Defence of the Nicene Definition

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.

For God creates, and creating is also said of men; and God is “He who is,” and men too are said to be, having received this too from God. Does God, then, create as men do? Or is he in the way a man is? Far from it! We take these terms in one way of God, and understand them otherwise of men. For God creates by calling into being the things that are not, needing nothing; but men work on underlying matter, having first prayed and received the skill of making from God, who fashioned all things through his own Word. Again, men, being unable to exist by themselves, are contained in place and subsist in the Word of God; but God exists by himself, containing all things and contained by none; and he is in all things by his goodness and power, yet again outside all things by his own nature. As, then, men do not create in the same way as God creates, nor do men exist in the way God exists, so the generation of men is one thing, and the Son’s being from the Father is another. For the offspring of men are in some way parts of those who beget them, since the very nature of bodies is not simple, but in flux and composed of parts; men lose substance in begetting, and again take in substance from their food; and for this reason men become fathers of many children in the course of time. But God, being without parts, is Father of the Son without division and without passion. For there is no effluence from the incorporeal, nor any influx into him, as there is with men. Being simple in nature, he is Father of one only Son; this is why the Son is Only-begotten and alone is in the bosom of the Father, and the Father acknowledges him alone as from himself, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” And he is the Word of the Father, in whom one may understand the Father’s freedom from passion and division; for not even a human word is begotten with passion and division, much less the Word of God. Therefore he sits at the right hand of the Father as Word; for where the Father is, there his Word is too; but we stand before him to be judged, as things made. And he is worshiped because he is Son of the Father who is worshiped; but we worship, confessing him Lord and God, because we are creatures and other than he. [12] This being so, let anyone of them who will now consider, and let someone put them to shame: is it right to say that what is from God and is his own offspring is from nothing? Or is it reasonable even to enter anyone’s mind at all that being from God came upon him as an accident, so that one should dare to say that the Son is not always? For in this too the generation of the Son exceeds and transcends human notions. We become fathers of our own children in time, since we ourselves, not existing before, came to be afterwards; but God, being always, is always Father of the Son. And the generation of men gains credence from things of like kind; but since “no one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son reveals him,” therefore the saints to whom the Son revealed him have given us an image drawn from visible things, saying, “who, being the radiance of his glory and the impress of his hypostasis,” and again, “For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we shall see light”; and when the Word reproaches Israel he says, “You have forsaken the fountain of wisdom”; and it is this fountain that says, “They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water.” The illustration is small and very dim compared with what we long to grasp; yet from it one can understand something beyond human nature, and not think that the Son’s generation is on a level with ours.

For who can even imagine that the radiance ever was not, so as to dare to say that the Son is not always, or that the Son was not before he was begotten? Or who is able to separate the radiance from the sun, or to conceive of the fountain of life as ever empty, so as to say in his madness that the Son, who says “I am the life,” is from nothing, or that he who says “He who has seen me has seen the Father” is foreign to the Father’s essence? For the saints, wishing us to understand in this way, have given such illustrations; and it is absurd and very impious, when Scripture contains such images, for us to form our notions of the Lord from others, which are neither written nor have any meaning that leads to piety.

Let them tell us, then, from where these men too learned, or who handed it down to them, that they began to conceive such things about the Savior. “We have read,” they will say, “in the Proverbs: ‘The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works.’” For Eusebius’s party too used to say this, and you in your letter made it plain that, though these men too were overthrown and condemned by many proofs, they nonetheless kept carrying this text up and down, saying that the Son was one of the creatures and numbering him among originated things. But it seems to me that they have not understood this text rightly either; for it has a pious and very correct sense, and had they understood it, they would not have blasphemed the Lord of glory. Let them compare what has been said above with this text, and they will see that there is a great difference between them. For who … [the things] being created and made … of the maker, whereas the Son, as the argument showed above, exists not from outside but from the Father who begets him? For a man builds a house but begets a son; and no one would turn it round and say that the house and the ship are begotten by the builder, and the son created and made by him; nor again that the house is the image of its builder and the son unlike his begetter. Rather, he will confess that the son is the image of the father, and the house a work of art—unless he is sick in mind and out of his wits. Certainly the divine Scripture, which knows the nature of each thing better than anyone, says of created things through Moses: “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth”; but concerning the Son it brings forward not another, but the Father himself, saying, “From the womb, before the morning star, I have begotten you,” and again, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you.” And the Lord himself says of himself in the Proverbs, “Before all the hills he begets me.” And of originated and created things John says, “All things came to be through him”; but proclaiming the Lord he says, “The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” If, then, he is son, he is not a creature; and if he is a creature, he is not a son; for great …

