History of Arian Opinions.
CCEL ThML source edition
Philip Schaff
We believe3544 in One God, the Father Almighty, Creator and Maker of all things; from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named. (Eph. iii. 15.)
And in His Only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who before all ages was begotten from the Father, God from God, Light from Light, by whom all things were made in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible, being Word, and Wisdom, and Power, and Life, and True Light; who in the last days was made man for us, and was born of the Holy Virgin; who was crucified, and dead, and buried, and rose again from the dead the third day, and was taken up into heaven, and sat down on the right hand of the Father; and is coming at the consummation of the age, to judge quick and dead, and to render to every one according to his works; whose Kingdom endures indissolubly into the infinite ages3545; for He shall be seated on the right hand of the Father, not only in this age but in that which is to come.
And in the Holy Ghost, that is, the Paraclete; which, having promised to the Apostles, He sent forth after His ascension into heaven, to teach them and to remind of all things; through whom also shall be sanctified the souls of those who sincerely believe in Him.
But those who say, that the Son was from nothing, or from other subsistence and not from God, and, there was time when He was not, the Catholic Church regards as aliens3546.
26. As if dissatisfied with this, they hold their meeting again after three years, and dispatch Eudoxius, Martyrius, and Macedonius of Cilicia3547, and some others with them, to the parts of Italy, to carry with them a faith written at great length, with numerous additions over and above those which have gone before. They went abroad with these, as if they had devised something new.
We believe3548 in one God the Father Almighty, the Creator and Maker of all things, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named.
And in His Only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ, who before all ages was begotten from the Father, God from God, Light from Light, by whom all things were made, in heaven and on the earth, visible and invisible, being Word and Wisdom and Power and Life and True Light, who in the last days was made man for us, and was born of the Holy Virgin, crucified and dead and buried, and rose again from the dead the third day, and was taken up into heaven, and sat down on the right hand of the Father, and is coming at the consummation of the age to judge quick and dead, and to render to every one according to his works, whose Kingdom endures unceasingly unto the infinite ages; for He sitteth on the right hand of the Father not only in this age, but also in that which is to come.
And we believe in the Holy Ghost, that is, the Paraclete, which, having promised to the Apostles, He sent forth after the ascension into heaven, to teach them and to remind of all things: through whom also shall be sanctified the souls of those who sincerely believe in Him.
But those who say, (1) that the Son was from nothing, or from other subsistence and not from God; (2) and that there was a time or age when He was not, the Catholic and Holy Church regards as aliens. Likewise those who say, (3) that there are three Gods: (4) or that Christ is not God; (5) or that before the ages He was neither Christ nor Son of God; (6) or that Father and Son, or Holy Ghost, are the same; (7) or that the Son is Ingenerate; or that the Father begat the Son, not by choice or will; the Holy and Catholic Church anathematizes.
(1.) For neither is safe to say that the Son is from nothing, (since this is no where spoken of Him in divinely inspired Scripture,) nor again of any other subsistence before existing beside the Father, but from God alone do we define Him genuinely to be generated. For the divine Word teaches that the Ingenerate and Unbegun, the Father of Christ, is One3549.
(2.) Nor may we, adopting the hazardous position, ‘There was once when He was not,’ from unscriptural sources, imagine any interval of time before Him, but only the God who has generated Him apart from time; for through Him both times and ages came to be. Yet we must not consider the Son to be co-unbegun and co-ingenerate with the Father; for no one can be properly called Father or Son of one who is co-unbegun and co-ingenerate with Him3550. But we acknowledge3551 that the Father who alone is Unbegun and Ingenerate, hath generated inconceivably and incomprehensibly to all: and that the Son hath been generated before ages, and in no wise to be ingenerate Himself like the Father, but to have the Father who generated Him as His beginning; for ‘the Head of Christ is God.’ (1 Cor. xi. 3.)
(3.) Nor again, in confessing three realities and three Persons, of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost according to the Scriptures, do we therefore make Gods three; since we acknowledge the Self-complete and Ingenerate and Unbegun and Invisible God to be one only3552, the God and Father (Joh. xx. 17) of the Only-begotten, who alone hath being from Himself, and alone vouchsafes this to all others bountifully.
(4.) Nor again, in saying that the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is one only God, the only Ingenerate, do we therefore deny that Christ also is God before ages: as the disciples of Paul of Samosata, who say that after the incarnation He was by advance3553 made God, from being made by nature a mere man. For we acknowledge, that though He be subordinate to His Father and God, yet, being before ages begotten of God, He is God perfect according to nature and true3554, and not first man and then God, but first God and then becoming man for us, and never having been deprived of being.
