What is the Christological difference between the early Church fathers and the Arians? Arius wrote to Eusebius of Nicomedia referring to the eternal Word that, '[B]efore He was begotten ... He was not, for He was not without beginning.'1 Where he qualified his argument on the fact that the Son has an eternal beginning from the Father who alone has no beginning.2 Arius seems trying to say that the Son does not exist apart from being begotten. An idea he claimed to be shared by Church fathers before him.

There is a debate on whether or not precursor to Arianism can be found among the earliest church fathers before the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea. Among the early Christian authors whom the early Church considered authoritative we can find some whose teachings are similar with the Arians that were used by the Arians to assert that their theology is patristic. What then differentiate these Ante Nicene Fathers3 from the Arians in terms of their Christology?



1 Arius' letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia, NPNF II:3:41.

2 '[The Son] being begotten apart from time before all things.' NPNF II,4:458.

3 Ante Nicene refer to before the Council of Nicaea in 325. They're early Church fathers who are venerated in the 24 sui juris Catholic churches, 16 canonical Eastern Orthodox churches, 6 canonical Oriental Orthodox churches, and Church of the East. Such as St. Justin Martyr, St. Theophilus of Antioch, Tertullian of Carthage, Origen of Alexandria, St. Dionysius of Alexandria, and St Lucian of Antioch.
First of all, there was no Arianism prior to Arius because Arianism started with Arius.Arius began to teach a new teaching. He taught that the Logos had a beginning of existence.Although some scholars like Alexander Vasiliev refers to Lucian as the Arius before Arius.This merely shows that Lucian hold onto a proto-Arianism (source).

Arius was condemned while Justin, Theophilus, Dionysius, and pre-Nicene Fathers were considered Orthodox because the former denied consubstantiality (oneness in essence) of the Father and the Son while the latter supported it. 

In Dialogue with Trypho Ch. 128 , Justin Martyr said: “this power is indivisible and inseparable from the Father" and  “begotten from the Father, by His power and will, but not by abscission, as if the essence of the Father were divided,”

The Alexandrian Dionysius used the term "same substance," but refused to rely on it theologically because the word was not used in any biblical text (source).

Theophilus of Antioch spoke of the Logos as begotten from the substance (ousia) of the Father (source).

Athenagoras ( A.D. 177) wrote: 


  "We acknowledge one God, uncreated, eternal, invisible, impassable
  [i.e., not subject to suffering], incomprehensible, illimitable … by
  whom the universe has been created through his Logos … We acknowledge
  also a Son of God. Nor let anyone think it ridiculous that God should
  have a Son … the Son of God is the Logos of the Father. If … it occurs
  to you to inquire what is meant by the Son, I will state briefly that
  he is the first product of the Father, not as having been brought into
  existence, for from the beginning God, who is the eternal mind, had
  theLogos in himself, being from eternity instinct with Logos. (Plea
  for the Christians ch. 10)


Some of the pre-nicene fathers were subordinationists yet they still adhere to Jesus as "God of God." Gregory Thaumaturgus, Irenaeus, Athenagoras and others taught that the Son is eternally begotten from the Father not created from nothing. On the other hand, Arius introduced a completely alien thought to the church by teaching that the Logos had a beginning of existence, created from nothing.