On the Opinion of Dionysius 16–27

If these things had been said ambiguously, they would need an interpreter; but since he wrote clearly and often about the same things, let Arius gnash his teeth, seeing his heresy overthrown by Dionysius and hearing him say what he does not want to hear: “God was always Father, and the Son is not simply eternal, but since the Father is eternal, the Son too would be eternal, and he is with him as the radiance with the light.” And let those who have so much as suspected that Dionysius held the views of Arius lay aside such defamation of him. For what fellowship is there between them, when Arius says, “The Son was not before he was begotten, but there was once when he was not,” while Dionysius teaches, “But God is eternal light, neither having begun nor ever ending; so the radiance lies before him eternally and is with him, without beginning and always begotten, shining forth before him”? For against the other suspicion too, of those who say that Dionysius, in speaking of the Father, does not name the Son …, but divides and removes and parts the Son from the Father, he answers and puts them to shame, saying in the second book: [17] “Each of the names spoken by me is inseparable and indivisible from the one next to it. I spoke of the Father, and before I brought in the Son, I signified him too in the Father. I brought in the Son; even if I had not mentioned the Father before, he would certainly have been included beforehand in the Son. I added the Holy Spirit, but at the same time I adjoined both from where and through whom he came. But they do not know that neither is the Father, as Father, estranged from the Son—for the name begins the bond between them—nor is the Son exiled from the Father; for … ; and in their hands is the Spirit, who cannot be deprived either of him who sends or of him who conveys him. How, then, could I, who use these names, think that they are divided and wholly separated from one another?” And a little later he adds: “Thus we expand the Monad indivisibly into the Triad, and again gather up the Triad without diminution into the Monad.”

Then, when they blamed him for saying that the Son is one of the originated things and not of the same essence as the Father, he refutes such men in the first book, saying: “But I, having said that some things are understood to be originated and some made, gave examples of such things in passing, as being less useful, … the boat; then I dwelt on those that were fitting and more apt, and went more fully into the truer ones, devising various further proofs, which I also wrote to you in another letter; in which I also 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, … I set forth [human] generation, plainly as being of the same kind … and that the river is the water from the spring. But these and such things they pretend not even to see written, but act as if they were blind; and with two detached little phrases they try to pelt me from afar, as with stones, not knowing that, with things that are not understood and need to be brought toward knowledge, not only different but even contrary proofs often become indications of what is sought.” And in the third book he says: “Life was begotten from life, and flowed as a river from a spring, and from unquenchable light a bright light was kindled.” [19] Who, hearing these things, will not condemn the madness of those who suspect that Dionysius held the views of Arius? For see how by these words he plainly tramples on their whole heresy with the reasonings of the truth. “He was not before he was begotten” and “There was once when he was not” he destroys by the account of the radiance, saying that the Father was never without offspring of him; their “from nothing” he destroys by saying that the Word is like a river from a spring, and a shoot from a root, and a child from a parent, and light from light, and life from life; their cutting off and dividing the Word from God he destroys by saying that the Triad is gathered up undivided and undiminished into the Monad; and their saying that the Son is foreign to the Father’s essence he openly tramples by saying that the Son is of the same essence as the Father. At this one might well marvel at the shamelessness of the impious: how, when Dionysius, whom they call one of their own opinion, says that the Son is “of the same essence,” they themselves go about buzzing like gnats that the council did not write “of the same essence” rightly. For if Dionysius is their friend, let them not deny what their like-minded friend holds; but if they think it was rightly said, how can they bandy about Dionysius, who says this, as holding their views? Especially since he is not seen to say these things casually, but, having first written other letters, he refutes as liars those who spoke against him as not saying that the Son is of the same essence as the Father; and those who think he calls the Word originated he rebuts, since he did not think as they suppose; but even if he used the words, he says he used them for this purpose only, to show that it is not the Father but the Son who put on the originated, created, and made body; and for this reason the Son is said to have come to be, and been made, and been created.