(5.) We abhor besides, and anathematize those who make a pretence of saying that He is but the mere word of God and unexisting, having His being in another,—now as if pronounced, as some speak, now as mental3555,—holding that He was not Christ or Son of God or mediator or image of God before ages; but that He first became Christ and Son of God, when He took our flesh from the Virgin, not quite four hundred years since. For they will have it that then Christ began His Kingdom, and that it will have an end after the consummation of all and the judgment3556. Such are the disciples of Marcellus and Scotinus3557 of Galatian Ancyra, who, equally with Jews, negative Christ’s existence before ages, and His Godhead, and unending Kingdom, upon pretence of supporting the divine Monarchy. We, on the contrary, regard Him not as simply God’s pronounced word or mental, but as Living God and Word, existing in Himself, and Son of God and Christ; being and abiding with His Father before ages, and that not in foreknowledge only3558, and ministering to Him for the whole framing whether of things visible or invisible. For He it is, to whom the Father said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness3559’ (Gen. i. 26), who also was seen in His own Person3560 by the patriarchs, gave the law, spoke by the prophets, and at last, became man, and manifested His own Father to all men, and reigns to never-ending ages. For Christ has taken no recent dignity, but we have believed Him to be perfect from the first, and like in all things to the Father3561.
(6.) And those who say that the Father and Son and Holy Ghost are the same, and irreligiously take the Three Names of one and the same Reality and Person, we justly proscribe from the Church, because they suppose the illimitable and impassible Father to be limitable withal and passible through His becoming man: for such are they whom Romans call Patripassians, and we Sabellians3562. For we acknowledge that the Father who sent, remained in the peculiar state of His unchangeable Godhead, and that Christ who was sent fulfilled the economy of the Incarnation.
(7.) And at the same time those who irreverently say that the Son has been generated not by choice or will, thus encompassing God with a necessity which excludes choice and purpose, so that He begat the Son unwillingly, we account as most irreligious and alien to the Church; in that they have dared to define such things concerning God, beside the common notions concerning Him, nay, beside the purport of divinely inspired Scripture. For we, knowing that God is absolute and sovereign over Himself, have a religious judgment that He generated the Son voluntarily and freely; yet, as we have a reverent belief in the Son’s words concerning Himself (Prov. viii. 22), ‘The Lord created me a beginning of His ways for His works,’ we do not understand Him to have been originated like the creatures or works which through Him came to be. For it is irreligious and alien to the ecclesiastical faith, to compare the Creator with handiworks created by Him, and to think that He has the same manner of origination with the rest. For divine Scripture teaches us really and truly that the Only-begotten Son was generated sole and solely3563. Yet3564, in saying that the Son is in Himself, and both lives and exists like the Father, we do not on that account separate Him from the Father, imagining place and interval between their union in the way of bodies.
For we believe that they are united with each other without mediation or distance3565, and that they exist inseparable; all the Father embosoming the Son, and all the Son hanging and adhering to the Father, and alone resting on the Father’s breast continually3566. Believing then in the All-perfect Triad, the most Holy, that is, in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and calling the Father God, and the Son God, yet we confess in them, not two Gods, but one dignity of Godhead, and one exact harmony of dominion, the Father alone being Head over the whole universe wholly, and over the Son Himself, and the Son subordinated to the Father; but, excepting Him, ruling over all things after Him which through Himself have come to be, and granting the grace of the Holy Ghost unsparingly to the saints at the Father’s will. For that such is the account of the Divine Monarchy towards Christ, the sacred oracles have delivered to us.
Source notes
a.d. 341.
[Cf. Prolegg. ii. §6 (3) init.]
4th Confession, or 4th of Antioch, a.d. 342. The fourth, fifth, and sixth Confessions are the same, and with them agree the Creed of Philippopolis [a.d. 343, see Gwatkin, Stud. p. 119, espec. note 2].
These words, which answer to those [of our present ‘Nicene’ Creed], are directed against the doctrine of Marcellus [on which see Prolegg. ii. §3 (2) c, 3]. Cf. Eusebius, de Eccl. Theol. iii. 8. 17. cont. Marc. ii. 4.
S. Hilary, as we have seen above, p. 78, by implication calls this the Nicene Anathema; but it omits many of the Nicene clauses, and evades our Lord’s eternal existence, substituting for ‘once He was not,’ ‘there was time when He was not.’ It seems to have been considered sufficient for Gaul, as used now, for Italy as in the 5th Confession or Macrostich, and for Africa as in the creed of Philippopolis.
Little is known of Macedonius who was Bishop of Mopsuestia, or of Martyrius; and too much of Eudoxius. This Long Confession, or Macrostich, which follows, is remarkable; [see Prolegg, ch. ii. §6 (3), Gwatkin, p. 125 sq.]
