Contra Arianos Dialogus Probo Judice Interlocutoribus

THE DIALOGUE OF VIGILIUS OF THAPSUS AGAINST THE ARIANS, ETC., WITH ATHANASIUS, ARIUS, SABELLIUS, PHOTINUS, AND THE JUDGE PROBUS AS INTERLOCUTORS.

PREFACE OF AN UNCERTAIN AUTHOR.

When this book, disputed by the catholic priest and blessed Athanasius of most approved life against the heretics Sabellius, Photinus, and Arius, has come into the hands of the diligent reader, most blessed Pope Maternus, he will immediately reply: And how can it be that Arius had a conflict with holy Athanasius, the successor of blessed Alexander the bishop, when it is established that he, as is read in the Ecclesiastical History, was poured out in a most shameful death, that is, after the example of Judas the traitor of our Lord Jesus Christ: so that what he had conceived with a foul mind he ended with a foul end. But if he recalls what Sulpicius Severus of blessed memory set down in his Chronicles, saying: Two Ariuses, like two serpents, were hissing from one mouth: he will find evidently that there were two Ariuses. Whence it is understood that holy Athanasius had a conflict either with Arius while he was still alive, not with the one who was poured out, or with some Ariomanite. Wherefore it is fitting that these things, a work, as we believe, fulfilled by God, be read again and again by catholics, so that they may know how they can avoid the poisons of heretics, and with God's help be able to guard their faith without any hesitation.

PREFACE OF VIGILIUS.

While I was for a long time and much pondering with myself concerning the truth of the faith, and was inquiring by consideration of Scripture in what way I might refute the manifold and numerous questions of the heretics by the brevity of a response, and might dispatch their sacrilegious utterances, spread abroad in various and lengthy treatises, by the compendious struggle of a disputation, lest, relating prolix things to prolix things, I should leave to readers an interminable and excessively laborious material, this appeared useful and very advantageous: that I should introduce the person of each heretic with the professions of his own dogma, as if present persons dealing with present persons. And lest the assertions of individuals should come into doubt with no one examining them, I caused a certain arbiter named Probus, invested with judicial authority, to be present, so that, as he judged each and every matter with probability, the intent of impious depravity might be annulled. I introduced, therefore, Sabellius, Photinus, Arius, and, on our side, Athanasius, so that the truth, refined by the greatest contest of those striving together, might come to the knowledge of all, and the varied arrangement of this work, through the diversity of persons or of responses and interlocutions, might cut off fastidiousness from readers.

BOOK ONE OF THE DIALOGUES.

I. Probus the judge said: Seeing that in the worship of idols there is no majesty of the true God, I wish to submit myself to the Christian doctrines, by which it is established that there is one true God, who by the power of his Word created all things both visible and invisible. And since, while many are reckoned under the title of the Christian name, they are said to wander far from the truth of that faith—evidently by holding different opinions and by following various systems of doctrine—I now greatly desire to know what is the faith of right doctrine, to which, with all the windings of doubt removed, I may cling tenaciously, lest, desiring to be stripped of the blindness of error, I be entangled in greater darkness of errors, if indiscriminately and without any distinction of examination I become an imitator of whatever sect comes first, which I do not know whether it is corrupt or not, or whether it is supported by the truth. And therefore, if it pleases you—indeed, because it ought to please you—let each one of you in our presence set forth the judgment of his faith, so that, an examination having been held, that which is found firmer and truer than all the rest, to this we may all rightly yield, and this, with the error of falsehood spurned, we may follow without hesitation.

All said: How can we commit to you the secrets of so great a mystery, and place the judgment of an untried matter in your hands, when you have not yet washed away the stains of paganism by the reception of the true doctrine?

Probus the judge said: This is precisely what I desire with all my strength to know—what is the right and true doctrine, in which I ought to receive the sacraments of the hidden mystery. For I do not now desire that the deep arcana of the mysteries be laid open to me; but I demand that those things be shown to me now which are held outwardly in your faith and are preached publicly. That is, that one and the same true God is the creator of things visible and invisible. And since I know that you profess this with one voice, what cause has arisen that you are divided into so many various sects, so that which is true and which is false cannot be understood by us at all, until, with your dispute conducted with a moderation worthy of patience, we learn more carefully what is fitting?

Athanasius said: Since you are imbued with every kind of literature and thoroughly learned in philosophical disciplines, you should by no means wonder everywhere that very many and various dogmas of novelties have existed among us, when among you too so many novelties of opinions have emerged as are contained in the very names of their authors. For since there are three religions in the world—of the Jews, the pagans, and the Christians—each religion, falling away from itself through many and far-scattered diversities of opinions, has been divided into various sects of its own institution; while each person, enticed by the sweetness of a more recent opinion that displays not the truth but a likeness of the truth, abandons the line handed down from of old by the fathers; wandering irremediably through pathless places, in that he uses novelty in place of antiquity as though walking in the ancient boundary and the way handed down by the fathers. For either he thinks too much, or he believes too little, and therefore he does not know how to walk the middle and royal road. I have said these things beforehand so that I might show you the clearest indications for examining the truth, so that you may most easily recognize that he is entangled in the error of depravity who, abandoning the ancient institutions of the apostolic faith, himself dreams according to the judgment of his own will which one he ought to follow.

Arius said: Athanasius excellently acknowledges that the error of falsehood consists in added and newly invented novelties of things, the apostolic testimony agreeing with this very point, where it says: "But avoid profane novelties of words" (1 Tim 6:20). Hence I beg that you not withdraw from this path of inquiry, by investigating more diligently and attentively who uses a new and who an old testimony of faith (or sacrament of faith).

Probus the judge said: So that these things which you assert may become most easily known, and may come to the light of truth with all the darkness of ambiguity removed, disclose the rule of the ancient faith, and impart it to our ears just as it was handed down by the apostles.

III. All said: We believe in God the Father almighty, and in Jesus Christ his Son our Lord, and in the Holy Spirit. This is the rule of our faith, which the Lord handed down to the apostles by heavenly teaching, saying: "Go, baptize all nations, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" (Matt 28:19).

Probus the judge said: I am struck dumb with great amazement and stand in suspense, seeing that three gods are preached by you; for I had believed that one must take refuge in the power and majesty of the one God alone. Therefore I ask that you deign to inform us briefly what is the ground of this account, or what these names of three things and three words indicate.

Sabellius said: You have not heard that three gods are preached by us; rather, we have simply professed that we believe in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as has been handed down to us by the apostles. For when we name the Father, we do not wish another to be understood as the Father and another as the Son, but we preach this same one as both Father and Son. For God, by the ineffable power of his might, with which he fills all things, filling the womb of the Virgin Mary, and taking upon himself from himself, for the expiation of human sins, the substance of fleshly matter without any change in himself, showed himself visibly to human eyes, and in that very man whom he assumed he is called the Son; since it is not one and another that is understood, but the same Father. And by this account we worship one God, understanding not one and another (as I said), but professing this same one to be the one and true God.

IV. Photinus said: Sabellius impiously professed that God the Father was born through the Virgin, bringing upon such great majesty I know not what vice of extension, so that by the very fact that he was extended in the Virgin, he is himself to himself both Father and Son, which none of the Christians would grant him. Hence I rather say that God the Father has as Lord Jesus Christ, who took his beginning from Mary the Virgin; who through the most excellent and inimitable merit of a holy way of life and of blessedness was adopted as Son by God the Father, and was endowed with the outstanding honor of divinity. But God, inviolable and immeasurable, neither begot another from himself, nor was he himself ever begotten, so that he might rightly be believed either to have a Son from himself, or to be himself his own Son. But he is unique and singular, neither subject to passion in begetting, nor increased by extending himself, nor subject to division by deriving a portion of himself into the Virgin.

