
	An alternative theory of the history of Christianity
Athanasius and the Eusebian fiction postulate
Web Publication by Mountain Man Graphics, Australia

'And shall not all human kind
at Arius's blasphemies
be struck speechless,
and stop their ears,
and shut their eyes,
to escape hearing them
or seeing their author? .'

--- Athanasius (speak no evil, hear no evil, see no evil) against Arius (C.357 CE)

"Not even a man, but a common little fellow"

Emperor Julian's description of Athanasius [Ep. 51]

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Athanasius - Four Discourses against the Arians

Four Discourses Against the Arians.

Discourse I.

Chapter I.--Introduction. Reason for writing; certain persons indifferent about Arianism;
Arians not Christians, because sectaries always take the name of their founder.

1. Of all other heresies which have departed from the truth
it is acknowledged that they have but devised [1821] a madness,
and their irreligiousness has long since become notorious to all men.
For that [1822] their authors went out from us, it plainly follows,
as the blessed John has written, that they never thought nor now think with us.
Wherefore, as saith the Saviour, in that they gather not with us,
they scatter with the devil, and keep an eye on those who slumber,
that, by this second sowing of their own mortal poison,
they may have companions in death.

But, whereas one heresy, and that the last,
which has now risen as harbinger [1823] of Antichrist, the Arian,
as it is called, considering that other heresies, her elder sisters,
have been openly proscribed, in her craft and cunning,
affects to array herself in Scripture language [1824] , like her father the devil,
and is forcing her way back into the Church's paradise,--
that with the pretence of Christianity, her smooth sophistry (for reason she has none)
may deceive men into wrong thoughts of Christ,--
nay, since she has already seduced certain of the foolish, not only to corrupt their ears,
but even to take and eat with Eve, till in their ignorance which ensues
they think bitter sweet, and admire this loathsome heresy,
on this account I have thought it necessary, at your request,
to unrip `the folds of its breast-plate [1825] ,'and to shew the ill savour of its folly.

So while those who are far from it may continue to shun it,
those whom it has deceived may repent; and, opening the eyes of their heart,
may understand that darkness is not light, nor falsehood truth,
nor Arianism good; nay, that [1826]
those who call these men Christians are in great and grievous error,
as neither having studied Scripture, nor understanding Christianity at all,
and the faith which it contains.

2. For what have they discovered in this heresy like to the religious Faith,
that they vainly talk as if its supporters said no evil?
This in truth is to call even Caiaphas [1827] a Christian,
and to reckon the traitor Judas still among the Apostles,
and to say that they who asked Barabbas instead of the Saviour did no evil,
and to recommend Hymen?us and Alexander as right-minded men,
and as if the Apostle slandered them.

But neither can a Christian bear to hear this,
nor can he consider the man who dared to say it sane in his understanding.
For with them for Christ is Arius, as with the Manichees Manichus;
and for Moses and the other saints they have made the discovery of one Sotades [1828 --> ancient greek satirist]
a man whom even Gentiles laugh at, and of the daughter of Herodias.

For of the one has Arius imitated the dissolute
and effeminate tone, in writing Thali? on his model;
and the other he has rivalled in her dance,
reeling and frolicking in his blasphemies against the Saviour;
till the victims of his heresy lose their wits and go foolish,
and change the Name of the Lord of glory into the likeness
of the `image of corruptible man [1829] ,'
and for Christians come to be called Arians,
bearing this badge of their irreligion.
< For let them not excuse themselves; nor retort their disgrace
on those who are not as they, calling Christians after the names
of their teachers [1830] , that they themselves may appear to have that Name in the same way.
Nor let them make a jest of it, when they feel shame at their disgraceful appellation;
rather, if they be ashamed, let them hide their faces, or let them recoil from their own irreligion.

For never at any time did Christian people
take their title from the Bishops among them,
but from the Lord, on whom we rest our faith.
Thus, though the blessed Apostles have become our teachers,
and have ministered the Saviour's Gospel,
yet not from them have we our title,
but from Christ we are and are named Christians.
But for those who derive the faith which they profess from others,
good reason is it they should bear their name,
whose property they have become [1831] .

3. Yes surely; while all of us are and are called Christians after Christ,
Marcion broached a heresy a long time since and was cast out;
and those who continued with him who ejected him remained Christians;
but those who followed Marcion were called Christians no more,
but henceforth Marcionites. Thus Valentinus also, and Basilides,
and Manich?us, and Simon Magus, have imparted their own name to their followers;
and some are accosted as Valentinians, or as Basilidians,
or as Manichees, or as Simonians; and other,
Cataphrygians from Phrygia, and from Novatus Novatians.

So too Meletius, when ejected by Peter the Bishop and Martyr,
called his party no longer Christians, but Meletians [1832] ,
and so in consequence when Alexander of blessed memory had cast out Arius,
those who remained with Alexander, remained Christians;
but those who went out with Arius, left the Saviour's Name
to us who were with Alexander, and as to them they were hence-forward denominated Arians.
Behold then, after Alexander's death too, those who communicate with his successor Athanasius,
and those with whom the said Athanasius communicates, are instances of the same rule;
none of them bear his name, nor is he named from them, but all in like manner,
and as is usual, are called Christians.
For though we have a succession of teachers and become their disciples,
yet, because we are taught by them the things of Christ,
we both are, and are called, Christians all the same.

But those who follow the heretics, though they
have innumerable successors in their heresy,
yet anyhow bear the name of him who devised it.
Thus, though Arius be dead, and many of his party have succeeded him,
yet those who think with him, as being known from Arius, are called Arians.

And, what is a remarkable evidence of this,
those of the Greeks who even at this time come into the Church,
on giving up the superstition of idols, take the name,
not of their catechists, but of the Saviour,
and begin to be called Christians instead of Greeks:
while those of them who go off to the heretics,
and again all who from the Church change to this heresy,
abandon Christ's name, and henceforth are called Arians,
as no longer holding Christ's faith,
but having inherited Arius's madness.

4. How then can they be Christians, who for Christians are Ario-maniacs [1833] ?
or how are they of the Catholic Church, who have shaken off the Apostolical faith,
and become authors of fresh evils?
who, after abandoning the oracles of divine Scripture,
call Arius's Thali? a new wisdom?
and with reason too, for they are announcing a new heresy.
And hence a man may marvel, that, whereas many have written
many treatises and abundant homilies upon the Old Testament and the New,
yet in none of them is a Thalia found;
nay nor among the more respectable of the Gentiles,
but among those only who sing such strains over their cups,
amid cheers and jokes, when men are merry, that the rest may laugh;
till this marvellous Arius, taking no grave pattern,
and ignorant even of what is respectable,
while he stole largely from other heresies,
would be original in the ludicrous,
with none but Sotades[greek satirist] for his rival.

For what beseemed him more, when he would dance forth against the Saviour,
than to throw his wretched words of irreligion into dissolute and loose metres?
that, while `a man,' as Wisdom says, `is known from the utterance of his word [1834] ,
' so from those numbers should be seen the writer's effeminate soul and corruption of thought [1835] .

In truth, that crafty one did not escape detection;
but, for all his many writhings to and fro, like the serpent,
he did but fall into the error of the Pharisees.
They, that they might transgress the Law,
pretended to be anxious for the words of the Law,
and that they might deny the expected and then present Lord,
were hypocritical with God's name, and were convicted of blaspheming
when they said, `Why dost Thou, being a man, make Thyself God,'
and sayest, `I and the Father are one [1836] ?'
And so too, this counterfeit and Sotadean [Sotodes was a greek satirist] Arius,
feigns to speak of God, introducing Scripture language [1837] ,
but is on all sides recognised as godless [1838] Arius,
denying the Son, and reckoning Him among the creatures.

5. Now the commencement of Arius's Thalia and flippancy, effeminate in tune and nature, runs thus:--

`According to faith of God's elect, God's prudent ones,
Holy children, rightly dividing, God's Holy Spirit receiving,
Have I learned this from the partakers of wisdom,
Accomplished, divinely taught, and wise in all things.
Along their track, have I been walking, with like opinions.
I the very famous, the much suffering for God's glory;
And taught of God, I have acquired wisdom and knowledge.'

--`God was not always a Father; ' but `once God was alone,
and not yet a Father, but afterwards He became a Father.'
`The Son was not always;' for,
whereas all things were made out of nothing,
and all existing creatures and works were made,
so the Word of God Himself was `made out of nothing,'
and `once He was not,'

`He was not before His origination,'
but He as others `had an origin of creation.'
`For God,' he says, `was alone,
and the Word as yet was not, nor the Wisdom.
Then, wishing to form us,
thereupon He made a certain one,
and named Him Word and Wisdom and Son,
that He might form us by means of Him.'

there are two wisdoms,
first, the attribute co-existent with God,
and next, that in this wisdom the Son was originated,
and was only named Wisdom and Word as partaking of it.
`For Wisdom,' saith he, `by the will of the wise God,
had its existence in Wisdom.' In like manner, he says,
that there is another Word in God besides the Son,
and that the Son again, as partaking of it,
is named Word and Son according to grace.

The others are many and are like the Son, and of them David speaks in the Psalms,
when he says, `The Lord of hosts' or `powers [1841] .

' And by nature, as all others, so the Word Himself is alterable,
and remains good by His own free will, while He chooseth;
when, however, He wills, He can alter as we can, as being of an alterable nature.
For `therefore,' saith he, `as foreknowing that He would be good,
did God by anticipation bestow on Him this glory,
which afterwards, as man, He attained from virtue.
Thus in consequence of His works fore-known [1842] ,
did God bring it to pass that He being such, should come to be.'

`the Word is not the very God;' `
though He is called God, yet He is not very God,'
but `by participation of grace,
He, as others, is God only in name.'
And, whereas all beings are foreign and different from God in essence,
so too is `the Word alien and unlike in all things to the Father's essence and propriety,
' but belongs to things originated and created, and is one of these.

`even to the Son the Father is invisible,' and
`the Word cannot perfectly and exactly either see or know His own Father;'
but even what He knows and what He sees,
He knows and sees `in proportion to His own measure,
' as we also know according to our own power.
For the Son, too, he says, not only knows not the Father exactly,
for He fails in comprehension [1843], but `He knows not even His own essence;' --and
that `the essences of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost,
are separate in nature, and estranged,
and disconnected, and alien [1844] ,
and without participation of each other [1845] ;
' and, in his own words, `utterly unlike from each other
in essence and glory, unto infinity.'
Thus as to `likeness of glory and essence,' he says that the Word is entirely diverse
from both the Father and the Holy Ghost.