Indeed, since he had been led to write such expressions earlier, he bids the Arians a long farewell, and asks of his hearers a good conscience, putting forward the difficulty, and perhaps even the incomprehensibility, of the matters under inquiry, so that they may judge not the words but the meaning of the writer, especially when most things bear witness to his thinking. At any rate he himself said: “Of such things, as less useful, I gave the examples in passing, the plant and the gardener; but I dwelt on the more apt ones and went more fully into the truer ones.” One who says this shows that it is truer to say that the Son is eternal and from the Father than that he is originated; for by the latter the bodily nature of the Lord is signified, by the former the eternity of his divinity. In these words, at any rate, he affirms that those who charged him with not saying that the Son is of the same essence as the Father were refuted by him—not simply, but with understanding and true proof—saying: “Even if I did not find this word in the Scriptures, yet, gathering the sense from the Scriptures themselves, I knew that, being Son and Word, he could not be foreign to the essence of the Father.” And that he does not think the Son to be a creature or a thing made (for on this point too they have bandied his name), he says thus in the second book: “But if any of the slanderers, because I called God the maker and creator of all things, supposes that I call him maker of Christ too, let him hear me having first called him Father, in which the Son too is written along with him. For after calling the Father maker, I added: And neither is he father of the things of which he is maker, if he who begets is properly understood as father (for we will work out the breadth of the title father in what follows); nor is the father a maker, if only the craftsman is called maker. For among the Greeks the wise are called makers of their own words; and the apostle said, ‘doer of the law’; and men become doers of things within the heart, virtue and vice, as God said: ‘I waited for him to do judgment, but he did lawlessness.’”

Truly, on hearing these things one should remember the divine oracle that says: “Wherever the impious man turns, he vanishes.” For see, turning this way and that at every point, the impious vanish, having no pretext concerning Dionysius even in this. For he plainly teaches that the Son is neither a thing made nor a creature; and he blames and corrects those who slander him for calling God maker, because they did not perceive that he had first called God Father, in which the Son too is written along with him. In saying this he shows that the Son is not one of the things made, nor God his maker, but that God is Father of his own Word. And since some carelessly charged him with calling God the maker of Christ, he therefore defends himself in various ways and says that even so his statement is not blameworthy; for he says that he called him maker because of the flesh which the Word assumed, since it was originated. “But if anyone should suppose that this was said of the Word, even so they ought to have heard it without contentiousness. For as I do not think the Word a thing made, so I do not call God his maker but his Father; and even if, in speaking of the Son, I said in passing that God is maker, even so a defense is possible. For the wise among the Greeks call themselves makers of their own words, though they are fathers of their own words; and the divine Scripture calls us makers even of the movements of the heart, speaking of doers of law and of judgment and of righteousness.” So on every side he shows that the Son is neither a creature nor a thing made, and that he himself is a stranger to the Arian false doctrine.

For let no Arian suspect him, even in this, of saying: “The Son coexists with the Father in such a way that the names are joined to one another, while the realities are very far apart from one another; and the Son did not always coexist with the Father, but from the time the Son came to be, from then on God was called Father and thereafter coexists with him, as happens with men.” Rather, let him consider and remember what was said before, and he will see that Dionysius’s faith is correct. For since he says, “For there was not a time when God was not Father,” and again, “But God is eternal light, neither having begun nor ever ending; so the radiance lies before him eternally and is with him, without beginning and always begotten, shining forth before him,” no one ought to suspect anything of the kind against him at all. And the illustrations of the spring and the river, and of the root, and of the …