Arius said: For I confess that the unbegotten Father, before all times, ineffably begot the Son, through whom and in whom he made visible and invisible creatures; who in the last times, sent by the Father for the salvation of the human race, bore a true man in the world, whom he received inviolably from the Virgin Mary without any mingling of human shame. And since he is God and Lord of his own creation, he cannot nevertheless be compared to his begetter in all things, or equated to him in anything, whom he proclaims both his God and the author of his origin. Nor therefore are there two gods, because this one also is God; nor therefore is he not God, because the Father alone is God. Just as he is not therefore not good, because the Father alone is good; since the Son is not only good, but also the creator of good things. And just as it is not taken from him that he is not good, since the Father alone, by the confession of the Son himself, is good; so it is not taken from him that he is not God, since the Father alone is God. And just as the goodness of the Son does not prejudice the singularity of the Father's goodness, so his deity does not harm the Father, so that he alone and singular may be God. And in this way we profess one God, not by denying (as I said) that he is God, but by establishing with the Father alone the authority of a single divinity.

Athanasius said: Arius has defined by his own profession that the Father ineffably begot the Son from himself before all times; but whether he wishes to assert that the Son was begotten from the very essence or nature of the Father, or from something else, he has for now left unspoken in this discourse of his. For I confess that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit are of one substance and one nature: so that I believe the Son was not begotten from nothing, nor from anything else, but from the Father, and that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. And although I profess that there are three persons subsisting in their own propriety, yet one nature and one divinity is proved to be theirs.

Probus the judge said: Although this varied and far disparate diversity of your opinions casts a great fog of confusion over our minds, nevertheless, so that we may quickly be freed from these ambiguities and come to know what is the profession of the true faith, deign to fortify the positions of your assertions with clearer testimonies of the divine Scripture. And lest by the long circuit of speech and the diffusion of this mixed disputation you wander far afield, let each one of you do battle against the others one by one: so that all, taking up the arms of questions against one, may in those things which you know to be common to you support one another against the one who disagrees with you. Moreover, if you have nothing of faith in common, let each one strive for his own assertions, so that it may easily become clear whether he himself does not utterly stumble into those things which he condemns in another.

If it pleases you, therefore, enter into conflict with Sabellius, and let him vindicate his own side against you, so that if you are able to overcome him, he may depart defeated. After him Photinus must give himself to the contest and defend his faith with truthful testimonies. Against him you must make firm the whole battle line of conflict, so that if he too yields defeated, he may leave the place of disputation to the others who follow. And in this way I think we can most swiftly arrive at the investigation of the truth. Let it be permitted, therefore, as I said, for Sabellius to prove his faith by heavenly documents.

VI. Sabellius said: Since you have ordered me to engage with all, let them answer whether they confess that God is of a simple nature.

Arius said: What impious man would deny this?

Sabellius said: Let them also answer whether all things that are said of God are to be understood according to substance.

Arius said: These things are known to be proper to our faith.

Photinus said: I agree that all things are said of God according to substance.

Athanasius said: I would not rashly pronounce that all things which are said of God ought to be taken according to substance, on account of certain relative cases of names, brought forth according to the customary eloquence of human speech, which are fitted not properly to God, but to persons and times or to whatever kinds of things. That is, when he says that he does not know, or when he confesses that he has again known, or when he bears repentance for things done by him, and now shows himself angry, now placated. All these things, if we wish to accept them according to essence, we shall without doubt profess that the divine nature is passible and improvident, into which either ignorance or knowledge born from time falls; which both sad things cast down by repenting, and glad things lift up by rejoicing. What else will this be, unless to endure mutable things, and to flow away hither and thither with unstable mobility? Whence it is most manifestly proved that not all things ought to be said of God according to substance, but certain things corresponding to dispensation, not befitting his nature, we profess most certainly.

Probus the judge said: Although you have answered sufficiently and quite learnedly with praiseworthy brevity, that not all things are said of God according to substance, nevertheless I desire to hear these matters from you more fully, when the time of your turn in the disputation has arrived. For now, in the meantime (as I said before), let Sabellius proceed as he had begun.

VII. Sabellius said: The profession of our faith, as I said above, proclaims this same one to be both Father and Son, God; lest we be convicted of asserting two gods by gentile error, if one is proclaimed Father and another Son by us. Hence from these very things which are thought by the unintelligent or the less discerning to be adverse to us, I will most openly demonstrate that the person of the supreme and almighty God is one. For what else is it that the Father who remains in me does the works (John 14:10), except that I, remaining in myself, do the works? And He who sees me sees also the Father (John 14:9), that is, I am the very Father who is the Son; so that through one contemplation of the divinity you may understand the person to be one? But also what he says, I am in the Father and the Father in me; or what Isaiah says to the same one, saying, In you is God, and there is no God besides you (Isaiah 45:14), he undoubtedly wished to indicate more manifestly that, without the mingling of another person, he remains ineffably in himself.

For if, as they themselves also concede and as they admitted above, the divine nature is simple, it cannot happen that, as though it were intrinsically empty, it contains within itself the person of another nature, and is in turn contained by another. For it must necessarily either contract itself by diminishing, or empty itself by evacuating, or spread out by dilating; since this is the condition of things received or receiving, that either the receiver be dilated in space to receive another, or the thing to be received be diminished by some contraction, so that it may be able to be contained within a nature emptied to receive it. Since these things, being so impious and so absurd, can in no way accord with that simple and unchangeable nature, it remains without doubt to be understood that one and the same [God], remaining in himself, is seen to say of himself singularly: I am in the Father and the Father in me; and He who sees me sees also the Father: lest, if you wish to take this as said of two, you be convicted of asserting nonetheless two gods separately distinct. Or if you defend that they remain in each other in such a way that you say there is one nature of both, I do not know what twofoldness of persons, similar to some portent, you will appear to profess—one protruding at the beginning of a single thing, or dwelling more confusedly and mixedly in the substance of one nature—and by this reasoning you will be defending the simple and undefiled nature of the divine power as composed of unworthy qualities.

Turn rather to those singular proclamations of the heavenly saints, by which the divinity of one remaining in one person is proclaimed, as Moses admonishes, saying: Hear, O Israel; the Lord your God, the Lord is one. And as God himself also testifies repeatedly: See, see, that I am God, and there is no other besides me. And again: You are witnesses, if there is any other God besides me. We ought not, by confessing another God, to frustrate a sentence drawn from heaven for us of such great authority, lest, by nullifying the command of so great a proclamation to our own destruction, we undergo the torments owed to the worshipers of gods.

VIII. Probus the judge said: If you think anything can be replied to so strong an accusation, be pleased to plead your case.

Arius said: While Sabellius, by a plausible indeed and very useful confession of one God, tries to strip himself of the error of a twofold divinity, he incurs the abominable impiety of the Jewish mind, denying with sacrilegious intent that the Son of God is God remaining in his own substance and having his own person.

