Arianism in the early church · Sophia Scriptura

Arius and the Arian parties, and the controversy over the Son's divinity. Part of Heresy.

Apology for Origen 3.1Pamphilus of Caesarea · ca. 308–310 (Rufinus's Latin about 397) · Pamphilus gathers Origen's statements that the Son is the image of God, born of the Father without beginning, the eternal radiance of the eternal light, Son by nature and not by adoption.
Letter 1.1Alexander of Alexandria · ca. 319–324 · Alexander warns his fellow bishop that Arius and Achillas, after forming a schism and denying Christ's divinity, have been expelled from the church of Alexandria.
Letter 1.2Alexander of Alexandria · ca. 319–324 · The Arians seek support from other bishops while hiding their teaching that the Son once did not exist, was made from nothing, and is changeable, chosen by God for his foreseen virtue.
Letter 1.3Alexander of Alexandria · ca. 319–324 · Against the Arian use of Psalm 45, Alexander argues from John's Gospel that the Word, through whom all things were made, cannot himself have been made or have once not existed.
Letter 1.4Alexander of Alexandria · ca. 319–324 · The Son's generation is beyond human inquiry, known only to the Father; and since all ages and times were made through him, there cannot have been a time when he was not.
Letter 1.6Alexander of Alexandria · ca. 319–324 · Christ's sonship is by nature and cannot be lost, unlike the adoptive sonship of creatures; the new teaching revives the errors of Ebion, Artemas, and Paul of Samosata.
Letter 1.7Alexander of Alexandria · ca. 319–324 · Arius's party quote the texts of Christ's humiliation but ignore those of his glory, such as “I and the Father are one,” and arrogantly claim to be the only wise teachers.
Letter 1.8Alexander of Alexandria · ca. 319–324 · Alexander rejects the charge that he teaches two unbegotten beings and sets out his creed: one unbegotten Father, and one Lord Jesus Christ ineffably begotten from the Father, unchangeable like him.
Letter 1.10Alexander of Alexandria · ca. 319–324 · Alexander completes his creed (the one church, the resurrection, Christ's true incarnation from Mary the God-bearer, his death, resurrection, and ascension) and asks his fellow bishops to reject Arius and his excommunicated followers.
Letter 2.1Alexander of Alexandria · ca. 319–324 · In an encyclical letter Alexander tells all bishops of the apostasy of Arius and his followers, warns them against Eusebius of Nicomedia, and begins to list the Arian propositions.
Letter 2.2Alexander of Alexandria · ca. 319–324 · The letter completes the Arian propositions (the Son a changeable creature, foreign to God's essence), reports their condemnation by about a hundred bishops, and begins to refute them from Scripture.
Letter 2.3Alexander of Alexandria · ca. 319–324 · Alexander refutes the claims that the Son is changeable and does not know the Father, noting that the Arians have been expelled like Hymenaeus, Philetus, and Judas before them.
Letter 2.4Alexander of Alexandria · ca. 319–324 · As Christ and Paul foretold, false teachers have come; Alexander asks the bishops to refuse communion and even greetings to the Arians and to ignore Eusebius's letters.
Letter 7.1Antony the Great · before 356 · Antony's seventh letter calls the brothers from servitude to sonship and self-knowledge, and condemns Arius for assigning a time, an end, and movement to the timeless Only-begotten.
Letter to Paulinus of Tyre 3Eusebius of Nicomedia · ca. 320–323 · Eusebius sets out his belief: one unbegotten God, and one who came into being from him, not from his essence, wholly other in nature though perfectly like him.
Letter to Paulinus of Tyre 4Eusebius of Nicomedia · ca. 320–323 · He claims Scripture as his source, citing Proverbs 8 to show that the Son is created, established, and begotten.
Letter to Paulinus of Tyre 5Eusebius of Nicomedia · ca. 320–323 · He argues that if the Son were from the Father's essence, he could not be called created or established.
Letter to Paulinus of Tyre 8Eusebius of Nicomedia · ca. 320–323 · He concludes that all things are from God through the Son, and asks Paulinus to write to Alexander of Alexandria.
Section 1Anonymous · 325 · The synod of Nicaea tells the church of Alexandria that Arius's teaching was anathematized and that Melitius may keep only the bare title of bishop in his own city.
On Ecclesiastical Theology 1.9.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Those who call the Son a creature from nothing make him a brother of creatures, not the Son.
On Ecclesiastical Theology 1.9.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · To call the Son a creature from nothing is to deny that he is truly Son.
Life of Constantine 2.61.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · A doctrinal quarrel among bishops began at Alexandria and spread through Egypt and Libya.
Life of Constantine 2.64.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Constantine's letter to Alexander and Arius opens by stating his twofold purpose.
Life of Constantine 2.69.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · The dispute began when Arius answered Alexander's question about a passage of Scripture.
Life of Constantine 2.73.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · The letter failed, and the dispute spread throughout the East.
Encyclical Letter 2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339 · Athanasius tells how the prefect announced that Gregory of Cappadocia was coming from the court to replace him, against the canons and the will of the people.
Encyclical Letter 5Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339 · Athanasius explains why he withdrew from the city, and describes how the churches were handed to Gregory, the faithful coerced, and a decree sent against him to Constantius.
Encyclical Letter 6Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339 · Athanasius says Gregory was sent by the Eusebians to the Arians, as Pistus had been, and urges the bishops to treat the wrong done to Alexandria as done to them all.
Encyclical Letter 7Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339 · Athanasius asks the bishops to reject any letters from Gregory or the Eusebians, to condemn them, and to write back in support of the Church of Alexandria.
Oration I Against the Arians 1Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius explains that he writes, at his readers' request, to expose the Arian heresy, which disguises itself in the words of Scripture.
Oration I Against the Arians 2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius argues that the Arians, named after Arius as the Manichaeans are named after Mani, cannot be counted as Christians.
Oration I Against the Arians 3Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius shows from the history of heresies that sects take the name of their founders, while the church keeps the name of Christ.
Oration I Against the Arians 4Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius mocks Arius's “Thalia” as a drinking-song style poem and compares Arius's use of Scripture to the Pharisees' pretended piety.
Oration I Against the Arians 5Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius quotes the opening of Arius's “Thalia” and its main claims: the Son was not always, came to be from nothing, and is changeable by nature.
Oration I Against the Arians 6Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius continues quoting Arius: the Word is not true God, does not know the Father or his own substance, and is unlike the Father and the Spirit.
Oration I Against the Arians 7Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius says that Arius's blasphemies should horrify all, recalls his condemnation at Nicaea, and proposes to question those who think the heresy harmless.
Oration I Against the Arians 8Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius argues that quoting Scripture does not make Arius orthodox, since the devil too uses Scripture, and that his teaching is new and not from the fathers.
Oration I Against the Arians 9Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius sets the church's confession of the Son, true God of one substance with the Father, beside the claims of the “Thalia” and asks which is fitting for God.
Oration I Against the Arians 10Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius contrasts the Scriptural confession with the Arian “Thalia,” says the Arians hide their views behind imperial patronage, and traces the heresy to the devil.
Oration I Against the Arians 11Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius attacks the Arian claim “there was once when the Son was not,” showing that it implies a time before the Word, and argues from Scripture that the Son is eternal, the “eternal power” of Rom 1:20.
Oration I Against the Arians 12Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius argues from creation and from many texts (Isaiah, Baruch, Hebrews, the Psalms, the “I am” sayings) that the Son is eternal, as radiance is never without light.
Oration I Against the Arians 13Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius shows that Scripture uses “before” and “when” of creatures, but “always” of the Son, so that the Arian phrases imply a time before the Word, through whom time itself was made.
Oration I Against the Arians 14Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius answers the objection that an eternal Son would be the Father's brother: the Son is begotten from the Father, and God's offspring is eternal because God's nature is always complete.
Oration I Against the Arians 30Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius exposes the Arian question “Is the unoriginate one or two?” as a trap and sets out the different meanings of “unoriginate.”
Oration I Against the Arians 56Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius argues that “having become” in Heb 1:4 is joined to “better” and to the title Son, so it does not make the Son originated, and that making him of the angels' kind repeats Gnostic teaching.
Oration II Against the Arians 19Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · The Arian formula “a creature, but not as one of the creatures” is a pretense: every creature differs from every other, so the phrase leaves the Son one creature among many.
Oration II Against the Arians 28Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Creatures share their tasks and need one another, which cannot be said of the Word; and Asterius's claim that the Son learned to create would make Wisdom something acquired and losable.
Oration II Against the Arians 32Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · The Arians fight not with the church but with God's own testimony; Scripture's images of radiance and impress show the Word's eternity, and they suffice without prying into how.
Oration II Against the Arians 33Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · A word from a mind and radiance from the sun are proper to their source, eternal with it, and do not divide it; so the Son is from the Father without division or beginning.
Oration II Against the Arians 34Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Even bodily offspring do not divide their parents; the faith first taught to every Christian knew an eternal Son, until the Arian tares were sown with their objections from human generation and human words.
Oration II Against the Arians 37Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · The Arians posit a second, true Word and Wisdom in God, making the Son only notionally Word and Wisdom; Athanasius quotes Asterius's argument from 1 Cor 1:24 and Rom 1:20.
Oration II Against the Arians 38Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · If the Son were Word, Wisdom, and Son only in name, he would be nothing in himself; and an unoriginate Wisdom coexisting with God is either the Son or makes God composite.
Oration II Against the Arians 40Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · The only unoriginate Wisdom coexisting with God is the Son; even Asterius, writing against pagans, confessed one Word and one Wisdom, contradicting himself.
Oration II Against the Arians 42Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Grace comes from the Father in the Son; those who deny the true Son, like the Jews who rejected him, endanger even baptism, which requires right faith together with the names.
Oration II Against the Arians 43Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Heretical baptism with the right names but wrong faith is profitless; the Arians, backed by human patronage, are worse than heresies that err about Christ's body, since they blaspheme the Father's own Godhead in the Son.
Oration II Against the Arians 58Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · John's “was” excludes any interval before the Son; in Deut 32, Moses puts “made” before “begot,” showing that human beings are made by nature and only afterwards called begotten by grace.
Oration II Against the Arians 70Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Only if the Word is true God and his flesh truly human could humanity be freed and deified; Arians who deny the first are as wrong as Valentinians who deny the second.
Oration III Against the Arians 2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Asterius explains John 14:10 as meaning only that Christ's words and works came from the Father; Athanasius replies that this makes the saying true of every prophet and saint.
Oration III Against the Arians 7Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Texts calling God “one” and “only” are not aimed at the Son, who is no rival to the Father but glorifies him; they are directed against the false gods made by human beings.
Oration III Against the Arians 15Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · The sun-and-radiance image shows one principle, not three gods as Greeks charge; it is the Arians, with a created Son and Spirit, who fall into polytheism, while the church confesses one Godhead in the Trinity.
Oration III Against the Arians 27Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · The Arians, stumbling at Christ's human experiences, repeat the objections of those who rejected him in the Gospels, and both deny the Word's Godhead because of his flesh.
Oration III Against the Arians 55Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · The one who wept and hungered also raised Lazarus and gave sight to the blind; his sufferings show that the impassible God took passible flesh, and his works show that he is the Word.
Oration III Against the Arians 59Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Now the Arians say the Son came into being “by the Father's will”; Athanasius argues that this means the same as “there was when he was not,” and that Scripture speaks only of the Son's “being.”
Oration III Against the Arians 60Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Scripture speaks of will only for creatures; the idea of a will preceding the Word comes from the Valentinian Ptolemy, and Asterius's argument makes the Son one of the things made.
Oration III Against the Arians 62Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · The Arian dilemma “by will or by necessity” ignores what is by nature, which is above both; as God is good by nature, not by choice or compulsion, so he is Father of the Son by nature.
Oration IV Against the Arians 3Athanasius of Alexandria · 4th century (disputed) · The author argues that the Word must be from God himself, and so is distinct from the Father yet one with him, and warns against making the Word merely attached to God.
Oration IV Against the Arians 8Athanasius of Alexandria · 4th century (disputed) · The author shows that the Arians and their opponents who deny the Son's subsistence each contradict themselves.
Oration IV Against the Arians 11Athanasius of Alexandria · 4th century (disputed) · The author argues that those who say the Word was put forth for creation, like the Arians who say he was created for us, make the Word depend on us and God inactive before.