Was this text, then, written in vain? For this is what they keep buzzing about again, like a swarm of gnats. Not at all: it was not written in vain, but quite necessarily. For he is indeed said to be created, but when he became man; for this is proper to man. And this sense will be found well set out in the oracles by one who does not treat the reading as a side matter, but searches out the time, the persons, and the purpose of what is written, and so discerns and understands what he reads. As for the time of this text, he will find and recognize that the Lord, who always is, later, at the consummation of the ages, became man, and being Son of God became also Son of man. And he would understand the purpose: that, wishing to abolish our death, he took to himself a body from the Virgin Mary, so that by offering this as a sacrifice for all to the Father he might set free all of us who through fear of death were subject to slavery all our lifetime. And the person is the Savior’s; but it is said at the time when, having taken the body, he says, “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works.” For as eternal being and being in the bosom of the Father well befits him as Son of God, so, now that he has become man, the saying “The Lord created me” is fitting. For it is then that it is said of him that he hungered and thirsted and asked where Lazarus lay, and suffered, and rose again. And as, when we hear him called Lord and God and true light, we understand him as being from the Father, so it is right, when we hear “created,” “servant,” and “suffered,” not to reckon these to the Godhead (for it is not proper to it), but to measure them by the flesh which he bore for our sake; for these things are proper to the flesh, and the flesh itself belongs to no other but to the Word. And if anyone wishes to learn the benefit that comes from this, he will find it too: for the Word became flesh both in order to offer it for all, and so that we, receiving a share of his Spirit, might be able to be made divine, which we could not otherwise have attained had he not himself put on our created body. For thus we have begun to be called men of God and men in Christ. But as we, receiving the Spirit, do not lose our own essence, so the Lord, having become man for our sake and borne a body, was no less God; for he was not diminished by being clothed with the body, but rather made it divine and rendered it immortal.

These things are enough to expose the heresy of the Arians. For, as the Lord has granted, they have been convicted of impiety out of their own words. Come now, let us too put forward questions and require them in turn to answer; for it is time, since they are at a loss in their own case, that they should now be questioned by us. Perhaps, put to shame in this way, the perverse men may look up and see from where they have fallen. We have learned from the divine Scriptures, as we said before, that the Son of God is himself the Word and the Wisdom of the Father. For the apostle says, “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God”; and John, having said, “And the Word became flesh,” added at once, “and we beheld his glory, glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth”; so that, the Word being the only-begotten Son, it was in this Word and Wisdom that the heaven and the earth and all that is in them came to be. And that God is the fountain of this wisdom we have learned in Baruch, where Israel is blamed for having forsaken the fountain of wisdom. If, then, they deny what is written, they are at once strangers to the name as well, and would properly be called by all godless and Christ-fighters; for they have brought these names upon themselves. But if they agree with us that the words of Scripture are inspired by God, let them dare to say openly what they think in secret: that God was once without Word and without Wisdom; and in their madness let them say, “There was when he was not,” and “Before he was begotten, Christ was not.” And again let them declare that the fountain did not beget wisdom from itself but acquired it from outside itself, so that they may dare to say, “The Son came to be from nothing,” as if it were a cistern that received its water from outside and has usurped the name of fountain.

How full of impiety this is, I think no one with even the slightest perception will doubt. But since they mutter that Word and Wisdom are only names of the Son, it is necessary to ask them: if these are only names of the Son, then he himself must be something other than these. And if he is better than the names, it is not holy for the better to be signified by the lesser; but if he is lesser than the names, he certainly has the reason for his better title, and this in turn indicates an advancement in him, which is no less impious than what came before. … in the Thalia, as if raising a difficulty, he tells the tale: “God speaks many words. Which of them, then, do we call the Son and only-begotten Word of the Father?” Senseless men, anything rather than Christians! For in the first place, by saying such things about God they all but conceive of God as a man, speaking in this way and replacing his first words with second ones, as if one Word from God were not enough to accomplish the whole creation that comes from the Father’s will, and his providence. For to speak many words is a mark of the weakness of them all, each falling short of what the other supplies; but that God uses one Word, as is in truth the case, shows both the power of God and the perfection of the Word who is from him, and the pious understanding of those who think in this way.