I shall curb the audacity of this most insane fury, with whatever brief compendium I can employ, by the authority of heavenly testimonies, to demonstrate the Son's own properly subsisting person: not taking up those things which they quibble are suited to the man assumed, but bringing forward into the midst those testimonies which all alike confess belong to his divinity without any scruple of ambiguous understanding. In Genesis we read that the Lord said: Let us make man in our image and likeness (Gen. 1:26). Behold, he said "let us make" in the plural, clearly indicating another to whom the word of the speaking God was directed. For it must not be understood so absurdly that he spoke to himself, saying "let us make," which is properly the mark of those who incur the affliction of madness. For in order that Scripture might show that one spoke to another, it immediately added, saying: And God made man; in the image of God he made him (Ibid., 27). If he were one, it would be said that he made him in his own image. But now another is more openly described as having made him in the image of another. Likewise, when on account of many deeds of unspeakable wickedness the divinity had ordained that the lands of the Sodomites with their inhabitants be consumed by fiery rains, it is thus reported: The Lord rained, it says, from the Lord fire and sulphur (Gen. 19:24). Nothing could be more evidently intimated in accordance with the law to show the Father and demonstrate the Son, where one from another, not one from himself, hurled sulphurous flames from heaven.

IX. Likewise the Son himself speaks to Jacob, saying: I am the God who was seen by you in the place of God (Gen. 31:13). He could have said, "who was seen by you in my place," if the speaker were understood to be one person. Likewise: Go up, it says, to Bethel, and make there an altar to God, who appeared to you (Gen. 35:1). Nor can this be fittingly applied to a single person, where one so distinctly commands the other that a sanctuary be established. For it would have been fitting for a solitary being to say: Make an altar to me, God, who appeared to you. Likewise the Father speaks concerning the peoples to be saved in God the Son through the prophet Hosea, saying: And I will save them in the Lord their God (Hos. 1:7). Likewise David, speaking to the Son of God: Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever: the rod of equity is the rod of your kingdom. Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows (Ps. 44:7-8). What could be said more clearly than this for removing the error of the confession, where God is written to have anointed God? These few things I have meanwhile culled from the Old Testament. For I have omitted many more and clearer ones out of a desire for brevity, by which it is proved clearer than light that both the Father and the Son exist with distinct and wholly separate properties of their substances. But as for what Sabellius [argues] from the fact that it says: I am in the Father, and the Father in me (John 10

He strove to demonstrate one nature or person—namely, that one cannot be within another without a confounding mixture, or apart from the other kinds of vices which he wished to raise by the manner of sophistical questions. Thus they do not indicate that there is one substance or person, just as there cannot be one nature of God and of men, concerning whom it is said that they are in God and God is in them. Finally, the same Son, speaking to the Father concerning believers, says: That just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, so also may these be in us (John 17:21). And again: He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him (John 6:56). The Apostle also concerning the idolater says: Falling prostrate, he will confess that God is truly in you (1 Cor. 14:25). Therefore, just as when we are in God and God is in us, it is not by confusion of person, not by unity of nature, not by addition of increase, not by subtraction of loss, not by any composed or ordered quality of a mutable substance, but by the holiness of pure and simple faith we prepare a dwelling for the Lord in us, and he receives us into his own dwelling, while by doing his will we remain in him—so the Father and the Son are known to remain in each other by the indissoluble bond of will.

X. Probus the judge said: Since you have demonstrated by such very clear proofs of testimonies that the Father and the Son subsist properly—which Sabellius denied by battering away the clouds of questions upon human minds—now it is asked of your side, how, in confessing both God the Father and God the Son separately and distinctly, you may not seem to introduce a plural number of divinity. And although in the preceding argument you have briefly touched on a few points concerning this, nevertheless the proof of this kind of question ought to be broad and proper. You will then be obliged to set it forth more fully, when the examination of the disputation between you and Athanasius begins to be stirred up. And since now, as I said, the perfidy of Sabellius has been refuted by your assertion, let Photinus, if he can, support his own faith with sure testimonies.

Photinus said: I assign a beginning to our Lord Jesus Christ, and I affirm that he was a pure man, and that through the most excellent merit of a blessed life he attained the honor of divinity. For who, carried in a woman's womb, is brought forth through childbirth? Who, having experienced the cradle of childbirth and been nourished by the food of milky drink, was borne in his mother's womb? Who received the advancement of age?

Who fulfilled all the conditions of bodily frailty—when he suffers hunger, when he is struck by the temptation of a most wicked spirit, when he is worn out by weariness, when he is dissolved into sleep, when, having been seized, he is bound in chains, when he is scourged with whips and beaten with palms, when he is stirred by the mockeries of those insulting him, when he is suspended on the gibbet of the cross, and when he endures the losses of death; he to whom the human condition was subject in respect of parents, whose brothers' names of both sexes were designated, who is deceived concerning the knowledge of places, who inquires concerning the name of the evil spirit, who confesses that he does not know the day of judgment, who testifies that he does not have the power to assign seats, who complains that he has been forsaken on the cross, who is shaken by the dread of suffering and the terror of death, on account of which he also prays that the cup be taken away from him, and who suffers many things (which it would be long to recount) befitting humanity—who is so foolish as to think that these things are fitting for God?

For those miracles of powers he did not perform by his own virtue, but it is to be believed that God did them through him, as he himself says: The Father who abides in me, he does the works. And again: The Son cannot do anything of himself. For because he was greatly acceptable to God, whatever he willed he obtained by his prayers. For if life was restored to the dead, if light to the blind, if strength to the weak, if cleansing to lepers, if the sea and the winds yielded, if the creature of foods felt the increase of multiplied interest, all these things are known to have been elicited only by the gift of prayer. And in like manner certain prophets also accomplished perfect things in the name of God. But because this one showed himself so worthy of God, and more dear by persevering in his commandments, as he himself says: I do always the things that are pleasing to him, and as the Father also speaks to him through an angel, saying (as it is written in Zechariah): The angel, he says, of the Lord stood and testified to Jesus: Thus says the Lord God of hosts: If you will walk in my ways, and keep my charge, you also shall judge my house, and as he bore death with equanimity for the salvation of the world; for this reason, I say, because he showed himself so great and such, God gave him power over all things, and constituted him God of all creation, as the Apostle teaches, saying: He humbled himself even unto death, death indeed of the cross.

Because of this God also exalted him, and gave him the name that is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven, on earth, and under the earth. Hence he himself also, after his passion, which conferred such merit upon him, said: All power has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Surely if he had been God before the ages, he would not have received power in time, which it was established he always had. But, as I said, on account of the distinguished merit of his obedience and passion, he was endowed with divine honor and exalted above all things, as Peter also says: The God of our fathers exalted his servant Jesus. And again: Therefore, exalted by the right hand of God. And again: Let all the house of Israel know most certainly, he says, that God has made both Lord and Christ this Jesus whom you crucified: showing more evidently that, on account of the passion of the cross, he was made God in time, not born God before the ages. Hence Paul also says: Having become so much better than the angels, as he has received a more excellent name than they. For what is made or received takes its beginning in time. For that he took the beginning of his origin from the seed of David, the divine oracles everywhere testify, as God speaks to David, saying: The son who shall come forth from your loins, he shall build me a house. And again: From the fruit of your womb I will set upon my throne.