5th Confession or Macrostich, a.d. 344. [Published by the Council which deposed Stephen and elected Leontius bishop of Antioch.]
It is observable that here and in the next paragraph the only reasons they give against using the only two Arian formulas which they condemn is that they are not found in Scripture. Here, in their explanation of the ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων, or from nothing, they do but deny it with Eusebius’s evasion, supr. p. 75, note 5.
They argue after the usual Arian manner, that the term ‘Son’ essentially implies beginning, and excludes the title ‘co-unoriginate;’ but see supr. §16, note 1, and p. 154, note 5.
[The four lines which follow are cited by Lightfoot, Ign. p. 91. ed. 2, as from de Syn. §3.]
Cf. §28, end.
ἐκ προκοπῆς, de Decr. §10, note 10.
These strong words, θεὸν κατὰ φύσιν τέλειον καὶ ἀληθῆ are of a different character from any which have occurred in the Arian Confessions. They can only be explained away by considering them used in contrast to the Samosatene doctrine; so that ‘perfect according to nature’ and ‘true,’ will not be directly connected with ‘God’ so much as opposed to, ‘by advance,’ ‘by adoption,’ &c.
The use of the words ἐνδιάθετος and προφορικός, mental and pronounced, to distinguish the two senses of λόγος, reason and word, came from the school of the Stoics, and is found in Philo, and was under certain limitations allowed in Catholic theology, Damasc. F. O. ii. 21. To use either absolutely and to the exclusion of the other would have involved some form of Sabellianism, or Arianism as the case might be; but each might correct the defective sense of either. S. Theophilus speaks of our Lord as at once ἐνδιάθετος and προφορικός. ad Autol. ii. 10 and 22, S. Cyril as ἐνδιάθετος, in Joann. p. 39. but see also Thesaur. p. 47. When the Fathers deny that our Lord is the προφορικὸς λόγος, they only mean that that title is not, even as far as its philosophical idea went, an adequate representative of Him, a word spoken being insubstantive, vid. Orat. ii. 35; Hil. de Syn. 46; Cyr. Catech. xi. 10; Damas. Ep. ii. p. 203; Cyril in Joann. p. 31; Iren. Hær. ii. 12. n. 5. Marcellus is said by Eusebius to have considered our Lord as first the one and then the other. Eccl. Theol. ii. 15.
This passage seems taken from Eusebius, and partly from Marcellus’s own words. S. Cyril speaks of his doctrine in like terms. Catech. xv. 27.
i.e. Photinus. [A note illustrating the frequency of similar nicknames is omitted. On Photinus, see Prolegg. ch. ii. §3. ad fin.]
Cf. Euseb. contr. Marc. i. 2.
Cf. §27, notes.
αὐτοπροσωπῶς and so Cyril Hier. Catech. xv. 14 and 17 (It means, ‘not in personation’), and Philo contrasting divine appearances with those of Angels. Leg. Alleg. iii. 62. On the other hand, Theophilus on the text, ‘The voice of the Lord God walking in the garden,’ speaks of the Word, ‘assuming the person, πρόσωπον, of the Father,’ and ‘in the person of God,’ ad Autol. ii. 22. the word not then having its theological sense.
ὅμοιον κατὰ πάντα. Here again we have a strong Semi-Arian or almost Catholic formula introduced by the bye. Of course it admitted of evasion, but in its fulness it included ‘essence.’ [See above §8, note 1, and Introd.]
See vol. i. of this series, p. 295, note 1. In the reason which the Confession alleges against that heretical doctrine it is almost implied that the divine nature of the Son suffered on the Cross. They would naturally fall into this notion directly they gave up our Lord’s absolute divinity. It would naturally follow that our Lord had no human soul, but that His pre-existent nature stood in the place of it:—also that His Mediatorship was no peculiarity of His Incarnation. vid. §23, note 2. §27, Anath. 12, note.
The Confession still insists upon the unscripturalness of the Catholic positions. On the main subject of this paragraph the θελήσει γεννηθὲν, cf. Orat. iii. 59, &c. The doctrine of the μονογενὲς has already partially come before us in de Decr. §§7–9. pp. 154 sq. Μόνως, not as the creatures. vid. p. 75, note 6.
The following passage is in its very form an interpolation or appendix, while its doctrine bears distinctive characters of something higher than the old absolute separation between the Father and the Son. [Eusebius of Cæs. had] considered Them as two οὐσίαι, ὅμοιαι like, but not as ὁμοούσιοι; his very explanation of the word τέλειος was ‘independent’ and ‘distinct.’ Language then, such as that in the text, was the nearest assignable approach to the reception of the ὁμοούσιον; [and in fact, to] the doctrine of the περιχώρησις, of which supr. Orat. iii.