During the early centuries, the Church was rocked by two major Christological controversies. Debate broke out in the early fourth century when Arius charged Bishop Alexander of Alexandria with heresy and went on to claim the begotten Son, precisely because he is begotten, must have “had a beginning of existence.” Hence the Arian slogan, “there was when [the Son] was not.” For Arians, the Son is a creature—a very exalted creature, to be sure, but a creature nonetheless. At the Councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381), the Church decided against Arius, insisting on the remarkable truth that the “begetting” Father and the “begotten” Son are the same substance (
homoousios
), equal in divinity, power, and glory.
