Against Arius

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–1.13 · 1.14–1.22 · 1.23–1.31 · 1.32–1.41 · 1.42–1.52 · 1.53–2.1 · 2.2–2.11 · 2.12–3.9 · 3.10–4.1 · 4.2–4.12 · 4.13–4.23 · 4.24–4.33

1. 1.1Victorinus 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.
2. 1.2Victorinus argues from Ephesians 3, John 1:18 and John 8:19 that God can be known through the Son, who reveals the Father because he is of the same substance.
3. 1.3Victorinus 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.
4. 1.4Victorinus explains that the Father is being at rest and the Word is the same being in outward operation, and applies this to the true light of John 1.
5. 1.5Victorinus gathers texts from John 1–5 showing that the Son is God, life, light, Christ and Saviour, and true Son of the Father.
6. 1.6Victorinus cites John 5–6 to show that the Son, the bread from heaven, is life from the living Father, so that each is in the other.
7. 1.7Victorinus argues that Christ's sayings in John would be blasphemy from a mere man, and that “I am in the Father” means unity of substance, not of dignity alone.
8. 1.8Victorinus reads John 7:37–39 to show the Spirit flowing from the Son as the Son from the Father's bosom, so that the three are homoousios, and adds further texts from John 8–10.
9. 1.9Victorinus argues from Philippians 2:6 that the Son is equal to the Father in power and therefore in substance, against Arius.
10. 1.10Victorinus distinguishes Christ's natural sonship from our adoption, against Photinus, and explains his prayers and fear as part of the mystery of the incarnation.
11. 1.11Victorinus cites John 12 and 14 to show that Father and Son are two from one substance, and that the Spirit, “another Paraclete”, is the power of Christ.
12. 1.12Victorinus argues from John 14 that the Spirit comes from Christ as Christ from God, speaking openly what Christ spoke in figures, so that the three are one and homoousion.
13. 1.13Victorinus explains how the Son is both equal to the Father and lower, and how the Spirit, the hidden power of the Word, receives from Christ as Christ from the Father.
14. 1.14Victorinus explains the order of Christ's sayings about coming from the Father in John 16–17, and shows from them that Christ existed before the world and is God in a man.
15. 1.15Victorinus 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.
16. 1.16Victorinus answers Valentinus from John 1:18 and argues from the sin against the Holy Spirit that the Spirit is God's, so that the three are of one substance with distinct subsistence by action.
17. 1.17Victorinus cites Matthew 22 and Romans 2, 4 and 8 to show that Christ is God and that the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ and Christ are one substance in three.
18. 1.18Victorinus reads Romans 11:36 of Father, Son and Spirit, admits that the generation is beyond understanding, and argues from 1 Corinthians 2 and 12 that the one Spirit is God, Christ and the Holy Spirit.
19. 1.19Victorinus explains in what sense Christ is the image of God: not a shadow but the living, self-subsisting form and action of the Father's being, homoousios with him.
20. 1.20Victorinus reads Genesis 1:26 to show that Christ is the image of God and one image with the Father, while man's rational soul is made according to the image and is to reach the likeness through faith.
21. 1.21Victorinus gathers texts from 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Galatians and Philippians to show that Christ existed before the incarnation and, being “equal with God” (Phil 2:6), shares God's substance.
22. 1.22Victorinus argues from Philippians 2 that Christ is the form of God, homoousios with him, who emptied himself and became man rather than taking up a man, as Marcellus and Photinus held.
23. 1.23Victorinus 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.
24. 1.24Victorinus expounds Colossians 1:13–20 to show that Christ, the image of the invisible God and firstborn before all creation, is begotten, not created, and is the cause and fullness of all things.
25. 1.25Victorinus argues that the Son, the fountain of life and the fullness in whom the Godhead dwells bodily, must be homoousios with the Father, through whom all things are gathered into one like a chain.
26. 1.26Victorinus applies 1 Timothy 3:16 to the incarnation of the pre-existent Word, who gives life to all things, and reads Isaiah 45:14–15 as a prophecy that God is in Christ.
27. 1.27Victorinus 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.
28. 1.28Victorinus 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.