Oration IV Against the Arians 17Athanasius of Alexandria · 4th century (disputed) · The author explains that in John 10:30–38 Jesus refutes both Sabellius and Arius, and that the sayings of unity with the Father are spoken by the Son.
Oration IV Against the Arians 25Athanasius of Alexandria · 4th century (disputed) · The author rejects both Arius and Sabellius, and shows that the Sabellian image of one Father “broadened” into Son and Spirit makes the incarnation, baptism, and creation merely temporary.
Historical Fragments 1.4.3.1Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 343–367 · The seventy-three signatures of the Eastern bishops at Serdica.
Historical Fragments 1.7.5.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 343–367 · Liberius reports the failure at Arles, asks for a council to confirm Nicaea, and sends Lucifer, Pancratius, and Hilary as envoys.
Historical Fragments 2.2.6.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 343–367 · Ursacius and Valens anathematize Arius and his teaching and promise not to act against Athanasius without Julius.
Historical Fragments 2.2.9.6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 343–367 · Hilary summarizes Arius's teaching that the Son was made from nothing, condemned at Nicaea.
Historical Fragments 2.2.9.7Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 343–367 · The council of Nicaea condemns the Arians and sets out the faith.
Defence against the Arians 17Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 349–357 · The bishops cite witnesses and letters, including Constantine’s, against the charges, and argue that the Meletian John was a tool of the Arian party, whose real aim was to remove an opponent of their heresy.
Defence against the Arians 24Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 349–357 · Julius explains that the Eusebians wanted him to write to Pistus, an Arian appointed by the deposed Secundus, which would have dishonored Nicaea.
Defence against the Arians 44Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 349–357 · The synod’s encyclical relates that the Eastern bishops came to Sardica but, though summoned repeatedly in the presence of Hosius and others, refused to face Athanasius, Marcellus, and Asclepas.
Defence against the Arians 47Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 349–357 · The synod reports that Marcellus’s book was found orthodox when read in context, that Asclepas proved his innocence, and that the Eastern bishops promoted deposed Arians.
Defence against the Arians 48Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 349–357 · The synod names the leaders of the Arian party and reports, on the evidence of two bishops who left them, that they had agreed beforehand to avoid the trial.
Defence against the Arians 58Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 349–357 · Athanasius quotes the recantation of Ursacius and Valens to Julius, with their anathema of Arius, and their letter of peace to himself, and prepares to recount the affair from its beginning.
Defence against the Arians 84Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 349–357 · Athanasius reveals the purpose of the plot: the same bishops went on to Jerusalem and received Arius into communion, as their synodal letter shows.
Defence against the Arians 89Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 349–357 · Athanasius points to the exile of many bishops, including Liberius and Hosius, as proof that they upheld the judgments in his favor, explaining that both later yielded only under compulsion.
Defence against the Arians 90Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 349–357 · Athanasius closes by commending the testimony of so many bishops, and the sufferings of Liberius and Hosius, as a lasting witness against the Arian heresy.
On the Decrees of Nicaea 1Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · Athanasius praises his correspondent for refuting the Arians, who, like the Pharisees with Jesus, invent pretexts such as the complaint that Nicaea used unscriptural terms.
On the Decrees of Nicaea 2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · The Arians, like the Pharisees, cavil at the council’s wording instead of defending the views for which they were condemned.
On the Decrees of Nicaea 3Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · The Arians at Nicaea were silenced, and Eusebius of Nicomedia’s party and even Eusebius of Caesarea signed the creed with “from the essence” and “of the same essence.”
On the Decrees of Nicaea 5Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · From Moses back to Adam and on to Paul the teaching has been one, so the Arians must either condemn their leaders’ change of mind or accept the council.
On the Decrees of Nicaea 6Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · Athanasius quotes the Arian claims that the Son is a creature, and asks in which of Scripture’s two senses of “son” they take him: by adoption for virtue, or by nature.
On the Decrees of Nicaea 7Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · Athanasius refutes the Arian claim that the Son alone was made by God directly and everything else through him, showing that it leads to an infinite regress of mediators.
On the Decrees of Nicaea 9Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · Even Adam, though formed by God’s hand, does not differ in nature from other men; so on Arian premises the Son would not differ from creatures.
On the Decrees of Nicaea 10Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · If the Son were Son only by adoption he would differ from us only in degree; but he is Son by nature, though not with a human, bodily kind of generation.
On the Decrees of Nicaea 13Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · The Arians appeal to Prov 8:22, “The Lord created me,” but Scripture distinguishes making a creature, like a house, from begetting a son.
On the Decrees of Nicaea 15Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · Since Scripture calls the Son God’s Word and Wisdom, saying he once was not means saying God was once without Word and Wisdom.
On the Decrees of Nicaea 19Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · The council wrote “from the essence” because the Arians claimed that “from God” applied to all creatures alike.
On the Decrees of Nicaea 20Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · Because the Arians claimed that “like,” “always,” “power,” and “in him” applied to us too, the council wrote “of the same essence” and added its anathemas.
On the Decrees of Nicaea 28Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · The Arians borrowed the non-scriptural term “unoriginate” from the Greek philosophers to reintroduce their condemned claims about the Son.
On the Decrees of Nicaea 29Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · Even in the sense “without cause of being,” calling God unoriginate names him in relation to his works, not to the Son, as a builder is maker of houses but father of his son.
On the Decrees of Nicaea 30Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · Calling God “Father,” as Christ taught in prayer and baptism, is truer than calling him “unoriginate,” because it names the Son as well.
On the Decrees of Nicaea 32Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · Scriptural terms would be preferable, but Arian craft forced the council to use clearer words; Athanasius closes by asking that the letter be read to the brothers.
On the Opinion of Dionysius 1Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · Athanasius writes to a correspondent because the Arians claim that Dionysius of Alexandria shared their views.
On the Opinion of Dionysius 2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · The Arians can find support neither in Scripture nor in pious human reasoning for calling the Son a creature.
On the Opinion of Dionysius 6Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · Unlike Arius, Dionysius defended and corrected his letter, which he had written by way of accommodation, as a physician or teacher adapts to his patients or pupils.
On the Opinion of Dionysius 12Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · Dionysius’s other letters show that he did not mean Christ to be a mere man; Athanasius will quote them.
On the Opinion of Dionysius 13Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · Some brothers denounced Dionysius of Alexandria to Dionysius of Rome, who condemned both Sabellianism and the creature doctrine; Dionysius of Alexandria then wrote his Refutation and Defense.
On the Opinion of Dionysius 16Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · Dionysius taught that the Father was always Father, and that the names Father, Son, and Spirit are inseparable: the Monad is expanded into the Triad and the Triad gathered into the Monad.
On the Opinion of Dionysius 21Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · Dionysius explained that he called God “maker” in relation to Christ’s flesh, or in the loose sense in which an author “makes” his words.
On the Opinion of Dionysius 23Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · Against Arius’s claim of two Words, Dionysius compared the Son to the word that springs from the mind, distinct yet inseparable.
On the Opinion of Dionysius 27Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · Against Sabellius, Christ’s human traits are decisive; against the Arians, his divine titles; the Arians, having no support in the fathers, follow only the devil.
Two Tractates and a Letter 3Potamius of Lisbon · ca. 350-360 · Potamius praises Athanasius for condemning the Arian heresy and argues from Scripture for the Son's unity of substance with the Father.
Letter to Marius Victorinus 1Candidus the Arian · ca. 355–360 · Candidus opens his reply to Victorinus by appending Arius's letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia, in which Arius complains of persecution by Bishop Alexander and states that the Son has a beginning and came from nothing.
Letter to Marius Victorinus 2Candidus the Arian · ca. 355–360 · Candidus appends Eusebius of Nicomedia's letter to Paulinus, which argues from Proverbs 8 and other uses of “begot” that the Son was created by God's will and is not from the Father's substance.
Letters 2Eusebius of Vercelli · 355-360 · From exile at Scythopolis, Eusebius thanks his churches for their letters and gifts, describes his mistreatment by the Arians under Patrophilus, quotes his protest, and urges them to keep the faith.
To the Bishops of Egypt 4Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 356 · Athanasius argues that heresies use Scripture's words without its sense, and warns that the Arians plan to send the Egyptian bishops a new creed to sign under threat of banishment, in order to bury Nicaea.
To the Bishops of Egypt 6Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 356 · Athanasius mocks the Arians' yearly new creeds, which they write to cover their plots and which they keep changing.
To the Bishops of Egypt 7Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 356 · Athanasius lists the Arian bishops who were promoted for their heresy and warns that George of Cappadocia, a man of violent character, is about to be sent to Alexandria.
To the Bishops of Egypt 8Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 356 · Athanasius urges the bishops to hold to the Nicene faith and to reject the Arians' writings even when they use Scripture's words, contrasting them with the orthodox bishops whose writings could be trusted.
To the Bishops of Egypt 10Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 356 · Athanasius argues that a creed which says nothing about the Arian errors is like a physician who ignores the wound and talks about the healthy limbs.
To the Bishops of Egypt 11Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 356 · Athanasius argues that the Arians must answer the charges actually brought against them, and then sets out the statements of Arius for which Alexander cast him out of the Church.
To the Bishops of Egypt 13Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 356 · Athanasius recalls Nicaea's unanimous condemnation of Arius and sets the Arian statements against John, Paul, and the words of Christ.
To the Bishops of Egypt 14Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 356 · Athanasius argues that Scripture, the angels and even the demons know only one Son and Word, and that a created Word would need another Word through whom to be made.
To the Bishops of Egypt 16Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 356 · Athanasius likens the Arians to the Manichees, who name a God without works, and rejects their claims that the Son is one power among many and does not know the Father or himself perfectly.
To the Bishops of Egypt 17Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 356 · Athanasius answers the Arian appeal to “The Lord created me” by referring such expressions to Christ's human flesh, and judges Arianism worse than other heresies because it attacks the Godhead itself.
To the Bishops of Egypt 18Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 356 · Athanasius challenges the Arians to state their doctrine openly, and recalls how Arius hid his views and swore a false oath before Constantine.
To the Bishops of Egypt 19Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 356 · Athanasius tells of Arius's sudden death at Constantinople on the eve of his readmission, and urges the bishops to judge the Arians' writings by Arius's own words.
To the Bishops of Egypt 20Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 356 · Athanasius begins to argue that the Arians would be believed only if they renounced Arius's Thalia; the rest of the letter is lost in the scan.
Life of Antony 68Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Antony kept apart from Melitian schismatics, Manichees, and other heretics, and drove away Arian visitors, calling their teaching worse than snake venom.
Life of Antony 69Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · When the Arians claimed him, Antony came to Alexandria and denounced Arianism, teaching that the Son is the eternal Word and Wisdom of the Father’s being, not a creature.
Life of Antony 82Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Antony saw distant events in visions, including mules kicking at the Lord’s table, which foretold the Arian seizure of the churches; he promised that the church would be restored.
Life of Antony 91Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Dying on the inner mountain, Antony charged his two disciples to persevere, to avoid schismatics and Arians, to bury him in secret, and to divide his few garments between Athanasius and Serapion.
On the Trinity 1.23Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Book 4 will answer the Arian creed and show from the Old Testament that Christ is God without denying that God is one.
On the Trinity 1.29Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Book 9 will answer the Arian use of texts such as “No one is good but God,” “the only true God,” “the Father is greater than I,” and the Son's not knowing the day.
On the Trinity 1.33Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Book 11 will answer the Arian use of “my God and your God” and of the Son's final subjection in 1 Corinthians 15.
On the Trinity 1.34Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Book 12 will refute the Arian slogans “there was when he was not” and “he was made from nothing,” teaching an eternal birth of the Son.
On the Trinity 2.23Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The Gospels answer Sabellius, Ebion, and the Arians alike; Peter's confession, “You are the Son of the living God,” is the rock of faith.
On the Trinity 3.22Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The Son's chief work was to reveal God as Father; the Arian view of the Son as a creature empties the names Father and Son of meaning.
On the Trinity 4.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The Arians teach that Christ is a son and god by adoption and appointment, a creature made from nothing, though the highest of creatures.
On the Trinity 4.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The Arians reject the term homoousion (“of one substance”) by claiming it implies Sabellianism, a prior shared matter, or a division of God.
On the Trinity 4.5Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The Arians place the Son's birth in time, claiming that to call him eternal would make him unbegotten.
On the Trinity 4.8Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Hilary lists the texts the Arians cite to reserve to the Father alone the titles one, wise, true, good, powerful, unchangeable, immortal, invisible, and unbegotten.
On the Trinity 4.9Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · If the Father's attributes belonged to him “alone,” the Son would be false, foolish, bodily, evil, weak, and mortal; the Arian argument proves too much.
