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Arianism is the teaching of the Alexandrian presbyter Arius (ca. 280–336) and his supporters. It arose originally in reaction to the Christology of the apologists. To preserve both monotheism and the deity of Christ, the apologists had adopted the philosophical idea of the Logos, and Origen (ca. 185-ca. 254), making use of ontological Platonic categories, had attributed autonomy to the Logos/Christ as a hypostasis, or ousia, subordinate to God (Ontology). Rejecting the Monarchian views of the Trinity of which he accused his bishop Alexand…

The oldest MSS tradition offers contractions of the divine names, especially ĪC̄ for Jesus (= IHCOYC) and X̄C̄ or X̄P̄C̄ for Christ (= XPICTOC). These contractions, which might be understood as ciphers for the salvation achieved in Christ (Christology), are also found to some extent in monogrammatic form (e.g., as the chrismon, or Chi-Rho) in the Middle Ages in introductions to letters and documents. From around 200 we also find the common symbol ⳨, the staurogram (Cross 3), which is made up of the superimposed letters tau (T) and rho (P) as an abbreviation for stauros / stauroō (cross …