And Isaiah: Behold, the root of Jesse shall rise up to rule the nations. And the Apostle says: Concerning his Son, who was made for him from the seed of David. And again: Remember that Christ Jesus rose from the dead from the seed of David. And the angel to Mary says: God will give him the seat of David his father. From these, therefore, and very many others, it is shown more clearly that he was not God before the ages, but advanced to be God by the merit of good action.

XII. Probus the judge said: Let the questions raised by Photinus be met with responses from those coming from the other side.

Athanasius said: If you carefully attend to the things that Arius set forth against Sabellius, there you will likewise recognize that the perfidy of Photinus is equally excluded.

Probus the judge said: For instance?

Athanasius said: Sabellius, by confessing one person, denied that the Son subsisted before the origin of all the ages; and Photinus also attempts to assert this very thing with impious fabrications, while attributing to the Son a beginning from the birth of human origin, he declares that he did not exist at all. Which sacrilegious opinion, with Arius setting it forth more copiously, has been annulled. For openly and more lucidly he demonstrated that the Son of God subsisted as God before the times.

Probus the judge said: I indeed remember that Arius dealt sufficiently with the property of the subsisting person of the Son against Sabellius; but the order and reason of the disputation demand that Photinus's assertion also be removed by the barrier of refutation against those who strive against it; for while you study too much brevity, you seem to omit necessary matters. For he has brought no small question into his faith, by asserting with many proofs that the Son of God received a beginning from Mary, and advanced into God by the merit of a most illustrious action.

Athanasius said: It will not displease me, or Arius, to accuse the madness of Photinus by the authorities of divine Scripture, who has burst forth into such great insanity that, resisting with the mind of his insane fury the prophetic and apostolic sayings, he has brought forth I know not what most vile examples of disparagement—things which God underwent by a voluntary affection for the salvation of our redemption—to the injury of such great majesty.

XIII. Arius said: More tolerable are the voices of the Jews insulting Christ, or the blasphemies of the crucified thief, than that the unspeakable treachery of this Photinus should be endured. For who could bear that a mere man should be preached, or that he should have taken his beginning from Mary, who declares of himself that he came from heaven and was begotten before the ages, as when the same one, speaking of the Father and revealing the mystery of his eternal nativity, says: Before the ages he founded me, and before all the hills he begot me. When he prepared the heavens, I was present with him (Prov. 8:23). But the Father also speaks to the same one, saying: From the womb before the morning star I begot you (Ps. 109:3). For since the stars have been placed for signs of the times, God the Father testifies that the nativity of his Son existed before the origin of the stars, that is, before the series of all times. Or let us understand it spiritually as said before the morning star, that is, before the creation of the angels; since it was said of the angel: Lucifer, who rose in the morning (Isa. 14:12).

Photinus said: This is to be understood as said according to the truth of predestination, with the Apostle testifying and saying: "Who was predestined the Son of God in power" (Rom 1:4). For so it is said: "Before the hills he begot me" (Prov 8:25), or: "Before the morning star I begot you" (Ps 104:3), although nevertheless he was born in the last times, just as the Apostle also asserts that the election of the saints was made before the beginning of the ages. "Who," he says, "chose us before the foundation of the world" (Eph 1:4). And yet they were not chosen except at the end of the world. Therefore, just as the apostles, who did not exist before the ages, are nevertheless said to have been chosen in predestination, by the same manner of understanding it is also accepted concerning Christ, that what was said before the ages was said in predestination. For it is the custom of divine Scripture to narrate that which is certainly going to be as if it had already happened. Hence the prophet also says: "Who made the things that are to come" (Isa 45:11, according to the LXX), that is, made in predestination, but not yet existing in reality. So also the Son's nativity was predestined before the ages, but in the end of the times it truly arose.

Probus the judge said: That birth of the Son which is predestined before the world is described as having proceeded from the womb of God the Father; but you, on the other hand, testify that the Son took his beginning from Mary.

XIV. Photinus said: But it must not therefore be understood that Christ was born of God the Father, because either he himself confesses that he was begotten of the Father, or the Father confesses that he begot him. For God the Father is accustomed to say this of sons adopted or to be adopted, as it is said through Isaiah: "I have begotten sons and exalted them" (Isa 1:2). And again: "Israel is my firstborn son" (Exod 4:22). And John says: "Everyone who is born," he says, "of God does not sin" (1 John 5:18); and he cannot, he says, sin, because the birth of God preserves him. Are faithful men, then, because they are said to have been born of God, for that reason deprived of the origin of their human birth? Or are they to be believed to have existed before the beginning of the world, before they were born of men, through the mention of a divine nativity?

Arius said: Since Photinus strives against the most manifest truth with the cunning art of disputation, he must be crushed by the most evident authority of divine Scripture. For John the apostle, perceiving long beforehand in the Holy Spirit the madness of this man (I believe), testifies that the Son existed substantially with God the Father before the beginning of the ages, and thus he rouses Photinus, sunk in the deep sleep of ignorance and buried in deadly quiet, by the proclamation of his most brilliant voice, saying: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This was in the beginning with God (John 1:1). Therefore, for him who was in the beginning with God, it is not left that in the latest time he should have taken the beginning of his origin from a man. And lest anyone think that this Word, which was in the beginning with God, is a passing sound of the divine voice, he says: And the Word was God (Ibid.). But if this Word was God, it was a remaining substance, not a passing sound. For the power of a founded nature is shown, which is proclaimed to have been or to be substantially. And since I now see Sabellius also standing with us in this audience, I will brandish the darts of this testimony against both, and from that same source I will slay Photinus whence I destroy Sabellius. Let Sabellius therefore hear that God was with God, and let him cease from the unity of person. Let Photinus hear that this Word was God in the beginning, and let him cease to assign a beginning from the virgin Mary. This, he says, was in the beginning with God.

All things were made through him, and without him was made nothing (John 1:2). He was in this world, and the world was made through him (Ibid., 10). Does the maker's work precede the creature made, or not?

XV. Probus the judge said: It is established that the creator precedes the fabric of his own work; for it cannot be admitted by any reasoning that he who was the author of what was made began to exist afterward.

Arius said: If, therefore, all things were made through the Son, and the world was made through him, it appears that the Son existed before the world, or before all things that were made.

Probus the judge said: Nothing more manifest than this proof can be demonstrated.

Arius said: But lest perhaps the proof of one apostle seem insufficient to the faithless, I shall, if you command, add in a brief continuation other testimonies witnessing that the Son of God subsisted before the ages.

Probus the judge said: Although (as I think) there is nothing more useful and more valid than this testimony, nevertheless, so that you may heap up faith for your assertion with diverse testimonies of proofs, set forth a few things (as you say) with concise brevity.

Arius said: It is the voice of our Lord Jesus Christ speaking in the Gospel: No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven (John 3:13). And again: I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of the Father who sent me (John 6:38). It is evident, therefore, that he who had descended from heaven already existed, so that Photinus may be put to shame, and that he is another besides the Father, since he does not presume to do anything by the decision of his own will, but carries out in all things the will of the Father who sent him—so that Sabellius and those like him may be confounded. Likewise: Father, he says, glorify me with that glory which I had with you before the world was made (John 17:5). Behold, before the foundation of the world, he testifies that he was himself endowed with the glory of honor in the Father's presence. Let Sabellius therefore hear that one was with another; let Photinus hear that he possessed glory before the world's beginning. Likewise the Apostle, showing that he was in the proper form of divinity before he took the form of a servile nature, says: Who, though he was in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant (Philippians 2:6-7). Already, therefore, he was God, who, in order to become man, is shown to have emptied himself of the form of God.

