The deity of Jesus, Arius and the Council of Nicea
Though Tertullian had provided the church with the formula that God is one substance, consisting in three persons, he had by no means given the world a complete understanding of the Trinity. Indeed, this doctrine has puzzled the greatest theologians. Early in the fourth century a pastor of Alexandria, Egypt — Arius —called himself a Christian. But Arius also accepted Greek theology, which taught that God is unique and unknowable . According to such thought, He is so radically different that He cannot share His substance with anything: Only God can be God. In his book Thalia Arius proclaimed that Jesus was divine, but not God. Only God the Father , Arius said, could be immortal, so the Son had to be a created being. He was like the Father, but not truly God. Many former pagans felt comfortable with Arius’s views , because they could preserve the familiar idea of an unknowable God and see Jesus as a kind of divine superhero, not much different from the divine-human heroes