On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia

Contents

Reading pages: 1–14 · 15–25 · 26–32 · 33–44 · 45–54 · 55

1. 1Athanasius reports that the council summoned for Nicaea was split into Ariminum in the West and Seleucia in the East at the instigation of an Arian party.
2. 2The sudden splitting of the council and the bishops’ search for a faith scandalized catechumens and made pagans laugh.
3. 3The authors of the dated Sirmian creed prefixed the consulship and called Constantius eternal, as if the faith began in their own time; the prophets’ dates mark their ministry, not the start of faith.
4. 4Dating their creed shows that the faith of Ursacius’s party is new, like that of the Montanists, and would leave the fathers and martyrs outside it.
5. 5Nicaea met for real reasons and confessed the apostolic faith without a date; at Ariminum the Arian party produced the Dated Creed of Sirmium.
6. 8The rest of the Dated Creed of Sirmium calls the Son “like the Father according to the Scriptures” and bans the word “essence.”
7. 9The bishops at Ariminum refused the Dated Creed, upheld Nicaea, deposed Ursacius, Valens and their allies, and wrote to Constantius asking that nothing be changed.
8. 11The decree of Ariminum condemned and deposed Ursacius, Valens, and their allies, and the bishops unanimously upheld the Nicene faith.
9. 12At Seleucia the majority accepted Nicaea except for “of the same essence,” while Acacius’s small party rejected it; the majority deposed and excommunicated the Acacians.
10. 13The bishops at Ariminum rightly kept the fathers’ definitions; the Acacians, by rejecting Nicaea, condemn their own teachers, such as Eusebius of Caesarea, who signed it.
11. 14By rejecting their fathers the Acacians reverse Paul’s praise of tradition; Athanasius appends the writings of Arius and the creeds of their councils to show their inconsistency.
12. 15Athanasius quotes extracts from Arius’s Thalia, which teach that the Son came to exist by the Father’s will, is foreign to his essence, and cannot know him.
13. 16Arius and his followers’ letter to Bishop Alexander calls the Son a perfect creature created by God’s will before the ages, not eternal and not of the Father’s essence.
14. 17Before Nicaea, Eusebius of Nicomedia, Eusebius of Caesarea, Athanasius of Nazarba, and George wrote in support of Arius’s views.
15. 18Asterius the Sophist, who had sacrificed in the persecution, toured the churches teaching that the Son is one of God’s many created powers, distinct from God’s own eternal Power and Wisdom.
16. 19Asterius further taught that the Son is one of the intellectual creatures, made by God’s will and power.
17. 20The Arian party fights Nicaea because it condemned their heresy, which was hateful before Nicaea, from Artemas back to Caiaphas.
18. 21After Nicaea the Eusebian party filled sees with their own men; at Jerusalem in 335 their council wrote to Alexandria asking that Arius be received back.
19. 22At the Dedication Council of Antioch (341) the Eusebians issued a creed disclaiming Arius as their master, and then a second, fuller creed with anathemas.
20. 24Theophronius of Tyana’s creed, accepted by all at Antioch, condemned Marcellus, Sabellius, and Paul of Samosata.
21. 25The Dedication Council numbered ninety bishops; a few months later a fourth creed was sent to the emperor Constans in Gaul.
22. 26The Long-Lined Creed (Macrostich) of 344, sent to Italy, rejects Arius’s slogans, Marcellus and Photinus, and Sabellius, while subordinating the Son to the Father.
23. 27The First Creed of Sirmium (351), drawn up against Photinus, repeats the Antiochene creed and adds twenty-seven anathemas.
24. 28The Second Creed of Sirmium (357), written in Latin, bans “essence,” “of the same essence,” and “of like essence,” and declares the Father greater than the Son.
25. 29After suppressing the Dated Creed, the Acacians issued a new creed at Seleucia rejecting both “of the same essence” and “of like essence” and condemning “unlike.”
26. 30At Constantinople (360) the Acacians revised the creed again, banning “hypostasis” as well as “essence,” and forced it on the bishops of Ariminum.
27. 31At Antioch they went back to saying the Son is wholly unlike the Father, earning the names Anomoeans and Exukontians; Constantius was baptized on his deathbed by the Arian Euzoius.
28. 32The endless succession of Arian councils and creeds shows that each was deficient and that their authors were fighting Nicaea and the truth.
29. 33The offense taken at “from the essence” and “of the same essence” comes not from the words, which most accept, but from those who misinterpret them.
30. 34Only the Arians are offended at the Nicene terms; and if “Father” does not mean God’s essence, the Son could not truly be from the Father.
31. 35Since “God” and “Father” signify God’s very essence, to say the Son is “from God” is to say he is “from the essence,” while creatures are works made by God’s will.
32. 36The council wrote “from the essence” to distinguish the Son from creatures; the Arians, who object to unscriptural terms, themselves invented many and used “essence” at Antioch.
33. 37Acacius and Eudoxius contradict themselves, having called the Son the exact image of the Father’s essence at Antioch and then rejected “essence” in Isauria; such men cannot be trusted.
34. 39Unscriptural terms with a pious meaning are no fault, while heretics misuse even Scripture; the Arians object to Nicaea only because it condemned their heresy.
35. 40Those who find the terms obscure should ask to learn rather than reject them, and should at least accept the council’s anathemas, which state their meaning.
36. 41Those who accept all of Nicaea but “of the same essence,” such as Basil of Ancyra, are brothers; “from the essence” and “of like essence” together amount to “of the same essence.”
37. 42As “offspring” and “Son” are understood of God without bodily notions, so must “of the same essence” be, since both are said of the same Son.
38. 43Some hesitate over “of the same essence” because the council that condemned Paul of Samosata rejected it; but both councils are fathers, and Nicaea followed the earlier Dionysii.
39. 44Dionysius of Alexandria’s defense: though the word is not in Scripture, his arguments always implied that Christ is of the same essence as God.
40. 45The council against Paul of Samosata rejected “of the same essence” in Paul’s bodily sense, while Nicaea affirmed it against the Arians; like Paul’s varied statements about the law, both are right in their context.
41. 46As “unbegotten” has more than one meaning, so the councils’ different uses of “of the same essence” can both be pious.
42. 47Ignatius called Christ both originate and unoriginate in different senses; the fathers should be read in harmony, and the oneness of Father and Son is one of essence, not mere agreement.
43. 49Scripture gives the Son every title it gives the Father—God, Almighty, Light, Creator, Lord, King, giver of life—except the name Father.
44. 50If all the Father’s attributes belong to the Son, he cannot be of a foreign essence without our worshiping a stranger; so he is rightly called of the same essence.
45. 51The Son deifies and gives light because he is the Father’s own Word, not a participant; and “of the same essence” does not imply a third essence prior to Father and Son.
46. 52There is one divinity, the Father’s, which is in the Son as light is in its radiance; so the Son, who is one with the Father, should be called of the same essence.
47. 53Likeness belongs to qualities, not essences; a Son “of like essence” would be Son only by participation, like creatures, whereas the true Son is of the same essence.
48. 54Nicaea rightly called the Son of the same essence; Athanasius closes with a prayer that strife cease and all confess one Lord, one faith, one baptism.
49. 55A postscript gives Constantius’s letter delaying the Ariminum envoys and the bishops’ reply refusing to change their decision and asking to return to their churches.