7. Who is there that hears all this, nay,
the tune of the Thalia, but must hate, and justly hate,
this Arius jesting on such matters as on a stage [1846] ?
who but must regard him, when he pretends to name God and speak of God,
but as the serpent counselling the woman? who, on reading
what follows in his work, but must discern in his irreligious doctrine that error,
into which by his sophistries the serpent in the sequel seduced the woman?

who at such blasphemies is not transported?

`The heaven,' as the Prophet says, `was astonished,
and the earth shuddered [1847] '
at the transgression of the Law.
But the sun, with greater horror,
impatient of the bodily contumelies,
which the common Lord of all voluntarily endured for us,
turned away, and recalling his rays
made that day sunless.

And shall not all human kind at Arius's blasphemies be struck speechless,
and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, to escape hearing them or seeing their author?

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil
Today "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" is commonly used to describe someone who doesn't want to be involved in a situation, or someone willfully turning a blind eye to the immorality of an act in which they are involved. The Italian version, "Non vedo, non sento, non parlo" (I see nothing, I hear nothing, I say nothing), expresses the Omert�, the local code of silence.

Rather, will not the Lord Himself have reason to denounce men so irreligious, nay, so unthankful, in the words which He has already uttered by the prophet Hosea, `Woe unto them, for they have fled from Me; destruction upon them, for they have transgressed against Me; though I have redeemed them, yet they have spoken lies against Me [1848] .' And soon after, `They imagine mischief against Me; they turn away to nothing [1849] .'

For to turn away from the Word of God, which is,
and to fashion to themselves one that is not,
is to fall to what is nothing.
For this was why the Ecumenical [1850] Council,
when Arius thus spoke, cast him from the Church,
and anathematized him, as impatient of such irreligion.
And ever since has Arius's error been reckoned for a heresy more than ordinary,
being known as Christ's foe, and harbinger [1851] of Antichrist.

Though then so great a condemnation be itself of special weight
to make men flee from that irreligious heresy [1852] , as I said above,
yet since certain persons called Christian,
either in ignorance or pretence, think it, as I then said,
little different from the Truth,
and call its professors Christians;
proceed we to put some questions to them, according to our powers,
thereby to expose the unscrupulousness of the heresy.
Perhaps, when thus caught, they will be silenced,
and flee from it, as from the sight of a serpent.

8. If then the use of certain phrases of divine Scripture
changes, in their opinion, the blasphemy of the Thalia into reverent language,
of course they ought also to deny Christ with the present Jews,
when they see how they study the Law and the Prophets;
perhaps too they will deny the Law [1853] and the Prophets like Manichees [1854] ,
because the latter read some portions of the Gospels.

If such bewilderment and empty speaking be from ignorance,
Scripture will teach them, that the devil, the author of heresies,
because of the ill savour which attaches to evil,
borrows Scripture language, as a cloak wherewith
to sow the ground with his own poison also, and to seduce the simple.
Thus he deceived Eve; thus he framed former heresies;
thus he persuaded Arius at this time to make a show
of speaking against those former ones,
that he might introduce his own without observation.
And yet, after all, the man of craft did not escape.
For being irreligious towards the Word of God,
he lost his all at once [1855] ,
and betrayed to all men his ignorance of other heresies too [1856] ;
and having not a particle of truth in his belief, does but pretend to it.
For how can he speak truth concerning the Father,
who denies the Son, that reveals concerning Him?
or how can he be orthodox concerning the Spirit,
while he speaks profanely of the Word that supplies the Spirit?
and who will trust him concerning the Resurrection, denying, as he does,
Christ for us the first-begotten from the dead?
and how shall he not err in respect to His incarnate presence,
who is simply ignorant of the Son's genuine and true generation from the Father?

For thus, the former Jews also, denying the Word, and saying,
`We have no king but C?sar [1857] ,' were forthwith stripped
of all they had, and forfeited the light of the Lamp,
the odour of ointment, knowledge of prophecy, and the Truth itself;
till now they understand nothing, but are walking as in darkness.

For who was ever yet a hearer of such a doctrine [1858] ?
or whence or from whom did the abettors and hirelings [1859] of the heresy gain it?
who thus expounded to them when they were at school [1860] ?
who told them, `Abandon the worship of the creation,
and then draw near and worship a creature and a work [1861] ?'

But if they themselves own that they have heard it now for the first time,
how can they deny that this heresy is foreign, and not from our fathers [1862] ?
But what is not from our fathers, but has come to light in this day,
how can it be but that of which the blessed Paul [1863] has foretold,
that `in the latter times some shall depart from the sound faith,
giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils,
in the hypocrisy of liars; cauterized in their own conscience,
and turning from the truth [1864] ?'

9. For, behold, we take divine Scripture, and thence discourse with freedom of the religious Faith, and set it up as a light upon its candlestick, saying:--Very Son of the Father, natural and genuine, proper to His essence, Wisdom Only-begotten, and Very and Only Word of God is He; not a creature or work, but an offspring proper to the Father's essence. Wherefore He is very God, existing one [1865] in essence with the very Father; while other beings, to whom He said, `I said ye are Gods [1866] ,' had this grace from the Father, only by participation [1867] of the Word, through the Spirit. For He is the expression of the Father's Person, and Light from Light, and Power, and very Image of the Father's essence. For this too the Lord has said, `He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father [1868] .' And He ever was and is and never was not. For the Father being everlasting, His Word and His Wisdom must be everlasting [1869]

On the other hand, what have these persons to shew us from the infamous Thalia?
Or, first of all, let them read it themselves, and copy the tone of the writer;
at least the mockery which they will encounter from others
may instruct them how low they have fallen;
and then let them proceed to explain themselves.
For what can they say from it, but that

`God was not always a Father, but became so afterwards;
the Son was not always, for He was not before His generation;
He is not from the Father, but He, as others,
has come into subsistence out of nothing;
He is not proper to the Father's essence,
for He is a creature and work?'

And `Christ is not very God,
but He, as others, was made God by participation;
the Son has not exact knowledge of the Father,
nor does the Word see the Father perfectly;
and neither exactly understands nor knows the Father.

He is not the very and only Word of the Father,
but is in name only called Word and Wisdom,
and is called by grace Son and Power.
He is not unalterable, as the Father is,
but alterable in nature, as the creatures,
and He comes short of apprehending
the perfect knowledge of the Father.'

10. Which of the two theologies sets forth our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Son of the Father,
this which you vomited forth, or that which we have spoken and maintain from the Scriptures?
If the Saviour be not God, nor Word, nor Son,
you shall have leave to say what you will,
and so shall the Gentiles, and the present Jews.

But if He be Word of the Father and true Son,
and God from God, and `over all blessed for ever [1872] ,'
is it not becoming to obliterate and blot out
those other phrases and that Arian Thalia,
as but a pattern of evil, a store of all irreligion,
into which, whoso falls, `knoweth not that giants perish with her,
and reacheth the depths of Hades [1873] ?'

This they know themselves, and in their craft they conceal it,
not having the courage to speak out, but uttering something else [1874] .
For if they speak, a condemnation will follow;
and if they be suspected, proofs from Scripture
will be cast [1875] at them from every side.

Wherefore, in their craft, as children of this world,
after feeding their so-called lamp from the wild olive,
and fearing lest it should soon be quenched
(for it is said, `the light of the wicked shall be put out [1876] ,')
they hide it under the bushel [1877] of their hypocrisy,
and make a different profession, and boast
of patronage of friends and authority of Constantius,
that what with their hypocrisy and their professions,
those who come to them may be kept from seeing how foul their heresy is.
Is it not detestable even in this, that it dares not speak out,
but is kept hid by its own friends, and fostered as serpents are?
for from what sources have they got together these words?
or from whom have they received what they venture to say [1878] ?

Not any one man can they specify who has supplied it.
For who is there in all mankind, Greek or Barbarian,
who ventures to rank among creatures One
whom he confesses the while to be God and says,
that He was not till He was made?
or who is there, who to the God in whom he has put faith,
refuses to give credit, when He says, `This is My beloved Son [1879] ,
' on the pretence that He is not a Son, but a creature?
rather, such madness would rouse an universal indignation.

Nor does Scripture afford them any pretext; for it has been often shewn,
and it shall be shewn now, that their doctrine is alien to the divine oracles.
Therefore, since all that remains is to say that from the devil came their mania
(for of such opinions he alone is sower [1880] ), proceed we to resist him
--for with him is our real conflict, and they are but instruments;--
that, the Lord aiding us, and the enemy, as he is wont,
being overcome with arguments, they may be put to shame, when
they see him without resource who sowed this heresy in them,
and may learn, though late, that,
as being Arians, they are not Christians.

11. At his suggestion then ye have maintained and ye think, that `there was once when the Son was not;' this is the first cloke of your views of doctrine which has to be stripped off. Say then what was once when the Son was not, O slanderous and irreligious men [1881] ? If ye say the Father, your blasphemy is but greater; for it is impious to say that He was `once,' or to signify Him by the word `once.' For He is ever, and is now, and as the Son is, so is He, and is Himself He that is, and Father of the Son. But if ye say that the Son was once, when He Himself was not, the answer is foolish and unmeaning. For how could He both be and not be? In this difficulty, you can but answer, that there was a time when the Word was not; for your very adverb `once' naturally signifies this. And your other, `The Son was not before His generation,' is equivalent to saying, `There was once when He was not,' for both the one and the other signify that there is a time before the Word. Whence then this your discovery? Why do ye, as `the heathen, rage, and imagine vain phrases against the Lord [1882] and against His Christ?' for no holy Scripture has used such language of the Saviour, but rather `always' and `eternal' and `coexistent always with the Father.' For, `In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God [1883] .' And in the Apocalypse he thus speaks [1884] ; `Who is and who was and who is to come.' Now who can rob `who is' and `who was' of eternity? This too in confutation of the Jews hath Paul written in his Epistle to the Romans, `Of whom as concerning the flesh is Christ, who is over all, God blessed for ever [1885] ;' while silencing the Greeks, he has said, `The visible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal Power and Godhead [1886] ;' and what the Power of God is, he teaches us elsewhere himself, `Christ the Power of God and the Wisdom of God [1887] .' Surely in these words he does not designate the Father, as ye often whisper one to another, affirming that the Father is `His eternal power.' This is not so; for he says not, `God Himself is the power,' but `His is the power.' Very plain is it to all that `His' is not `He;' yet not something alien but rather proper to Him. Study too the context and `turn to the Lord;' now `the Lord is that Spirit [1888] ;'and you will see that it is the Son who is signified.