Would that these men too, at least from what they now say, were willing to confess the truth! For if they once grant that God utters words, they surely recognize him as Father; and knowing this, let them consider that, being unwilling to grant one Word of God, they imagine him to be Father of many. And while they do not wish to deny that there is a Word of God at all, they do not confess that he is the Son of God; and this is ignorance of the truth and inexperience in the divine Scriptures. For if God is in any sense Father of a Word, why is not he who is begotten a Son? And again, who could be Son of God but his Word? For there are not many words, lest each be deficient, but one Word, so that he alone may be perfect; and because, God being one, his image too must be one, and that is the Son. For the Son of God, as one may learn from the oracles themselves, is himself the Word of God, and the Wisdom, and the Image, and the Hand, and the Power; for the offspring of God is one, and these are tokens of his generation from the Father. If you say “the Son,” you have declared what is from him by nature; if you think of “the Word,” again you have in mind what is from him and inseparable from him; when you speak of “the Wisdom,” you mean no less what is not from outside but from him and in him; if you name “the Power” and “the Hand,” again you speak of what is proper to the essence; and when you speak of “the Image,” you signify the Son: for what could be like God but the offspring from him? Certainly, what came to be through the Word was founded in Wisdom; and what was founded in Wisdom was all made by the Hand and came to be through the Son. And we have this faith not from outside but from the Scriptures. For God himself says through Isaiah the prophet: “My hand founded the earth, and my right hand made firm the heaven”; and again: “And under the shadow of my hand I will cover you, by which I set up the heaven and founded the earth.” And David, having learned this, and knowing that the Hand itself is the Wisdom, sang: “In wisdom you have made all things; the earth is filled with your creation”; as Solomon too, having received it from God, said: “God by wisdom founded the earth.” And John, knowing that the Hand and the Wisdom is the Word, proclaimed: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.” And the apostle, seeing that the Hand, the Wisdom, the Word, is himself the Son, says: “In many parts and in many ways God spoke of old to the fathers in the prophets; in these last days he has spoken to us in a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the ages”; and again: “One Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him.” And knowing again that the Word, the Wisdom, the Son, is himself the Image of the Father, he says in the letter to the Colossians: “Giving thanks to God and the Father, who has qualified us for the share of the inheritance of the saints in light, who delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins; who is the image of the invisible God, firstborn of all creation; for in him all things were created, those in the heavens and those on the earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities: all things were created through him and for him; and he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” For as all things were created through him as Word, so, since he is the Image, they were created in him. Whoever thinks thus about the Lord will not stumble on the stone of stumbling, but will rather go toward the brightness, facing the light of truth; for this is truly the mind of the truth, even if these men burst with contentiousness, neither revering God nor put to shame by the refutation that comes from the proofs.

Eusebius’s party, then, after being examined at length in this way at the time and condemning themselves, subscribed, as I said before, and having changed their minds, kept quiet and withdrew. But since these men, swaggering in their impieties and growing dizzy about the truth, attempt nothing else but to accuse the council, let them tell us from what Scriptures they learned, or from which of the saints they heard, the little phrases they have heaped together for themselves: “from nothing,” and “he was not before he was begotten,” and “there was once when he was not,” and “changeable,” and “pre-existing,” and “by will”—in which they tell fables in mockery of the Lord. For the blessed Paul says in the letter to the Hebrews: “By faith we understand that the ages were framed by the word of God, so that what is seen did not come to be from things that appear.” But the Word has nothing in common with the ages; for he is the one who exists before the ages, through whom the ages too came to be. In the Shepherd it is written (since they bring this forward too, though it is not of the canon): “First of all believe that God is one, who created and framed all things, and made all things to be out of what was not.” But this again has nothing to do with the Son; for it speaks of all the things that came to be through him, from which he himself is distinct. For one cannot number the Creator with the things made by him, unless someone were mad enough to say that the architect is the same as the buildings he has made. Why then, when they themselves have invented unscriptural terms for impiety, do they blame those who are pious with unscriptural terms? For impiety is wholly forbidden, even if someone tries to clothe it in varied words and plausible sophisms; but piety is acknowledged by all to be holy, even if someone uses unfamiliar terms, so long as the speaker has a pious mind and wishes to express through them, piously, what he has understood. Now the argument has already shown that the grovelling little phrases of the Christ-fighters mentioned above were, then and now, full of all impiety; but as for what was written and defined against them by the council, if anyone examines it carefully, he will certainly find the mind of the truth contained in it, especially if he asks with a love of learning and hears the reason for such terms, which is a sound one. It is this.

When the council wished to do away with the impious terms of the Arians, and to write the acknowledged words of the Scriptures—that the Son is not from nothing but from God, and is Word and Wisdom, not a creature or a thing made, but the proper offspring from the Father—Eusebius’s party, drawn on by their long-standing false doctrine, wanted “from God” to be common to us and to the Word of God, and him to differ from us in nothing in this respect, because it is written: “One God, from whom are all things,” and again: “The old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new; and all things are from God.” But the fathers, seeing their craftiness and the cunning of their impiety, were forced to express “from God” more clearly, and to write that the Son is “from the essence of God,” so that “from God” might not be thought common and equal to the Son and to originated things, but that all the others might be believed to be creatures and the Word alone to be from the Father. For though all things are said to be from God, this is said in another sense than that in which the Son is from God. Created things are said to be “from God” because they do not exist at random or of themselves, nor did they come into being by chance, as those say who speak of a concourse of atoms and of like parts, or as some of the heretics speak of another creator, or as others again say that the constitution of all things is the work of certain angels; but because, God existing, all things, which were not before, came into being by him through the Word: for this reason “from God” is said of them. But the Word, since he is not a creature, is said to be, and is, alone “from the Father”; and the token of this sense is that the Son is “from the essence of the Father”; for this belongs to none of the originated things. Indeed, when Paul said that all things are from God, he at once added: “and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things,” to show to all that the Son is other than all the things that came to be from God; for the things that came to be from God came to be through the Son. He said this with reference to the creation made by God, and not because all things are from the Father as the Son is. For neither are all things as the Son, nor is the Word one of all things; for he is Lord and Creator of all things. That is why the holy council said more clearly that he is from the essence of the Father, so that the Word might be believed to be other than the nature of originated things, being alone truly from God, and that no pretext for deceit might be left any longer to the impious. This, then, is the reason for writing “from the essence.”