On the Trinity 4.11Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The Arians call the Son a perfect creature made from nothing, citing Proverbs 8:22, Hebrews, and “the Father is greater than I.”
On the Trinity 4.12Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The Arian creed (the letter of Arius to Alexander) confesses one unbegotten God and calls the Son a perfect creature made by God's will before the ages.
On the Trinity 4.13Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The Arian creed continues: the Son was not before he was born, is not co-eternal with the Father, and the Father as his principle rules over him.
On the Trinity 4.41Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Those who oppose the Son will be put to shame; the Father himself says to the Son, “There is no God besides you,” so the Arian “honor” to the Father dishonors him.
On the Trinity 5.25Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The Arians cite “they will bless you, the true God” to deny the Son's true divinity; Hilary also confesses one true God, but in the nature of the Son as well.
On the Trinity 6.1Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Hilary writes knowing that the Arian heresy has spread through the churches of almost every province, and that error shared by many is hard to correct.
On the Trinity 6.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The Arian creed borrows pious language to introduce its impiety; Hilary sets it out again to answer it from the Gospels.
On the Trinity 6.5Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The Arian creed (letter of Arius to Alexander) is quoted again: the Son a perfect creature made by God's will before the ages.
On the Trinity 6.6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The conclusion of the Arian creed is quoted again: the Son not co-eternal, the Father his principle and his God.
On the Trinity 6.7Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The Arian creed is a coiled serpent: it uses true names to slip in falsehood, never calling the Son God and condemning other heresies to disguise its own.
On the Trinity 6.13Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · In rejecting “one who existed before and was afterward born,” the Arians prepare to deny the Son's true birth from God and to say he came from nothing.
On the Trinity 6.15Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The Arian creed ends by claiming that birth from God's substance would make God bodily and divisible; Hilary hopes that those erring from ignorance will be corrected.
On the Trinity 6.50Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The high priest's question shows that even unbelieving Jews held the Christ to be the Son of God; the Arians, who know he was born of Mary, deny it with less excuse.
On the Trinity 7.6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The Arians and Sabellius refute each other: Sabellius shows God in Christ's works, the Arians that the Son is distinct; the church holds both.
On the Trinity 7.7Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Photinus, Sabellius, and the Arians each refute part of the others' errors; the church holds the whole truth: the Son exists, is God by nature, and is the Creator before the ages.
On the Trinity 7.23Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The Arians, unable to stone Christ like the Jews of John 10, attack him with words, denying that “I and the Father are one” means one nature.
On the Trinity 8.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Hilary sets out the heretics' three questions and the argument by which they use the oneness of God to deny that Christ is God by nature.
On the Trinity 9.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Hilary lists the heretics' proof-texts: Mark 10:18, John 17:3, John 5:19, John 14:28, and Mark 13:32.
On the Trinity 12.5Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · If Christ were a creature, he would share creation's subjection to vanity and corruption and its waiting for liberty (Rom 8:19–21), which is absurd.
On Saint Athanasius 2.7Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer charges the emperor with lying to the Holy Spirit like Ananias and Sapphira, and compares the Arians' threats to the elders who tried to force Susanna and then bore false witness against her.
On Saint Athanasius 2.11Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer applies Daniel's sentence on Susanna's accusers to the emperor, sets out the Nicene faith (homoousion) against his Arianism, and recalls that as papal legate he had already called him the forerunner of the Antichrist.
On Saint Athanasius 2.20Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer argues that if the Son were a creature the prophets would have died for a creature, places the emperor among the killers of the prophets, and applies the parable of the wedding feast and the guest without a wedding garment.
Letters 1Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer and the papal legates Pancratius and Hilarius urge Eusebius of Vercelli to come quickly and join them against the Arians.
Letters 6Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Athanasius, in hiding from the Arian persecution, thanks Lucifer for his books, praising them as the work of the Holy Spirit and calling him the Elijah of the age.
That One Must Die for the Son of God 4Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Recalling his defiance before the emperor at Milan, Lucifer restates the Nicene faith in the Son as homoousios, claims that Christians everywhere hold it while Arianism has withered, and says that Christ present in his martyrs makes torture their glory.
That One Must Die for the Son of God 10Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer defends the equality of the Son with the Father from Philippians 2:6 and Jesus' sayings in John, says that whatever has a beginning can have an end, and applies Paul's warnings about apostates of the last times to the Arians.
That One Must Die for the Son of God 11Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer mocks Constantius's shifting creeds and his promotion of Eudoxius, contrasts the polished but unpersuasive speech of the Arians with the plain truth of the Scriptures, and says that religion is defended not by killing but by dying, as the apostles did.
That One Must Die for the Son of God 12Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer says the demons persecute the bishops through Constantius but are conquered in the martyrs, refers the emperor to his book On Apostate Kings, and argues from Philippians 2 that the Arians read only the texts of Christ's humiliation and ignore those of his eternal divinity.
On Not Agreeing with Heretics 2Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · From Korah's rebellion, the laws against covenants with the nations and against adultery, and the fall of Jericho, Lucifer argues that Christians may have no fellowship with Arians.
On Not Agreeing with Heretics 3Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · From the man of God who was killed for eating with the false prophet at Bethel, Lucifer argues that table and worship with Arians is forbidden, and calls Constantius a false prophet of peace.
On Not Agreeing with Heretics 5Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · From the Psalms Lucifer argues that the blessed keep away from the counsel of the ungodly, and denounces the emperor's councils as gatherings of evildoers that exile and imprison the faithful.
On Not Agreeing with Heretics 6Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · From the warnings of Proverbs against the way of the wicked and the harlot, Lucifer argues that joining the Arians is spiritual adultery and leads to Gehenna.
On Not Agreeing with Heretics 7Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Citing the Psalms on hating the wicked, Lucifer says the faithful cannot be friends of the emperor as his court bishops Valens, Ursacius, Epictetus and Saturninus are.
On Not Agreeing with Heretics 9Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer argues that heretics such as Sabellius, Marcion, Paul of Samosata and Arius have been cut off from the church like an offending member, and contrasts the Arian creed with the apostolic faith in Father, Son and Spirit.
On Not Agreeing with Heretics 10Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer quotes Hebrews 3:2–4:13 on the unbelief that kept Israel from God's rest, and Peter's call to escape a crooked generation, to show that the faithful must withdraw from the Arians.
On Not Agreeing with Heretics 12Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · From Paul's charges to Timothy to avoid false teachers and profane novelties, Lucifer argues that the faithful must keep the Nicene faith and withdraw from the emperor's councils.
On Not Agreeing with Heretics 13Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · From Judas Maccabeus's withdrawal to the desert, the leaven of the Pharisees, Paul's command to come out and be separate, and John's ban on greeting false teachers, Lucifer argues for complete separation from the Arians.
On Not Agreeing with Heretics 14Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer argues that though Constantius confesses Christ come in the flesh, by calling the Son a creature he lacks both Father and Son, and that the faithful must avoid such heretics as children of darkness.
On Not Sparing Those Who Sin against God 6Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · From the priests who drove the leprous King Uzziah out of the temple, Lucifer argues that the bishops may rightly tell Constantius that an Arian may not assemble with the church, and contrasts Josiah, who killed idolaters, with the mere words the bishops have used.
On Not Sparing Those Who Sin against God 18Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer argues that Constantius's Arianism differs from Photinus's and Paul of Samosata's denial of the Son only in words, quotes the Nicene Creed with its anathemas, and warns him from John the Baptist's imprisonment and the parable of the pounds.
On Not Sparing Those Who Sin against God 24Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · From John's command to test the spirits, Lucifer argues that, as those who deny Christ's incarnation are antichrists, so the Arians, who deny that the Son is truly born of the Father's substance, carry the spirit of Antichrist.
On Not Sparing Those Who Sin against God 31Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer explains that he quoted Daniel's whole vision to show that persecuting tyrants are called beasts, and argues that Constantius, speaking against God by calling the Son a creature, is either Antichrist or his forerunner.
On Apostate Kings 6Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer lists further idolatrous kings of Judah and Israel (Abijam, Baasha, Omri, Jehoshaphat, Ahab) who reigned long, to show that the emperor's prosperity is no proof of right faith, and begs him to return to the church.
On Apostate Kings 7Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer argues that Ahab, though an idolater and killer of prophets, was given victory over Ben-hadad to call him to repentance, and that the emperor's victories likewise prove God's patience, not his approval.
On Apostate Kings 8Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · From Ahab's hatred of Micaiah, and the long reigns of Jeroboam II, the leprous Uzziah, and the idolater Manasseh, Lucifer argues that God's patience is no sign of approval and calls Arianism a leprosy of the soul.
On Apostate Kings 9Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer calls Constantius a second Manasseh who has brought heresy into the church, and says that denying the Son of God is the sacrifice the devil now prefers to the burning of children.
Letter to the Monks 1.2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357 · The covering letter to the monks ends by asking them to treat the work as a refutation of the Arians, to return it uncopied, and to pray; then a fragment of the History describes how the emperor imposes unknown bishops on unwilling people.
Letters to Serapion 1.1Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Writing from the desert, Athanasius answers Serapion’s report that some who left the Arians now call the Holy Spirit a creature, one of the ministering spirits.
Letters to Serapion 1.2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Those who call the Spirit a creature divide the Triad into creator and creature, and so err about the Son and the Father too.
Letters to Serapion 1.29Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · If the Spirit were a creature, baptism into the Triad would mix a creature into the Godhead, and the Tropici, like the Arians, would be worshiping the creature.
Letters to Serapion 2.6Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · A father begets, not makes, a son of the same essence; so God’s Son is of the same essence, and texts such as “he created” refer to his becoming man.
Letters to Serapion 4.22Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · The Pharisees, worse than Pharaoh’s magicians, and the Arians alike deny Christ’s Godhead and incur the unpardonable sin; the pious, confessing him God and man, will reign with him.
History of the Arians 44Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357 · Hosius’s letter to Constantius: he recounts the fair challenge offered to Athanasius’s enemies at Sardica, urges the emperor to stop persecuting, and insists that church affairs belong to the bishops, not the emperor.
History of the Arians 48Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357 · Athanasius recounts the assault of Syrianus, Constantius’s letter inciting Alexandria against him, and the emperor’s false claim that he had restored Athanasius only for his brother’s sake, contrasting his conduct with his father’s and brother’s.
History of the Arians 66Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357 · Athanasius contrasts Arianism with other heresies: where they rely on persuasive words, the Arians rely on the power of the magistrates.
History of the Arians 70Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357 · Athanasius describes Constantius as the slave of his advisers, condemns the order handing all the churches of Egypt and Libya to the Arians as worse than any persecution, and begins to list the original Arians now restored.
History of the Arians 72Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357 · Athanasius lists the Egyptian bishops exiled in 356–357 and describes the tortures of laymen and virgins, and the replacement of the exiles by unworthy men who had bought their sees.
History of the Arians 80Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357 · Athanasius closes the History by urging the faithful to separate from the heresy; after a gap there follows the end of the Alexandrian people’s protest describing the night attack of the duke Syrianus on the church in February 356.
Letters 8, 9Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil explains his withdrawal to the Caesareans and defends the Trinity against Anomoean arguments from Scripture; a damaged second letter to Maximus judges Dionysius of Alexandria and accepts “like in essence” only with “without difference.”
Letter 16Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil challenges Eunomius, who claims to comprehend God, to explain first the nature of an ant.
Letter 20Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil teases Leontius for not writing and sends him his work against Eunomius for criticism.
Letters 89, 90Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil asks Meletius to direct Dorotheus's mission to the West and to receive Athanasius into communion; a second letter, to the Western bishops, describes the ruin of the Eastern churches and asks for help.
Letter 92Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · A joint letter of thirty-two Eastern bishops to the bishops of Italy and Gaul describing the Arian ruin of the Eastern churches and begging them to send a synod to restore the Nicene faith and heal the schisms.
Letter 130Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil explains to Theodotus why he has broken with Eustathius of Sebasteia, who has attacked him, offered an Arian creed, and reportedly re-ordained clergy.
Letter 222Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil thanks the Chalcidians for a letter that refreshed him as the Arian 'fire' spreads toward Cappadocia, praises the unity of their clergy and people, and urges them to hold together.
Letter 242Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil appeals to the Western bishops to send envoys and letters to the persecuted Eastern Churches, whose congregations, refusing the Arian 'leaven', now worship in the open air.
