Maurice Wiles came to the conclusion that Arians had been misrepresented by a close reading of the primary sources, as his book Archetypal Heresy: Arianism Through the Centuries (1996) demonstrates at length. If you think my quotations of his work, or others, are not representative then I would welcome correction. His conclusion is that early Arians started from the Bible and that they are no more open to the charge of philosophising than the Nicene authors. Plus the later Arians in the West and the Goths had a very simple reliance on the language of the Bible and rejected philosophical language.
I don’t think it’s relevant, because I am not claiming to be an expert on early church history—I am pointing to those who are experts—but just for your interest, I answer your query about what I have read from the original sources, to the best of my recollection. I have read a translation of the Apostolic Fathers that included Clement of Rome, Polycarp, Ignatius, the Didache, Shepherd of Hermas, letter of Barnabas, and probably some others I forget. This was a number of years ago. I have not read any other complete works but I have read substantial parts of Adversus Praxaen by Tertullian, Origen, Justin Martyr, the Odes of Solomon, Athanasius, and small parts from lots of others. I may have got some of those names wrong, I am writing this from memory.
You asked earlier where John Locke got the idea that pre-Nicene authors wrote like Arians. As best I can tell, from Wiles’ book, in common with many of his time who questioned the Trinity, including John Milton, Samuel Clarke, Isaac Newton, William Whiston, and others, Locke appears to have read voraciously in the texts of the early church and based his views on that.
There is some evidence that Trinitarians in the fourth century attempted to alter the wording of Rev 3:14 from “the beginning of the creation of God” to “the beginning of the church of God”, to avoid the conclusion that Jesus was created, but in this instance their forgery did not succeed.
The first Christological reading to surface is in Revelation 3:14. The title of the risen Christ, ‘the beginning of the creation of God’, κτίσεως τοῦ θεοῦ, is altered to the ‘begin- ning of the church of God’, ἐκκλησίας τοῦ θεοῦ.29 The change eliminates the possibility of placing Jesus within the created order and is conspicuous against the backdrop of the fourth century, defined as it was by its pitched theological battles over the precise nature of the Son. In fact, it is remarkable how close the Apocalypse’s original title comes to Arius’s own musings about the Son. In the Thalia fragments, one of the few primary sources believed to preserve Arius’s authentic words, we encounter the following assertion: ‘The one without beginning established the Son as the beginning of all creatures’.30 The ‘Arian’ statement is nearly indistinguishable from the Apocalypse’s original title. The eradication of such language in Codex Sinaiticus appears to indicate that the wording was a problem. The title of Revelation 3:14 was thus harmonized to the title of Colossians 1:18, where Jesus is ‘the head of the church’ (κεφαλὴ...τῆς ἐκκλησίας).31
Remarkably, two centuries later Oecumenius would use Revelation 3:14 to weigh in on the Arian controversy of his day. Oecumenius’s text of Revelation 3:14 is identical to the ‘earliest attainable text’, and he displays no knowledge of the singular reading in Codex Sinaiticus. Yet, Oecumenius also reads Revelation 3:14 in light of Colossians 1:18 as he attempts to refute the idea that the Son was created. The singular reading of Codex Sinaiticus may therefore represent the earliest use of the Apocalypse (on record) to thwart an ‘Arian’ threat by reading it in light of Colossians.32
Hernández Jr, J. (2015). Codex Sinaiticus: An Early Christian Commentary on the Apocalypse?. Codex Sinaiticus: New Perspectives on the Ancient Biblical Manuscript, 107-26 (This article is available online if you search for it)
