Defence of the Nicene Definition 1–10

You have done well in informing me of the inquiry you held with those who champion the views of Arius, among whom were some of the associates of Eusebius, as well as very many of the brothers who hold the church’s doctrine. I welcomed your Christ-loving watchfulness, which refuted the impiety of the heresy so well; but I was amazed at their shamelessness, that although the Arian reasonings had been shown to be rotten and vain, and they themselves had been condemned by all for their utter perversity, they nevertheless afterwards murmured, like the Jews, saying: “Why did those who met at Nicaea write unscriptural terms, ‘from the essence’ and ‘of the same essence’?” You, then, as a learned man, showed them to be talking idly no less, even when they put on such airs. They, for their part, are doing nothing foreign to their own malice in fabricating pretexts. For they are variable and changeable in their opinions, like chameleons in their colors: when refuted they blush, when questioned they are at a loss, and then, growing shameless, they make excuses. And if anyone refutes them in these too, they labor until they invent things that do not exist and, as it is written, “devise vain things,” only so that they may continue in their impiety. Such an attempt is nothing other than a plain token of their irrationality and, as I said, an imitation of Jewish malice. For they too, when refuted by the truth and unable to contradict it, made excuses, saying: “What sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform?” And yet so many signs had been done that even they said, “What are we doing? For this man does many signs.” For the dead were raised, the lame walked, the blind recovered their sight, lepers were cleansed, the water became wine, and five thousand were filled from five loaves. And all marveled and worshiped the Lord, confessing that the prophecies were fulfilled in him and that he was the Son of God; only the Pharisees, though the signs shone brighter than the sun, murmured again like ignorant men and said, “Why do you, being a man, make yourself God?” Senseless, and blind in mind! They ought rather to have said the reverse: “Why have you, being God, become man?” For his works showed him to be God, so that they might worship the goodness of the Father and marvel at his dispensation for our sake. But this they did not say, nor did they even wish to see what was happening; they saw it indeed (for they could not help seeing what was so bright), yet they turned about and murmured again: “Why do you heal the paralytic on the Sabbath, and make the man born blind see?” This too was a pretext and mere murmuring. For when the Lord healed every disease and every infirmity on the other days as well, they found fault as usual, and chose rather to incur the suspicion of godlessness by calling him Beelzebul than to renounce their own wickedness. Yet even so, while the Savior showed his divinity in many parts and in many ways and proclaimed the Father to all, they nonetheless, as though kicking against the goads, contradicted him with foolish talk, only that, according to the divine proverb, by finding pretexts they might separate themselves from the truth.

The Jews of that time, then, who acted so wickedly and denied the Lord, rightly fell away from both the laws and the promise made to the fathers; and the Arians, Judaizing now, seem to me to be in the same case as Caiaphas and the Pharisees of that time. For since they see that their heresy has nothing reasonable in it, they invent pretexts: “Why was this written, and why not that?” And do not wonder if they now contrive such things; in a little while they will turn to insults as well, and after that they will threaten us with “the band and the tribune.” For in these lies what seems to be the strength of their false doctrine. Denying the Word of God, they are rightly destitute of all reason. Knowing this, I would not have answered their questions; but since your affection asked to learn what was done at the council, I did not put it off, but have at once made known how it happened, showing in a few words how destitute of godly understanding the Arian heresy is, and that they merely fabricate pretexts. Consider for yourself too, beloved, whether it is not so. If they are confident in the evils they themselves invented, the devil having sown this perversity in them, let them defend themselves on the charges on which they were shown to be heretics, and then, if they can, let them find fault with what was decreed against them. For no one convicted of murder or adultery is at liberty after the trial to blame the sentence of the judge, asking why he spoke thus and not otherwise. That does not acquit the condemned man, but rather increases his guilt because of his rashness and daring. Let these men, then, either show that their own mind is godly (for they were accused and convicted, not complainants first, and it is right that the accused do nothing but defend themselves), or, if they have a defiled conscience and see that they are impious, let them not find fault with what they do not understand, lest they incur a double evil, the charge of impiety and the reproach of ignorance. Let them rather inquire with a love of learning, so that, coming to know what they did not know before, they may wash their impious ears in the stream of truth and in the doctrines of godliness. For that is what happened to Eusebius’s party at the council of Nicaea.