Letter 244Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil explains to Patrophilus of Aegae how his breach with Eustathius of Sebaste came about, rebutting the charges of communion with Apollinarius and of deceit over the Nicopolitan creed, and listing the many creeds Eustathius has accepted, before asking whether Patrophilus remains in communion with him.
Letter 257Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil tells monks persecuted by the Arians that their reward will be greater than that of the martyrs under pagan persecutors, because their sufferings are not even honored as martyrdom, and urges them to stand firm though bishops are exiled and clergy betray the faith.
Letter 263Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil asks the Western bishops to denounce publicly to the Eastern Churches three men who are disturbing them while claiming orthodoxy: Eustathius of Sebaste, Apollinarius, and Paulinus of Antioch, whose teachings and careers he describes.
Letter 364Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Apollinarius explains why the Nicene faith had to be restated against those who replaced homoousios with 'like in essence', insists that homoousios means the Son is God, and adds the Spirit's place in the same Godhead.
Against the Arians 2Phoebadius of Agen · ca. 357-358 · Phoebadius outlines the errors of the Sirmian creed: its veiled denial of one God, its banning of the word “substance,” and its making the Son lesser, temporal, and subject like a slave.
Against the Arians 3Phoebadius of Agen · ca. 357-358 · Phoebadius argues that the creed’s “one God, the almighty Father” is a trap: it confesses one Father, not one God, and calls the Son God only as men may be called gods.
Against the Arians 4Phoebadius of Agen · ca. 357-358 · Phoebadius answers the creed’s denial of “two gods” by showing that it uses Christ’s words in his humanity to make the Son a creature, failing to distinguish his two states.
Against the Arians 8Phoebadius of Agen · ca. 357-358 · Phoebadius argues that “one substance” means one divinity, power, and glory in Father and Son, and that the Arians reject it because they divide the Son from the Father.
Against the Arians 9Phoebadius of Agen · ca. 357-358 · Phoebadius argues that the Arians cannot both assign the Son a beginning and declare his birth unknown, and explains “Who will declare his generation?” as pointing to an eternal and indescribable birth.
Against the Arians 10Phoebadius of Agen · ca. 357-358 · Phoebadius explains “from, with, and in” the Father, compares the Arian claim that the Son’s origin is unknown to the unbelief of the Jews in John 9, and notes that the Son reveals the Father to whom he wills.
Against the Arians 12Phoebadius of Agen · ca. 357-358 · Phoebadius answers the Arian use of “The Father is greater than I” by showing from John that the Son shares the Father’s honour, works, and divinity.
Against the Arians 13Phoebadius of Agen · ca. 357-358 · Phoebadius explains “The Father is greater than I” as referring to the Father as unoriginate source, and shows that “I in the Father and the Father in me” rules out both Sabellius and Arius.
Against the Arians 14Phoebadius of Agen · ca. 357-358 · Phoebadius argues from John that the Son does all the Father’s works, is one with him by nature, and knows him perfectly, which would be impossible if the Son had a beginning.
Against the Arians 15Phoebadius of Agen · ca. 357-358 · Phoebadius argues that making the Son subject to the Father along with creation numbers him among creatures, contradicting the Scriptures that God is one and that the Son bears the Father’s name.
Against the Arians 17Phoebadius of Agen · ca. 357-358 · Phoebadius argues that the Son, like the Father, is invisible in his divine nature, since the Old Testament appearances of God were seen only in dreams, mirrors, and visions.
Against the Arians 22Phoebadius of Agen · ca. 357-358 · Phoebadius sets the Catholic rule between the Patripassian and Arian errors: one substance in distinct persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God.
Against Arius 1.1Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus begins his reply by comparing the letters of Arius and Eusebius of Nicomedia with the Nicene faith, accepting their denials but rejecting the claim that the Son was made from nothing.
Against Arius 1.3Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus argues from John 1:1–3 that the Word, who was in the beginning and made all things, cannot be from nothing and is equal to the Father, though he differs as the one who acts outwardly.
Against Arius 1.9Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus argues from Philippians 2:6 that the Son is equal to the Father in power and therefore in substance, against Arius.
Against Arius 1.15Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus adds texts from John and Matthew, including the confessions of Satan and the demons, and argues from Matthew 11:27 that only one who shares God's substance can know him.
Against Arius 1.23Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus rejects the Photinian, Arian and homoiousian positions, arguing that substance as such cannot be “like” another substance, so that the Son must be homoousios, not homoiousios.
Against Arius 1.27Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus reads Isaiah 45:14 against Jews, Photinians and Arians, and explains that the Word, God's power and wisdom, always proceeds from the Father as action from being.
Against Arius 1.28Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus attacks the new “homoiousion” party, arguing that its claim to antiquity is empty since Nicaea confirmed the homoousion, and that heretics were condemned for their own errors, not for saying homoousion.
Against Arius 1.43Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus argues that only homoousion preserves one God, and that if the Son is the truth, the Father too is truth and of the same substance, not merely like.
Against Arius 1.45Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus dismisses the Patripassians, Arians, Marcellians and Photinians, and the homoiousian followers of Basil, whose image of a spark struck from stone and iron he calls hidden Arianism.
Against Arius 2.10Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus argues that both the deniers of substance and Basil's party in fact confess substance by calling God light and spirit, and explains that homoousion means “of the same substance” and “together”, excluding Arius's “once he was not”.
Against Arius 2.11Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus praises the Nicene term homoousion as the death of Arianism and argues that, since Father and Son are in each other, one may say “God in God, light in light” as well as “God from God”.
Against Arius 2.12Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus ends Book 2 by finding “light in light” in Psalm 36:9 and “God in God” in Isaiah 45:14, and urges that homoousion, the faith of Nicaea and of the apostles, be preached in all the churches.
On the Generation of the Divine Word 12Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus says God is not one of the things he causes, and recalls the four senses of non-being against Candidus's claim that the Son came from nothing by election.
On the Generation of the Divine Word 24Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus rejects the claim that the Son came from nothing, since what truly is not cannot even be thought by God, and God's power begets only what has the power to be.
On Receiving the Homoousion 1Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus opens his short appeal for accepting homoousion by setting Christian faith in one God, Father and Son, between pagan polytheism and Jewish monotheism, and explaining that God's being is substance (ousia or hypostasis).
On Receiving the Homoousion 2Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus shows that Scripture speaks of God's substance (Jeremiah 23, Psalm 139, Hebrews 1:3) and explains that homoousion means both “of the same substance” and “substance together”, excluding Arius's “from nothing” and “there was when he was not”.
On Receiving the Homoousion 3Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus charges his opponents with being new Arians who say “God from God” yet mean “from nothing”, and answers their argument that generation would divide or diminish God, since spiritual beings beget without change.
On Receiving the Homoousion 4Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus answers the appeal to “Who can tell his generation?” (Isaiah 53:8), offers Latin equivalents of homoousion, cites Psalm 36:9 for “light in light”, and rejects “like substance” from Isaiah and the Psalms.
On the Synods 11Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 358–359 · The text of the Second Creed of Sirmium (357), which forbids talk of substance and calls the Father greater than the Son.
On the Synods 83Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 358–359 · Homoousion was adopted at Nicaea precisely against the Arian denial of the Son's birth from God's substance.
On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia 1Athanasius of Alexandria · 359 (additions 361) · Athanasius 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.
On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia 11Athanasius of Alexandria · 359 (additions 361) · The decree of Ariminum condemned and deposed Ursacius, Valens, and their allies, and the bishops unanimously upheld the Nicene faith.
On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia 13Athanasius of Alexandria · 359 (additions 361) · The 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.
On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia 16Athanasius of Alexandria · 359 (additions 361) · Arius 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.
On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia 17Athanasius of Alexandria · 359 (additions 361) · Before Nicaea, Eusebius of Nicomedia, Eusebius of Caesarea, Athanasius of Nazarba, and George wrote in support of Arius’s views.
On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia 19Athanasius of Alexandria · 359 (additions 361) · Asterius further taught that the Son is one of the intellectual creatures, made by God’s will and power.
On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia 20Athanasius of Alexandria · 359 (additions 361) · The Arian party fights Nicaea because it condemned their heresy, which was hateful before Nicaea, from Artemas back to Caiaphas.
On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia 21Athanasius of Alexandria · 359 (additions 361) · After 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.
On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia 28Athanasius of Alexandria · 359 (additions 361) · The 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.
On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia 31Athanasius of Alexandria · 359 (additions 361) · At 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.
On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia 32Athanasius of Alexandria · 359 (additions 361) · The endless succession of Arian councils and creeds shows that each was deficient and that their authors were fighting Nicaea and the truth.
On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia 34Athanasius of Alexandria · 359 (additions 361) · Only 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.
On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia 36Athanasius of Alexandria · 359 (additions 361) · The 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.
On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia 39Athanasius of Alexandria · 359 (additions 361) · Unscriptural terms with a pious meaning are no fault, while heretics misuse even Scripture; the Arians object to Nicaea only because it condemned their heresy.
On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia 40Athanasius of Alexandria · 359 (additions 361) · Those 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.
Apology 24Eunomius of Cyzicus · ca. 360 · Eunomius argues from Col 1:15–16 that the Son is the image not of the Father's substance but of his activity and will.
Apology 25Eunomius of Cyzicus · ca. 360 · Eunomius teaches that the Holy Spirit is third in nature as well as in order, the first and greatest work of the Only-begotten, without Godhead or creative power but with power to sanctify and teach.
Apology 26Eunomius of Cyzicus · ca. 360 · Eunomius sums up: one unbegotten God made the Son, through whom the Spirit was made; the Son is neither "of the same substance" nor "of like substance" with the Father.
Apology 27Eunomius of Cyzicus · ca. 360 · Eunomius confesses the Son as obedient minister of the Father, incarnate, crucified, risen, and coming as judge, subject with all things to the Father, and closes by urging his hearers to judge rightly before Christ's judgment seat.
Apology 28Eunomius of Cyzicus · ca. 360 · A closing creed-like summary: one unbegotten God who by his will made the Son, and through the Son the Holy Spirit and all things.
On the Orthodox Faith against the Arians 0Gregory of Elvira · ca. 360-392 · The work opens with the Nicene Creed and a preface in which the author explains that he has rewritten an earlier book against the Arians to remove doubts that he confused the persons of Father and Son.
On the Orthodox Faith against the Arians 1Gregory of Elvira · ca. 360-392 · The author warns that heretics who share much with the Catholics are the most dangerous, and argues that the removal of the word “substance” is meant to bring in the Arian teaching that the Son was made from nothing.
On the Orthodox Faith against the Arians 2Gregory of Elvira · ca. 360-392 · The author argues that the Arians replace “of one substance” with “like” in order to make the Son a creature, and shows from Scripture that the Son, as Word and Wisdom, was eternally born of the Father and is the Creator, not a creature.
On the Orthodox Faith against the Arians 3Gregory of Elvira · ca. 360-392 · The author answers the objection that homoousion is not in Scripture: the Arians themselves use the unscriptural “God from God, light from light,” but in a sense that makes the Son a creature, as some heretics speak of resurrection while denying the resurrection of the flesh.
On the Orthodox Faith against the Arians 4Gregory of Elvira · ca. 360-392 · The author answers the Arian objection that God cannot be called “substance,” arguing that God’s substance is his own simple being, and that the Son, born of it, is homoousios with the Father.
On the Orthodox Faith against the Arians 7Gregory of Elvira · ca. 360-392 · The author explains that Father and Son are two persons but one God and one substance, citing Baruch and Isaiah, and rejects both Sabellius and the Arians.
On the Orthodox Faith against the Arians 8Gregory of Elvira · ca. 360-392 · The author answers the Arian argument that the visible and changing appearances of the Son prove a different substance from the Father’s, explaining the theophanies and the incarnation as God showing himself without change, and closes with a confession of the Trinity and of Nicaea.
Against Constantius 14Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–361 · An anomoean explains to Hilary that the Son is "like the Father" by will but "unlike God" in nature.
Against Constantius 15Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–361 · The condemned anomoeans won over Constantius, who forced the Eastern envoys to sign and installed heretical bishops.
Against Constantius 16Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–361 · Constantius bans unscriptural words only when they guard the faith, while admitting new ones that serve heresy.
Tome to the Antiochenes 3Athanasius of Alexandria · 362 · The council sets the terms for reunion at Antioch: anathematize Arianism, confess the Nicene faith, and deny that the Holy Spirit is a creature.