Likewise Jeremiah more clearly reveals that God existed before he deigned to assume the form of a man, saying: This is our God, and no other shall be reckoned besides him: who found out every way of knowledge and gave it to Jacob his servant, and to Israel his chosen. After these things he was seen on earth, and conversed among men (Baruch 3:36). These proofs, so firm and so robust, drawn from the divine authorities, let Photinus dissolve by whatever argumentation he can (if he is able).

XVI. Probus the judge said: If Photinus still wishes to oppose such manifest and perfect evidences, it is certain that he is afflicted with the vice of diseased contention, since he does not submit to such great truth. But lest, in his zeal to prolong the dispute, he direct his attention to the cloudy questions of falsehood and waste necessary time on superfluous matters, let him impose a useful end upon his pleadings. But let Arius and Athanasius, who confess that the Son of God was begotten of the Father before the beginnings of the world's origin (which indeed Sabellius and Photinus alike denied), not delay to declare how, in one and the same sentence of faith, they make a dissension and do not agree among themselves.

Athanasius said: Arius truly professes that the Son existed before the flesh. But that he was born of the Father, he concedes only by the sound of the voice and a feigned confession of words, not by the truth of the matter; since he separates him too far from the substance of the Father's nature, and affirms that the Son is subject to the Father by condition of nature, not by reason of dispensation.

Probus the judge said: Give the clearest indication of your faith, and mark by a fresh exposition how you believe, so that the matter of the dispute may also be fitted to the norm of the confession set forth.

Athanasius said: Lest I burden your senses with a very long speech, I conclude my faith in a brief statement. I confess that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one in deity, power, greatness, and nature: nor is there anything in this Trinity new or foreign, as if it had not existed before and were afterward added, but, as I have said, I believe it to be of one nature and one substance.

Arius said: I confess three substances of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, just as I confess three persons remaining in their own property. For one is the substance of God the Father, another of the Son, another of the Holy Spirit, nor can the nature of the unbegotten substance of the Father be in any way compared with the begotten nature of the Son or the created nature of the Holy Spirit. Whence they are believed by our faithful confession to be neither equal in power, nor similar in magnitude, nor sharers in nature.

XVII. Probus the judge said: If this is the whole matter in which we see you disagree with one another—namely, that one of you says the substances are diverse, while the other says the substance of the Trinity is one—then the nature of the dispute now demands that you support your assertions not by the subtlety of arguments deliberately drawn from the art of dialectic, but more firmly by the pure and simple proofs of divine Scripture.

Arius said: I believe that the memory of your prudence has by no means erased the prosecution of Athanasius, in which he pleaded this point more elegantly: that he ought to be marked with the error of depravity who pursues new and unusual inventions of words, adding to the apostolic doctrines what is established not to have been handed down by them.

Probus the judge said: So I remember.

Arius said: Therefore let the decrees of the Council of Nicaea be made public by reading, and you will recognize that Athanasius, or the authors of this, corrupted the apostolic faith by the addition of new words to such an extent that they even used royal ambition to decree that those who adhered to the ancient doctrines of the Fathers were to be relegated by savage edicts.

Probus the judge said: If the nature of the present matter requires that the decree of the Council of Nicaea be recited, let Athanasius also designate this by his own prosecution, so that by the agreement of both parties' will (if there is anything that is being offered) it may be read out from outside.

Athanasius said: It is fitting for the case that an abundant reading of the records not be denied.

XVIII. Probus the judge said: Therefore, as you desire, let the reading of the aforementioned decree of the Nicene faith be aired.

And it was read as follows:

COPY OF THE NICENE FAITH.

We believe in one God the Father, almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, born of the Father, that is, of the substance of the Father: God from God, light from light, true God from true God: born, not made: of one substance with the Father, which the Greeks call homoousion; through whom all things were made, both in heaven and on earth: who for our salvation descended, was incarnate, became man, suffered, and rose again on the third day, ascended into the heavens, and will come to judge the living and the dead. And in the Holy Spirit.

But those who say: There was when he was not, and before he was born he was not, and that he is from things that do not exist, or from another substance or essence; saying that God is mutable and changeable, the catholic and apostolic Church anathematizes.

XIX. Arius said: You see clearly, Probus, best of men, that the decrees of the council were written by the rash presumption of daring to the disparagement of the apostolic faith. For what need was there for this new word homoousion to be inserted into the ancient rules of doctrine? For shall we say that the apostles, or their disciples and all their successors in order, who lived in the confession of Christ up to that time, were ignorant of the word homoousion, and followed the sacrilege of impiety in the truth of the faith—namely, because they were deprived of the name of this word, they went to Christ without the assertion of that preaching? For if (as these men utterly lie) a new doctrine was being introduced by us against the statutes of the apostles, it would surely have been fitting for us to oppose the ancient teachings of the apostles with the doctrine newly brought in by us, and to proscribe novelty by antiquity, not to pervert antiquity by novelty. Why does he impose on me this name to be followed? Why does he drag me more violently to a novelty of this kind? Why does he add this word to the apostolic faith, of which not even the prophets, nor the apostles, make any mention at all? What, I ask, is this name, without which the faith cannot be whole?

without whom Christians are deprived of the honor of the Christian religion? For in this matter one of two things must follow: if the assertion of homoousios is true, the preaching of the apostles is false, which flourished for a long time without this name. But if the apostolic faith without this name is true, as indeed it is, then this is undoubtedly false, which has added the novelty of a name to the ancient faith. Roll through all the volumes of the New and Old Testament, to see whether you can find homoousios inscribed anywhere in the sacred pages.

XX. Probus the judge said: What is being said in reply to these things?

Athanasius said: Are you offended only by the novelty of the name, or do you also shrink from the power of the thing itself which has obtained this word?

Arius said: What you are saying, I do not understand well enough.

Athanasius said: Since the thing is ancient but has received a new name, and the power of a new thing has not been added by a new word, this at least I ask: is the thing, which is ancient, to be condemned by you together with the novelty of the name? Arius said: You are speaking of twisted things, and things worthy of every marvel of folly. For if homoousios is a new name, there is no doubt that the thing it seems to signify is also new.

Athanasius said: Do you therefore condemn the thing and the name alike?

Arius said: Quite so.

Athanasius said: Therefore, when I have demonstrated that a new name was attached to an ancient thing handed down by the apostles, will you at last admit that you are defeated? Or will you even so condemn the ancient thing together with the newness of the name?

Arius said: Plainly you do not show this. And what reasoning will demand that an ancient thing receive a new name? For surely, before it obtained the term of this name, was it without the propriety of a name? This seems to me to have no logical consequence.

Athanasius said: It is always the custom of ecclesiastical discipline, whenever a new doctrine of heretics arises, to change the terms of names against the insolent novelties of questions, while the things themselves remain unchangeably, and to express the natures of things more significantly; terms which nevertheless correspond to the powers of existing causes, and which demonstrate that these things existed of old rather than suggest the newness of an origin. And that what I say may be made plainer, I use an example. In the very beginning of the preaching of the Christian religion, all who believed in our Lord Jesus Christ were called not Christians, but only disciples.