When they persisted in their impious contention and attempted to fight against God, what they said was full of impiety; but the bishops who had assembled (they were about three hundred, more or less) asked them mildly and kindly to give an account of what they were saying and godly proofs. But when, as soon as they spoke, they were condemned, and fought among themselves, seeing how great was the perplexity of their heresy, they stood speechless and by their silence confessed their shame at their false doctrine. So the bishops, having done away with the expressions they had invented, then set forth against them the sound and ecclesiastical faith; and when all subscribed, Eusebius’s party also subscribed to these very expressions which these men now find fault with—I mean “from the essence” and “of the same essence,” and that the Son of God is neither a creature nor a thing made nor one of the originated things, but that the Word is an offspring from the essence of the Father. And what is remarkable, Eusebius of Caesarea in Palestine, who had been denying it the day before, nevertheless subscribed afterwards and wrote to his church, saying that this was the faith of the church and the tradition of the fathers; and he plainly showed to all that they had been in error before and had contended against the truth in vain. For though he was ashamed at the time to write in these terms and excused himself to his church as he wished, still, by not denying “of the same essence” and “from the essence” in his letter, he plainly means to signify this. And he got into a sad plight: for in defending himself he went on to accuse the Arians, because, by writing “The Son was not before he was begotten,” they would not allow him to exist even before his birth according to the flesh. And Acacius knows this too, unless he also, now afraid because of the times, plays a part and denies the truth. I have therefore appended Eusebius’s letter at the end, so that from it you may learn the ingratitude of the Christ-fighters toward their own teachers, and of Acacius above all.

How then are these men not in the wrong, if they so much as think of contradicting so great and so ecumenical a council? How are they not lawless, daring to set themselves against what was rightly defined against the Arian heresy and attested by those who earlier taught them impiety? And if, after subscribing, Eusebius’s party changed and, like dogs, returned to their own vomit of impiety, are not those who contradict now all the more deserving of hatred, since, signing away the freedom of their own souls to others, they are willing to have as leaders of the heresy men who, as James said, are double-minded and unstable in all their ways, not holding one opinion but changing now this way, now that, now praising what they say and shortly afterwards blaming what they have said, and again praising what a little before they were attacking? This, as the Shepherd has said, is offspring of the devil, and the mark of hucksters rather than of teachers. For, as the fathers have handed down, this is true teaching and the genuine proof of teachers: to confess the same things as one another, and not to disagree either among themselves or with their own fathers. Those who are not so disposed should be called wicked rather than true teachers. The Greeks, at any rate, since they do not confess the same things but dispute with one another, do not have true teaching; but the saints, who are in truth heralds of the truth, agree with one another and do not differ among themselves. For though they lived at different times, they all press toward the same goal, being prophets of the one God and proclaiming the same Word in harmony.

What Moses taught, that Abraham kept; and what Abraham kept, Noah and Enoch knew, distinguishing clean from unclean and becoming well-pleasing to God. For Abel too bore witness in this way, knowing what he had learned from Adam, who himself had learned from the Lord, who, when he came at the consummation of the ages to put away sin, said: “I give you no new commandment, but an old commandment, which you have heard from the beginning.” For this reason the blessed apostle Paul too, who learned from him, when he laid down the order of the church, would not have even deacons double-tongued, much less bishops; and rebuking the Galatians he made a universal declaration, saying: “If anyone preaches to you anything other than what you received, let him be accursed; as I have said before, so I say again. Even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you anything other than what you received, let him be accursed.” Since, then, the apostle says this, let these men either anathematize Eusebius’s party for changing and saying other things than what they subscribed, or, if they know that they subscribed rightly, let them not murmur against so great a council. But if they do neither the one nor the other, it is plain that they too are carried about by every wind and wave, led not by their own opinions but by those of others; and being such, they are not to be trusted now either, when they put forward such pretexts. Let them stop finding fault with what they do not know; perhaps, not knowing how to discern, they simply call evil good and good evil, and think bitter to be sweet and sweet bitter. Certainly they wish to uphold what was judged evil and rejected, and they strive to slander what was rightly defined. We ought, then, no longer to make any defense against them or to answer their vain pretexts, and they for their part ought to contend no longer, but to agree with what the leaders of their heresy subscribed, knowing that the later change of Eusebius’s party is suspicious and malicious, while their subscribing, when they had been able to make even the briefest defense, shows the Arian heresy to be truly impious. For they did not subscribe until they had condemned it, and they did not condemn it until, at a loss on every side, they were put to shame. So the change is a proof of their contentiousness for impiety. Therefore, as has been said, these men too ought to keep quiet; but since they are clever at shamelessness, and perhaps think that they are better able than those men to champion this devilish impiety, then, although in the earlier letter written to you I have already used a fuller refutation against them, come, let us examine these men now too, as we did those, on each of the things they say. For it will be shown no less now that their heresy is not sound, but something demonic.