29. 1.29Victorinus answers the homoiousian objection that homoousion implies a substance prior to Father and Son, turning it back on “like substance”, and appeals to Isaiah's “none like me”.
30. 1.30Victorinus argues that the Word is God's image, not a likeness, defines substance, and answers the objection that “substance” is unscriptural by appealing to epiousios (Matt 6:11), periousios (Titus 2:14) and Jeremiah 23.
31. 1.31Victorinus argues that God, called light and spirit in Scripture, is substance, and that the Son is his image, form, will and Word, light from light, always with him.
32. 1.32Victorinus illustrates the homoousion by the soul, whose life and understanding are one motion and one substance with it, as the Son, the Father's will and motion, is one substance with the Father.
33. 1.33Victorinus rejects the view that God's being is a power at rest prior to God, insisting that God is both being and action, so that the Father and the Word are one and homoousion.
34. 1.34Victorinus describes the Son as the image and effulgence of the Father, eternally begotten, the universal being that proceeds from the Father above the universal yet remains in him.
35. 1.35Victorinus argues from Colossians 1:13–15 and John 1 that the Son born of Mary, who redeemed us, is the same as the eternal image and Word, the firstborn before all creation.
36. 1.36Victorinus argues that the Son of Colossians 1, through whom all things were created, is the Word of John 1, since both texts ascribe creation “through him”.
37. 1.37Victorinus compares Colossians 1:16 with Romans 11:36 and 1 Corinthians 8:6 to show that Paul gives the same prepositions, and so the same power and substance, to the Father and the Son.
38. 1.38Victorinus expounds 1 Corinthians 15:24–28, arguing that the Son subjects all things by the Father's power and the Father subjects them to the Son, which shows that both are one action and one substance.
39. 1.39Victorinus explains that the Word, acting by the Father's power, made and governs all things from creation to the final abolition of death, after which his activity rests and God is all in all.
40. 1.40Victorinus argues from 1 Corinthians 1:24 that Christ, God's power and wisdom, is one substance with God, as sight is one with the power of sight.
41. 1.41Victorinus argues from John 1:4 and 5:26 that Father and Son both have life in themselves, rejecting “like substance” and explaining that their substance is in a certain way both “itself” and “the same”.
42. 1.42Victorinus explains that the Father is life at rest within and the Son is the same life as motion made manifest, so that the two are homoousion, each in the other.
43. 1.43Victorinus 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.
44. 1.44Victorinus distinguishes his teaching from Patripassianism: the Father is impassible, and the Son suffered only according to the flesh, while divine “emotions” are not passions but nature.
45. 1.45Victorinus 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.
46. 1.46Victorinus closes his treatment of the homoousion by listing questions still to be answered and stressing that the Scriptures speak above all of the incarnate Word crucified and risen.
47. 1.47Victorinus sets out his creed: the Father almighty, the only-begotten Son homoousios with him, the Word incarnate, crucified and risen, and the Holy Spirit, three who are one God.
48. 1.48Victorinus asks whether spirit, Word, intellect, wisdom and substance are the same or different, and argues that all existents share a communion, so that they may be “other in identity” or “the same in otherness”.
49. 1.49Victorinus describes the Father as the One before all being, beyond existence, substance and understanding, known only to himself, the first cause and power of all things.
50. 1.50Victorinus describes the Father as triple-powered spirit, uniting existence, life and blessedness in simple oneness, from whom the Son leaps forth as the one existing in substance and motion.
51. 1.51Victorinus describes the Son as infinite life going forth from the Father and returning as wisdom, and reads the incarnation from the virgin as the earthly type of this descent and return.
52. 1.52Victorinus explains God as the power of existence, life and understanding, and the Son as life, the Father's will and motion going forth, both within and without, so that each is in the other.
53. 1.53Victorinus explains that the Son is the form in which the hidden Father is seen, life in which being appears, and calls for faith in the incarnate Christ as the way to eternal life.
54. 1.54Victorinus explains that the names spirit, Word, intellect and the rest belong to Father, Son and Spirit as synonyms, the three being the same yet distinguished as hidden and manifest.
