Theological Development
It is not that people who believed in Christ’s subordination in the second century could not therefore have been saved—we are all, after all, saved despite some of the things which we believe. It is rather that the church had come to an understanding that to protect and to articulate the gospel, accurate concepts and appropriate language were necessary, and some of these had to change over time as the inadequacy and abuse of earlier forms became clear.
Carl Trueman, The Creedal Imperative (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 96