12. For after making mention of the creation, he naturally speaks of the Framer's Power as seen in it, which Power, I say, is the Word of God, by whom all things have been made. If indeed the creation is sufficient of itself alone, without the Son, to make God known, see that you fall not, from thinking that without the Son it has come to be. But if through the Son it has come to be, and `in Him all things consist [1889] ,' it must follow that he who contemplates the creation rightly, is contemplating also the Word who framed it, and through Him begins to apprehend the Father [1890] . And if, as the Saviour also says, `No one knoweth the Father, save the Son, and he to whom the Son shall reveal Him [1891] ,' and if on Philip's asking, `Shew us the Father,' He said not, `Behold the creation,' but, `He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father [1892] ,' reasonably doth Paul,--while accusing the Greeks of contemplating the harmony and order of the creation without reflecting on the Framing Word within it (for the creatures witness to their own Framer) so as through the creation to apprehend the true God, and abandon their worship of it,--reasonably hath he said, `His Eternal Power and Godhead [1893] ,' thereby signifying the Son. And where the sacred writers say, `Who exists before the ages,' and `By whom He made the ages [1894] ,' they thereby as clearly preach the eternal and everlasting being of the Son, even while they are designating God Himself. Thus, if Isaiah says, `The Everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth [1895] ;' and Susanna said, `O Everlasting God [1896] ;' and Baruch wrote, `I will cry unto the Everlasting in my days,' and shortly after, `My hope is in the Everlasting, that He will save you, and joy is come unto me from the Holy One [1897] ;' yet forasmuch as the Apostle, writing to the Hebrews, says, `Who being the radiance of His glory and the Expression of His Person [1898] ;' and David too in the eighty-ninth Psalm, `And the brightness of the Lord be upon us,' and, `In Thy Light shall we see Light [1899] ,' who has so little sense as to doubt of the eternity of the Son [1900] ? for when did man see light without the brightness of its radiance, that he may say of the Son, `There was once, when He was not,' or `Before His generation He was not.' And the words addressed to the Son in the hundred and forty-fourth Psalm, `Thy kingdom is a kingdom of all ages [1901] ,' forbid any one to imagine any interval at all in which the Word did not exist. For if every interval in the ages is measured, and of all the ages the Word is King and Maker, therefore, whereas no interval at all exists prior to Him [1902] , it were madness to say, `There was once when the Everlasting was not,' and `From nothing is the Son.' And whereas the Lord Himself says, `I am the Truth [1903] ,' not `I became the Truth;' but always, `I am,--I am the Shepherd,--I am the Light,'--and again, `Call ye Me not, Lord and Master? and ye call Me well, for so I am,' who, hearing such language from God, and the Wisdom, and Word of the Father, speaking of Himself, will any longer hesitate about the truth, and not forthwith believe that in the phrase `I am,' is signified that the Son is eternal and without beginning?

13. It is plain then from the above that the Scriptures declare the Son's eternity; it is equally plain from what follows that the Arian phrases `He was not,' and `before' and `when,' are in the same Scriptures predicated of creatures. Moses, for instance, in his account of the generation of our system, says, `And every plant of the field, before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew; for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground [1904] .' And in Deuteronomy, `When the Most High divided to the nations [1905] .' And the Lord said in His own Person, `If ye loved Me, ye would rejoice because I said, I go unto the Father, for My Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it come to pass, that when it is come to pass, ye might believe [1906] .' And concerning the creation He says by Solomon, `Or ever the earth was, when there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, was I brought forth [1907] .' And, `Before Abraham was, I am [1908] .' And concerning Jeremiah He says, `Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee [1909] .' And David in the Psalm says, `Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made, Thou art, God from everlasting and world without end [1910] .' And in Daniel, `Susanna cried out with a loud voice and said, O everlasting God, that knowest the secrets, and knowest all things before they be [1911] .' Thus it appears that the phrases `once was not,' and `before it came to be,' and `when,' and the like, belong to things originate and creatures, which come out of nothing, but are alien to the Word. But if such terms are used in Scripture of things originate, but `ever' of the Word, it follows, O ye enemies of God, that the Son did not come out of nothing, nor is in the number of originated things at all, but is the Father's Image and Word eternal, never having not been, but being ever, as the eternal Radiance [1912] of a Light which is eternal. Why imagine then times before the Son? or wherefore blaspheme the Word as after times, by whom even the ages were made? for how did time or age at all subsist when the Word, as you say, had not appeared, `through' whom `all things have been made and without' whom `not one thing was made [1913] ?' Or why, when you mean time, do you not plainly say, `a time was when the Word was not?' But while you drop the word `time' to deceive the simple, you do not at all conceal your own feeling, nor, even if you did, could you escape discovery. For you still simply mean times, when you say, `There was when He was not,' and `He was not before His generation.'

14. When these points are thus proved, their profaneness goes further. `If there never was, when the Son was not,' say they, `but He is eternal, and coexists with the Father, you call Him no more the Father's Son, but brother [1914] .' O insensate and contentious! For if we said only that He was eternally with the Father, and not His Son, their pretended scruple would have some plausibility; but if, while we say that He is eternal, we also confess Him to be Son from the Father, how can He that is begotten be considered brother of Him who begets? And if our faith is in Father and Son, what brotherhood is there between them? and how can the Word be called brother of Him whose Word He is? This is not an objection of men really ignorant, for they comprehend how the truth lies; but it is a Jewish pretence, and that from those who, in Solomon's words, `through desire separate themselves [1915] ' from the truth. For the Father and the Son were not generated from some pre-existing origin [1916] , that we may account Them brothers, but the Father is the Origin of the Son and begat Him; and the Father is Father, and not born the Son of any; and the Son is Son, and not brother. Further, if He is called the eternal offspring [1917] of the Father, He is rightly so called. For never was the essence of the Father imperfect, that what is proper to it should be added afterwards [1918] ; nor, as man from man, has the Son been begotten, so as to be later than His Father's existence, but He is God's offspring, and as being proper Son of God, who is ever, He exists eternally. For, whereas it is proper to men to beget in time, from the imperfection of their nature [1919] , God's offspring is eternal, for His nature is ever perfect [1920] . If then He is not a Son, but a work made out of nothing, they have but to prove it; and then they are at liberty, as if imagining about a creature, to cry out, `There was once when He was not;' for things which are originated were not, and have come to be. But if He is Son, as the Father says, and the Scriptures proclaim, and `Son' is nothing else than what is generated from the Father; and what is generated from the Father is His Word, and Wisdom, and Radiance; what is to be said but that, in maintaining `Once the Son was not,' they rob God of His Word, like plunderers, and openly predicate of Him that He was once without His proper Word and Wisdom, and that the Light was once without radiance, and the Fountain was once barren and dry [1921] ? For though they pretend alarm at the name of time, because of those who reproach them with it, and say, that He was before times, yet whereas they assign certain intervals, in which they imagine He was not, they are most irreligious still, as equally suggesting times, and imputing to God an absence of Reason [1922] .

15. But if on the other hand, while they acknowledge with us the name of `Son,' from an unwillingness to be publicly and generally condemned, they deny that the Son is the proper offspring of the Father's essence, on the ground that this must imply parts and divisions [1923] ; what is this but to deny that He is very Son, and only in name to call Him Son at all? And is it not a grievous error, to have material thoughts about what is immaterial, and because of the weakness of their proper nature to deny what is natural and proper to the Father? It does but remain, that they should deny Him also, because they understand not how God is [1924] , and what the Father is, now that, foolish men, they measure by themselves the Offspring of the Father. And persons in such a state of mind as to consider that there cannot be a Son of God, demand our pity; but they must be interrogated and exposed for the chance of bringing them to their senses. If then, as you say, `the Son is from nothing,' and `was not before His generation,' He, of course, as well as others, must be called Son and God and Wisdom only by participation; for thus all other creatures consist, and by sanctification are glorified. You have to tell us then, of what He is partaker [1925] . All other things partake of the Spirit, but He, according to you, of what is He partaker? of the Spirit? Nay, rather the Spirit Himself takes from the Son, as He Himself says; and it is not reasonable to say that the latter is sanctified by the former. Therefore it is the Father that He partakes; for this only remains to say. But this, which is participated, what is it or whence [1926] ? If it be something external provided by the Father, He will not now be partaker of the Father, but of what is external to Him; and no longer will He be even second after the Father, since He has before Him this other; nor can He be called Son of the Father, but of that, as partaking which He has been called Son and God. And if this be unseemly and irreligious, when the Father says, `This is My Beloved Son [1927] ,' and when the Son says that God is His own Father, it follows that what is partaken is not external, but from the essence of the Father. And as to this again, if it be other than the essence of the Son, an equal extravagance will meet us; there being in that case something between this that is from the Father and the essence of the Son, whatever that be [1928] .

16. Such thoughts then being evidently unseemly and untrue, we are driven to say that what is from the essence of the Father, and proper to Him, is entirely the Son; for it is all one to say that God is wholly participated, and that He begets; and what does begetting signify but a Son? And thus of the Son Himself, all things partake according to the grace of the Spirit coming from Him [1929] ; and this shews that the Son Himself partakes of nothing, but what is partaken from the Father, is the Son; for, as partaking of the Son Himself, we are said to partake of God; and this is what Peter said `that ye may be partakers in a divine nature [1930] ;' as says too the Apostle, `Know ye not, that ye are a temple of God?' and, `We are the temple of a living God [1931] .' And beholding the Son, we see the Father; for the thought [1932] and comprehension of the Son, is knowledge concerning the Father, because He is His proper offspring from His essence. And since to be partaken no one of us would ever call affection or division of God's essence (for it has been shewn and acknowledged that God is participated, and to be participated is the same thing as to beget); therefore that which is begotten is neither affection nor division of that blessed essence. Hence it is not incredible that God should have a Son, the Offspring of His own essence; nor do we imply affection or division of God's essence, when we speak of `Son' and `Offspring;' but rather, as acknowledging the genuine, and true, and Only-begotten of God, so we believe. If then, as we have stated and are shewing, what is the Offspring of the Father's essence be the Son, we cannot hesitate, rather we must be certain, that the same [1933] is the Wisdom and Word of the Father, in and through whom He creates and makes all things; and His Brightness too, in whom He enlightens all things, and is revealed to whom He will; and His Expression and Image also, in whom He is contemplated and known, wherefore `He and His Father are one [1934] ,' and whoso looketh on Him looketh on the Father; and the Christ, in whom all things are redeemed, and the new creation wrought afresh. And on the other hand, the Son being such Offspring, it is not fitting, rather it is full of peril, to say, that He is a work out of nothing, or that He was not before His generation. For he who thus speaks of that which is proper to the Father's essence, already blasphemes the Father Himself [1935] ; since he really thinks of Him what he falsely imagines of His offspring.