Oration 2.37Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory names three errors about God, Sabellian fusion, Arian division, and tritheist polyarchy, and rejects all three.
Oration 20.2Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory argues from the Old Testament that only the purified may approach God, sets out the doctrine of the Trinity between Sabellius and Arius, answers objections to the Son’s eternal generation, and urges purification and humility before speaking of God.
Oration 21.12Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory laments the sophistical theology that entered the Church, describes Arius’s death and his followers’ errors, and praises Athanasius’s balanced teaching on the Trinity.
Oration 21.13Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory tells how Athanasius opposed Arianism at Nicaea, introduces George of Cappadocia, the usurper of Alexandria, and compares Athanasius’s sufferings with Job’s.
Oration 21.22Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory condemns the synods of Seleucia and Constantinople (359–360), which replaced “of the same essence” with an ambiguous “like according to the Scriptures” and forced bishops to sign it.
Oration 23.1Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory rejects both tritheism and an Arian view that makes the Son and Spirit creatures, sets out the Trinity as one Godhead from one timeless principle, and rejoices in the reconciliation of the orthodox before their opponents.
Oration 25.8Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory surveys the heresies before Arius, the rise of Arianism and its condemnation at Nicaea, and the persecution under Valens, recounting how a presbyter was burned alive on a ship set adrift.
Oration 25.11Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory turns to Hero’s own contest, recalling the death of Athanasius and the violent intrusion of an Arian successor into the see of Alexandria.
Oration 33.1Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory confronts the Arians, who boast of their numbers and wealth, and offers to refute and heal rather than threaten.
Oration 39.10Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Both Sabellius' merging and Arius' division of God are to be rejected as equally impious.
Oration 43.30Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · When the Arian emperor Valens attacked the church, Basil, at Gregory's urging, returned from Pontus, reconciled with his bishop, and led the defence of the faith in the Trinity.
Against Eunomius 1.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil explains why he writes, names Aetius and Eunomius as the authors of the teaching that the Son is unlike the Father in essence, and exposes Eunomius's pose of writing an 'apology' when no accusers or court can be named.
Against Eunomius 1.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil exposes how Eunomius praises the Fathers' creed and then 'corrects' it, mocks his proof that God is unbegotten, argues that 'Father' is the better name, and begins his account of conceptualization (epinoia).
Against Eunomius 1.8Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil exposes Eunomius's claim that calling 'unbegotten' God's essence is a debt of piety, showing that the same logic would make every divine name mean the same thing and would apply equally to the Son.
Against Eunomius 1.9Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil traces Eunomius's argument about privation to Aristotle's Categories and shows that 'unbegotten' belongs with 'incorruptible,' 'invisible,' and 'immortal,' so that his reasoning would prove too much.
Against Eunomius 1.11Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil answers Eunomius's argument by elimination that God is 'unbegotten essence,' granting that God's essence is unbegotten but denying that 'unbegotten' is the essence.
Against Eunomius 1.13Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil notes that Moses did not inquire into the essence of the earth and that God did not reveal even his name to the patriarchs, so that claiming to know God's essence is the height of conceit.
Against Eunomius 1.16Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil explains 'unbegotten' as the mind's recognition that God's life has no beginning, and exposes Eunomius's use of the word to deny that the Father begets a Son who shares his nature.
Against Eunomius 1.17Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil shows that if the Father has no comparison or fellowship with the Son, Christ's words that whoever sees him sees the Father would be false.
Against Eunomius 1.18Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil shows that Eunomius's denial of all comparison between Father and Son overturns the scriptural titles of the Son as seal, image, form of God, radiance, and stamp.
Against Eunomius 1.19Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil quotes Eunomius's denial that Father and Son share a common essence and explains the sense in which the church does confess one essence and one Godhead with distinct properties.
Against Eunomius 1.20Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil distinguishes natural order, such as that of a cause to what comes from it, from order by design, and grants that the Father is prior to the Son as cause but not in nature or time.
Against Eunomius 1.22Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil quotes Eunomius's argument that because God is simple the Son cannot be like him, and asks why the Son, who is equally simple, cannot be like the Father.
Against Eunomius 1.23Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil argues that since the Son, like the Father, is incorporeal and formless, it is pious to compare them.
Against Eunomius 1.24Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil argues that the Jews drew the right inference that calling God Father means equality, and shows that Eunomius's view of 'Father' as an activity contradicts his claim that the Father is greater.
Against Eunomius 1.26Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil exposes the contradiction of calling the Father both 'greater' and 'incomparable,' and argues that belittling the Son removes the knowledge of the Father himself.
Against Eunomius 1.27Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil concludes Book 1: if the Father is incomparable, the Son would be no different from creatures, contrary to his words 'I and the Father are one,' and Eunomius's argument refutes itself.
Against Eunomius 2.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil introduces Book 2 by quoting Eunomius's claim that the saints call the Son 'offspring' and 'thing made,' and proposes to test every claim against the teaching of the Spirit in Scripture.
Against Eunomius 2.2Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil denies that any saint called the Son a 'thing made,' and argues that Acts 2:36 ('God made him Lord and Christ') speaks of the incarnate Christ's authority, not of his coming into being.
Against Eunomius 2.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil argues from the names Peter and Paul that names signify distinctive features, not essences, so a difference of names cannot prove a difference of essence between Father and Son.
Against Eunomius 2.6Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil exposes Eunomius's selective concern about bodily notions of begetting, and argues that 'offspring' is a name never given to the Son in Scripture, which uses 'Son', as the Septuagint translators kept even Hebrew names untranslated out of reverence.
Against Eunomius 2.8Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil argues that Scripture calls the Lord 'Son' but never 'offspring,' a word used of unformed miscarriages, crops, and the 'offspring of vipers.'
Against Eunomius 2.9Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil argues that 'offspring' is a relative term, like 'son' or 'friend,' which indicates a relation, not an essence.
Against Eunomius 2.10Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil shows that if 'offspring' named an essence, all offspring would share one essence and the Son would be the essence of the Father himself.
Against Eunomius 2.11Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil exposes the sophism in Eunomius's claim that the Son's essence 'was not before its own constitution,' showing that it implies the Son came from nothing and the Father became Father later.
Against Eunomius 2.12Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil argues that God is eternally Father, so the Son eternally exists, with nothing between them; the Father is prior only as cause.
Against Eunomius 2.13Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil argues that any interval between Father and Son would make the Son younger than an age or a time, contradicting Scripture that all things, the ages included, came to be through him.
Against Eunomius 2.14Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil answers Eunomius's dilemma ('God begot the Son either when he was or when he was not') from John 1:1: the Word 'was' in the beginning, beyond which nothing can be conceived, and John's prologue proclaims his eternal begetting.
Against Eunomius 2.17Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil answers Eunomius's claim that a Son who 'was' before his begetting would be unbegotten: the Son is eternally begotten, and 'eternal' and 'unbegotten' are different notions.
Against Eunomius 2.18Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil answers Eunomius's claim that the Son was begotten 'not being' by showing that the One who named himself 'He who is' at the burning bush was the Son, called in Scripture both angel and God.
Against Eunomius 2.19Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil denounces calling the Son 'not being,' a phrase Scripture uses of idols, and shows that the 'superiority' Eunomius grants the Son over his works does not imply a difference of essence from creatures.
Against Eunomius 2.20Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil rejects Eunomius's redefinition of 'Only-Begotten' as 'begotten and created by the only one,' briefly treats Prov 8:22 ('The Lord created me,' rendered by other translators 'acquired me'), and shows the absurd consequences of calling the Son a mere minister.
Against Eunomius 2.22Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil answers Eunomius's warning against a 'human' begetting: faith in Father and Son, into whom Christians are baptized, is the heart of the Gospel, and the names indicate a relation, not bodily passion.
Against Eunomius 2.23Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil argues that the names Father and Son, applied to God, point to the impassible cause, and that Christ himself transfers the name 'Father' from human beings to God.
Against Eunomius 2.24Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil argues that even if 'Father' were taken figuratively, Scripture's language of begetting points to kinship of nature, not passion; the manner of the begetting is ineffable but must be believed; and Eunomius contradicts himself about names and essences.
Against Eunomius 2.25Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil quotes Eunomius's dilemma about the Father and Son as 'light' and shows that the opposition he posits between unbegotten and begotten admits no common ground.
Against Eunomius 2.26Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil shows that Eunomius's reasoning would make the Son's 'light' the opposite of light, that is, darkness, and exposes the logical fallacy that consequents of contraries must themselves be contraries.
Against Eunomius 2.27Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil argues that Eunomius's formula would deny that the Son is light, life, and power, contrary to Scripture, and explains that darkness, death, and weakness belong to the powers that fell away by choice, not to any essence.
Against Eunomius 2.28Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil argues that 'unbegotten' and 'begotten' are distinguishing properties of Father and Son within one essence, not opposed essences, so that the one Godhead is known as Father and Son without contrariety.
Against Eunomius 2.30Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil rebuts Eunomius's claim that a 'law of nature' separates the Son's essence from the Father's, arguing that natural law, if anything, makes the offspring akin to the begetter.
Against Eunomius 2.31Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil shows that Eunomius contradicts himself by calling the Father's essence 'free of all laws' and yet bound by a 'law of nature,' and turns his chain of dignity, activity, and image into a proof that the Son is the image of the Father's essence.
Against Eunomius 2.32Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil argues that works reveal a maker's power, not his essence, and that if divine power and essence coincide, Eunomius's argument from works proves the likeness, not the unlikeness, of Father, Son, and Spirit.
Against Eunomius 2.33Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil denounces Eunomius as the first to call the Holy Spirit a 'work,' a blasphemy he uses to argue the Son's inferiority.
Homilies 16.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Expounding John 1:1, Basil shows that the Word's “beginning” has no beginning before it and that the fourfold “was” refutes the Arian “there was when he was not,” while “Word” and “with God” exclude both passion in the begetting and Sabellian confusion.
Homilies 24.0Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Title of Basil's homily against the Sabellians, Arians and Anomoeans.
Homilies 24.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · The Sabellians renew Judaism by making Father and Son one person, the Anomoeans renew paganism by worshiping a created Son; Christ's own words show two persons and one nature.
Against Auxentius 0Hilary of Poitiers · 364–365 · Hilary greets the bishops and peoples who hold the faith of the fathers against Arianism.
Against Auxentius 6Hilary of Poitiers · 364–365 · The Arians give Christ titles that also fit angels and men while denying that he is true God; the people, hearing the words, believe rightly.
Against Auxentius 8Hilary of Poitiers · 364–365 · Hilary analyzes how Auxentius's written creed attaches "true" to "Son" rather than to "God" and keeps the one divinity in the Father alone.
Against Auxentius 11Hilary of Poitiers · 364–365 · Auxentius grants Christ only titles that Scripture also gives to men, Israel, and even the devil, while denying his true deity.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 4.5Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · The Donatist bishops, who sit and teach, slander the Catholics in sermons and forbid their people even to greet them, misapplying texts meant for heretics such as Marcion, Praxeas, Valentinus, Arius and Photinus.
Commentary on Philippians 2:10–12Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The name above every name given to Christ is the divine name he had by nature from his birth from the Father, made manifest after the cross; it was not given to a mere man or by adoption, against the Arians.
Letter to the Africans 1Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 369 · The synod of Egyptian bishops welcomes the Roman synod under Damasus and the Western councils that upheld Nicaea, and warns against those who appeal to the council of Ariminum instead.
Letter to the Africans 3Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 369 · The bishops recall that at Ariminum the Arian leaders were deposed and the orthodox majority held to Nicaea, until the emperor's pressure forced them to yield in Thrace.
Letter to the Africans 4Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 369 · The bishops contrast Nicaea with the Arian councils that forbade speaking of God's essence or hypostasis, and show from Exodus, Jeremiah and Hebrews that hypostasis and essence mean God's very being.
Letter to the Africans 5Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 369 · The bishops explain how the council of Nicaea came to write “from the essence” and “of the same essence” because the Arians could twist every scriptural phrase, and cite earlier bishops and Eusebius of Caesarea for the term.
Letter to the Africans 7Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 369 · The bishops argue that the Son's oneness with the Father cannot be a likeness of virtue and will, as the Arians say, for that belongs to changeable creatures, but must be a likeness of essence.
Letter to the Africans 9Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 369 · The bishops explain that “of the same essence” means what the Nicene anathemas mean, that the Son is no creature, and urge the Africans to reject every council but Nicaea.
Question 97, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Against the Arians, Christ is called the true Son of God, which means he was born from God’s substance; God’s power does not make false things true.
