teach, that the Son is not unbegotten, nor in any way part of the unbegotten; and that He does not derive His subsistence from any matter; but that by His own will and counsel He has subsisted before time and before ages as perfect as God, only begotten and unchangeable, and that before He was begotten, or created, or purposed, or established, He was not. For He was not unbegotten. We are persecuted because we say that the Son has a beginning but God is without beginning.