But since, in addition to all his other evils, Arius has also raked together this little phrase for himself, as from a dunghill, and adds that “the Word is not proper to the Father; but the Word in God is one, while this Lord is foreign and alien to the Father’s essence, and is called Word only in notion; he is not by nature and truly Son of God, but he too is called Son by adoption, as a creature”; and since, saying such things, he boasts among the ignorant that in these too he has Dionysius as one of his opinion—see the faith of Dionysius on these matters too, and how he fights against such malicious views of Arius. For he writes thus in the first book: “It has been said already that God is the spring of all good things, while the Son is described as the river poured forth from him. For a word is an effluence of mind, and, to speak as of men, it is channeled from the heart through the mouth, the mind that leaps forth through the tongue becoming other than the word in the heart. For the one, having sent forth the other, remained, and is as it was; the other, sent forth, flew out and is carried everywhere. And so each is in the other, being other than the other; and they are one, being two. For so too the Father and the Son were said to be one, and in one another.” And in the fourth book he says thus: “For as our mind brings forth the word from itself, as the prophet said, ‘My heart has uttered a good word’; and each is other than the other, having obtained its own place separate from the other, the one dwelling and moving in the heart, the other on the tongue and in the mouth; yet they are not apart, nor are they ever deprived of one another, nor is the mind without word, nor the word without mind; but the mind makes the word, appearing in it, and the word shows the mind, having come to be in it; and the mind is like a word lying within, while the word is mind leaping forth; and the mind passes over into the word, while the word carries the mind round to the hearers; and so the mind, through the word, is settled in the souls of the hearers, entering in together with the word. And the mind is, as it were, father of the word, existing by itself; while the word is, as it were, son of the mind—impossible before it, yet not coming to be together with it from somewhere outside, but having sprung from it. So the Father, the greatest and universal Mind, has the Son first, as his Word, interpreter and messenger.”

Either Arius never heard these things, or, having heard them, the ignorant man did not understand them; for if he had understood, he would not have lied so grossly against the bishop, but would surely have reviled him too, as he does us, out of hatred for the truth. For being a Christ-fighter, he will not hesitate to persecute those who hold the views of Christ as well, as the Lord himself foretold: “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you too.” Or if the champions of impiety think that Dionysius is of one mind with them, let them write these things and confess them. Let them write of the vine and the vinedresser, the boat and the shipbuilder; and at the same time let them confess also what he said in his defense—“of the same essence,” and that the Son is from the essence, and is eternal, and the mind in relation to the word, and the spring and the river, and the rest—so that from the very difference they may at least learn how he said the former by way of accommodation, and the latter as the account of the pious faith requires. And then, by saying these things, let them do away with what they have thought against these very things. For what is there in the faith of Dionysius that comes even close to the evils of Arius? Does not Arius say that the Word is Word only in notion, while Dionysius says he is the true and natural Word of God? And the one estranges the Word from the Father, while the other teaches that he is proper to and inseparable from the essence of the Father, as the word is to the mind and the river to the spring. If, then, anyone can divide and estrange the word and the mind, or part the river and the spring and separate them by a wall, or call the river of a different essence from the spring and show its water to be foreign, or dares to separate the radiance from the light and say that the radiance is from another essence and not from the light, let him rave with Arius; for such a person will be seen no longer to have even a human mind. But if nature knows these to be inseparable, and their offspring proper to them, let no one any longer hold the views of Arius nor slander Dionysius; but rather let him admire, from these passages, the clarity of his speech and the correctness of his faith. [25] For that Dionysius again opposes and attacks the madness of Arius, who says that the Word in God is one, and he of whom John says, “In the beginning was the Word,” is another, and that God’s own wisdom in him is one, and that of which the apostle says, “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God,” is another—see again how he writes on these matters in the second book: “In the beginning was the Word; but he who put forth the Word was not Word; for the Word was with God. The Lord became Wisdom; he who sent forth Wisdom, then, was not Wisdom; for ‘I was,’ it says, ‘she in whom he delighted.’ Christ is Truth; ‘but blessed,’ it says, ‘is the God of truth.’” Here he overthrows both Sabellius and Arius, and shows both heresies to be equal in impiety. For neither is the Father of the Word himself the Word, nor is what is from the Father a thing made, but the proper offspring of his essence. Again, the Word who came forth is not the Father; nor again is this Word one out of many, but he alone is Son of the Father, true and genuine by nature, who both is now in him and is eternally and inseparably from him. So the Lord is Wisdom and Truth, and is not second to some other wisdom; but he alone is the one through whom the Father made all things, and in whom he established the various essences of originated things; through him he is made known to whomever he wills, and in him he exercises and works his providence over all things. For Dionysius too knows this one alone as Word of God. This is the faith of Dionysius; for I have written after collecting a few things from his letters, which can give you occasion to add more, and give the Arians the greatest shame for their slander against the bishop. For in all things, and in each of the things he wrote, he refuted their perversity and exposed their heresy.