They say, then, as those men thought, and have dared to say: “Not always Father, not always Son; for the Son was not before he was begotten, but he too came to be from nothing; therefore God has not always been Father of the Son, but when the Son came to be and was created, then God too was called his Father. For the Word is a creature and a thing made, and foreign to and unlike the Father in essence; and the Son is neither by nature the true Word of the Father nor his only and true Wisdom, but being a creature and one of the things made, he is called Word and Wisdom by a misuse of terms. For he too came to be by the Word which is really in God, as all things did. Therefore the Son is not true God either.” I wish first to ask these men too what in general a son is, and of what this name is significant, so that in this way they may at least understand what they themselves are saying. For the divine Scripture indicates to us a twofold sense of this name. One concerns those of whom Moses says in the law: “If you hearken to the voice of the Lord your God, to keep all his commandments that I command you this day, to do what is good and pleasing before the Lord your God, you are sons of the Lord our God”; as John too says in the Gospel: “But as many as received him, to them he gave power to become children of God.” The other sense is that in which Isaac is son of Abraham, and Jacob of Isaac, and the patriarchs of Jacob. In which of these senses, then, do they suppose the Son of God to be, that they tell such fables about him? For I am well aware that they will run into the same impiety as Eusebius’s party. If in the first sense, as with those who gain the grace of the name by improvement of conduct and receive power to become sons of God (for this is what those men too said), he would seem to differ in nothing from us, nor would he be only-begotten, since he too would have obtained the title of Son from virtue. For even if, as they say, being foreknown as one who would be such, he receives it in advance, and as soon as he came to be receives both the name and the glory of the name, still he will differ in nothing from those who receive the name after their deeds, so long as it is in this way that he too is attested as son. For Adam too, though he received grace in advance and was placed in paradise as soon as he came to be, differed in nothing either from Enoch, who after some time from his birth pleased God and was translated, or from the apostle, who likewise after his deeds was caught up into paradise, nor even from the man who was once a robber, who because of his confession received the promise that he would at once be in paradise.

But, hard pressed on these points, they will perhaps say what they have often said and been put to shame for: “We hold that the Son has a pre-eminence over the others, and is called Only-begotten for this reason, that he alone came to be by God alone, while all other things were created by God through the Son.” Who, then, suggested to you this foolish and novel notion, that you should say: “The Father alone made the Son alone with his own hands, while all other things came to be through the Son as through an assistant”? If it was because of weariness that God was content to make only the Son himself, and not the others any more, it is impious to think such things of God, especially for those who have heard Isaiah saying: “The everlasting God, God who made the ends of the earth, will not hunger nor be weary, and there is no searching out of his understanding.” Rather, it is he who gives strength to the hungry and through his Word refreshes the weary. And if he disdained as something lowly to make the things after the Son with his own hands, this too is impious. For there is no pride in God, who goes down with Jacob into Egypt, and for Abraham’s sake corrects Abimelech on account of Sarah, and speaks mouth to mouth with Moses, who was a man, and comes down onto Mount Sinai, and by secret grace fights along with the people against Amalek. You speak falsely, moreover, in saying this; for “he made us, and not we ourselves,” and it is he who made all things, small and great, through his Word; and one cannot divide creation so as to say that this belongs to the Father and that to the Son, but all is of one God, who uses his own Word as a hand and makes all things in him. Showing this, God himself said, “My hand has made all these things”; and Paul, having learned this, taught: “One God, from whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things.” So it is he who always, even now, speaks to the sun and it rises, and commands the clouds, and it rains on one portion, while the portion on which it does not rain is dried up. He bids the earth yield its fruits, and he forms Jeremiah in the womb. If he does these things himself now, there is no doubt that at the beginning too he did not disdain to make all things himself through the Word; for these are parts of the whole. [8] But if it was because the other creatures could not endure the working of the untempered hand of the Unbegotten that the Son alone came to be by God alone, while the others came to be through the Son as through an assistant and helper—for this is what Asterius the sacrificer wrote, and Arius copied it out and gave it to his own followers, and ever since they use this little phrase like a broken reed, not knowing its rottenness, the fools—if it was impossible for originated things to endure the hand of God, and the Son, according to you, is one of the originated things, how could he come to be by God alone? And if, in order that originated things might come to be, there was need of a mediator, and the Son, according to you, is originated, then there must have been some mediator before him too, that he might be created; and since that mediator in turn is himself a creature, it follows that he too needed another mediator for his own constitution. And if one devises another, he will first have to devise that one’s mediator, so as to fall into an infinite regress. And thus, with a mediator always being sought, creation will never be able to come into being, because, as you say, none of the originated things can endure the untempered hand of the Unoriginate. But if, seeing this absurdity, you begin to say that the Son, though a creature, was made capable of coming to be by the Unoriginate, then necessarily all the other things too, being originated, could have been made by the Unoriginate himself; for according to you he too is a creature, just as all these are; and then, according to your impious and foolish notion, the generation of the Word is superfluous, since God is sufficient to make all things himself, and all originated things are able to endure the untempered hand of God. Since their derangement is so senseless, let us see whether this sophism of the impious does not appear even more irrational than their others. Adam alone came to be by God alone through the Word; yet no one would say on that account that Adam has some pre-eminence over all men or differs from those after him, because he alone was made and formed by God alone, while we are all born from Adam and come into being by the succession of the race—so long as he too was formed from the earth and, not existing before, came to be afterwards.