Again, when the bishops said that it ought to be written that the Word is the true Power and Image of the Father, like and unvarying from the Father in all things, and unchangeable, and always, and in him without division (for the Word never was not, but was always, existing eternally with the Father as the radiance of light), Eusebius’s party bore it, not daring to contradict because of the shame they felt at having been refuted; but they were caught again muttering among themselves and winking with their eyes that “like,” and “always,” and the name “power,” and “in him” were again common to us and the Son, and that there was no harm in agreeing to these. “Like,” because it is written of us, “Man is the image and glory of God”; “always,” because it is written, “For we who live are always…”; “in him,” because “In him we live and move and have our being”; and “unchangeable,” because it is written, “Nothing will separate us from the love of Christ.” And as for “power,” because even the caterpillar and the locust are called “power,” and “great power,” and it is often written of the people, as, “All the power of the Lord went out of the land of Egypt”; and there are other heavenly powers too, for it says, “The Lord of powers is with us; the God of Jacob is our helper.” For Asterius, called the Sophist, learned such things from them and wrote them down, and before him Arius had learned them, as has been said. But the bishops, seeing their hypocrisy in this too, and that, as it is written, “deceit is in the heart of the impious who devise evil,” were forced in their turn to gather up the sense of the Scriptures and to say again more clearly what they had said before, and to write that the Son is “of the same essence” as the Father; so as to signify that the Son is not only like, but the same in likeness, from the Father, and to show that the Son’s likeness and unchangeableness is other than the imitation ascribed to us, which we acquire from virtue by keeping the commandments. For bodies that are like one another can somehow be separated and come to be far from one another, as the sons of men are in relation to those who begot them, as it is written of Adam and of Seth who was begotten from him, that he was like him according to his form. But since the generation of the Son from the Father is other than human nature, and he is not only like but also inseparable from the essence of the Father, and he and the Father are one, as he himself has said, and the Word is always in the Father and the Father in the Word, as the radiance is in relation to the light (for this too is what the term signifies), therefore the council, understanding this, rightly wrote “of the same essence,” so as to overthrow the malice of the heretics and to show that the Word is other than originated things. For having written this, they at once added: “Those who say that the Son of God is from nothing, or created, or changeable, or a thing made, or from another essence, these the holy and catholic church anathematizes.” By saying this they showed plainly that “from the essence” and “of the same essence” do away with the catchwords of impiety, which are: “creature,” and “thing made,” and “originated,” and “changeable,” and “he was not before he was begotten.” Whoever holds these contradicts the council; but whoever does not hold the views of Arius necessarily holds and understands these views of the council, seeing rightly how the radiance stands to the light, and receiving from it the image of the truth.

So if these men too make the words an excuse as being strange, let them hold the sense in which the council wrote thus, anathematizing what the council anathematized; and then, if they can, let them find fault with the terms. But I know well that if they hold the sense of the council, they will certainly accept the words that express that sense too. And if they wish to find fault with the sense as well, it is plain to all that they talk idly about the words too, and are merely inventing occasions for impiety for themselves. This, then, is the reason for such terms. But if they murmur again that they are not in Scripture, let them be thrown out at once as idle talkers of unsound mind; and let them blame themselves in this too, because they first gave occasion for such a thing and began to fight against God with unscriptural terms. Yet let anyone who loves learning know that, even if the terms are not found in just this form in the Scriptures, still, as was said before, they contain the sense of the Scriptures, and in expressing it they convey it to those whose hearing is sound for piety. This you may consider; those uneducated men had better listen. It has been shown above, and it is true to believe, that the Word is from the Father and is alone his own and natural offspring. For from where else could one conceive the Son, who is the Wisdom and the Word in whom all things came to be, to be, if not from God himself? Yet this too we have learned from the Scriptures, as the Father says through David, “My heart has uttered a good Word,” and “From the womb, before the morning star, I have begotten you”; and as the Son shows of himself to the Jews, “If God were your Father, you would love me; for I came forth from the Father”; and again, “Not that anyone has seen the Father, except he who is from God; he has seen the Father.” Moreover, “I and the Father are one,” and “I am in the Father and the Father in me,” is equivalent to saying, “I am from the Father, and inseparable from him.” And John, in saying, “The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known,” said it having learned it from the Savior. For what else does “in the bosom” signify but the genuine generation of the Son from the Father?

