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Translated by Cardinal Newman.
St Athanasius the Great Resources Online and in Print
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This Part: 128 Pages
Page 10
6. Moreover he has dared to say, that 'the Word is not the very God;' 'though He is called God, yet He is not very God,' but 'by participation of grace, He, as others, is God only in name.' And, whereas all beings are foreign and different from God in essence, so too is 'the Word alien and unlike in all things to the Father's essence and propriety,' but belongs to things originated and created, and is one of these. Afterwards, as though he had succeeded to the devil's recklessness, he has stated in his Thalia, that 'even to the Son the Father is invisible,' and 'the Word cannot perfectly and exactly either see or know His own Father;' but even what He knows and what He sees, He knows and sees 'in proportion to His own measure,' as we also know according to our own power. For the Son, too, he says, not only knows not the Father exactly, for He fails in comprehension [1843] , but 'He knows not even His own essence;'--and that 'the essences of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, are separate in nature, and estranged, and disconnected, and alien [1844] , and without participation of each other [1845] ;' and, in his own words, 'utterly unlike from each other in essence and glory, unto infinity.' Thus as to 'likeness of glory and essence,' he says that the Word is entirely diverse from both the Father and the Holy Ghost. With such words hath the irreligious spoken; maintaining that the Son is distinct by Himself, and in no respect partaker of the Father. These are portions of Arius's fables as they occur in that jocose composition.
7. Who is there that hears all this, nay, the tune of the Thalia, but must hate, and justly hate, this Arius jesting on such matters as on a stage [1846] ? who but must regard him, when he pretends to name God and speak of God, but as the serpent counselling the woman? who, on reading what follows in his work, but must discern in his irreligious doctrine that error, into which by his sophistries the serpent in the sequel seduced the woman? who at such blasphemies is not transported? 'The heaven,' as the Prophet says, 'was astonished, and the earth shuddered [1847] ' at the transgression of the Law. But the sun, with greater horror, impatient of the bodily contumelies, which the common Lord of all voluntarily endured for us, turned away, and recalling his rays made that day sunless. And shall not all human kind at Arius's blasphemies be struck speechless, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, to escape hearing them or seeing their author? Rather, will not the Lord Himself have reason to denounce men so irreligious, nay, so unthankful, in the words which He has already uttered by the prophet Hosea, 'Woe unto them, for they have fled from Me; destruction upon them, for they have transgressed against Me; though I have redeemed them, yet they have spoken lies against Me [1848] .' And soon after, 'They imagine mischief against Me; they turn away to nothing [1849] .' For to turn away from the Word of God, which is, and to fashion to themselves one that is not, is to fall to what is nothing. For this was why the Ecumenical [1850] Council, when Arius thus spoke, cast him from the Church, and anathematized him, as impatient of such irreligion. And ever since has Arius's error been reckoned for a heresy more than ordinary, being known as Christ's foe, and harbinger [1851] of Antichrist. Though then so great a condemnation be itself of special weight to make men flee from that irreligious heresy [1852] , as I said above, yet since certain persons called Christian, either in ignorance or pretence, think it, as I then said, little different from the Truth, and call its professors Christians; proceed we to put some questions to them, according to our powers, thereby to expose the unscrupulousness of the heresy. Perhaps, when thus caught, they will be silenced, and flee from it, as from the sight of a serpent.
[1843] Vid. de Syn. 15, note 6. katalepsis was originally a Stoic word, and even when considered perfect, was, properly speaking, attributable only to an imperfect being. For it is used in contrast to the Platonic doctrine of ideai, to express the hold of things obtained by the mind through the senses; it being a Stoical maxim, nihil esse in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu. In this sense it is also used by the Fathers, to mean real and certain knowledge after inquiry, though it is also ascribed to Almighty God. As to the position of Arius, since we are told in Scripture that none 'knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him,' if katalepsis be an exact and complete knowledge of the object of contemplation, to deny that the Son comprehended the Father, was to deny that He was in the Father, i.e. the doctrine of the perichoresis, de Syn. 15, anepimiktoi, or to maintain that He was a distinct, and therefore a created, being. On the other hand Scripture asserts that, as the Holy Spirit which is in God, 'searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God,' so the Son, as being 'in the bosom of the Father,' alone 'hath declared Him.' vid. Clement. Strom. v. 12. And thus Athan. speaking of Mark xiii. 32, 'If the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son, and the Father knows the day and the hour, it is plain that the Son too, being in the Father, and knowing the things in the Father, Himself also knows the day and the hour." Orat. iii. 44.
[1844] de Decr. 25, note 2.
[1845] de Syn. 15.
[1846] Ep. Encycl. 6; Epiph. Haer. 73. 1.
[1847] Jer. ii. 12.
[1848] Hos. vii. 13.
[1849] Ib. 15. lxx.
[1850] de Decr. 27, note 1.
[1851] Ib. 3, note 1, S:1, note 3.
[1852] And so Vigilius of the heresies about the Incarnation, Etiamsi in erroris eorum destructionem nulli conderentur libri, hoc ipsum solum, quod haeretici sunt pronunciati, orthodoxorum securitati sufficeret. contr. Eutych. i. p. 494.
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/athanasius/discourses-against-arians.asp?pg=10