And if anyone should grant some pre-eminence to the first-formed man because he was deemed worthy of the hand of God, let such a person reckon that this pre-eminence lies in honor and not in nature. For he came from the earth, as all men did; and the hand that formed Adam then is the very hand that now and always forms and constitutes those after him as well. God himself says this to Jeremiah, as I said before: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you”; and of all things he said, “My hand has made all these things.” And again through Isaiah he says: “Thus says the Lord who redeems you and forms you from the womb: I am the Lord who accomplishes all things; I alone stretched out the heaven and made firm the earth.” And David, knowing this, sang: “Your hands made me and fashioned me.” And he who says in Isaiah, “Thus says the Lord, who formed me from the womb to be his servant,” signifies the same. So in nature Adam differs in nothing from us, even if he precedes us in time, so long as we are all constituted and created by the same hand. If, then, you Arians think in this way about the Son of God too, that he also subsisted and came to be in this way, then according to you he will differ in nothing from the others in nature, so long as he too was not and came to be, and the grace of the name was added to him too because of virtue. For he too is one of those, according to what you say, of whom the Spirit says in the Psalms: “He spoke, and they came to be; he commanded, and they were created.” Who, then, is it to whom God gave the command, that this one too might be created? For there must be a Word to whom God gives the command and in whom the works are created. But you could not point to any other word besides the one you deny—unless indeed you invent some new notion again. “For,” they will say, “we have found another notion”—one that I once heard Eusebius’s party too stating: “We consider that the Son of God has a pre-eminence over the others, and is called Only-begotten, for this reason: that he alone partakes of the Father, while all other things partake of the Son.” They are worn out already with changing and shifting their words like colors; yet even so they will be shown to be talking idly like men of the earth, and wallowing in their own notions as in mire.

For if he were Son of God, and we were called sons of the Son, their fiction would be plausible; but if we too are called sons of God, of whom he too is Son, it is plain that we too partake of the Father, who says, “I have begotten sons and raised them up.” For if we did not partake of him, he would not have said “I have begotten”; but if it is he himself who begot us, then no other but he himself is our Father. And again it makes no difference if the Son has more and came to be first, while we have less and came to be later, so long as we all partake of the same Father and are called sons of the same Father. For more and less do not indicate a different nature; it is the practice of virtue that adds this to each. One is set over ten cities, another over five; some sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel, while others hear, “Come, you blessed of my Father,” and “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Since they hold such views, then, those men naturally imagine that God was not always Father of such a Son, and that such a Son did not always exist, but came to be from nothing as a creature and was not before he was begotten; for such a one is other than the true Son of God. But since it is no longer pious for them to say this (for this is rather the mind of the Sadducees and of the Samosatene), it remains for them to say that the Son of God too is son in the other sense, in which Isaac is son of Abraham. For what is begotten from someone by nature, and is not acquired from outside, nature recognizes as a son, and this is what the name signifies. Is the generation of the Son, then, like a human experience? (For perhaps they too, like those men, will wish to raise this objection in their ignorance.) By no means. For God is not as man, since men are not as God either. Men were created out of matter, and passible matter at that; but God is immaterial and incorporeal. And if at times the same terms are used of God and of men in the divine Scriptures, still it is the part of clear-sighted men, as Paul enjoined, to give heed to the reading, and so to distinguish, and to interpret what is written according to the nature of each thing signified, and not to confuse the sense, so as neither to conceive the things of God in a human way nor ever to reckon the things of men as if they were said of God. For that is to mix wine with water and to put strange fire on the altar along with the divine fire.