If, then, anyone thinks that God is composite, so that there is accident in his essence, or that he has some covering from outside and is veiled, or that there are things around him that complete his essence, so that when we say “God” or name “Father” we do not signify his invisible and incomprehensible essence itself but something about it, then let them find fault with the council for writing that the Son is from the essence of God; but let them consider that, in thinking thus, they utter two blasphemies: they bring in a bodily God, and they falsely say that the Lord is Son not of the Father himself but of the things around him. But if God is something simple, as indeed he is, it is plain that in saying “God” and naming “the Father” we name nothing as if it were about him, but signify his very essence. For though it is impossible to comprehend what the essence of God is, yet understanding only that God is, and since Scripture signifies him by these terms, we too, wishing to signify none other than him, say God and Father and Lord. When, then, he says, “I am He who is,” and “I am the Lord God,” and wherever Scripture says “God,” we in reading understand nothing other than his incomprehensible essence itself to be signified, and that he is the one of whom they speak. So let no one be startled on hearing that the Son of God is from the essence of God, but rather let him approve the fathers, who, purifying the sense, wrote “from the essence” more clearly and as an equivalent for “from God.” For they considered it the same thing to say that the Word is “from God” and to say that he is “from the essence of God,” since the word “God,” as I said before, signifies nothing other than the essence of him who is. If, then, the Word is not from God as a genuine Son by nature from a Father, but is said, like all things, to be from God as creatures are, because of being made, then he is neither from the essence of the Father, nor is the Son himself Son by essence, but by virtue, like us who are called sons by grace. But if he alone is from God as a genuine Son, as indeed he is, the Son may rightly be said to be from the essence of God too.

For the illustration of the light and its radiance too has this meaning. The saints have not said that the Word is related to God like the fire kindled from the heat of the sun, which is also usually put out again; for that is a work external to its maker and a creature. Rather, they all proclaimed him as radiance, in order to show his being proper to the essence and inseparable from it, and his oneness with the Father. For in this way his being truly unchangeable and unalterable will also be preserved; for how else could he be such, unless he is the proper offspring of the Father’s essence? For in this too he must preserve his identity with his own Father. Since, then, the doctrine has been shown to be pious, it would follow that the Christ-fighters should not be startled at “of the same essence” either, since this term too has a sound meaning and proof. For if we say that the Word is from the essence of God (and from now on let the term be acknowledged by them too), what would this mean but the truth and eternity of the essence from which he is begotten? For he is not of a different kind, as though something foreign and unlike were mixed with the essence of the Father; nor is he merely like from outside, as though he should appear to be of another essence in some respect or wholly, as shining brass is to gold, or silver to tin. For these are foreign to one another and of different essences, and separated in nature and in power; brass is not proper to gold, nor is the wild pigeon born of the dove; they are thought to be alike, yet they are of different essence from one another. If, then, the Son is so, let him be a creature as we are, and not of the same essence; but if the Son is Word, Wisdom, Image of the Father, Radiance, he would rightly be of the same essence. For unless it is shown that he is not from God, but is like an instrument of a different nature and a different essence, the council wrote well and understood rightly.

Here again let every bodily thought be set aside; and rising above every image of the senses, let us understand with pure thought and with the mind alone the genuineness of the Son in relation to the Father, the Word’s being proper to God, and the unvarying likeness of the radiance to the light. For as “offspring” and “Son” are said, and are so, not in a human way but as befits God, in the same way, when we hear the term “of the same essence,” let us not fall into the notions of human sense and think of portions and divisions of the Godhead; but, conceiving as of incorporeal things, let us not divide the oneness of nature and the identity of the light. For this is proper to the Son in relation to the Father, and this shows that God is truly Father of the Word. Here again the illustration of the light and the radiance is necessary. Who will dare to say that the radiance is foreign to the sun and unlike it? Or rather, who, looking thus at the radiance in relation to the sun and at the identity of the light, would not say with confidence: “Truly the light and the radiance are one; the one is shown in the other, and the radiance is in the sun, so that whoever sees the one sees the other too”? And such a oneness and natural property, what would those who believe and see rightly call it, but an offspring of the same essence? And the offspring of God, what could one fittingly and properly think it to be, but Word and Wisdom and Power, which it is not holy to call foreign to the Father, nor lawful even to imagine as not existing eternally with the Father? For by this offspring the Father made all things, and, extending his providence to all, he shows his love for humankind through him; and so he and the Father are one, as has been said—unless indeed the perverse dare to say again that the essence of the Word is one thing, and the light from the Father in him another, so that the light in the Son is one with the Father, while he himself is foreign in essence, as a creature. But this is simply the mind of Caiaphas and of the Samosatene, which the church cast out but which these men now dissemble; and so they too, having fallen from the truth, have been shown to be heretics. For if he partakes at all of the light from the Father, why is he not rather himself what is partaken of, so that nothing may be found between him and the Father? For if it is not so, it is no longer shown that all things came to be through the Son, but through that of which he too partakes. But if this is the Word, the Wisdom of the Father, in whom the Father is revealed and known and creates, and without whom the Father does nothing, it is plain that it is he who is from the Father; for all originated things too partake of him, partaking of the Holy Spirit. Being such, he will not be from nothing, nor a creature at all, but rather the proper offspring from the Father, as radiance from light. [25] Those who assembled at Nicaea, then, having this meaning, wrote such terms too. And that they did not invent these terms by fashioning them themselves (since they make this a pretext as well), but said them after receiving them from those before them, come, let us prove this too, so that not even this pretext of theirs may be left. Learn, then, you Christ-fighting Arians, that Theognostus, a learned man, did not decline to say “from the essence.” For writing about the Son in the second book of his Outlines, he said this: “The essence of the Son is not something devised from outside, nor was it brought in from nothing; but it sprang from the essence of the Father, as the radiance of light, as the vapor of water. For neither the radiance nor the vapor is the water itself or the sun itself; nor is it foreign, but it is an effluence of the essence of the Father, the essence of the Father undergoing no division. For as the sun, remaining the same, is not diminished by the rays poured out from it, so neither did the essence of the Father undergo alteration in having the Son as its image.” Theognostus, then, after first examining matters as in an exercise, afterwards set down his own opinion and spoke thus. … And Dionysius, who became bishop of Alexandria, when writing against Sabellius and explaining at length the Savior’s dispensation according to the flesh, and refuting the Sabellians from it—that it is not the Father who became flesh but his Word, as John said—was suspected of calling the Son a thing made and originated, and not of the same essence as the Father; and so he writes to his namesake Dionysius, bishop of Rome, defending himself that this was a slander against him. For he affirmed that he had not called the Son a thing made, but that he also confessed him to be of the same essence. His words run thus: “And in another letter I wrote, in which I refuted the charge they bring against me, which is false, that I do not say that Christ is of the same essence as God. For even if I say that I have not found this word anywhere in the holy Scriptures, yet my arguments that followed, which they have passed over in silence, are not out of keeping with this meaning. For I set forth human generation, which is plainly of the same kind, saying that parents differ from their children only in this, that they are not themselves the children; otherwise there could be neither parents nor children. The letter, as I said before, I cannot produce because of circumstances; otherwise I would have sent you the very words I used then, or rather a copy of the whole, which I will do if I am able. But I know and remember that I added more comparisons with things akin. For I said that a plant coming up from a seed or a root is other than that from which it sprang, and yet is entirely of the same nature with it; and that a river flowing from a spring has taken another name—for neither is the spring called river, nor the river spring—and that both exist, and that the river is what comes from the spring …

