Perhaps he is an unknowing follower of early Christianity that Arius defended against attacks by Athanasius, that ended up being declared a heresy in 379 upon The Emperor Theodosius’s Edict of 380. Both Arius and Athanasius were dead by then.
Summary. The so-called “Arian Controversy” was initially an argument between two men, Athanasius and Arius. Athanasius authored an exalted Christology, and Arius reacted against it. Then two bishops, Alexander in support of his secretary Athanasius, and Eusebius of Nicomedia in defense of the exiled Arius, transformed what might have remained a minor Egyptian theological debate into an ecumenical controversy. The term “Arian heresy” was coined by Alexander at a time when it was neither Arian nor heresy, but a widely-held set of traditional beliefs. Alexander said Arius had started something that was spreading through Christianity, but what was actually spreading was a reaction against what he did to Arius.
360 Council of Constantinople. A council of 72 bishops, including Bishop Wulfila of the Goths, convened in Constantinople (January) to review the conclusions of Ariminum and Seleucia the year before. They abolished the use of unscriptural terms in reference to God, and condemned as heresy all formulas contrary to this one:
The Tenth Consensus Creed (”Arian Confession”)
We believe in One God, Father Almighty, from whom are all things;
And in the only-begotten Son of God, begotten from God before all ages and before every beginning, by whom all things were made, visible and invisible, and begotten as only-begotten, only from the Father, only God from God, like to the Father that begat Him according to the Scriptures; whose origin no one knows, except the Father alone who begat Him. He, as we acknowledge, the only-begotten Son of God, the Father sending Him, came hither from the heavens, as it is written, for the undoing of sin and death, and was born of the Holy Ghost, of Mary the Virgin, according to the flesh, as it is written, and convened with the disciples, and having fulfilled the whole stewardship according to the Father’s will, was crucified and dead and buried and descended to the parts below the earth; at whom Hades itself shuddered: who also rose from the dead on the third day, and abode with the disciples, and, forty days being fulfilled, was taken up into the heavens, and sits at the right hand of the Father, to come in the last day of the resurrection in the Father’s glory, that He may render to every man according to his works.
And in the Holy Ghost, whom the only-begotten Son of God himself, Christ, our Lord and God, promised to send to the race of man, as Paraclete, as it is written, ‘the Spirit of truth’ (John 16:13), which He sent unto them when He had ascended into the heavens.
But the name of ‘Essence,’ which was set down by the Fathers in simplicity, and, being unknown by the people, caused offense, because the Scriptures contain it not, it has seemed good to abolish, and for the future to make no mention of it at all; since the divine Scriptures have made no mention of the Essence of Father and Son. For neither ought ‘Substance’ to be named concerning Father, Son and Holy Ghost. But we say that the Son is Like the Father, as the divine Scriptures say and teach; and all the heresies, both those which have been afore condemned already, and whatever are of modern date, being contrary to this published statement, be they anathema. [From: The Ecole Initiative]
Whose view do you believe was/is more scripturally accurate? Arius, or Athanasius?