To the accidental Arians of 2020:
I slapped Arius at the Council of Nicaea, according to the story you like to tell. I can neither confirm nor deny this, since the first rule of Nicaean Fight Club is not to talk about Nicaean Fight Club. It is also the second rule. But whether or not I did what you say I did, I will say this: I would like to slap you.
Let me clarify: I would slap not out of malice but out of charity. You are slumbering in a sadness that dulls all your senses, and I want to wake you up. Without uttering his name, you have pledged allegiance to the teaching of Arius, who revered Christ but did not worship him. You, too, confess Jesus as a superior man, perhaps even the first and greatest among all men, but you do not praise him as the Son of God — consubstantial with the Father. And because of that, you are mired in hopelessness, though you realize it not.
Your studies show that more than half of you say that “Jesus was a great teacher, but not God.” Those of you who profess this imitation of Christianity do not congregate in one church or another; rather, you are spread out among many churches and in no church at all. Perfunctorily, you profess the creed we crafted at Nicaea, but you do not believe what you say. In your thoughts and in your words, in what you do and in what you fail to do, you live as though Jesus were a wisdom figure to occasionally consult rather than the one to whom you ought to give your heart. You would have been quite at home in Arius’ church; you would have enjoyed his preaching.