17. This is of itself a sufficient refutation of the Arian heresy;
however, its heterodoxy will appear also from the following:--
If God be Maker and Creator, and create His works through the Son, and we cannot regard things which come to be, except as being through the Word, is it not blasphemous, God being Maker, to say, that His Framing Word and His Wisdom once was not? it is the same as saying, that God is not Maker, if He had not His proper Framing Word which is from Him, but that that by which He frames, accrues to Him from without [1936] , and is alien from Him, and unlike in essence. Next, let them tell us this,--or rather learn from it how irreligious they are in saying, `Once He was not,' and, `He was not before His generation;'--for if the Word is not with the Father from everlasting, the Triad is not everlasting; but a Monad was first, and afterwards by addition it became a Triad; and so as time went on, it seems what we know concerning God grew and took shape [1937] . And further, if the Son is not proper offspring of the Father's essence, but of nothing has come to be, then of nothing the Triad consists, and once there was not a Triad, but a Monad; and a Triad once with deficiency, and then complete; deficient, before the Son was originated, complete when He had come to be; and henceforth a thing originated is reckoned with the Creator, and what once was not has divine worship and glory with Him who was ever [1938] . Nay, what is more serious still, the Triad is discovered to be unlike Itself, consisting of strange and alien natures and essences. And this, in other words, is saying, that the Triad has an originated consistence. What sort of a religion then is this, which is not even like itself, but is in process of completion as time goes on, and is now not thus, and then again thus? For probably it will receive some fresh accession, and so on without limit, since at first and at starting it took its consistence by way of accessions. And so undoubtedly it may decrease on the contrary, for what is added plainly admits of being subtracted.

18. But this is not so: perish the thought;
the Triad is not originated;
but there is an eternal and one Godhead in a Triad,
and there is one Glory of the Holy Triad.
And you presume to divide it into different natures;
the Father being eternal, yet you say of the Word
which is seated by Him, `Once He was not;' and,
whereas the Son is seated by the Father,
yet you think to place Him far from Him.

The Triad is Creator and Framer,
and you fear not to degrade It
to things which are from nothing;
you scruple not to equal servile beings
to the nobility of the Triad,
and to rank the King,
the Lord of Sabaoth with subjects [1939] .

Cease this confusion of things unassociable,
or rather of things which are not with Him who is.
Such statements do not glorify and honour the Lord,
but the reverse; for he who dishonours the Son,
dishonours also the Father.

For if the doctrine of God is now perfect in a Triad,
and this is the true and only Religion,
and this is the good and the truth,
it must have been always so,
unless the good and the truth be something
that came after, and the doctrine of God
is completed by additions.

I say, it must have been eternally so; but if not eternally, not so at present either, but at present so, as you suppose it was from the beginning,--I mean, not a Triad now. But such heretics no Christian would bear; it belongs to Greeks, to introduce an originated Triad, and to level It with things originate; for these do admit of deficiencies and additions; but the faith of Christians acknowledges the blessed Triad as unalterable and perfect and ever what It was, neither adding to It what is more, nor imputing to It any loss (for both ideas are irreligious), and therefore it dissociates It from all things generated, and it guards as indivisible and worships the unity of the Godhead Itself; and shuns the Arian blasphemies, and confesses and acknowledges that the Son was ever; for He is eternal, as is the Father, of whom He is the Eternal Word,--to which subject let us now return again. 19. If God be, and be called, the Fountain of wisdom and life--as He says by Jeremiah, `They have forsaken Me the Fountain of living waters [1940] ;' and again, `A glorious high throne from the beginning, is the place of our sanctuary; O Lord, the Hope of Israel, all that forsake Thee shall be ashamed, and they that depart from Me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the Lord, the Fountain of living waters [1941] ;' and in the book of Baruch it is written, `Thou hast forsaken the Fountain of wisdom [1942] ,'--this implies that life and wisdom are not foreign to the Essence of the Fountain, but are proper to It, nor were at any time without existence, but were always. Now the Son is all this, who says, `I am the Life [1943] ,' and, `I Wisdom dwell with prudence [1944] .' Is it not then irreligious to say, `Once the Son was not?' for it is all one with saying, `Once the Fountain was dry, destitute of Life and Wisdom.' But a fountain it would then cease to be; for what begetteth not from itself, is not a fountain [1945] . What a load of extravagance! for God promises that those who do His will shall be as a fountain which the water fails not, saying by Isaiah the prophet, `And the Lord shall satisfy thy soul in drought, and make thy bones fat; and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not [1946] .' And yet these, whereas God is called and is a Fountain of wisdom, dare to insult Him as barren and void of His proper Wisdom. But their doctrine is false; truth witnessing that God is the eternal Fountain of His proper Wisdom; and, if the Fountain be eternal, the Wisdom also must needs be eternal. For in It were all things made, as David says in the Psalm, `In Wisdom hast Thou made them all [1947] ;' and Solomon says, `The Lord by Wisdom hath formed the earth, by understanding hath He established the heavens [1948] .' And this Wisdom is the Word, and by Him, as John says, `all things were made,' and `without Him was made not one thing [1949] .' And this Word is Christ; for `there is One God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we for Him; and One Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through Him [1950] .' And if all things are through Him, He Himself is not to be reckoned with that `all.' For he who dares [1951] to call Him, through whom are things, one of that `all,' surely will have like speculations concerning God, from whom are all. But if he shrinks from this as unseemly, and excludes God from that all, it is but consistent that he should also exclude from that all the Only-Begotten Son, as being proper to the Father's essence. And, if He be not one of the all [1952] , it is sin to say concerning Him, `He was not,' and `He was not before His generation.' Such words may be used of the creatures; but as to the Son, He is such as the Father is, of whose essence He is proper Offspring, Word, and Wisdom [1953] . For this is proper to the Son, as regards the Father, and this shews that the Father is proper to the Son; that we may neither say that God was ever without Word [1954] , nor that the Son was non-existent. For wherefore a Son, if not from Him? or wherefore Word and Wisdom, if not ever proper to Him? 20. When then was God without that which is proper to Him? or how can a man consider that which is proper, as foreign and alien in essence? for other things, according to the nature of things originate, are without likeness in essence with the Maker; but are external to Him, made by the Word at His grace and will, and thus admit of ceasing to be, if it so pleases Him who made them [1955] ; for such is the nature of things originate [1956] . But as to what is proper to the Father's essence (for this we have already found to be the Son), what daring is it in irreligion to say that `This comes from nothing,' and that `It was not before generation,' but was adventitious [1957] , and can at some time cease to be again? Let a person only dwell upon this thought, and he will discern how the perfection and the plenitude of the Father's essence is impaired by this heresy; however, he will see its unseemliness still more clearly, if he considers that the Son is the Image and Radiance of the Father, and Expression, and Truth. For if, when Light exists, there be withal its Image, viz. Radiance, and, a Subsistence existing, there be of it the entire Expression, and, a Father existing, there be His Truth (viz. the Son); let them consider what depths of irreligion they fall into, who make time the measure of the Image and Form of the Godhead. For if the Son was not before His generation, Truth was not always in God, which it were a sin to say; for, since the Father was, there was ever in Him the Truth, which is the Son, who says, `I am the Truth [1958] .' And the Subsistence existing, of course there was forthwith its Expression and Image; for God's Image is not delineated from without [1959] , but God Himself hath begotten it; in which seeing Himself, He has delight, as the Son Himself says, `I was His delight [1960] .' When then did the Father not see Himself in His own Image? or when had He not delight, that a man should dare to say, `the Image is out of nothing,' and `The Father had not delight before the Image was originated?' and how should the Maker and Creator see Himself in a created and originated essence? for such as is the Father, such must be the Image. 21. Proceed we then to consider the attributes of the Father, and we shall come to know whether this Image is really His. The Father is eternal, immortal, powerful, light, King, Sovereign, God, Lord, Creator, and Maker. These attributes must be in the Image, to make it true that he `that hath seen' the Son `hath seen the Father [1961] .' If the Son be not all this, but, as the Arians consider, originate, and not eternal, this is not a true Image of the Father, unless indeed they give up shame, and go on to say, that the title of Image, given to the Son, is not a token of a similar essence [1962] , but His name [1963] only. But this, on the other hand, O ye enemies of Christ, is not an Image, nor is it an Expression. For what is the likeness of what is out of nothing to Him who brought what was nothing into being? or how can that which is not, be like Him that is, being short of Him in once not being, and in its having its place among things originate? However, such the Arians wishing Him to be, devised for themselves arguments such as this;--`If the Son is the Father's offspring and Image, and is like in all things [1964] to the Father, then it necessarily holds that as He is begotten, so He begets, and He too becomes father of a son. And again, he who is begotten from Him, begets in his turn, and so on without limit; for this is to make the Begotten like Him that begat Him.' Authors of blasphemy, verily, are these foes of God! who, sooner than confess that the Son is the Father's Image [1965] , conceive material and earthly ideas concerning the Father Himself, ascribing to Him severings and [1966] effluences and influences. If then God be as man, let Him become also a parent as man, so that His Son should be father of another, and so in succession one from another, till the series they imagine grows into a multitude of gods. But if God be not as man, as He is not, we must not impute to Him the attributes of man. For brutes and men, after a Creator has begun them, are begotten by succession; and the son, having been begotten of a father who was a son, becomes accordingly in his turn a father to a son, in inheriting from his father that by which he himself has come to be. Hence in such instances there is not, properly speaking, either father or son, nor do the father and the son stay in their respective characters, for the son himself becomes a father, being son of his father, but father of his son. But it is not so in the Godhead; for not as man is God; for the Father is not from a father; therefore doth He not beget one who shall become a father; nor is the Son from effluence of the Father, nor is He begotten from a father that was begotten; therefore neither is He begotten so as to beget. Thus it belongs to the Godhead alone, that the Father is properly [1967] father, and the Son properly son, and in Them, and Them only, does it hold that the Father is ever Father and the Son ever Son. 22. Therefore he who asks why the Son is not to beget a son, must inquire why the Father had not a father. But both suppositions are unseemly and full of impiety. For as the Father is ever Father and never could become Son, so the Son is ever Son and never could become Father. For in this rather is He shewn to be the Father's Expression and Image, remaining what He is and not changing, but thus receiving from the Father to be one and the same. If then the Father change, let the Image change; for so is the Image and Radiance in its relation towards Him who begat It. But if the Father is unalterable, and what He is that He continues, necessarily does the Image also continue what He is, and will not alter. Now He is Son from the Father; therefore He will not become other than is proper to the Father's essence. Idly then have the foolish ones devised this objection also, wishing to separate the Image from the Father, that they might level the Son with things originated. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Footnotes

