Arianism - Jesus was created by God and is therefore distinct from God. Arius's basic premise is that only God is independent of existing. Since the Son is dependent, he must, therefore, be called a creature.

Historically, Arianism was formally condemned at the Council of Nicaea (325) and again at Constantinople (381) precisely because, while logically tidy, it is forced to override the weight of the New Testament's high-Christology data (see christianity-summary-002/004 above: John 1:1, Col 1:15-20, Phil 2:6-11, Heb 1:1-3, the reception of worship and the divine name) and, if true, makes Jesus a creature who nonetheless receives the worship, prayer, and creative/judging prerogatives that Scripture and Second Temple Judaism reserve exclusively for YHWH (Isa 42:8; 45:23, cf. Phil 2:10-11) — which would make Christian worship of Jesus a form of idolatry, precisely the charge orthodox bishops leveled back at the Arians. The deeper philosophical error is a false dichotomy embedded in Arius's own premise: he assumes only two categories are available — 'independent of existing' (unbegotten, *agennetos*) versus 'creature' (brought into being from non-existence, *ex nihilo*, at the will of another and not sharing the same nature). Nicene orthodoxy denies that these are the only two options and supplies a third: 'eternally begotten, not made' (as the Nicene Creed puts it). Begottenness (generation from the Father's own nature, without beginning, not an act of will bringing something into existence from nothing) is a real relation of origin, but it is not creaturehood — the Son derives his personal existence *from* the Father's nature while being fully, eternally, that same nature (*homoousios*, 'of the same substance'), not called into being from nothing at a point when 'he was not' (Arius's famous slogan). Arius's argument only works if 'dependent for one's origin' automatically equals 'creature,' and that identification is exactly the disputed premise, not a neutral logical starting point — asserting it as if self-evident is the false dichotomy.

The Nicene formula *homoousios* ('of the same substance/essence,' not the weaker *homoiousios*, 'of similar essence,' which the semi-Arian party proposed as a compromise) was chosen at Nicaea precisely because it is the only formula that lets the Son be truly, fully God — sharing numerically the one divine nature with the Father — while being really, personally distinct by eternal generation, satisfying both the strict monotheism texts and the full-deity-of-the-Son texts simultaneously, without requiring either two gods or a demoted, created intermediary.