Arianism - Cosmoses in Conflict

Historian Hiliare Belloc's The Great Heresies (1938) should be required reading for all engaged in fighting for truth, goodness, and beauty. On the Arian heresy he writes:

Had this (Arian) movement for rejecting the full divinity of Our Lord gained the victory, all our civilization would have been other than what it has been from that day to this. We all know what happens when an attempt to simplify and rationalize the mysteries of the Faith succeeds in any society. (I wish.) We have before us the now ending experiment of the Reformation, and the aged but still very vigorous Mohammedan heresy, which may perhaps appear with renewed vigor in the future. (Do tell; a prophet's insight borne out with such ferocity today.) Such rationalistic efforts against the creed produce a gradual social degradation following on the loss of that direct link between human nature and God which is provided by the Incarnation. Human dignity is lessened. The authority of Our Lord is weakened. He appears more and more as a man -- perhaps a myth. The substance of Christian life is diluted. It wanes. What began as Unitarianism ends as Paganism. [27-28]

We will see that, as Belloc predicted, attacks on the Catholic faith would take one or all of five tacks taken by the "great heresies." Arianism's "Christian faith Lite" is plainly visible today as various Christianities drift further and further from the safety of Peter's Barque.