And because many authors of new doctrines had arisen, opposing the apostolic teaching, and were calling all their followers disciples, and there was no distinction of name between true and false disciples—whether they were followers of Christ, or of Dositheus, or of Theodas, or of some Judas, or even of John, who confessed that they believed in Christ—they were unwilling to be reckoned under the one name of disciples. Then the apostles, assembling at Antioch, as the Acts indicate through Luke's narration, call all the disciples by a new name, that is, Christians, separating them from the common designation of false disciples, so that the word of the divine oracle through Isaiah might also be fulfilled, which says: But to my servants a new name shall be given (Isa. 65:15, according to the LXX).

XXI. Therefore the Church, retaining this form handed down by the apostles in the use of new names, against various heretics, as the reason of the sound faith demanded, brought forth various newness of names. Finally the Church imposed on the Father the new name of innascibility. For when the Sabellian heresy wished to assert that the Father was begotten of the Virgin, the Church, by confessing the contrary, handed down that the Father is unbegotten. And indeed in the divine Scriptures we never read that the Father is unbegotten.

Sabellius can therefore turn the shamelessness of his own position into an occasion for this calumny, and use the same kind of proposition as you do, so as to say: Why do you do violence to the divine Scriptures with no regard for shame, professing an invisible Father, which you are unable to show from what is written? Likewise, because the same Sabellius professes with impious doctrine that he is not only begotten but also suffered, your bishops, having long ago assembled together at Sirmium, among the other sanctions of the faith which they promulgated, said that the Father is impassible; and we approve that they established this religiously and holily. But he likewise proclaims this: How long do you extend the audacity of your license, by professing (what you have not read in writing) an impassible Father—which neither the prophets handed down, nor the authority of the authentic symbol handed down, but it has been presumed by your temerity? Again, let the same men who convened at Sirmium continue, and they establish this faith of religious confession concerning the Son. God, they say, from God, light from light. Now here, I ask you, measure for yourself how great an occasion of calumny lies open to Photinus, who assigns a beginning to the Son from the nature of human generation. For why should he not bring forward similar grounds of complaint? Why should he not himself also rave with a similar outcry, saying: What do you say? What do you establish? What do you hand down to posterity by your judgment to be followed?—by confessing the Son to be God from God, light from light?

Show me whether you have read this written in the same form of faith, that is, in the authentic creed which the apostles handed down. But I am content that, since it was not written there, it be read to me at least from the prophets, be shown from the letters of the apostles. Who could tolerate these novelties of words? Who would allow to be admitted into his senses what neither the prophets nor the apostles handed down?

XXII. Likewise, you have established the Son as similar to the Father by many and repeated decrees of your councils. Let Eunomius now rise up, who confesses him to be dissimilar, and say: Where did you read this? Where did you find it written? Did the Father or the Son use this word about himself? Therefore you, Arius, who today press me with such an article as to demand that I show "homoousion" written expressly, either confess that against the insolent and furtive depravities of heretical understanding, certain names of confession were inserted into the authorities of the faith, not rashly presumed but gathered by consequent reasoning—so that by the religious understanding of so many new words there came about absolutions as numerous as the occasions of perfidy that had been sought or supplied—or, if you are unwilling to confess this, I will deal with you by means of your own objections.

Show me—not from conjectures, not from probabilities, not from what is akin to reason, not from things that prompt toward understanding, not from what the piety of faith persuades one to confess—but by the pure and naked propriety of the words themselves, show it written: that the Father is unbegotten or impassible; but that the Son is God from God, light from light, or that he is like the Father. Do not say to me: the reasoning of faith demands this, piety teaches this, the sequence of the Scriptures summons me to this profession of the name. Do not, I say, put such things before me, because you also reject me when I bring similar arguments for the proof of homoousios. But carry in your hands the codices of the divine volumes, and read in the same sound and the same syllables the names of the aforesaid words written there. Either show it written that the Son is like the Father, or confess that he is unlike. There is no way for you to burst out from here or escape to anywhere. No ability to untangle yourself supplies you when you are entangled in the knots of your own proposition. Either grant me that I may prove homoousios, that is, the faith of one substance, from the consequences; or, if you are unwilling to grant it, then everything that you yourself confess must be denied by you, because you will certainly never be able to find those things set down nakedly.

XXIII. Probus the judge said: If it is the custom of ecclesiastical usage that certain verbal terms, for the restraining of heretical movements, are set down bare in the authority of the faith, yet are clothed by reason drawn from the consequence of existing things—since their truth, from which they take their origin, is found to be contained in the divine writings—what do you say, Arius? Do you grant that homoousion (as Athanasius says) is proved from the divine Scriptures through fitting qualities of confession, or not?

Arius said: This man, by some cunning of the syllogistic art, I know not what, is trying to elude my objection. For I desire this to be shown to me: whether homoousion has been written by the authority of the Lord's reading. And therefore let him either read it as properly set down, or let him withdraw from his own confession.

Probus the judge said: But you see how he turns your question back upon yourself, and binds you with the same points you employ, himself also more manifestly demanding a document of your confession—that you show him, from the canonical writings, set down bare, either the Father as unbegotten, or as impassible, or God from God, or light from light, or the Son as like the Father. All of which, if you are unable to demonstrate as properly set down, the necessity of denying them will hang over you. To this peril, as it seems to me, that one reason alone can come to the rescue: that you grant that those things which were set down bare in your councils flowed from the fountains of the Scriptures.

For this will be reckoned a fault of contentiousness, that you should demand the bare wording of a document whose meaning in the Scriptures you know to abound more copiously. Seek, then, the meaning from which the nature of this word drew its origin; and when you have found the meaning, do not doubt that you have likewise found the name.

XXIV. Athanasius said: However many arguments you use with him, he can in no way be recalled from this intention. For he knows most certainly that if it comes to this, that from the consequence of the Scriptures it be taught that the substance of the Father and of the Son is one (which is homoousion), he can most easily be overcome; and therefore, driven by the danger of distrust and fear, he demands the document of the bare word. But he must again be constrained by his own professions. You demand of me that I show written that the substance of the Father and of the Son is one, that is, homoousion; but you confess three ousiai, that is, three substances. Show me, therefore, where you have read three ousiai. For if I ought therefore to deny one, that is, homoousion, because I do not find it written bare, how do you dare to profess three ousiai, when you can nowhere demonstrate this to be written?

Probus the judge said: If there exists any document from the divine authorities that is set forth properly and specifically, by which it may be proved that there are three usiae of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and three natures (as you maintain), let it be produced, by which Athanasius might withdraw from the confession of one substance, that is, homoousion. For when you have shown that "triusion" is properly set forth in the Scriptures, it will appear that Athanasius has hitherto persisted in the confession of homoousion through the stubbornness of a most obstinate pertinacity, because he could not demonstrate that it is properly set forth. But if you yourself cannot demonstrate three usiae, you will appear to be bound by the same necessity of condition as I am.

XXV. Athanasius said: Let him teach that three usiae are properly set forth, and I will make a concession of one substance, that is, homoousion.

Arius said: If there are three, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, then necessarily there are three substances, in which each person is known to subsist separately and more distinctly, properly.

Athanasius said: Arguments are of no use here; here the truth is gathered from consequent reasoning. The specific testimony is demanded. Read where three usiae are specifically set down, and do not say by conjecture: If there are three, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, then necessarily there are also three substances; because I too by a similar conjecture could more truly opine: If the Father and the Son are one (since he himself says: I and the Father are one), how is there not one substance? But you were wholly unwilling to enter this path of disputation, while you demand from me a testimony specifically set down (by demonstrating homoousion). By a similar reasoning, therefore, do you read three usiae specifically and properly set down. For if I ought to deny homoousion for this reason, that I do not plainly show it written, then I ought necessarily to confess three usiae at that point, if I have learned that it is properly set down by your demonstration.