[1821] epinoesasai. This is almost a technical word, and has occurred again and again already, as descriptive of heretical teaching in opposition to the received traditionary doctrine. It is also found passim in other writers. Thus Socrates, speaking of the decree of the Council of Alexandria, 362, against Apollinaris; `for not originating, epinoesantes, any novel devotion, did they introduce it into the Church, but what from the beginning the Ecclesiastical Tradition declared.' Hist. iii. 7. The sense of the word epinoia which will come into consideration below, is akin to this, being the view taken by the mind of an object independent of (whether or not correspondent to) the object itself. [But see Bigg. B. L. p. 168, sq.]

[1822] to gar exelthein...delon an eie, i.e. to and so infr. ?43. to de kai proskuneisthai...delon an eie.

[1823] de Syn. 5.

[1824] Vid. infr. ?4 fin. That heresies before the Arian appealed to Scripture we learn from Tertullian, de Pr?scr. 42, who warns Catholics against indulging themselves in their own view of isolated texts against the voice of the Catholic Church. vid. also Vincentius, who specifies obiter Sabellius and Novation. Commonit. 2. Still Arianism was contrasted with other heresies on this point, as in these two respects; (1.) they appealed to a secret tradition, unknown even to most of the Apostles, as the Gnostics, Iren. H?r. iii. 1 or they professed a gift of prophecy introducing fresh revelations, as Montanists, de Syn. 4, and Manichees, Aug. contr. Faust. xxxii. 6. (2.) The Arians availed themselves of certain texts as objections, argued keenly and plausibly from them, and would not be driven from them. Orat. ii. ?18. c. Epiph. H?r. 69. 15. Or rather they took some words of Scripture, and made their own deductions from them; viz. `Son,' `made,' `exalted,' &c. `Making their private irreligiousness as if a rule, they misinterpret all the divine oracles by it.' Orat. i. ?52. vid. also Epiph. H?r. 76. 5 fin. Hence we hear so much of their thrulletai phonai, lexeis, epe, rheta, sayings in general circulation, which were commonly founded on some particular text. e.g. infr., ?22, `amply providing themselves with words of craft, they used to go about,' &c. Also ano kai kato peripherontes, de Decr. ?13. to rh& 208;to tethrullekasi ta pantachou. Orat. 2. ?18. to poluthrulleton sophisma, Basil. contr. Eunom. ii. 14. ten poluthrulleton dialektiken, Nyssen. contr. Eun. iii. p. 125. ten thrulloumenen apor& 191;oen, Cyril. Dial. iv. p. 505. ten poluthrulleton phonen, Socr. ii. 43.

[1825] Job xli. 13 (v. 4. LXX).

[1826] These Orations and Discourses seem written to shew the vital importance of the point in controversy, and the unchristian character of the heresy, without reference to the word homoousion. He has [elsewhere] insisted that the enforcement of the symbol was but the rejection of the heresy, and accordingly he is here content to bring out the Catholic sense, as feeling that, if persons understood and embraced it, they would not scruple at the word. He seems to allude to what may be called the liberal or indifferent feeling as swaying the person for whom he writes, also infr. ?7 fin. ?9. ?10 init. ?15 fin. ?17. ?21. ?23. He mentions in Apollin. i. 6. one Rhetorius, who was an Egyptian, whose opinion, he says, it was `fearful to mention.' S. Augustine tells us that this man taught that `all heresies were in the right path, and spoke truth,' `which,' he adds, `is so absurd as to seem to me incredible.' H?r 72. vid. also Philastr. H?r. 91.

[1827] de Decr. ??2, 24, 27.

[1828] de Syn. ?1. Sotades (Greek: S?t?d??; 3rd century BC) was an Ancient Greek poet. Sotades was born in Maroneia, either the one in Thrace, or in Crete. He was the chief representative of the writers of obscene satirical poems, called Kinaidoi, composed in the Ionic dialect and in the "sotadic" metre named after him. The sotadic metre or sotadic verse is one that reads backwards and forwards the same, as �llewd did I live, and evil I did dwell.� These verses have also been called palindromic Sotades lived in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285 BC-246 BC). One of his poems attacked Ptolemy's marriage to his own sister Arsinoe, from which came the infamous line: "You're sticking your prick in an unholy hole."[1] For this, Sotades was imprisoned, but he escaped to the island of Caunus, where he was afterwards captured by Patroclus, Ptolemy's admiral, shut up in a leaden chest, and thrown into the sea. Only a few genuine fragments of Sotades have been preserved; those in Stobaeus are generally considered spurious. Ennius translated some poems of this kind, included in his book of satires under the name of Sola. Sotades was also the author of some of the first recorded palindromes, and many credit him with the invention of that particular genre of composition.

[1829] Vid. Hil. de Trin. viii. 28; Rom. i. 25.

[1830] He seems to allude to Catholics being called Athanasians; vid. however next ?. Two distinctions are drawn between such a title as applied to Catholics, and again to heretics, when they are taken by Catholics as a note against them. S. Augustine says, `Arians call Catholics Athanasians or Homo?sians, not other heretics too. But ye not only by Catholics but also by heretics, those who agree with you and those who disagree, are called Pelagians; as even by heresies are Arians called Arians. But ye, and ye only, call us Traducianists, as Arians call us Homo?sians, as Donatists Macarians, as Manichees Pharisees, and as the other heretics use various titles.' Op. imp. i. 75. It may be added that the heretical name adheres, the Catholic dies away. S. Chrysostom draws a second distinction, `Are we divided from the Church? have we heresiarchs? are we called from man? is there any leader to us, as to one there is Marcion, to another Manich?us, to another Arius, to another some other author of heresy? for if we too have the name of any, still it is not those who began the heresy, but our superiors and governors of the Church. We have not "teachers upon earth,"' &c. in Act. Ap. Hom. 33 fin.

[1831] Vid. foregoing note. Also, `Let us become His disciples, and learn to live according to Christianity; for whoso is called by other name besides this, is not of God.' Ignat. ad Magn. 10. Hegesippus speaks of `Menandrians, and Marcionites, and Carpocratians, and Valentinians, and Basilidians, and Saturnilians,' who `each in his own way and that a different one brought in his own doctrine.' Euseb. Hist. iv. 22. `There are, and there have been, my friends, many who have taught atheistic and blasphemous words and deeds, coming in the name of Jesus; and they are called by us from the appellation of the men, whence each doctrine and opinion began....Some are called Marcians, others Valentinians, others Basilidians, others Saturnilians,' &c. Justin. Tryph. 35. Iren. H?r. i. 23. `When men are called Phrygians, or Novatians, or Valentinians, or Marcionites, or Anthropians, or by any other name, they cease to be Christians; for they have lost Christ's Name, and clothe themselves in human and foreign titles.' Lact. Inst. iv. 30. `A. How are you a Christian, to whom it is not even granted to bear the name of Christian? for you are not called Christian but Marcionite. M. And you are called of the Catholic Church; therefore ye are not Christians either. A. Did we profess man's name, you would have spoken to the point; but if we are called from being all over the world, what is there bad in this?' Adamant. Dial. ?1, p. 809. Epiph. H?r. 42. p. 366. ibid. 70. 15. vid. also H?r. 75. 6 fin. Cyril Cat. xviii. 26. `Christian is my name, Catholic my surname.' Pacian. Ep. 1. `If you ever hear those who are called Christians, named, not from the Lord Jesus Christ, but from some one else, say Marcionites, Valentinians, Mountaineers, Campestrians, know that it is not Christ's Church, but the synagogue of Antichrist.' Jerom. adv. Lucif. fin.

[1832] Vid. de Syn. 12. [Prolegg. ch. ii. ?2.]

[1833] de Syn. 13, note 4. Manes also was called mad; `Thou must hate all heretics, but especially him who even in name is a maniac.' Cyril. Catech. vi. 20, vid. also ibid. 24 fin.--a play upon the name, vid. de Syn. 26, `Scotinus.'

[1834] Vid. Ecclus. iv. 24.

[1835] It is very difficult to gain a clear idea of the character of Arius. [Prolegg. ch. ii. ?2.] Epiphanius's account of Arius is as follows:--`From elation of mind the old man swerved from the mark. He was in stature very tall, downcast in visage, with manners like wily serpent, captivating to every guileless heart by that same crafty bearing. For ever habited in cloke and vest, he was pleasant of address, ever persuading souls and flattering; wherefore what was his very first work but to withdraw from the Church in one body as many as seven hundred women who professed virginity.?' H?r. 69. 3, cf. ib. ?9 for a strange description of Arius attributed to Constantine, also printed in the collections of councils: Hard. i. 457.

[1836] John x. 30.

[1837] ?1, note 4.

