Arius

Arius
Arius arguing for the supremacy of God the Father, and that the Son had a beginning as a true Firstborn
Born	256 Ptolemais, Cyrenaica, Roman Empire
Died	336 (aged 80) Constantinople, Thracia, Roman Empire
Residence	North Africa, Levant, Antioch, Egypt
Occupation	Theologian, Presbyter
Notable work	Thalia
Theological work
Era	3rd and 4th centuries AD
Language	Koine Greek
Notable ideas	Subordinationism

Arius (Koine Greek: Ἄρειος, 250 or 256–336) was a Christian presbyter and ascetic of Berber origin, and priest in Baucalis in Alexandria, Egypt. His teachings about the nature of the Godhead in Christianity, which emphasized the Father's divinity over the Son, and his opposition to what would become the dominant Christology, Homoousian Christology, made him a primary topic of the First Council of Nicaea, which was convened by Emperor Constantine the Great in 325.

After Emperors Licinius and Constantine legalized and formalized the Christianity of the time in the Roman Empire, Constantine sought to unify and remove theological division within the newly recognized Church. The Christian Church was divided over disagreements on Christology, or, the nature of the relationship between Jesus and God. Homoousian Christians, including Athanasius of Alexandria, used Arius and Arianism as epithets to describe those who disagreed with their doctrine of coequal Trinitarianism, a Homoousian Christology representing God the Father and Christ the Son as "of one essence" ("consubstantial") and coeternal.