Arius said: Does the Father subsist properly, or not? Athanasius said: Unless you read to me three usiae properly set down, I will give no answer to your questions. For who does not see where your objection tends? For you wish by the argument of a cunning interrogation to approve diverse substances of the Father and the Son; but arguments are not needed here, where by a more manifest testimony of propriety the document of three substances is demanded.

But if you wish to pass from the specific force of the testimonies to the logical consequence of things, let this very fact be made known to the public conscience, that you could not demonstrate three usiae specifically set down; and since we have resolved this point for neither side, I must satisfy your objections or questions.

XXVI. Probus the judge said: As the intent of your disputation shows, neither you can show Homoousion nor this man Triusion as specifically and specially set down. Hence, lest you linger too long in childish wrangling over superfluous matters, at last both of you cease from this demand for pure proof; and by consequent reasoning, gather either Homoousion or Triusion from the authority of the Scriptures. For it will not be right to doubt the appellation of a name, which a copious accumulation of testimonies will be able to strengthen more firmly.

Arius said: Since your sentence has decreed that we ought to gather the powers of the aforesaid names by the persuasions of arguments and the causes of consequent things, lest it seem to Athanasius that, through the difficulty of demonstrating the truth, I have sought the proofs of the specific force of a bare word, I will do as the sentence of your decree has promulgated. For I wished rather to use a compendium, lest the intent of reasoning wander too far and obscure the truth with ambiguous senses.

Athanasius said: The faith cannot be brought into doubt, which is supported by the protection of truth. The coarser trifles of lies do not dispel the light of shining truth. For he cannot lack his own strength, who does not need to be aided from outside by the supports of others' testimonies.

BOOK TWO.

1. And on another day Probus the judge said: Since I do not doubt that you keep the agreements of the covenant entered into with unswerving judgment, by which you seem to have granted this to one another in turn, that you prove by the clear examination of disputation the profession of one substance or of three substances from the logical consequence of the divine writings—the question, namely, of the exact meaning of the pure and properly used word being set aside—the very reasoning of that same decision now demands that, with all the cavilling of human argumentation removed, you teach from the sacred volumes of the divine authorities whether the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are of one substance or of different substances. For the proof of this matter, not only my own mind (as I think) but the mind of almost all mortals is so suspended in balanced expectation that, if the merits of so great a matter allowed it, it would desire to arrive at the summit of truth and the goal of the most manifest understanding without the adjournment of any day or the interval of any moment. Therefore, lest the so religious and truth-desiring intention of the faithful be frustrated, with all the allurements of luxurious speech cast aside.

about the matter, about the case, about the parties concerned, deal with the necessary things, carefully avoiding—as I said—all the circuitousness of words and the ornaments of speech that wander far from the case, and the charm of fine phrases: so that the account of your disputation may be adorned with truth rather than with the swelling eloquence of a tragic buskin.

II. Athanasius said: Although I have already long since disputed frequently and often enough concerning the unity of substance, apart from the proceedings, and have committed my disputations to writing, to which nothing further can be added by me in this disputation: nevertheless, since these things were said externally with no one opposing from afar, I must needs repeat these same things and set them forth in the examination of this public proceeding, so that they may be strengthened by the sentence of your judgment.

Probus the judge said: If they have not been whittled down by Arius's replies, then they will be able to stand firm by our sentence.

Arius said: Why are these snares of frauds set before us? Why, in defense of an abominable assertion, is the judge's sentence preferred beforehand? Let us first do what the necessity of demonstrating the truth imposes on us to do. Let the profession of our faith be impressed upon human hearing. Let the judgments perceive by what means and by what reasonings, and finally by what proofs, our assertion is supported: and then at last we will demand the promulgation of the sentence, which certainly in no way depends on our will, from the judge.

Probus the judge said: It is necessary that I remember my preface, recently delivered at the beginning of this proceeding, and your promise, inserted some time ago into the record of past proceedings, by which it was urged that, setting aside superfluous matters, we ought to descend to the heart of the case. This you ought at last to do.

Arius said: Let him teach that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit are of one substance: of one power, one dignity, one glory, one majesty, one virtue and honor; which he is accustomed to boast to the people with a rather imprudent and overly reckless profession.

Athanasius said: Do you profess that the Son was truly born of the Father, or not?

Arius said: Do you yourself profess that the Father cannot be subject to the fault of any derivation or division, or not?

Athanasius said: I profess it strongly.

Arius said: And I also profess that the Son was born of the Father.

III. Athanasius said: Do you judge that to be born of the Father which is also born from the Father?

Arius said: It is enough for you that I have said he was born from the Father; I show that this is even very easily written. Why do you use cunning arguments? Otherwise, for the present, a text saying "born from the Father" has not been able to occur to me. But I recall that "from the Father" is written, the apostle John saying: "Whoever loves the Father loves him who is born from him."

Athanasius said: Do you therefore think it makes no difference whether he is said to be born from him or of him?

Arius said: If you can demonstrate to me that "the Son born of the Father" is properly set down, then I will consider what I ought to think from it. But because I am not unaware that in very many manuscripts it is variously set down, so that in the same passages where "from him" is read, in other codices "of him" is read—yet whether this has been done by the fraud of interpolators or by the meaning of one thing (that is, so that "from him" is the same as "of him")—this cannot bring any prejudice to our faith.

Athanasius said: In this prosecution of yours I have noticed, from the careful and very certain reasoning you have set forth, that you have spoken only of our faith and have not indicated that no prejudice can be brought against the faith of both parties by these words; and I have wondered enough at this, and I think that, hastening to fortify your own position, you proposed it thus, hoping that I could thence pass lightly over it without any proof. Also in the Gospel the Son says concerning the Father: God is a Spirit (John 4:24). And to show that he was born of the Father, he says: That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit (John 3:6). And: I came forth from God the Father (John 16:27). Behold, I have shown, with the Son himself speaking, that the Son was born of the Father.

And Arius said: You employ sufficiently cunning and suspicious disputations, in saying that I said this to fortify my faith; but so that all ambiguity of suspicion may be removed from your senses: as I confessed above, whether he is said to be born from him or of him, it can bring no prejudice at all upon the faith of either party in any respect.

Athanasius said: The Father begot the Son from himself—did he beget this which he himself is, or something else?

Arius said: He begot, certainly, this which he himself is, because God begot God, light begot light, the perfect begot the perfect, the almighty begot the almighty.

Athanasius said: Therefore not from outside, nor from nothing, nor from any preceding or subsequent matter, but from himself he begot; and he begot nothing other than what he himself is.

Arius said: One begot another.

Athanasius said: We too confess that one begot another. But if he begot from himself, that is, from that which he himself is—since the Son cannot be of another substance or of a different kind—then he will be of one and the same substance with the Father.

Arius said: If you knew into how many errors of perfidy the profession of one substance descends, you would assuredly never make mention of this name between the Father and the Son, nor would you have cut short your disputation with certain steps of questioning and concluded it with such an article as to bring it to this end of impious profession.

