Over the centuries, Arianism has become a byword for heresy but at the time there was no officially orthodox position and nobody knew whether Arius or Athanasius was right.11 Arius was anxious to safeguard the transcendence of God. God was unique, “the only unbegotten, the only eternal, the only one without beginning, the only true, the only one who has immortality, the only wise, the only good.”12 His power was so overwhelming that it had to be mediated through the Logos at the creation, because frail creatures “could not endure to be made by the absolute hand of the Unoriginate.”13 The
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