Note: The divinity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity will be addressed in greater detail in a subsequent section.

The Council of Nicaea was not convened to establish the concept of the Trinity. Therefore, the claims of Muslims on this point rest on a false premise. They also argue that the Trinity was absent in the first century. Yet, if the doctrine had not existed prior to the council, Arius—a bishop of Alexandria would not have opposed the divinity of Christ. The Council of Nicaea was convened to refute Arius’s denial of Christ’s divinity. Arius taught that Jesus was a created being and therefore could not be God, and that the Holy Spirit did not coexist eternally with the Father, effectively rejecting the Trinity. Variations of this belief continue to be held by Unitarians and Muslims today.

It should be emphasized that every rebuttal to the views of Arius and other heretics is firmly grounded in Scripture. These are not merely the opinions of the Church, but the authoritative witness of Scripture standing against heresy.

Arius relied on texts that Unitarians also appeal to, such as those describing Jesus as “the only begotten.” From this, he argued that if Christ was begotten, He must have been created by God along with the Holy Spirit, and therefore did not exist eternally with the Father. Arius and his followers further supported their claim by citing Colossians 1:15, which refers to Christ as “the firstborn of all creation.”

Col 1:15; The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

The second claim on Colossians 1:15 is better understood to mean that Christ has the rights or privileges of the “First-born” according to biblical usage and custom, the right of leadership or authority in the family for one’s generation. This is also used in Heb 12:16 where Esau is said to have sold his “first born status” or “birthright” which in Greek is prototokia and cognate to the term prototokos, used in Col 1:15.

Heb 12:16; Make sure that no one is immoral or godless like Esau, who traded his birthright as the firstborn son for a single meal

So, Col 1:15 shows that Christ has the privileges of authority and rule, the privileges belonging to the “first born” but with respect to the whole creation.

Christ being the “only begotten” of God, does not imply that He was created by God into existence. Justin Martyr on the Logos doctrine, had this to say about the Logos. The Logos therefore, according to Justin’s theology, is “God’s Creative Word and the Divine Reason, the first- begotten of God, God’s agent in creation and His instrument in pre-Christian theophanies, the source of all human truth and goodness; He is quantitatively diverse from the Father, and is sometimes represented as subordinate to Him; but at the same time He is regarded as the only and absolute Son of God, in a sense in which that title can be applied to no other person, for He is begotten, not created. In short, the Logos ‘was with God and was God.”

Justin Martyr in his apology says that the Divine reason, God’s creative word, who was Christ before incarnation was not created but proceeds from the Father. The early Church had strong evidence from the texts showing Christ was fully and completely God. It then concluded that whatever “only begotten” meant, it did not mean “created”.

This led to the Nicene creed in 325 AD which was an affirmation and not a concoction, that Christ was “begotten” and not “made or created”.