And that the Word of God is not a thing made nor a creature, but the inseparable offspring proper to the Father’s essence, as the great council wrote, see how Dionysius too, bishop of Rome, writing against those who held the views of Sabellius, inveighs against those who dared to say such things, and speaks thus: “Next I may reasonably speak against those who divide and cut up and do away with the most venerable proclamation of the church of God, the monarchy, making it three powers of some kind and separated hypostases and three godheads. For I have learned that some among you who catechize and teach the divine word are leaders of this way of thinking, who are diametrically opposed, so to speak, to the opinion of Sabellius. For he blasphemes in saying that the Son himself is the Father, and the Father the Son; but they in a way proclaim three gods, dividing the holy unity into three hypostases foreign to one another and utterly separated. For the divine Word must be united to the God of all, and the Holy Spirit must abide and dwell in God; and so the divine Triad must of necessity be gathered up and brought together into one, as into a summit—I mean the God of all, the Almighty. For the teaching of the foolish Marcion, which cuts and divides the monarchy into three principles, is a devilish teaching, and not that of the true disciples of Christ and of those who are pleased with the Savior’s teachings. For these know well that a Triad is proclaimed by the divine Scripture, but that neither the Old nor the New Testament proclaims three gods. No less would one blame those who hold that the Son is a thing made and suppose that the Lord came to be like one of the things that really came to be, whereas the divine oracles bear witness to a generation fitting and proper to him, but not to some fashioning and making. It is, then, no ordinary blasphemy, but the very greatest, to say that the Lord is in some way handmade. For if the Son came to be, there was when he was not; but he was always, if indeed he is in the Father, as he himself says, and if Christ is Word and Wisdom and Power; for the divine Scriptures say that Christ is these, as you know; and these are powers of God. If, then, the Son came to be, there was when these were not; and so there was a time when God was without them, which is most absurd. And why … Scripture … taking ‘The Lord … of his ways’ … the meaning of ‘created,’ as you know …; for ‘created’ here must be understood as ‘set over the works made by him,’ made through the Son himself. But ‘created’ would not here be said in the sense of ‘made’; for creating differs from making. ‘Is not he himself your Father, who acquired you and made you and created you?’ says Moses in the great song in Deuteronomy. To these one might say: Reckless men! Is he a thing made, the firstborn of all creation, he who from the womb before the morning star … divine oracles one would find the Son said to have been begotten, but not to have come to be; and by these those who dare to call his divine and ineffable generation a making are plainly convicted of conceiving falsehoods about the Lord’s generation. Neither, then, must we divide the wonderful and divine Monad into three godheads, nor diminish by ‘making’ the dignity and surpassing greatness of the Lord; but we must believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Christ Jesus his Son, and in the Holy Spirit, and hold that the Word is united to the God of all. For ‘I and the Father are one,’ he says, and ‘I am in the Father and the Father in me.’ For so both the divine Triad and the holy proclamation of the monarchy would be preserved.”