55. 1.55Victorinus argues that “spirit” names the one substance of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and that the Spirit speaks from the Son as the Son from the Father: silence, voice and spiritual utterance.
56. 1.56Victorinus calls the three one light, Word, voice and utterance; the soul is only an echo, like John the Baptist, while the Son is the life that became flesh by the Spirit and the power of the Most High.
57. 1.57Victorinus says Christ is at once flesh, Spirit, power and Word, and describes the eternal generation as the divine life going out to know itself and at once returning into identity, like faces looking at each other.
58. 1.58Victorinus calls the Holy Spirit the “mother” of Jesus above and below, and reads Luke 1:35 as the Spirit and the Word together bringing about the incarnation for the liberation of soul and flesh.
59. 1.59Victorinus concludes that Father, Son and Spirit are one God, differing only in power and action, and lists biblical uses of “substance” against those who deny that the word is scriptural.
60. 1.60Victorinus pictures the Word as a circular motion going out from the Father and returning to him, and the triad of being, life and understanding as a perfect sphere whose centre is God.
61. 1.61Victorinus describes the soul as an image of the Son, who is life, able to turn upward to intellect and become divine or downward toward matter and become embodied.
62. 1.62Victorinus surveys views of human nature and, from Gen 2:7 and the sayings about one taken and one left, distinguishes a heavenly soul and intellect from a material soul, both to be purified by faith in Christ.
63. 1.63Victorinus explains that the soul is made in the image of the Trinity, its being, living and understanding being three in one, as an image of the Son, who is the image of the Father.
64. 1.64Victorinus ends Book 1 by suggesting that man was made in the image of God even in the body, since the Word was to take flesh, rise and ascend, and our bodies will become spiritual.
65. 2.1Victorinus opens Book 2 by arguing that God is not without substance but above it, and that Christ, the Only-begotten, is from the Father's substance, not from nothing.
66. 2.2Victorinus rejects the claim that the Son came from nothing, distinguishes Marcellus and Photinus, and argues against those who say “like substance” that substance in two is the same, not like, so that Father and Son are homoousion.
67. 2.3Victorinus answers the objection that “substance” is not in Scripture by arguing that God, though above substance, may be called substance, and by citing Jeremiah 23, Psalm 139 and Hebrews 1:3.
68. 2.4Victorinus explains the Greek terms on, hyparxis and hypostasis, arguing that being belongs to the Father and form to the Son, that there are three subsistences of one substance, and that hypostasis in Scripture means ousia.
69. 2.5Victorinus argues that hypostasis in Jeremiah 23 and Psalm 139 means God's very substance, not wealth, and that to stand in it is to see the Word.
70. 2.6Victorinus interprets the father's dividing of his “substance” in the parable of the two sons as God's riches, which are Christ, the power and wisdom of God, and concludes that Father and Son share one hypostasis.
71. 2.7Victorinus argues that his opponents themselves use the unscriptural phrase “light from light”, so they cannot reject homoousion, which follows from texts showing that the same life is in Father and Son.
72. 2.8Victorinus traces the scriptural roots of ousia in epiousios bread (Matt 6:11) and the people periousios (Titus 2:14), arguing that homoousion is formed in the same way and rightly excludes heretics.
73. 2.9Victorinus answers the objections that homoousion is obscure, scandalous or new, arguing that Scripture itself keeps foreign words, that the term excludes heretics, and that it was adopted at Nicaea and approved by Constantine.
74. 2.10Victorinus 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”.
75. 2.11Victorinus 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”.
76. 2.12Victorinus 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.
77. 3.1Victorinus explains that the Word is the image of God, light from light and of the same substance, and that to see the hidden Father one must die to outward life and understanding.
78. 3.2Victorinus explains the generation as God's inner motion looking outward to see and know himself, so that the Son, the one motion and act, is only-begotten and consubstantial with the Father.
79. 3.3Victorinus argues that the Son is life from himself, in whom all things were made, and that in the incarnation the Word took the universal principle of flesh and of soul, so that the whole man was assumed and freed.
80. 3.4Victorinus argues that in God being, living and understanding are one in substance and three in subsistence, which the Greeks express as one ousia and three hypostases.