So from these it is shown that the letter to Euphranor and Ammonius too was written by him with another intention, by way of accommodation; for his defense also shows this. And this is truly a persuasive method for overthrowing the madness of Sabellius: whoever wishes to refute such men quickly should not begin from the texts that signify the divinity of the Word—that the Son is Word and Wisdom and Power, and “I and the Father are one”—lest they, misinterpreting what is well said, take such texts as a pretext for their shameless contentiousness, hearing “I and the Father are one” and “He who has seen me has seen the Father”; but he should bring forward what is said of the Savior in a human way, as Dionysius himself did, such as hungering, being weary, being the vine, praying, and suffering. For the lowlier these things are said to be, the more it is shown that it was not the Father who became man. For if the Lord is called the vine, there must also be a vinedresser; if he prays, there must be one who hears; if he asks, one who gives. Such things show up the madness of the Sabellians more easily: that he who prays is one, and he who hears another; the vine one, and the vinedresser another. For whatever texts are said as if estranging the Son from the Father are said of him because of the flesh which he bore for our sake; for originated things are foreign to God by nature. For this reason, since the Word came to be of the flesh, which is originated—as John says, “the Word became flesh”—although he is by nature proper to the Father and inseparable from him, yet because of it the Father too is said to be far from him; for he himself allows the things proper to the flesh to be said of him, to show that the body was not another’s but his own. This being the meaning, Sabellius will be more quickly refuted, that it is not the Father who became flesh but his Word, who also redeems the flesh and brings it to the Father. And having refuted and persuaded him in this way, one will then teach more readily about the divinity of the Word too: that he is Word and Wisdom, Son and Power, Radiance and Impress. For here again one must understand that, since the Word exists, there must also be the Father of the Word; and since Wisdom exists, there must be its parent; and since the radiance exists, there must also be the light; and so the Son and the Father are one.

Knowing these things, Dionysius wrote; and in those letters he muzzled Sabellius, while in these he overthrew the Arian heresy. For as the human things of the Savior overthrow Sabellius, so against the Ariomaniacs one must draw the refutations not from the human things but from what signifies the divinity of the Word, lest these men too, misinterpreting what is said of the Lord because of the body, think that the Word is such as we men are, and so persist in their madness. But if these too are taught about his divinity, they will condemn their own malice; and having learned more easily that the Word became flesh, they too will thereafter distinguish the human things from those befitting the divinity. This being so, and Dionysius the bishop having been shown from what he wrote to be pious, what will the Ariomaniacs do now? Whom will they slander next, now that they are refuted on this count? For since they have fallen from the foundation of the apostles and have an unstable mind, they must seek some prop, and, not finding one, must then slander the fathers. But no one will believe them any longer, even if they force themselves to slander; for the heresy has been condemned by all—unless perhaps they will next speak about the devil; for he alone agrees with them; or rather, it is he who suggests the heresy to them. Who, then, would any longer call those whose leader is the devil Christians, and not rather devilish, so that they may be called not only Christ-fighters but devilish too—unless indeed they change, and deny the impiety they invented, and acknowledge the truth? For this would benefit them …