[1838] And so godless or atheist Aetius, de Syn. 6, note 3, cf. note on de Decr. 1, for an explanation of the word. In like manner Athan. says, ad Serap. iii. 2, that if a man says `that the Son is a creature, who is word and Wisdom, and the Expression, and the Radiance, whom whoso seeth seeth the Father,' he falls under the text, `Whoso denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father.' `Such a one,' he continues, `will in no long time say, as the fool, There is no God.' In like manner he speaks of those who think the Son to be the Spirit as `without (exo) the Holy Trinity, and atheists' (Serap. iv. 6), because they really do not believe in the God that is, and there is none other but He. Cf. also Serap. i. 30. Eustathius speaks of the Arians as anthropous atheous, who were attempting kratesai tou theiou. ap. Theod. Hist. i. 7. p. 760. Naz. speaks of the heathen polutheos atheia. Orat. 25. 15. and he calls faith and regeneration `a denial of atheism, atheias, and a confession of godhead, theotetos,' Orat. 23. 12. He calls Lucius, the Alexandrian Anti-pope, on account of his cruelties, `this second Arius, the more copious river of the atheistic spring, tes atheou peges.' Orat. 25. 11. Palladius, the Imperial officer, is aner atheos. ibid. 12. Chapter II.--Extracts from the Thalia of Arius. Arius maintains that God became a Father, and the Son was not always; the Son out of nothing; once He was not; He was not before his generation; He was created; named Wisdom and Word after God's attributes; made that He might make us; one out of many powers of God; alterable; exalted on God's foreknowledge of what He was to be; not very God; but called so as others by participation; foreign in essence from the Father; does not know or see the Father; does not know Himself. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Footnotes

[1839] de Syn. ?15. [where the metre of the Thalia is discussed in a note.]

[1840] de Syn. ?18; Joel ii. 25.

[1841] Ps. xxiv. 10.

[1842] de Syn. 26, note 7, de Decr. 6, note 8.

[1843] Vid. de Syn. 15, note 6. katalepsis was originally a Stoic word, and even when considered perfect, was, properly speaking, attributable only to an imperfect being. For it is used in contrast to the Platonic doctrine of ideai, to express the hold of things obtained by the mind through the senses; it being a Stoical maxim, nihil esse in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu. In this sense it is also used by the Fathers, to mean real and certain knowledge after inquiry, though it is also ascribed to Almighty God. As to the position of Arius, since we are told in Scripture that none `knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him,' if katalepsis be an exact and complete knowledge of the object of contemplation, to deny that the Son comprehended the Father, was to deny that He was in the Father, i.e. the doctrine of the perichoresis, de Syn. 15, anepimiktoi, or to maintain that He was a distinct, and therefore a created, being. On the other hand Scripture asserts that, as the Holy Spirit which is in God, `searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God,' so the Son, as being `in the bosom of the Father,' alone `hath declared Him.' vid. Clement. Strom. v. 12. And thus Athan. speaking of Mark xiii. 32, 'If the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son, and the Father knows the day and the hour, it is plain that the Son too, being in the Father, and knowing the things in the Father, Himself also knows the day and the hour." Orat. iii. 44.

[1844] de Decr. 25, note 2.

[1845] de Syn. 15.

[1846] Ep. Encycl. 6; Epiph. H?r. 73. 1.

[1847] Jer. ii. 12.

[1848] Hos. vii. 13.

[1849] Ib. 15. lxx.

[1850] de Decr. 27, note 1.

[1851] Ib. 3, note 1, ?1, note 3.

[1852] And so Vigilius of the heresies about the Incarnation, Etiamsi in erroris eorum destructionem nulli conderentur libri, hoc ipsum solum, quod h?retici sunt pronunciati, orthodoxorum securitati sufficeret. contr. Eutych. i. p. 494. Chapter III.--The Importance of the Subject. The Arians affect Scripture language, but their doctrine new, as well as unscriptural. Statement of the Catholic doctrine, that the Son is proper to the Father's substance, and eternal. Restatement of Arianism in contrast, that He is a creature with a beginning: the controversy comes to this issue, whether one whom we are to believe in as God, can be so in name only, and is merely a creature. What pretence then for being indifferent in the controversy? The Arians rely on state patronage, and dare not avow their tenets. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Footnotes

[1853] de Syn. 33.

[1854] Faustus, in August. contr. Faust. ii. 1. admits the Gospels (vid. Beausobre Manich. t. i. p. 291, &c.), but denies that they were written by the reputed authors. ibid. xxxii. 2. but nescio quibus Semi-jud?is. ibid. xxxiii. 3. Accordingly they thought themselves at liberty to reject or correct parts of them. They rejected many of the facts, e.g. our Lord's nativity, circumcision, baptism, temptation, &c. ibid. xxxii. 6.

[1855] de Decr. 1, note 6.

[1856] [A note on the intimate mutual connexion of all heresies is omitted here.]

[1857] Joh. xix. 15.

[1858] de Decr. 7, note 2.

[1859] dorodokoi, and so kerdos tes philochrematias, infr. ?53. He mentions prostasias philon, ?10. And so S. Hilary speaks of the exemptions from taxes which Constantius granted the Clergy as a bribe to Arianize; contr. Const. 10. And again, of resisting Constantius as hostem blandientem, qui non dorsa c?dit, sed ventrem palpat, non proscribit ad vitam, sed ditat in mortem, non caput gladio desecat, sed animum auro occidit. ibid. 5. vid. Coustant. in loc. Liberius says the same, Theod H. E. ii. 13. And S. Gregory Naz. speaks of philochrusous mallon e philochristous. Orat. 21. 21. On the other hand, Ep. ?g. 22, Athan. contrasts the Arians with the Meletians, as not influenced by secular views. [Prolegg. ch. ii. ?3 (2) c. (2).]

[1860] de Syn. ?3 and 9.

[1861] Vid. de Decr. 1. note. This consideration, as might be expected, is insisted on by the Fathers. vid. Cyril. Dial. iv. p. 511, &c. v. p. 566. Greg. Naz. 40, 42; Hil. Trin. viii. 28; Ambros. de fid. i. n. 69 and 104.

[1862] Ib. 4, note 8.

[1863] 1 Tim. iv. 1, 2; Tit. i. 14.

[1864] This passage is commonly taken by the Fathers to refer to the Oriental sects of the early centuries, who fulfilled one or other of those conditions which it specifies. It is quoted against the Marcionists by Clement. Strom. iii. 6. Of the Carpocratians apparently, Iren. H?r. i. 25; Epiph. H?r. 27. 5. Of the Valentinians, Epiph. H?r. 31. 34. Of the Montanists and others, ibid. 48. 8. Of the Saturnilians (according to Huet.) Origen in Matt. xx. 16. Of apostolic heresies, Cyril. Cat. iv. 27. Of Marcionites, Valentinians, and Manichees, Chrysost. de Virg. 5. Of Gnostics and Manichees, Theod. H?r. ii. pr?f. Of Encratites, ibid. v. fin. Of Eutyches, Ep. Anon. 190 (apud Garner. Diss. v. Theod. p. 901. Pseudo-Justin seems to consider it fulfilled in the Catholics of the fifth century, as being Anti-Pelagians. Qu?st. 22. vid. Bened. note in loc. Besides Athanasius, no early author occurs to the writer of this, by whom it is referred to the Arians, cf. Depos. Ar. supr. p. 71, note 29.

[1865] [This is the only occurrence of the word homoousios in these three Discourses.]

[1866] Ps. lxxxii. 6.

[1867] de Decr. ?14 fin.; de Syn. ?51.

[1868] John xiv. 9.

[1869] de Decr. 15, note 6.

[1870] That is, `Let them tell us, is it right to predicate this or to predicate that of God (of one who is God), for such is the Word, viz. that He was from eternity or was created,' &c., &c.

[1871] kat' epinoian, vid. Orat. ii. ?38.

[1872] Rom. ix. 5.

[1873] Prov. ix. 18. LXX.

[1874] de Decr. 6. note 5; de Syn. 32.

[1875] de Decr. 26, note 6.

[1876] Job xviii. 5.

[1877] Ep. ?g. 18.

[1878] ?8, note 5.

[1879] Matt. iii. 17.

[1880] de Decr. 2, note 6. Chapter IV.--That the Son is Eternal and Increate. These attributes, being the points in dispute, are first proved by direct texts of Scripture. Concerning the `eternal power' of God in Rom. i. 20, which is shewn to mean the Son. Remarks on the Arian formula, `Once the Son was not,' its supporters not daring to speak of `a time when the Son was not.' -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Footnotes

[1881] Athan. observes that this formula of the Arians is a mere evasion to escape using the word `time.' vid. also Cyril. Thesaur. iv. pp. 19, 20. Else let them explain,--`There was,' what `when the Son was not?' or what was before the Son? since He Himself was before all times and ages, which He created, de Decr. 18, note 5. Thus, if `when' be a word of time, He it is who was `when' He was not, which is absurd. Did they mean, however, that it was the Father who `was' before the Son? This was true, if `before' was taken, not to imply time, but origination or beginning. And in this sense the first verse of S. John's Gospel may be interpreted `In the Beginning,' or Origin, i.e. in the Father `was the Word.' Thus Athan. himself understands that text, Orat. iv. ?1. vid. also Orat. iii. ?9; Nyssen. contr. Eunom. iii. p. 106; Cyril. Thesaur. 32. p. 312.

[1882] Ps. ii. 1.

[1883] John i. 1.

[1884] Rev. i. 4. tade legei. [On legei, &c., in citations, see Lightf. on Gal. iii. 16, Winer, Gram. ?58, 9 g, Grimm-Thayer, s.v. II. 1. e.]

[1885] Rom. ix. 5.

[1886] Ib. i. 20.

[1887] 1 Cor. i. 24. Athan. has so interpreted this text supr. de Decr. 15. It was either a received interpretation, or had been adduced at Nic?a, for Asterius had some years before these Discourses replied to it, vid. de Syn. 18, and Orat. ii. ?37.