Question 97, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Christ is God’s own Son, born of his substance, and therefore equal to him, as Paul and John testify.
Question 97, section 4Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Everything Scripture ascribes to the Father it also ascribes to the Son, so the Arians misread the passages that show Christ’s true sonship.
Question 97, section 8Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Father and Son are two by birth but one God by nature; since all things were made through Christ, he is not made but born, and the Arian “there was when he was not” is condemned.
Question 97, section 9Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The Arian claim that God “made” Christ to be a true Son would replace birth with will and begetting with making.
Question 97, section 10Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · If God made Christ his true Son, Christ must be what God is and of one substance with him, which the Arians do not mean.
Question 97, section 11Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · To call Christ the true Son while denying his equality with the Father is a deceit, for true sonship implies equality.
Question 97, section 12Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The Arian objection that a simple nature cannot beget is answered by God’s power, which also gave the virgin birth, Jonah’s survival, and the resurrection.
Question 97, section 13Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The Arian argument that a Son begotten by will must come after the will fails, because in God will and begetting are one.
Question 97, section 14Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The Arian dilemma that God must either beget always or never is rejected as an irreverent law imposed on God, contrary to Christ’s word that he is the only Son.
Letter to Adelphius 1Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 370 · Athanasius praises Adelphius for exposing a new Arian error that refuses worship to the incarnate Word, and deplores the heretics' fall.
Letter to Rufinianus 1Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 370–373 · Athanasius tells Rufinianus that the councils decided to pardon clergy who had yielded to force without embracing Arianism and to let them keep their rank, but to admit the leaders of the heresy only as laymen.
Letter 15.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome asks Damasus to rule whether he must say "three hypostases", arguing that the term implies three natures and professing one substance in three coequal persons.
Letter 84.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome describes how the Origenists evade condemnation, arguing that Nicaea's silence about Origen does not clear him, and that they use ambiguous formulas.
Letter 121.7Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome rejects Marcionite and Arian readings of Rom 5:7 and explains that Paul contrasts the rarity of dying for a just man with Christ's dying for the ungodly.
On the Holy Spirit 2.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 374–375 · The heretics use the prepositions "from whom," "through whom," and "in whom" to argue that Father, Son, and Spirit differ in nature.
On the Holy Spirit 30.77Basil of Caesarea · ca. 374–375 · The Arian controversy has split the churches into warring factions: bishops exiled, doctrine twisted to both extremes, self-appointed men seizing office, and no one willing to obey.
Ancoratus 3.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Jews and Arians use the name of Jesus without confessing him as true Lord and God.
Ancoratus 17.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The Son's session at the right hand refutes both Sabellius and Arius.
Ancoratus 27.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Arians cite “my God and your God” to make the Son a creature.
Ancoratus 28.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · “Our image” shows one Godhead, refuting the Anomoeans.
Ancoratus 52.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The Arian dilemma: did the Father beget willingly or not?
Ancoratus 52.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · “Once” implies time; the Arians use words deceptively.
Ancoratus 116.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Arians and Sabellians long for Egypt.
Ancoratus 116.10Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The Arians separate the Son from the Father's substance.
Ancoratus 117.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · John 14:10 refutes the Arians.
Ancoratus 118.13Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The Nicene anathemas.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 30.5.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Josephus opposed the Arians of Scythopolis.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 30.5.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · His rank protected him from the Arian bishop Patrophilus.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 57.10.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Against Arius, John 10:30 affirms unity.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 59.13.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Donatists are also said to be Arian.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 62.3.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Against both Sabellius and Arius.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 62.4.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · One name refutes Arius; “and” refutes Sabellius.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 62.8.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Son is called “true light,” refuting Arius.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.4.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Origen’s teaching gave pretexts to Arius.
On the Christian Faith 1.1Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose states the faith in one God against pagans, Jews, Sabellius, Photinus, and Arius, and argues from the baptismal formula and John 10:30 that the Trinity has one name, one nature, and one power.
On the Christian Faith 1.3Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose argues from Isaiah, Genesis, Psalm 45, Paul, and a passage he ascribes to Jeremiah that Scripture speaks of one God while confessing both Father and Son.
On the Christian Faith 1.5Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose lists the Arian claims about the Son (unlike the Father, begun in time, created, not good, not true Son, not almighty, not one with the Father) and warns against their reliance on dialectic.
On the Christian Faith 1.6Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose proposes to answer the Arians from Scripture, names their divided leaders, and likens heresy to the Hydra and to Scylla, which the faithful must sail past.
On the Christian Faith 1.7Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · From Paul’s calling Christ the image of the invisible God, from Wisdom 7:26, from John 14:9, and from Gen 1:26, Ambrose argues that the Son is not unlike the Father.
On the Christian Faith 1.8Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose argues that the Son is everlasting from Isa 43:10 and from the fourfold “was” of John 1:1–2, which he finds to refute Arius, Sabellius, Photinus, Eunomius, and the Manichaeans.
On the Christian Faith 1.9Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose argues that if the Father became Father at some point, he would have changed, so the Son’s eternal generation follows from God’s unchangeability.
On the Christian Faith 1.11Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose argues from Ps 81:9 that the Son is neither a “new” nor a “strange” God, and shows that arguments from the custom of human birth lead to absurdities.
On the Christian Faith 1.12Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose answers the objection that the Son lacks what sons have by arguing that nothing creaturely applies to God, that both Christ’s eternal generation and his birth from the Virgin are unique, and that they are to be believed, not examined.
On the Christian Faith 1.13Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose answers “how was the Son begotten?” with the image of radiance from light, reads the furnace, Mamre, the Transfiguration, and the burning bush as revelations of the eternal Son, and contrasts simple faith with philosophical disputation.
On the Christian Faith 1.16Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose argues that “begotten” and “created” differ, that Paul forbids serving the creature yet calls himself Christ’s servant, and that a creature cannot exist in the simple nature of God.
On the Christian Faith 1.17Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose argues that the Son is true God and the Father’s own Son, from Rom 8:32, from his coming forth from God, from his sharing the Father’s work, from the confessions of the apostles and the centurion, and from Isa 65 and 1 John 5:20.
On the Christian Faith 1.18Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose quotes the Nicene Creed and its anathemas against the Arians, sees the cross and the name of Jesus in the number of the 318 bishops, and appeals to the Council of Ariminum.
On the Christian Faith 1.19Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose answers the anathematized Arian claims one by one: that there was when the Son was not, that he was not before he was born, that he is from nothing or from another substance, that he is a creature, and that he is changeable; he compares Arius’s death with that of Judas.
On the Christian Faith 2.1Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose answers the Arian use of Mark 10:18 (“No one is good but one, God”): Christ spoke as man to one who did not believe him God, and goodness belongs to the one divine nature, which includes the Son.
On the Christian Faith 2.10Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose explains that the Son’s obedience unto death (Phil 2:8) belongs to his incarnation, shows the one power and work of the Trinity from the passion and from Paul’s prayers, and compares the Son’s subjection to his subjection to Joseph and Mary.
On the Christian Faith 2.13Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose imagines the Arian, the Photinian, the Sabellian, and the Manichaean pleading before Christ the judge, each condemned by his own denial, and ends with his own plea for mercy.
On the Christian Faith 2.15Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose closes the second book: Peter’s confession is enough for faith, the Arians shut their ears like those who heard the Father’s voice as thunder, and Paul and John warn against such sowers of questions and antichrists.
On the Christian Faith 3.6Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose answers the Arian use of John 1:3–4 (“what was made in him”) by discussing its punctuation and showing that things are said to be “made in God” without belonging to his substance.
On the Christian Faith 3.8Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose reads Isa 9:6 (“a child is born, a Son is given to us”) as distinguishing Christ’s human birth from his eternal sonship, and as excluding Jews, Manichaeans, Marcionites, Photinians, Sabellians, and Arians.
On the Christian Faith 3.15Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose defends the Nicene word homoousios (“of one substance”) against the Arians, recalling that Eusebius of Nicomedia rejected it, explaining that it signifies distinction of persons and unity of nature, and urging fidelity to the faith sealed by confessors and martyrs.
On the Christian Faith 3.16Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose warns against Arian formulas that sound orthodox, such as “not a creature like the other creatures,” and insists that Christ be confessed as true God with the Father’s full divinity, seated at his right hand.
On the Christian Faith 4.2Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose teaches that only those who confess Christ almighty may enter heaven, and urges each believer to open and lift up the gates of the heart so that the ascended Christ may enter.
On the Christian Faith 4.3Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose answers the Arian use of 1 Cor 11:3 (“the head of Christ is God”) as said of Christ’s humanity, and distinguishes the unity of Father and Son by nature from the unity of believers by grace (John 17).
On the Christian Faith 4.8Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose answers the Arian claim that the Son is unequal because he did not beget a son: begetting belongs to the Father’s property, not to power or nature, and the Son, of one substance with the Father, has all that the Father has.
On the Christian Faith 4.9Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose answers the Arian dilemmas about the Son’s generation (whether he existed before he was begotten, whether generation began, whether it was willed) by showing that the generation is eternal, like radiance from light, and that even human beings such as Jacob, Jeremiah, and John existed in some sense before birth.
On the Christian Faith 5.1Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose argues that John 17:3 (“you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ”) joins the Son to the Father, and that Christ, being neither a false god nor a god in name only, is true God, the same yesterday, today, and for ever.
On the Christian Faith 5.3Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose answers the Arian charge that one substance means two gods: Scripture uses plurality for things of different substance, while Father and Son, being of one substance, are one God, to be served and worshiped together.
On the Christian Faith 5.8Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose explains that Christ calls the Father “Lord” in respect of his servant form, uses Christ’s question about David’s son and Lord to refute several heresies, and refers texts about Christ as servant and being glorified to his incarnation.
On the Christian Faith 5.9Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose answers the Arian argument from the order of names in the baptismal formula by showing that Scripture often names the Son before the Father.
On the Christian Faith 5.11Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose explains that the Son’s speaking what he hears from the Father expresses their unity of will, and gives a series of arguments that the Son is not a creature.
On the Christian Faith 5.16Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose answers the Arian use of Mark 13:32 (“nor the Son”) by noting that older Greek manuscripts of Matthew lack the words, by explaining them of Christ’s human nature, and by arguing that the Creator of the ages, who foretold the signs, the place, and the order of the end, cannot be ignorant of the day.
On the Christian Faith 5.18Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose gives two explanations of “nor the Son” (love that withholds useless knowledge, and the human condition Christ assumed), then argues that the Son, who has all that the Father has, is less only according to the flesh, and that no creature may sit in judgment on the Father and the Son.
On the Christian Faith 5.19Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose turns in prayer to the Father: no one may measure God or judge between the Father and the Son, and Arius, claiming to know God wholly, outdoes Paul in presumption and imitates the devil’s boast.
Anathema 3Anonymous · ca. 378–382 (traditionally 382) · Anathema on Arius and Eunomius, who call the Son and the Spirit creatures.
Anathema 4Anonymous · ca. 378–382 (traditionally 382) · Anathema on the Macedonians, who are Arians under another name.
On the Making of Man 6Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · Just as one human mind works through many senses, God is not divided by his many powers; and since the three persons make one image, they cannot be unlike in nature, as the Anomoeans claim.
On the Trinity 0Faustinus · ca. 380–384 · Faustinus writes at the request of the empress, who asked how to answer the Arians' proof texts; he will first set out what the Arians really believe.
On the Trinity 1Faustinus · ca. 380–384 · Faustinus sets out the Arian position and refutes it from John 1, Philippians 2, Colossians 1, Genesis 1, and 'I and the Father are one,' arguing that the Son is eternal, equal, and of one substance and will with the Father.
On the Trinity 2Faustinus · ca. 380–384 · Against the claim that God made the Son from nothing, Faustinus cites the Father's voice at the baptism and transfiguration, Peter's confession, John's 'only-begotten' texts, God's gift of his Son compared with Abraham's offering of Isaac, and Psalm 110:3, 'from the womb I begot you.'
On the Trinity 3Faustinus · ca. 380–384 · Faustinus proves the Son almighty and unchangeable from Zechariah, Revelation, Wisdom, the Psalms, and Isaiah, and explains Christ's weaknesses as belonging to the human nature he assumed.
On the Trinity 5Faustinus · ca. 380–384 · Acts 2:36, 'God made him Lord and Christ,' refers to Jesus according to the flesh, who became Lord of those who serve him and Christ, King and Priest, by the anointing of the Spirit, not to the making of the Word's substance.