And concerning the Word’s eternal coexistence with the Father, and his being not of another essence or hypostasis but proper to that of the Father, as those at the council said, you may hear again from the laborious Origen too. For what he wrote as inquiring and exercising himself, let no one take as expressing his own mind, but that of those who contend for the sake of strife in the inquiry; what he declares fearlessly, as a definition, that is the mind of the laborious man. So after what he says as in an exercise against the heretics, he at once brings forward his own view, saying thus: “If he is the image of the invisible God, he is an invisible image; and I would dare to add that, being also the likeness of the Father, there is no time when he was not. For when did God, who according to John is called light (‘For God is light’), not have the radiance of his own glory, so that one should dare to assign a beginning to the Son, as if he did not exist before? And when was the image of the Father’s ineffable and unnameable and unutterable hypostasis, the impress, the Word, who knows the Father, not in existence? Let him who dares to say ‘There was once when the Son was not’ consider that he will also be saying, ‘Wisdom once was not,’ and ‘the Word was not,’ and ‘Life was not.’” And again elsewhere he speaks thus: “But it is neither lawful nor without danger, because of our weakness, that God should be deprived, so far as lies with us, of the only-begotten Word who is always with him, who is the Wisdom in which he rejoiced; for in that case he will not be thought of as always rejoicing.” See, we show that such a mind has passed from fathers to fathers; but you, new Jews and disciples of Caiaphas, what fathers can you show for your phrases? You could not name one of the prudent and wise; for all turn away from you except the devil alone. He alone has become father to you of such an apostasy, he who in the beginning sowed this impiety in you and now has persuaded you to revile the ecumenical council, because they wrote not your views but what those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word handed down. For the faith that the council confessed in writing is the faith of the catholic church. In defense of it the blessed fathers wrote as they did and condemned the Arian heresy; and that is chiefly why these men try to slander the council. For it is not the terms that grieve them, but that by them they were shown to be heretics, and more daring than the other heresies.

Indeed, when their little phrases had been shown at that time to be worthless, and were always easy to refute as impious, they next took over from the Greeks the term “unoriginate,” so that under pretext of this name too they might again number among originated things and creatures the Word of God, through whom originated things themselves came to be: so shameless are they in impiety, and so contentious in their blasphemies against the Lord. If, then, they are shameless in this way through ignorance of the name, they should have learned from those who gave it to them that even the Mind which they say comes from the Good, and the Soul which comes from the Mind—though they know from what these are—they nevertheless did not fear to call unoriginate, knowing that in saying this they do not diminish the First, from which these too spring. So they should either speak in the same way themselves, or not speak at all about what they do not know. But if they think they know, they must be questioned, especially since the term is not from the divine Scriptures, but once again they contend while speaking unscripturally. I for my part have explained the reason and the sense in which the council wrote “from the essence” and “of the same essence,” in agreement with what is said in the Scriptures about the Savior and with what the fathers before them set forth and wrote. Let them too, if they can, answer how they found this unscriptural term, or in what sense they call God unoriginate. For I have heard that the name has different meanings. They say that “unoriginate” is said of what has not yet come to be but can come to be; and again of what neither exists nor can come into being; and a third meaning is what exists, but is neither originated nor has had a beginning of being, but is eternal and incorruptible. Perhaps, then, they will wish to pass over the first two senses because of the absurdity that follows from them; for according to the first, both things that have already come to be and things expected to come to be will be unoriginate; and the second is even more absurd. They will then go to the third, using “unoriginate” in that sense. But in saying this too they are no less impious. For if by “unoriginate” they mean what has no beginning of being, and is neither originated nor created but eternal, and say that the Word of God is the contrary of this, who does not see the craftiness of the God-fighters? Who would not stone them for such madness? For since they are ashamed to bring forward any longer the first catchwords of their fables, for which they were condemned, the wretches have devised a way to signify them differently through the name, as they call it, “unoriginate.” For if the Son is among originated things, plainly he too came to be from nothing; and if he has a beginning of being, then he was not before he was begotten; and if he is not eternal, there was once when he was not.

If they think this, then, they ought once more to signify their heterodoxy in their own proper words, and not cover their malice with the term “unoriginate,” as they pretend. But the malicious men do not do this; they do everything with craft, after the manner of their father the devil. For as he tries to deceive in borrowed clothing, so these men have devised the use of the name “unoriginate,” so that, pretending to speak well of God, they may keep their blasphemy against the Lord hidden and signify it to others under a veil. But now that this sophism of theirs too has been detected, let them say what else is left to them. “We have found something,” say the villains, and, adding to their earlier statements, they say that “unoriginate” is that which has no cause of its being, but is itself the cause of their coming to be for originated things. Ungrateful men, and truly deaf to the Scriptures, who do and say everything not for the honor of God but for the dishonor of the Son, not knowing that whoever dishonors the Son dishonors the Father! For, first, even if they name God thus, the Word is not shown to be among originated things. For as offspring of the Father’s essence, he is thus with him eternally. This name does not take away the nature of the Word, nor again does “unoriginate” have its meaning in relation to the Son, but in relation to the things that came to be through the Son. One who addresses an architect and calls him maker of a house or a city does not include under this name the son begotten from him; he calls him maker because of his skill and knowledge in the works, signifying that he is not such as the things made by him are; but knowing the nature of the maker, he knows that the son begotten from him is other than these, and he calls him father on account of the son, and builder and maker on account of the works. In the same way, one who calls God unoriginate in this sense names him from his works, signifying not only that he is not originated, but also that he is the maker of originated things; yet he knows that the Word is other than originated things, and alone the proper offspring of the Father, through whom all things came to be and hold together.

