Concordant Christology: Arianism vs Socinianism

Those of us in the ecclesia called the body of Christ — not to be confused with members of the Christian religion who mistakenly use our title — are not Trinitarians (nor are we Modalists, for the same reasons we don’t believe in the Trinity).

As far as why we aren’t Trinitarians, I’ve written about that elsewhere, so please read this if you’re interested in learning more about that topic, but in this post I want to mention a debate within our ecclesia as to whether Arianism (which is the doctrine that Jesus was the first being God brought into existence) or Socinianism (which is the doctrine that Jesus first came into existence at His human birth) is more likely to be true. This isn’t a salvation issue, so we don’t let this minor disagreement get in the way of fellowship between members of the body, but it is something that people are increasingly taking sides on in recent years, so I’ve published this post to provide you with the main arguments from either side so you can decide for yourself.

Now, while I’m not 100% sold on either side of the debate, and can see the arguments for both sides, there is a side which I do believe seems to have stronger arguments. However, in the interest of leaving this one up to you to decide for yourself, I’m simply going to share links to a series of articles which Aaron Welch and Martin Zender have both written on the topic, beginning with the articles Aaron wrote that began the debate between the two of them, followed by Martin’s arguments against the points Aaron made in his articles, and finally Aaron’s follow-up to Martin’s arguments (the only reason Aaron is getting the last word here is because I don’t believe Martin ever wrote anything responding to Aaron’s final article, but if he ever does, I’ll add it to the list as well).