81. 3.5Victorinus illustrates the unity of being, living and understanding by sight, whose power, act of seeing and judging are one.
82. 3.6Victorinus urges his own spirit to seek God, who is known through the Son and the Spirit, and argues that Father, Son and Spirit, each spirit and life, are one substance.
83. 3.7Victorinus calls the Father being, silence and rest, and the Son life, Word and motion born from that silence, warning against separating the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son.
84. 3.8Victorinus argues that the Son is the one motion from the Father, life and knowledge, and that the Spirit exists as the knowledge within that one motion, receiving all from the Son as the Son from the Father.
85. 3.9Victorinus concludes that Father, Son and Spirit are being, life and knowledge, one substance in three subsistences, and supports the Spirit's role as knowledge from Romans 8–9 and 1 Corinthians 2.
86. 3.10Victorinus shows from Romans, Ephesians and John that Father, Son and Spirit are knowledge and life, one substance and one will, and that to believe in Christ, the Word of life, is to know God and have the Spirit.
87. 3.11Victorinus argues from John 8 and 10 that the Father is known in the Son as substance in life, and that the Word and Spirit, which lay down and take up the soul, are of a higher substance than the soul.
88. 3.12Victorinus explains that the soul is the image of the Word, of like substance, which the Word, as life, takes up in the incarnation and lays down in death, and identifies the Spirit who came after Christ's departure as the one motion of the Word.
89. 3.13Victorinus reads John 14:6–14 to show that Father, Son and Spirit are one, and that to ask in Christ's name is to ask for eternal life and spiritual things, not worldly goods.
90. 3.14Victorinus reads John 14:15–26 to show that Christ and the Holy Spirit are two Paracletes but one motion, Christ the Spirit made open in the flesh and the Holy Spirit the same Spirit hidden.
91. 3.15Victorinus explains Christ's “going to the Father” as the sanctifying of the risen humanity, and reads John 15:26 and 16:8–11 to show the Father, Son and Spirit joined in sending and in convicting the world.
92. 3.16Victorinus explains the Spirit's work as giving knowledge and testimony, distinguishes baptismal sanctification from the gift of the Spirit for knowledge in Acts, and traces the apostles' witness to Christ's resurrection and ascension.
93. 3.17Victorinus cites texts on the judging of Satan and explains that the three powers are one deity, referred to Father and Son because both are self-begotten motion of one substance.
94. 3.18Victorinus ends Book 3 by explaining how Father and Son are two as one, Christ and Spirit two in one motion, and the Trinity one God, recalling the Spirit's role in Christ's conception and baptism.
95. 4.1Victorinus opens Book 4 by asking whether “he lives” and “life” are one or two, and concludes that each is in the other, so that they are one, differing only as cause.
96. 4.2Victorinus argues that living and life are not two things coupled but one substance, since in eternal realities there is no accident and being, living and understanding coincide.
97. 4.3Victorinus explains that in God living and life are distinguished only as cause and effect, living being first and life its offspring, though they are always together.
98. 4.4Victorinus argues from John 4:24, John 6:63, Jeremiah 23 and Romans 8 that God is spirit, that spirit is substance, and that this substance is living and life.
99. 4.5Victorinus distinguishes God's living from all created life and describes God as first begetting the universal Ideas of entity, vitality and intellectuality, each of which contains the others.
100. 4.6Victorinus argues that the Father is living itself and the Son is life begotten from that living, citing John 1:4, 14:6, 7:37–38 and the Samaritan woman to show that Christ is life and eternal life.
101. 4.7Victorinus reads John 6:53–62 to show that the whole Christ, spirit, soul and flesh, is eternal life, and that Father and Son are consubstantial, distinguished only as cause and caused.
102. 4.8Victorinus explains the Son as life, the form in which the Father's hidden living is seen, citing John 1:18, 14:9, Philippians 2:6, Colossians 1:15 and Exodus 33.
103. 4.9Victorinus restates that God, the Son and the Holy Spirit are spirit, and that spirit, living from itself without beginning, is the eternal substance of life.
104. 4.10Victorinus argues that the Father is living and the Son life, begotten from living, so that they are two only as begetter and begotten, one substance and one God, homoousion.