On the Trinity 6Faustinus · ca. 380–384 · Proverbs 8:22, 'the Lord created me,' does not make Wisdom (Christ) a creature: Wisdom was begotten before it was 'created' for God's works, and 'created' can mean being made something for others, as God is 'made' our refuge.
Theological Oration 3 (Or. 29), On the Son 5Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · God is Father eternally and in the proper sense; biblical tenses show that “he begot” need not imply a temporal beginning.
Theological Oration 3 (Or. 29), On the Son 6Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · Gregory turns the Eunomian dilemma about the Father begetting “willingly or unwillingly” back on its authors.
Theological Oration 3 (Or. 29), On the Son 7Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · Applied to the Father’s own existence, the Eunomian question about will proves absurd.
Theological Oration 3 (Or. 29), On the Son 10Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · If “unbegotten” were God’s substance, the begotten Son could not be God; but unbegotten and begotten are properties within one and the same nature.
Theological Oration 3 (Or. 29), On the Son 11Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · Being unbegotten is a property of the Father, not the divine substance; the Son, begotten of the Father, is equally God.
Theological Oration 3 (Or. 29), On the Son 12Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · Being unbegotten and being God are not the same, or the Eunomian logic would make the Son’s substance older than the Father’s.
Theological Oration 3 (Or. 29), On the Son 14Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · The Eunomian appeal to equivocal names, like the land dog and sea dog, fails because it is meant to make the Son unequal to the Father.
Theological Oration 3 (Or. 29), On the Son 15Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · The Father is greater as the Son’s cause, but the Eunomians fallaciously conclude that he is greater in nature.
Theological Oration 4 (Or. 30), On the Son 7Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · The Father is “greater” as the Son’s cause, while the Son is equal to him in nature.
Theological Oration 5 (Or. 31), On the Holy Spirit 19Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · Using 1 John 5:8 and common equivocal names, Gregory shows that the Eunomian rules about counting and names prove nothing about substance.
To Simplicius on Faith, part 1Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Against those who say the Son once was not and is created, Gregory argues from the commands against a "new" or "foreign" god that such a Son could not be worshipped, and explains "The Lord created me" (Prov 8:22) of the humanity the Word became for our sake.
To Simplicius on Faith, part 2Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Christ is both divine by nature and human by the economy; the Son is eternal as the radiance of the Father's glory is never without the lamp, and as the express image of the Father's hypostasis he cannot be less than the Father, since the Word was in the beginning and wholly with God.
Chapter 3Nicetas, bishop of Remesiana · ca. 380–414 · Nicetas explains that Arius, prying into how God begets, denied both Father and Son, and that Nicaea confessed the Son born from the Father’s substance, “of one substance with the Father.”
Book of Heresies 66.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The Arians, from Arius of Alexandria, call the Son like God.
Book of Heresies 66.2Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Calling the Son only like God makes him like a creature.
Book of Heresies 68.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The Eunomians teach three unequal substances.
Book of Heresies 68.2Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The Eunomians deny that the Son is like the Father.
Book of Heresies 90.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Meletius, once Arian, was received back into the church.
Eleven Tractates 2.46Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · They condemn the Arians, Photinus, and the Patripassians, citing Scripture against each.
Section 5Anonymous · 3 September 381 · Ambrose challenges Palladius either to defend from Scripture Arius's claim that only the Father is eternal or to condemn it.
Section 9Anonymous · 3 September 381 · Palladius refuses to answer whether Arius was right; the bishops press him to confess his faith freely.
Section 11Anonymous · 3 September 381 · Ambrose demands that Palladius condemn or defend Arius; the bishops reject his claim that the emperor wanted the Easterners present.
Section 12Anonymous · 3 September 381 · Ambrose reminds Palladius that he had promised to debate as a Christian and again demands that he condemn Arius or defend him; Palladius refuses.
Section 15Anonymous · 3 September 381 · Ambrose recalls Arius's death as a divine judgment; the legates of Gaul condemn whoever denies that the Son is co-eternal with the Father.
Section 24Anonymous · 3 September 381 · Ambrose distinguishes Christ's death in the flesh from his immortal divinity; the bishops anathematize whoever denies the Son immortality.
Section 36Anonymous · 3 September 381 · Ambrose accuses Palladius of misquoting John 14:28 and explains the Father as greater only according to Christ's flesh.
Section 50Anonymous · 3 September 381 · Palladius again refuses to condemn Arius, and all the bishops anathematize him.
Section 65Anonymous · 3 September 381 · Ambrose asks Secundianus of Singidunum whether Christ is true God; Secundianus will only call him the true Son.
Canon 1Anonymous · 381–382 · The council confirms the Nicene faith and anathematizes the Eunomians, Semi-Arians or Pneumatomachi, Sabellians, Marcellians, Photinians and Apollinarians.
Section 1Anonymous · 382 · The bishops at Constantinople greet Damasus and the Western bishops at Rome and recall the sufferings they endured under the Arians.
Expositio fidei 2Eunomius of Cyzicus · 383 · Eunomius confesses the Son as the only-begotten God, begotten and created before all creation, like the Father only as Son to Father, the agent of creation, judgment, and salvation.
Petition to the Emperors (Libellus precum) 7Faustinus · ca. 383–384 · The petition recalls the condemnation of Arius at Nicaea and the story of his sudden and shameful death in a privy at Constantinople, after bishop Alexander prayed that he not be received into the church.
Petition to the Emperors (Libellus precum) 8Faustinus · ca. 383–384 · Arius's death shows God's judgment on his doctrine and on all who revive it, and confirms as true Catholics those who suffer for the Nicene faith; but Arius left heirs, like worms bred from his corpse.
Petition to the Emperors (Libellus precum) 9Faustinus · ca. 383–384 · The heirs of Arius, with Constantius's support, persecuted Catholic bishops and summoned the councils of Seleucia and Ariminum (359); at Ariminum the bishops at first upheld Nicaea and condemned the formula of Ursacius and Valens, but their envoys to the emperor gave way under pressure.
Petition to the Emperors (Libellus precum) 10Faustinus · ca. 383–384 · The bishops at Ariminum and Seleucia, fearing exile more than eternal punishment, signed the Arian formula; the petitioners ask why they should be punished for refusing communion with such bishops.
Petition to the Emperors (Libellus precum) 11Faustinus · ca. 383–384 · The petitioners list the few bishops who suffered rather than betray the faith: Paulinus of Trier, Lucifer of Cagliari, Eusebius of Vercelli, Dionysius of Milan, Rhodanius, Hilary (though he later compromised), Maximus of Naples, and Rufinianus, run to death by Epictetus of Centumcellae.
Second Apology of David 26Ambrose · ca. 384-397 · Christ’s question about Psalm 110 refutes not only the Jews but Photinians, Sabellians, and Arians: the Son, distinct from the Father, shares his throne and power.
Second Apology of David 70Ambrose · ca. 384-397 · Heresies converge: the Arians, by dividing Father and Son, end up like the Manichees, who split the God of the two Testaments.
Second Apology of David 72Ambrose · ca. 384-397 · Since Christ forgives the debt owed to the one who lent it, Father and Son are one; otherwise the Arians fall into the Manichees’ two gods.
Catechetical Oration 39Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · In baptism one chooses one's own parentage: whoever confesses the Trinity uncreated is born into unchangeable life, but whoever thinks the Son or Spirit a creature is born only into changeable creation.
Letter 1 to Himerius of Tarragona, chapter 1Siricius, bishop of Rome · 385 · Converts baptized by Arians are not to be rebaptized but received by the bishop's laying on of hands.
On the Duties of the Clergy 1.25Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Ambrose explains why he teaches by the forefathers’ examples rather than by definitions, and shows the four virtues in Abraham, Jacob, and Noah.
Exposition of Psalm 118 19.17.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Against the Arians: Christ’s generation from the Father is above time; only his passion and birth fall in time.
Exposition of Psalm 118 20.32.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Heretics used “I can do nothing of myself” to argue the Son is inferior.
Exposition of Psalm 118 22.10.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The Arians, following Aristotle’s dialectic rather than Paul, fell into error about Christ’s generation.
Letter 44.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine shows that the letter Fortunius produced, from the council at Serdica to a bishop Donatus, came from the Arian party that condemned Athanasius and Julius.
Letter 93.31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Hilary's lament for a time of Arian confusion does not mean the church perished; the deceived were pardoned when corrected, and the church survived in its wheat.
Letter 120.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine distinguishes true reason from the false reasoning of the Arians and Macedonians, and notes that philosophers who accepted Christ crucified found the fishermen ahead of them.
Letter 147.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that God appears in forms chosen by his will while his nature stays hidden; Ambrose's wording guards against both Photinians and Arians and against making God mutable.
Letter 170.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Father and Son are relative names, not names of nature, so the Arian argument that the Son is of a different nature fails.
Letter 238.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine writes to the Arian count Pascentius, setting out his faith in writing since Pascentius refused to have their debate recorded.
Letter 238.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine recounts that Pascentius's creed, when written, omitted “Father” and “incomprehensible.”
Letter 238.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine recounts that Pascentius anathematized Arius and Eunomius but demanded that the word homoousios be shown in Scripture, while Augustine insisted the thing matters more than the word.
Letter 238.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine recounts how an Arian admitted “unbegotten” is not in Scripture yet rightly said, which Augustine applied to homoousios.
Letter 238.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine rejects the Arian claim that the Son before the incarnation was visible and corruptible, citing the Wisdom of Solomon on divine Wisdom.
Letter 238.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues from Wis 7:26 that the Father was never without the Son, who is eternally begotten, and confesses the limits of language before Isa 53:8.
Letter 238.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine challenges Pascentius to find Scripture calling different substances “one,” and cites the argument that God either would not or could not beget an equal Son.
Letter 239.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine tells Pascentius that the creed he recited is common to both, and asks him to state and defend from Scripture the Arian points on which they differ.
Letter 242.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine thanks the Arian Elpidius for trying to correct him and for sending an Arian bishop's treatise, and wishes him true knowledge from God, quoting 1 Cor 2:12–14.
Letter 242.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues from John 1:3 that the Son, through whom all things were made, cannot himself have been made.
Letter 242.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine says the Son's generation cannot be declared, but Phil 2:6 calls him equal to God, and only the pure in heart can see this.
Homilies on Matthew 54.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · At Caesarea Philippi Christ draws from the disciples, beyond the people’s opinions, Peter’s confession that he is the Christ, the Son of the living God, which the Father revealed; he names Peter the rock of the church’s faith and promises him the keys, gifts that show the Son’s equality with the Father.
Hexameron (Exameron) 2.18Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · “God said” and “God made” show Father and Son sharing one name and one operation, against those who make the Son inferior.
Hexameron (Exameron) 2.20Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · What God approved is good, and its creator still more so, against the Arians and Eunomians.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.32Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Against Manichees, Photinians, and Eunomians, Ambrose argues from Gen 1:26 that the Son is co-creator and equal to the Father.
Hexameron (Exameron) 6.40Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · God's “Let us make” is addressed not to angels but to the Son, against Jewish and Arian objections.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 35.4.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Christ is servant from his mother's womb, not by divine nature, against Jews and Arians.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 36.35.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · John never says the Word was made, but that the Word was God.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 38.12.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · David exalted his soul by thinking highly of Christ, unlike the Arians.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 43.20.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · God’s name, “I am who I am”, means eternal being; those who deny the Son’s co-eternity deny God.
Sermon 117.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Against the Arians, who argue that a born Son must be later and lesser than his Father, the Catholic faith holds that the Word was born of God without a temporal birth, and Augustine asks for prayer as he undertakes to explain how a Son can be born and yet coeternal.
Sermon 117.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Without claiming to grasp the ineffable, Augustine will offer likenesses to refute the Arians, who argue from creatures that every parent exists before its offspring.
Sermon 117.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Arians’ examples show only temporal sons later than temporal fathers; a likeness can be found instead in things coeval, begotten and begetter beginning together, which point to the Son coeternal with the eternal Father.
Sermon 117.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Scripture calls Wisdom the brightness of eternal light; just as the brightness of a lamp comes from the fire yet exists together with it, the begotten need not be later than the begetter.
Sermon 118.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Word who was in the beginning was not made, since all things were made through him, but begotten of the Father; Father and Son are one God, and the Arian claim that there was a time when the Word was not is false.