[1888] 2 Cor. iii. 16, 17. S. Athanasius observes, Serap. i. 4-7, that the Holy Ghost is never in Scripture called simply `Spirit' without the addition `of God' or `of the Father' or `from Me' or of the article, or of `Holy,' or `Comforter,' or `of truth,' or unless He has been spoken of just before. Accordingly this text is understood of the third Person in the Holy Trinity by Origen, contr. Cels. vi. 70; Basil de Sp. S. n. 32; Pseudo-Athan. de comm. ess. 6. On the other hand, the word pneuma, `Spirit, is used more or less distinctly for our Lord's Divine Nature whether in itself or as incarnate, in Rom. i. 4, 1 Cor. xv. 45, 1 Tim. iii. 16, Hebr. ix. 14, 1 Pet. iii. 18, John vi. 63, &c. [But cf. also Milligan Resurr. 238 sq.] Indeed the early Fathers speak as if the `Holy Spirit,' which came down upon S. Mary might be considered the Word. E.g. Tertullian against the Valentinians, `If the Spirit of God did not descend into the womb "to partake in flesh from the womb," why did He descend at all?' de Carn. Chr. 19. vid. also ibid. 5 and 14. contr. Prax. 26, Just. Apol. i. 33. Iren. H?r. v. 1. Cypr. Idol Van. 6. Lactant. Instit. iv. 12. vid. also Hilar. Trin. ii. 27; Athan. logos en to pneumati eplatte to soma. Serap. i. 31 fin. en to logo en to pneuma ibid. iii. 6. And more distinctly even as late as S. Maximus, auton anti sporas sullabousa ton logon, kekueke, t. 2. p. 309. The earliest ecclesiastical authorities are S. Ignatius ad Smyrn. init. and S. Hermas (even though his date were a.d. 150), who also says plainly: Filius autem Spiritus Sanctus est. Sim. v. 5, 2, cf. ix. 1. The same use of `Spirit' for the Word or Godhead of the Word, is also found in Tatian. adv. Gr?c. 7. Athenag. Leg. 10. Theoph. ad Autol. ii. 10. Iren. H?r. iv. 36. Tertull. Apol. 23. Lact. Inst. iv. 6, 8. Hilar. Trin. ix. 3, and 14. Eustath. apud Theod. Eran. iii. p. 235. Athan. contr. Apoll. i. 8. Apollinar. ap. Theod. Eran. i. p. 71, and the Apollinarists passim. Greg. Naz. Ep. 101. ad Cledon. p. 85. Ambros. Incarn. 63. Severian. ap. Theod. Eran. ii. p. 167. Vid. Grot. ad Marc. ii. 8; Bull, Def. F. N. i. 2, ?5; Coustant. Pr?f. in Hilar. 57, &c. Montfaucon in Athan. Serap. iv. 19. [see also Tertullian, de Orat. init.]

[1889] Col. i. 17.

[1890] Vid. contr. Gent. 45-47.

[1891] Matt. xi. 27.

[1892] John xiv. 8, 9.

[1893] Rom. i. 20.

[1894] Heb. i. 2.

[1895] Is. xl. 28.

[1896] Hist. Sus. 42.

[1897] Bar. iv. 20, 22.

[1898] Heb. i. 3.

[1899] Ps. xc. 17; xxxvi. 9.

[1900] de Decr. 12, 27.

[1901] Ps. cxlv. 13.

[1902] Vid. de Decr. 18, note 5. The subject is treated at length in Greg. Nyss. contr. Eunom. i. t. 2. Append. p. 93-101. vid. also Ambros. de Fid. i. 8-11. As time measures the material creation, `ages' were considered to measure the immaterial, as the duration of Angels. This had been a philosophical distinction, Tim?us says eikon esti chronos to agennato chrono, hon aiona potagoreuomes. vid. also Philon. Quod Deus Immut. 6. Euseb. Laud. C. 1 prope fin., p. 501. Naz. Or. 38. 8.

[1903] John xiv. 6; x. 14; viii. 12; xiii. 13

[1904] Gen. ii. 5.

[1905] Deut. xxxii. 8.

[1906] John xiv. 28, 29.

[1907] Prov. viii. 23.

[1908] John viii. 58.

[1909] Jer. i. 5.

[1910] Ps. xc. 2.

[1911] Hist. Sus. 42.

[1912] de Decr. 23, note 4.

[1913] John i. 3. Chapter V.--Subject Continued. Objection, that the Son's eternity makes Him coordinate with the Father, introduces the subject of His Divine Sonship, as a second proof of His eternity. The word Son is introduced in a secondary, but is to be understood in real sense. Since all things partake of the Father in partaking of the Son, He is the whole participation of the Father, that is, He is the Son by nature; for to be wholly participated is to beget. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Footnotes

[1914] This was an objection urged by Eunomius, cf. de Syn. 51, note 8. It is implied also in the Apology of the former, ?24, and in Basil. contr. Eunom. ii. 28. Aetius was in Alexandria with George of Cappadocia, a.d. 356-8, and Athan. wrote these Discourses in the latter year, as the de Syn. at the end of the next. It is probable then that he is alluding to the Anomoean arguments as he heard them reported, vid. de Syn. l.c. where he says, `they say, "as you have written,"' ?51. 'Anomoios kat' ousian is mentioned infr. ?17. As the Arians here object that the First and Second Persons of the Holy Trinity are adelphoi, so did they say the same in the course of the controversy of the Second and Third. vid. Serap. i. 15. iv. 2.

[1915] Prov. xviii. 1.

[1916] Vid. de Syn. ?51.

[1917] In other words, by the Divine gennesis is not meant an act but an eternal and unchangeable fact, in the Divine Essence. Arius. not admitting this, objected at the outset of the controversy to the phrase `always Father, always Son,' Theod. H. E. i. 4. p. 749, and Eunomius argues that, `if the Son is co-eternal with the Father, the Father was never such in act, energos, but was argos.' Cyril. Thesaur. v. p. 41. S. Cyril answers that `works,' erga, are made exothen, `from without;' but that our Lord, as S. Athanasius here says, is neither a `work' nor `from without.' And hence he says elsewhere that, while men are fathers first in posse then in act, God is dunamei te kai energei& 139; pater. Dial. 2. p. 458. (vid. supr. p. 65. note m). Victorinus in like manner, says, that God is potentia et actione Deus sed in ?terna, Adv. Ar. i. p. 202; and he quotes S. Alexander, speaking apparently in answer to Arius, of a semper generans generatio. And Arius scoffs at aeigennes and agennetogenes. Theod. Hist. i. 4. p. 749. And Origen had said, ho soter aei gennatai. ap. Routh. Reliq. t. 4. p. 304 and S. Dionysius calls Him the Radiance, anarchon kai aeigenes. Sent. Dion 15. S. Augustine too says, Semper gignit Pater, et semper nascitur Filius. Ep. 238. n. 4. Petav. de Trin. ii. 5. n. 7, quotes the following passage from Theodorus Abucara, `Since the Son's generation does but signify His having His existence from the Father, which He has ever, therefore He is ever begotten. For it became Him, who is properly (kurios) the Son, ever to be deriving His existence from the Father, and not as we who derive its commencement only. In us generation is a way to existence; in the Son of God it denotes the existence itself; in Him it has not existence for its end, but it is itself an end, telos, and is perfect, teleion.' Opusc 26.

[1918] de Decr. 22, note 9.

[1919] Infr. ?26 fin., and de Decr. 12, note 2.

[1920] Vid. supr. note 4. A similar passage is found in Cyril. Thesaur. v. p. 42, Dial. ii. fin. This was retorting the objection; the Arians said, `How can God be ever perfect, who added to Himself a Son?' Athan. answers, `How can the Son not be eternal, since God is ever perfect?' vid. Greg. Nyssen, contr. Eunom. Append. p. 142. Cyril. Thesaur. x. p. 78. As to the Son's perfection, Aetius objects ap. Epiph. H?r. 76. pp. 925, 6, that growth and consequent accession from without were essentially involved in the idea of Sonship; whereas S. Greg. Naz. speaks of the Son as not atele proteron, eita teleion, hosper nomos tes hemeteras geneseos, Orat. 20. 9 fin. In like manner, S. Basil argues against Eunomius, that the Son is teleios, because He is the Image, not as if copied, which is a gradual work, but as a charakter, or impression of a seal, or as the knowledge communicated from master to scholar, which comes to the latter and exists in him perfect, without being lost to the former. contr. Eunom. ii. 16 fin.

[1921] de Decr. 12, 15.

[1922] Ib. 22, note 1, infr. ?19.

[1923] De Decr. ??10, 11.

[1924] Infr. ?23.

[1925] De Syn. ?45, 51.

[1926] Nic. Def. 9, note 4.

[1927] Matt. iii. 17.

[1928] Here is taught us the strict unity of the Divine Essence. When it is said that the First Person of the Holy Trinity communicates divinity to the Second, it is meant that that one Essence which is the Father, also is the Son. Hence the force of the word homoousion, which was in consequence accused of Sabellianism, but was distinguished from it by the particle homou, `together,' which implied a difference as well as unity; whereas tautoousion or sunousion implied, with the Sabellians, an identity or a confusion. The Arians, on the other hand, as in the instance of Eusebius, &c., supr. p. 75, note 7; de Syn. 26, note 3; considered the Father and the Son two ousiai. The Catholic doctrine is that, though the Divine Essence is both the Father Ingenerate and also the Only-begotten Son, it is not itself agennetos or gennete; which was the objection urged against the Catholics by Aetius, Epiph. H?r. 76. 10. Cf. de Decr. ?30, Orat. iii. ?36 fin., Expos. Fid. 2. vid. de Syn. 45, note 1. `Vera et ?terna substantia in se tota permanens, totam se co?tern? veritati nativitatis indulsit.' Fulgent. Resp. 7. And S. Hilary, `Filius in Patre est et in Filio Pater, non per transfusionem, refusionemque mutuam, sed per viventis natur? perfectam nativitatem.' Trin. vii. 31.

[1929] De Decr. ?31.

[1930] 2 Pet. i. 4.

[1931] 1 Cor. iii. 16; 2 Cor. vi. 16.

[1932] ennoia, vid. de Syn. ?48 fin.

[1933] de Decr. 17, 24.

[1934] John x. 30.

[1935] de Decr. 1, note. Chapter VI.--Subject Continued. Third proof of the Son's eternity, viz. from other titles indicative of His coessentiality; as the Creator; One of the Blessed Trinity; as Wisdom; as Word; as Image. If the Son is a perfect Image of the Father, why is He not a Father also? because God, being perfect, is not the origin of a race. Only the Father a Father because the Only Father, only the Son a Son because the Only Son. Men are not really fathers and really sons, but shadows of the True. The Son does not become a Father, because He has received from the Father to be immutable and ever the same. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Footnotes

[1936] de Decr. 25, note 2.

[1937] Vid. Orat. iv. ?13.

[1938] ?8, note 8.

[1939] De Decr. ?31.

[1940] Jer. ii. 13.

[1941] Ib. xvii. 12, 13.

[1942] Bar. iii. 12.

[1943] John xiv. 6.

[1944] Prov. viii. 12.

[1945] Supr. ?15.

[1946] Isa. lviii. 11.

[1947] Ps. civ. 24.

[1948] Prov. iii. 19.

[1949] John i. 3. See Westcott's additional note on the passage.]

[1950] 1 Cor. viii. 6.

[1951] Vid. Petav. de Trin. ii. 12, ?4.

[1952] De Decr. ?30.

[1953] De Decr. ?17.