105. 4.11Victorinus describes the life-giving power flowing from the Word through the heavenly orders into soul and matter, so that all things live in their degree, while Christ and the Spirit are life itself from God.
106. 4.12Victorinus identifies God as the fountain of all life and being, always perfect and needing no added act, while all else consists of powers and actions that proceed from him.
107. 4.13Victorinus contrasts the soul, a made substance with self-originated motion, with the Son, life eternally made by the Father's living without beginning, so that maker and made are in each other and of one substance.
108. 4.14Victorinus answers the objection that two living ones would both be unbegotten: the Son lives “because of the Father”, receiving the same substance from him, and so is homoousios in both senses, the same and together.
109. 4.15Victorinus compares the generation of life from living with eternity made by an ever-present act, of which our present time is an image, and concludes that the Son is homoousios with the Father.
110. 4.16Victorinus explains that God is being, spirit and light, and that living and understanding are one motion from that being, so that Christ is life and the Holy Spirit knowledge, receiving from Christ as Christ from the Father.
111. 4.17Victorinus explains that life and understanding go forth from God's inner motion as Christ and the Spirit, and that Christ gives life through faith while the Spirit adds the knowledge that completes salvation.
112. 4.18Victorinus argues from John 16, Matthew 28 and Sirach 1 that the Spirit, the wisdom and knowledge of God, completes the faith Christ sowed, and that Father, Son and Spirit are homoousia; he then raises the question of how inner life and understanding appear outwardly.
113. 4.19Victorinus distinguishes the first, unparticipated being of God, infinite and beyond even the existent, from the Logos, which defines and forms each thing so that it becomes an existent.
114. 4.20Victorinus argues that God's first being has its own hidden Logos, identical with being itself, and asks how this inner form came to appear outwardly as the image of God without becoming something other.
115. 4.21Victorinus rejects the alternatives that the Son's form came from another, from nothing, or from itself, and prepares to explain, outside time, how God as triple power of being, living and understanding begets without change.
116. 4.22Victorinus explains that all creatures share in being, living and understanding as images of the higher three, and that God, “one all and not one”, is the principle from whom all powers and acts arise.
117. 4.23Victorinus explains that God is called without existence, substance, intellect and life not by privation but by supereminence, being the pre-existent, unknowable until knowledge, the Son, appeared.
118. 4.24Victorinus explains that in God knowledge and the knowable are one, knowledge becoming knowable by turning upon itself, and describes God as resting at the centre of all things, seeing all at once; he then states that contraries arise from contraries.
119. 4.25Victorinus argues that contraries do not truly perish: death in the world dissolves only the form of composite bodies, whose elements remain, while in divine things there is no death and procession is manifestation, not birth.
120. 4.26Victorinus explains that the Son is the Father's inherent, consubstantial form, so that form and substance coincide and the Son is the same as the Father, God above being, living and understanding.
121. 4.27Victorinus argues that God is intelligence understanding itself, and that by this self-understanding, without motion, he exists and lives, unbegotten and one.
122. 4.28Victorinus explains that the Son is the form and image through which God is known, the intelligence that, understanding itself, came forth outward from the inner intelligence which is the Father.
123. 4.29Victorinus argues that the Son, the outer intelligence understanding the Father's inner intelligence, received the Father's whole fullness and is homoousion with him in every respect, equal with God.
124. 4.30Victorinus argues from Philippians 2 and the resurrection that the Son, the form of God, is other than the Father though having all that the Father has by the Father's gift: God's hidden being made manifest.
125. 4.31Victorinus explains that the Son, the Father's image and the Logos through which all things are made, acts both by the Father's power and by his own will, and, like a river from a fountain, suffers only in act and operation, not in substance.
126. 4.32Victorinus sums up: Father and Son are homoousion; the Son, the Logos of all things, became incarnate from the Virgin, and Philippians 2:5–8 shows that he who existed in the form of God emptied himself even to the cross.
127. 4.33Victorinus ends the work by restating that the pre-existent Word became flesh, that the Holy Spirit is the hidden, inward Christ, and that Father, Son and Spirit, each with his own existence, are one substance, a faith on which salvation rests.