Sermon 118.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Son is the Father’s brightness, as Scripture calls Wisdom the brightness of eternal light; as fire is never without its splendor, the Father is never without the Son, who is always born and coeternal.
Sermon 126.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Arians take John 5:19 to show the Son is lesser, but the next words, “the Son does the same,” must also be heard; Augustine asks for quiet attention to a hard question.
Sermon 126.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · If the Son made things by copying the Father as a carpenter’s son copies a chest, then the Father would have made something without the Word, against John 1:3; there is only one Son by nature, the others adopted through him.
Sermon 135.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Against the Arian claim that the Son does another’s works, Augustine replies that by the same reasoning the Father would have another’s things, since the Son says, “All that the Father has is mine.”
Sermon 139.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Against the Arian objection that a father is greater than his son, Augustine replies that this difference is one of age, not nature, and has no place in eternity; a Son of another substance than the Father would be a monster.
Sermon 139.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God, who gave creatures the power to beget their own kind, did not beget a Son of another substance; to call the Son degenerate by nature is a greater insult than calling a coward his brave father’s degenerate son.
Sermon 139.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine urges prayer for the Arians, many of them Arian by upbringing; by claiming to honor the Father at the Son’s expense they insult both, as a son and father are both insulted when the son is called degenerate.
Sermon 140.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Against the claim that Father and Son are one only in will, as the apostles are one with God by obedience, Augustine replies that no apostle or prophet ever dared to say “I and God are one.”
Sermon 140.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Son is from the Father yet equal to him, born equal and eternal; a lesser Son would either grow, making the Father age, or remain forever deficient; the Son’s honoring of the Father does not lessen his divinity.
Sermon 183.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Arian, though preaching the virgin birth, does not confess Christ come in the flesh, for Christ is the Son of the living God, as Peter confessed, not merely more than a man.
Sermon 183.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The full confession joins Christ's “Son of Man” with Peter's “Son of the living God”; the Arian, who says “in the beginning God made the Word,” denies John's “in the beginning was the Word” and so denies the Son.
Sermon 183.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The true Son is Son by nature, equal to the Father in the form of God, who emptied himself by taking the form of a servant without losing the form of God; the Arian who denies his equality denies the Son and so Christ come in the flesh.
Sermon 183.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Eunomians, who deny the Son is even like the Father, deny Christ, and so deny that Christ has come in the flesh.
Sermon 244.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Photinians, who think Christ only a man, and Arians, who think him a lesser and created God, have not touched him; the Son is born eternally, without time, and his generation cannot be told.
On Illustrious Men 83Jerome · 392–393 · Athanasius of Alexandria, often exiled by the Arians: his works include Against the Pagans and the Life of Antony.
On Illustrious Men 85Jerome · 392–393 · Eustathius of Antioch, exiled for opposing the Arians, wrote against Origen on the Witch of Endor.
On Illustrious Men 94Jerome · 392–393 · Asterius the Arian wrote commentaries on Romans, the Gospels and the Psalms.
On Illustrious Men 100Jerome · 392–393 · Hilary of Poitiers, exiled to Phrygia, wrote twelve books against the Arians (On the Trinity), On the Synods, and commentaries on the Psalms and Matthew.
On Illustrious Men 101Jerome · 392–393 · Marius Victorinus, a convert in old age, wrote obscure books against Arius and commentaries on Paul.
On Illustrious Men 108Jerome · 392–393 · Phoebadius of Agen wrote against the Arians.
On Illustrious Men 118Jerome · 392–393 · Lucius, Arian bishop of Alexandria, wrote Easter letters.
On Faith and the Creed 5Augustine of Hippo · 393 · The Son is neither made, nor begotten in time, nor inferior to the Father; both those who identify him with the Father and those who call him a creature are excluded.
On Faith and the Creed 18Augustine of Hippo · 393 · Texts that seem to make the Son less than the Father refer either to his assumed humanity or to his receiving his being from the Father, not to an inequality of nature.
On the Christian Struggle 18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Augustine rejects the teaching that the Son was made from nothing and the Spirit after him, with three different substances, because it pictures divine generation by earthly images.
Life of Saint Martin 6Sulpicius Severus · ca. 396–397 · Martin repels the devil with a psalm, converts his mother, resists the Arians in Illyricum and Milan, and survives poisoning on Gallinaria.
Tractates 19Gaudentius of Brescia · ca. 397-410 · A letter to the deacon Paul on John 14:28 ('the Father is greater than I'): against the Arians, Gaudentius distinguishes Christ's two substances, divine and human, showing from the Gospels the works of God and the weaknesses of man in him, and reads the saying of the assumed manhood before its glorification (Phil 2:6–11).
Tractates 21Gaudentius of Brescia · ca. 397-410 · Gaudentius's sermon on the anniversary of his predecessor Philastrius of Brescia: a true son of Abraham, a travelling preacher against heresies and Arianism (at Milan against Auxentius and at Rome), who evangelized Brescia, lived humbly and generously, and died on 18 July.
On the Trinity 5.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine states the Arian argument that “unbegotten” and “begotten” name different substances, and answers it from John 10:30 and Phil 2:6.
On the Trinity 5.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine answers the objection that “unbegotten” is said absolutely: the Son is equal to the Father only by what is said of him in himself, so they share one substance, and “unbegotten” only denies a relation.
On the Trinity 6.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine examines an anti-Arian argument from 1 Cor 1:24 that seems to imply the Father is wise only by the wisdom he begot.
On the Trinity 15.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine refutes Eunomius's claim that the Son is a son of God's will rather than of his nature, and sums up: the human mind's memory, understanding, and will are an image, though a very unlike one, of the Trinity.
Letter 24, chapter 2Innocent I, bishop of Rome · 401–417 · Church provinces are not to follow imperial divisions; Cyprus must keep the Nicene canons on ordination; Arian clergy are received only as laymen, since heretics cannot give the Spirit in ordination.
Apology against Rufinus 1.8Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome contrasts his long, unchallenged translating with Rufinus's first work, and claims that the Apology for Origen ascribed to Pamphilus is really the first of Eusebius's six books.
Apology against Rufinus 1.11Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome compares Rufinus's charge to Eusebius's against Methodius, defends having praised Eusebius and Origen for their learning, and explains that his literal translation was forced on him by Rufinus's compromising praise.
Apology against Rufinus 2.17Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome rejects Rufinus's argument from falsified writings (the Recognitions, Clement of Alexandria, Dionysius) as one that would make every author's errors someone else's.
Apology against Rufinus 2.19Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome explains that Origen alleged falsification only about his dialogue with Candidus, and ridicules Rufinus's stories of Hilary's falsified book and Cyprian's On the Trinity, which is Novatian's.
Apology against Rufinus 3.12Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome repeats that he found at Caesarea the six books of Eusebius's Apology for Origen, of which Rufinus's "Pamphilus" is the first, and urges Rufinus to retract the attribution to spare the martyr's name.
Commentary on the Apostles' Creed 39Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 404 · The one holy church keeps the whole faith; Rufinus warns against the 'councils of vanity' of Marcion, Ebion, Mani, Paul of Samosata, Arius and others.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 1.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Against the Arians, Augustine argues that the Word through whom all things were made cannot itself have been made, and that it is unchangeable.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 17.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The Jews rightly understood that Jesus made himself equal to God, which the Arians deny; the Son did not seize equality like the devil, but was begotten equal and emptied himself by taking the form of a servant.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 19.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · To honor the Father is to honor him as Father of the Son, so honoring the Son as lesser dishonors the Father too.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 20.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Against heretics who infer that the Son is lesser, Augustine asks when the Son saw the Father walk on the sea.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 26.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The Father draws to the Son those who believe him equal to the Father, unlike Arius and Photinus; Peter's confession shows that revelation is itself the drawing, as a branch draws a sheep.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 36.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ's words both distinguish the persons of Father and Son against the Sabellians and, with “I and the Father are one,” affirm one substance against the Arians.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 37.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Between the Sabellians, who make Father and Son one person, and the Arians, who make the Son different in substance, the Catholic faith holds “I and the Father are one.”
Tractates on the Gospel of John 37.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · “If you knew me, you would know my Father” shows the Son's likeness to the Father, as one recognizes a man from someone very like him; against the Arians, Father and Son are one.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 40.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · As many believed when Christ spoke, Augustine hopes that Arians in his congregation, brought by recent newcomers, will believe with him.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 43.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ refers his glory to the Father; against the Arians, Father and Son glorify each other, which shows equality.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 45.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Heretics such as Sabellius, Arius, and Photinus do not enter by the door, for they preach a Christ of their own making; the fold is the Catholic Church, and the door is entered only by humility.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 48.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · When Jesus said “I and the Father are one,” the Jews tried to stone him, understanding, as the Arians do not, that he claimed equality with the Father.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 59.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The words "he who receives me receives him who sent me" give no support to the Arian ranking of the Son below the Father, which cannot even place the Holy Spirit consistently.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 71.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Against both Arians, who make the Son unequal, and Sabellians, who make him the Father, Augustine holds that the Son is other than the Father yet equal to him, from him and inseparable from him.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 78.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · In the form of a servant the Son is less than the Father, the Spirit, and even himself; the Arians wrongly use what he says as man to diminish his divinity.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 100.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Heretics and pagans who praise a false Christ do not give him true glory; true glory is given him by the Spirit only in the catholic church.
Homilies on the First Epistle of John 6.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · The sign that a spirit confesses Christ come in the flesh seems not to distinguish, since Arians, Eunomians, Macedonians, Montanists, and Novatians all confess it, yet they are antichrists.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.28.23Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Arius's heresy.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.28.24Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Alexander expels Arius.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.28.25Orosius · ca. 417–418 · The Council of Nicaea condemns Arius.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.29.3Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Constantius is drawn into Arianism.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.29.4Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Arian persecution of the catholics.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.32.6Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Valens becomes an Arian.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.33.19Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Valens made the Goths Arians and was burned by them.
The Conferences 7.32John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Demons have as many pursuits as men: tricksters, night visitors, violent killers, spirits of vanity, inspirers of heresy such as that of Arius and Eunomius, and others signified by the beasts named in Scripture.
The Conferences 15.3John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Macarius, founder of the settlement at Scetis, challenged a Eunomian heretic to raise a dead man; when the heretic fled, Macarius raised an ancient corpse before the people, acting only from love and necessity, as Elijah did.
Commonitory 4Vincent of Lérins · 434 · The examples of the Donatists and the Arians show the harm done by novelty and the safety of holding to the universal and ancient faith.
Commonitory 5Vincent of Lérins · 434 · Vincent cites Ambrose on the Arian persecution and praises the confessors who defended the whole church's ancient faith.
Tome to the Armenians 27Proclus of Constantinople · ca. 435-437 · The one Son made the world, gave the law, and became flesh; Proclus condemns Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, and the new teaching, which he says outdoes Judaism in blasphemy.
Chapter 6Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 437-450 · The Son is light from light with the Father, one light, against the Manichaeans and the Arians; if David and Sirach could not comprehend even the soul or the creation, no one can search out God’s Wisdom.
Chapter 7Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 437-450 · The Arian who cannot count the raindrops or his own hairs presumes to dispute about God’s Wisdom and calls the Son less, though even a wise man rejoices to leave a son like himself.
Chapter 22Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 437-450 · The way to eternal life is the whole Christ, head and body, Christ and the Catholic Church; the Arian church is a harlot posing as the bride, called to return, while the true mother patiently bears her persecution.
Against Five Heresies 3Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 437-450 · Against the pagan objection that a divine Son requires a divine marriage, the preacher cites Hermes Trismegistus and the Sibyl on the Son of God, the Word of wisdom born of God alone.
Against Five Heresies 6Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 437-450 · The Arian who confesses the Creed but denies the Son’s eternity is asked how he can divide the inheritance of peace, like the false mother before Solomon; Scripture and the likeness of fire and its brightness show Father and Son distinct yet one, eternal God.
Sermon on the Barbarian Time 8Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 437-450 · Through the narrow gate of Christ’s opened side the robber, the Jews, and the pagans enter, while the Arian heretic goes out; the faithful must not be rebaptized, and must help the captives and refugees of the invasion.
Part 4, chapter 13Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · Malachi’s Elijah and the two witnesses of the Apocalypse are Elijah and Enoch, who will expose the Antichrist, as Moses and Aaron withstood Jannes and Jambres and Peter and Paul withstood Simon Magus; the forty-two months of trampling are already begun by the Arian Goths and Moors.