[1954] alogon. Vid. note on de Decr. ??1, 15, where other instances are given from Athan. and Dionysius of Rome; vid. also Orat. iv. 2, 4. Sent. D. 23. Origen, supr. p. 48. Athenag. Leg. 10. Tat. contr. Gr?c. 5. Theoph. ad. Autol. ii. 10. Hipp. contr. Noet. 10. Nyssen. contr. Eunom. vii. p. 215. viii. pp. 230, 240. Orat, Catech. 1. Naz. Orat. 29. 17 fin. Cyril. Thesaur. xiv. p. 145 (vid. Petav. de Trin. vi. 9). It must not be supposed from these instances that the Fathers meant that our Lord was literally what is called the attribute of reason or wisdom in the Divine Essence, or in other words, that He was God merely viewed as He is wise; which would be a kind of Sabellianism. But, whereas their opponents said that He was but called Word and Wisdom after the attribute (vid. de Syn. 15, note), they said that such titles marked, not only a typical resemblance to the attribute, but so full a correspondence and (as it were) coincidence in nature with it, that whatever relation that attribute had to God, such in kind had the Son;--that the attribute was His symbol, and not His mere archetype; that our Lord was eternal and proper to God, because that attribute was, which was His title, vid. Ep. ?g. 14, that our Lord was that Essential Reason and Wisdom,--not by which the Father is wise, but without which the Father was not wise;--not, that is, in the way of a formal cause, but in fact. Or, whereas the Father Himself is Reason and Wisdom, the Son is the necessary result of that Reason and Wisdom, so that, to say that there was no Word, would imply there was no Divine Reason; just as a radiance implies a light; or, as Petavius remarks, l.c. quoting the words which follow shortly after in the text, the eternity of the Original implies the eternity of the Image; tes hupostaseos huparchouses, pantos euthus einai dei ton charaktera kai ten eikona tautes, ?20. vid. also infr. ?31, de Decr. ?13, p. 21, ??20, 23, pp. 35, 40. Theod. H. E. i. 3. p. 737.

[1955] This was but the opposite aspect of the tenet of our Lord's consubstantiality or eternal generation. For if He came into being at the will of God, by the same will He might cease to be; but if His existence is unconditional and necessary, as God's attributes might be, then as He had no beginning, so can He have no end; for He is in, and one with, the Father, who has neither beginning nor end. On the question of the `will of God' as it affects the doctrine, vid. Orat. iii. ?59, &c.

[1956] ?29, note.

[1957] De Decr. 22, note 9.

[1958] John xiv. 6.

[1959] Athan. argues from the very name Image for our Lord's eternity. An Image, to be really such, must be an expression from the Original, not an external and detached imitation. vid. supr. note 10, infr. ?26. Hence S. Basil, `He is an Image not made with the hand, or a work of art, but a living Image,' &c. vid. also contr. Eunom. ii. 16, 17. Epiph. H?r. 76. 3. Hilar. Trin. vii. 41 fin. Origen observes that man, on the contrary, is an example of an external or improper image of God. Periarch. i. 2. ?6. It might have been more direct to have argued from the name of Image to our Lord's consubstantiality rather than eternity, as, e.g. S. Gregory Naz. `He is Image as one in essence, homoousion,...for this is the nature of an image, to be a copy of the archetype.' Orat. 30. 20. vid. also de Decr. ??20, 23, but for whatever reason Athan. avoids the word homoousion in these Discourses. S. Chrys. on Col. i. 15. [1960] Prov. viii. 30.

[1961] John xiv. 9.

[1962] homoias ousias. And so ?20 init. homoion kat' ousian, and homoios tes ousias, ?26. homoios kat' ousian, iii. 26. and homoios kata ten ousian tou patros. Ep. ?g. 17. Also Alex. Ep. Encycl. 2. Considering what he says in the de Syn. ?38, &c., in controversy with the semi-Arians a year or two later, this use of their formula, in preference to the homoousion (vid. foregoing note), deserves our attention.

[1963] De Decr. ?16.

[1964] De Syn. 27 (5) note 1, and infr. ?40.

[1965] The objection is this, that, if our Lord be the Father's Image, He ought to resemble Him in being a Father. S. Athanasius answers that God is not as man; with us a son becomes a father because our nature is rheuste, transitive and without stay, ever shifting and passing on into new forms and relations; but that God is perfect and ever the same, what He is once that He continues to be; God the Father remains Father, and God the Son remains Son. Moreover men become fathers by detachment and transmission, and what is received is handed on in a succession; whereas the Father, by imparting Himself wholly, begets the Son: and a perfect nativity finds its termination in itself. The Son has not a Son, because the Father has not a Father. Thus the Father is the only true Father, and the Son alone true Son; the Father only a Father, the Son only a Son; being really in their Persons what human fathers are but by office, character, accident, and name; vid. De Decr. 11, note 6. And since the Father is unchangeable as Father, in nothing does the Son more fulfil the idea of a perfect Image than in being unchangeable too. Thus S. Cyril also, Thesaur. 10. p. 124. And this perhaps may illustrate a strong and almost startling implication of some of the Greek Fathers, that the First Person in the Holy Trinity, is not God [in virtue of His Fatherhood]. E.g. ei de theos ho hui& 232;s, ouk epei hui& 231;s; homoios kai ho pater, ouk epei pater, theos; all' epei ousia toiade, heis esti pater kai ho hui& 232;s theos. Nyssen. t. i. p. 915. vid. Petav. de Deo i. 9. ?13. Should it be asked, `What is the Father if not God?' it is enough to answer, `the Father.' Men differ from each other as being individuals, but the characteristic difference between Father and Son is, not that they are individuals, but that they are Father and Son. In these extreme statements it must be ever borne in mind that we are contemplating divine things according to our notions. not in fact: i.e. speaking of the Almighty Father, as such; there being no real separation between His Person and His Substance. It may be added, that, though theologians differ in their decisions, it would appear that our Lord is not the Image of the Father's person, but of the Father's substance; in other words, not of the Father considered as Father, but considered as God. That is, God the Son is like and equal to God the Father, because they are both the same God. De Syn. 49. note 4, also next note.

[1966] Ep. Eus. 7, de Decr. 11, note 8.

[1967] kurios, de Decr. 11, note 6. Elsewhere Athan. says, `The Father being one and only is Father of a Son one and only; and in the instance of Godhead only have the names Father and Son stay, and are ever; for of men if any one be called father, yet he has been son of another; and if he be called son, yet is he called father of another; so that in the case of men the names father and son do not properly, kurios, hold.' ad Serap. i. 16. also ibid. iv. 4 fin. and 6. vid. also kurios, Greg. Naz. Orat. 29. 5. alethos, Orat. 25, 16. ontos, Basil. contr. Eunom. i. 5. p. 215.

Writings of Athanasius. Introduction to Four Discourses Against the Arians

Under the editorial supervision of Philip Schaff, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Church History in the Union Theological Semimary, New York, and Henry Wace, D.D., Principal of King's College, London

Published in 1892 by Philip Schaff, New York: Christian Literature Publishing Co.

Introduction to Four Discourses Against the Arians.

Written Between 356 And 360.

There is no absolutely conclusive evidence as to the date of these Discourses, in fact they would appear from the language of ii. 1 to have been issued at intervals. The best judges, however, are agreed in assigning them to the fruitful period of the `third exile. ' The Discourses cannot indeed be identified with the lost account of the Arian heresy addressed to certain Egyptian monks (see Introd. to Arian Hist. supra); but the demand for such a treatise may have set Athanasius upon the composition of a more comprehensive refutation of the heresy.

It was only at this period (`Blasphemy' of Sirmium, 357) that the doctrinal controversy began to emerge from the mass of personalities and intrigues which had encumbered it for the first generation after the great Council; only now that the various parties were beginning to formulate their position; only now that the great mass of Eastern `Conservatism' was beginning to see the nature of the issue as between the Nicene doctrine and the essential Arianism of its more resolute opponents.

The situation seemed to clear, the time had come for gathering up the issues of the combat and striking a decisive blow. To this situation of affairs the treatise before us exactly corresponds. Characteristic of this period is the anxiety to conciliate and win over the so-called semi-Arians (of the type of Basil of Ancyra) who stumbled at the homoousion, but whose fundamental agreement with Athanasius was daily becoming more clear. Accordingly we find that Athanasius pointedly avoids the famous test word in these Discourses [1820] (with the exception of the fourth: see Orat. i. 20, note 5, 58, note 10: it only occurs i. 9, note 12, but see Orat. iv. 9, 12), and even adopts (not as fully adequate de Syn. 53, but as true so far as it goes), the `semi-Arian' formula `like in essence' (Or. i. 21, note 8, 20, 26, iii. 26, he does not use the single compound word homoiousios: see further, Introd. to de Synodis). Although, therefore, demonstrative proof is lacking, there is tolerable certainty as to the date of our Discourses. And their purpose is no less manifest: they are a decisive blow of the kind described above, aimed at the very centre of the question, and calculated to sever the abnormal alliance between conservatives who really thought with Athanasius and men like Valens or Eudoxius, whose real convictions, so far as they had any, were Arian. Moreover they gather up all the threads of controversy against Arianism proper, refute its appeal to Scripture, and leave on record for all time the issues of the great doctrinal contest of the fourth century. They have naturally become, as Montfaucon observes, the mine whence subsequent defenders of the Divinity of our Redeemer have drawn their material. There are doubtless arguments which a modern writer would scarcely adopt (e.g. ii. 63, iii. 65 init., &c.), and the repeated labelling of the Arians as madmen (`fanatics' in this translation), enemies of Christ, disciples of Satan, &c., &c., is at once tedious and by its very frequency unimpressive (see ii. 43 note 8 for Newman's famous list of animal nicknames). But the serious reader will pass sicco pede over such features, and will appreciate `the richness, fulness, and versatility' of the use of Scripture, `the steady grasp of certain primary truths, especially of the Divine Unity and of Christ's real or genuine natural and Divine Sonship (i. 15, ii. 2-5, 22, 23, 73, iii. 62), the keen penetration with which Arian objections are analysed (i. 14, 27, 29, ii. 26, iii. 59), Arian imputations disclaimed, Arian statements old and new, the bolder and th

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Athanasius - Four Discourses against the Arians

Four Discourses Against the Arians.

Discourse I.

Writings of Athanasius. Introduction to Four Discourses Against the Arians

Introduction to Four Discourses Against the Arians.

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