For when the prophets call God Almighty, they did not call him so because the Word is one of all things; for they knew that the Son is other than originated things and is himself the ruler of all, after the likeness of the Father. They called him so because he rules all the things that he made through the Son, and has given the authority over them to the Son, and having given it, is himself again Lord of all through the Word. And again, when they call God Lord of powers, they said this not because the Word too is one of these powers, but because he is Father of the Son and Lord of the powers that came to be through the Son. For the Word himself in turn, being in the Father, is Lord of all these and rules all; for all that the Father has belongs to the Son. As, then, this has such a meaning, so let anyone who wishes to call God unoriginate say it, if he once thinks fit to do so—but not because the Word is among originated things, but because, as I said before, God is not only not originated, but is also the maker of originated things through his own Word. For even when the Father is spoken of in this way, the Word is still his image and of the same essence as the Father; and being his image, he would be other than originated things and than all things; for he has the property and the likeness of him whose image he is; so that one who calls the Father unoriginate and almighty perceives in the Unoriginate and the Almighty his Word and Wisdom too, which is the Son. But these marvelous men, so ready for impiety, invented the name “unoriginate” not out of concern for the honor of God, but out of malice against the Savior. For if they had cared for honor and reverent speech, they ought rather—and it would have been better—to acknowledge and call God Father, than to give him that name. For in calling God unoriginate they call him, as I said before, only maker, from the things that came to be, so as to signify, as it pleases them, that the Word too is a thing made; but whoever calls God Father at once signifies the Son in him as well, and will not be ignorant that, since there is a Son, all things that came to be were created through the Son. [31] It would therefore be more fitting and truer to signify God from the Son and call him Father, than to name him from the works alone and call him unoriginate. For the latter signifies the works that came to be by the will of God through the Word; but the name of Father makes known the proper offspring from his essence. And as much as the Word differs from originated things, so much and more would calling God Father differ from calling him unoriginate. For the latter is unscriptural and suspect, since it has various meanings; the former is simple and scriptural, and truer, and signifies the Son alone. “Unoriginate” was found by the Greeks, who do not know the Son; but “Father” was made known and granted by our Lord. For knowing himself whose Son he is, he said, “I am in the Father and the Father in me,” and “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” and “I and the Father are one”; and nowhere does he appear calling the Father unoriginate. And when teaching us to pray, he did not say, “When you pray, say: O God unoriginate,” but rather, “When you pray, say: Our Father who art in heaven.” And he willed that the sum of our faith should tend to this; for he commanded us to be baptized not into the name of Unoriginate and originated, nor into the name of Uncreated and creature, but into the name of Father and Son and Holy Spirit. For being perfected in this way we too are truly made sons; and in saying the name of the Father we recognize from this name the Word who is in the Father as well. And if he wills that we too should call his own Father our Father, we must not on this account put ourselves on a level with the Son in nature; … for this too is said because of him. For since the Word bore our body and came to be in us, it follows that, because of the Word in us, God is called our Father too. For the Spirit of the Word who is in us names through us his own Father as ours; and this is the meaning of the apostle when he says: “God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.”

But perhaps, having been refuted about the name “unoriginate” too, being evil in their ways, they will want to say for their part: “About our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ too, what is written of him in the Scriptures ought to have been said, and unscriptural terms ought not to have been brought in.” Yes, it ought, I too would say; for the marks of the truth are more exact when drawn from the Scriptures than from other sources. But the malice and the crafty, shifting impiety of Eusebius’s party compelled the bishops, as I said before, to set out more clearly the terms that overthrow their impiety; and what the council wrote has been shown to have a correct sense, while the catchwords of the Arians have been shown to be rotten and their ways wicked. For even the name “unoriginate,” which has its own sense and can be used piously, they in turn use according to their own notion, as they wished, to dishonor the Savior, only so that, like the giants, they may contend in fighting against God. But neither did they remain uncondemned when they brought forward those catchwords, nor, though “unoriginate” can be used well and piously, could they escape detection, since their own thinking is wrong; for they were put to shame in everything, and their heresy has been exposed everywhere. These things, then, I have related as well as I could, recalling what was done at the council at that time. But I know that the contentious among the Christ-fighters will not be willing to change even after hearing these things, but will run about seeking other pretexts again, and after these will devise still others. For according to the prophetic saying, if the Ethiopian will change his skin and the leopard her spots, then these too will be willing to think piously, after learning to be impious. But you, beloved, when you receive this, read it by yourself; and if you judge it to be good, read it also to the brothers who are present at the time, so that they too, learning these things, may approve the council’s zeal for the truth and the exactness of its meaning, and may condemn the Christ-fighting Arians and the vain pretexts which they have practiced fabricating among themselves for the sake of their impious heresy. For to God and the Father belong glory, honor, and worship, with his Son and Word who is without beginning together with him, together with the all-holy and life-giving Spirit, now and to the endless ages of ages. Amen.