Athanasius said: That it is impious and sacrilegious to profess distinct substances of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and that it is pious and religious to believe them to be of one substance, you know, Arius, that I cannot be ignorant of; and I will demonstrate that this is not gathered from human opinion, nor invented by conjectures and arguments, but handed down by the teaching of heavenly doctrine.

Probus the judge said: First assign to me the force and quality of the word, and then at last it can be demonstrated whether it is fitting for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Athanasius said: Substance is indeed distinguished by two kinds of appellation: and there is one kind, namely the quality that indicates the essence of an existing nature. But there is another kind of substance, by which he who has it is separated from the things he has. And so that what I say may be plainer, I use a clearer exposition. For example: man is the substance of his own kind and nature. Again, if there is anything that he possesses from outside, that is, in the matter of gold or silver or other kinds, it is called his substance. And although there seems to be one appellation of the same word, it nevertheless appears to signify two things. But we are disputing about that kind of substance by which each nature is called substance for the reason that it is or subsists. And whatever it has begotten from itself, that is, from itself, cannot be anything other than what it itself is.

Finally, a human father begetting a son begets a human of his own kind, that is, of his own substance, because a human begets a human; and they are rightly said to be of one substance, because the truth of birth does not admit a diversity of substances. But there is a diversity of substance, if I may speak by way of example, if a human should beget a beast, or if a beast of any kind should beget a beast of another kind than itself; that is, if an ox should beget a donkey, or if a sheep should beget a goat. And since these proceed into a diversity of kind, the generation will be monstrous, preserving in the least the property of its own nature. Again, in the qualities of the elements, it is worthwhile to consider what the diversity or property of substances is. For example: the nature of each fire or light seems to minister from itself that which it itself is; as light, brightness; as fire, burning. And subsisting in this kind of its own office, it seems to preserve the unviolated nature of its substance. But if light should beget darkness from itself, it will be liable to change, furnishing matter of a kind other than itself; because in this it will be able to preserve the unblemished substance of its immutability, if it ministers from itself that which it itself is. Otherwise, if, as I said, that which it contributes from itself is other than that which contributes it, then it could be said to be of another substance; which the quality, or order, or reason of all natures altogether does not admit.

Come now, if it seems good, let us lift the eye of the mind from earthly and visible things to things above, and from the things that have been made let us recognize the substance of the uncreated power, taught by the instruction of apostolic authority, which says that the invisible power of the Godhead ought to be understood from the things that have been made (Rom. 1:20). Arius therefore says that the Son was born from the Father, and that God begot God, light light. In this profession one of two things must undoubtedly be maintained. For either, generating from himself, he begot what he himself is, and on this account the Son will be of one substance with the Father. Or if he begot a God of another kind than himself, true birth can no longer be called that which could not preserve the property of the substance of its kind; and the reasoning of the argument is brought to this point, that either he was not born at all, or he was born degenerate. To admit either of these will seem absurd and impious.

VI. Judge Probus said: If Arius knows anything that he thinks tells against these points, let him not delay to declare it.

Arius said: That God is of a simple and immutable nature, I do not think Athanasius is unaware. If, as he himself has asserted, he begot from his own substance, he will undoubtedly be mutable. For it is necessary that, by begetting from himself what he himself is, he either lost a part of his substance through the generation of derivation, or was able to suffer the defect of division. For I confess that the substance of God the Father neither brought forth anything from itself, nor was derived into the qualities of parts, nor has felt or could feel addition or subtraction, or anything of this kind that is subject to passion.

Athanasius said: But neither do we believe that the divine nature is subject to these conditions of passion; rather, we faithfully confess that the impassible Father impassibly begot the Son from himself, that is, from what he himself is. Nor do divisions or derivations and parts, and all the kinds of passion of all things which you, driven by the fear of empty anxiety, wished to object, turn us aside from the truth of our profession—so that we should deny that God could beget from himself for this reason, lest he seem to be subject to these passions. What, then, is more religious, what more holy and more fitting to the Divinity (I beseech you, O hearers), weigh with the equal scale of judgment.

Lift up the eyes of your mind, and fearing the dread day of the future examination, consider with devout intent of mind what more befits the catholic and apostolic truth: whether to confess that almighty God begot the Son from himself impassibly, or rather to opine that, lest he be subject to the defect of passion, he could not beget the Son from himself, that is, from his own substance. For I assert this, I profess this with the clearest declaration of voice, that just as God is impassible, so also is he almighty. I believe that he was able to beget from his own substance, and yet was not subject to the defect of any passion. For division, derivation, contraction, accession, flux, or whatever other kinds of passions there can be, belong to corporeal and tangible things composed of diversity. But God, who is circumscribed by no corporeal signs of figures, nor distinguished by any lineaments of members, cannot be subject to the defect of passion. And rightly do I profess generation in him, because he begot; and rightly do I nonetheless confess that he was impassible, because he was never passible.

VII. Arius said: Is it therefore because omnipotence cannot be denied to God that we must confess that he cannot endure those things which the entirely incorrupt substance of his divinity does not admit? Hence it will seem very shameful and quite full of impiety that, through the profession of one substance, we should believe that neither does the Father properly subsist, nor does the Son stand in his own property. For the intent of his perfidy proceeds to this point: with the persons of the Father and the Son mixed together and, as it were, collected and confounded from diverse things into the coagulation of one thing, they cannot, as I said, subsist in the singularity of their own property. That also is too horrible and to be removed far from the minds of the faithful, which is contained in this perfidy of your profession: that the inviolable Father, by generating from his substance, could in no way avoid the fault of corruption and division.

Athanasius said: Bound more tightly by the truth of the divine generation, as by insoluble knots, you seek a means of escape through I know not what contrivances of a nefarious intent, which it is certain the divine nature lacks, objecting corruption to the incorrupt, passion to the impassible, and impotence to the omnipotent; and repeating this frequently and more often, no reverence for the divine majesty can, as far as I see, keep you from such nefarious objections; but without any regard for shame, you strive to rush headlong into injury against the venerable nativity of the Son.

But the testimonies of divine authority will restrain you as you wander more unbridled than ever and drift, as it were, on the surge of a swelling sea by a kind of natural license, and, confined within the fixed boundaries of the divine confession, they will not allow you to step beyond the limits of the legal decrees. Therefore the divine majesty presses upon human senses, by that sacred oracle of its confession, in which it testifies and says that it ineffably begot the Son from the hidden secrets of its own substance: From the womb, before the morning star, I begot you. One thing, then, must be retained in this testimony of the divine confession. For either he begot the Son incorruptibly from his own ineffable substance, or he did not beget him at all, lest he be corrupted. But I choose this part of the whole faith, which persuades us to serve God more religiously when he testifies concerning himself; nor shall any obstacles of human passion, descending from the sacrilege of unbelief, be able in any way to call me back, so that I should rightly not believe that God could beget, lest he should be able to be subject to corruption after the manner of human custom; since I do not doubt that it is enough for me to profess this, that he was born of the substance of God, who is established to have proceeded from the womb of the Father.

VIII. Arius said: As the intent of your prosecution shows, you wish to introduce to us a God who is composed and subject to corruption, since you do not fear to accept even a bodily designation of a womb in him. It will therefore be necessary that he either be composed of members, if he has a womb, or (as I said) subject to corruption, if he generated from his own substance.

Athanasius said: You would rightly charge me with having felt this, if I had affirmed by the rash presumption of my own temerity, without any testimony of the divine law, that God has a womb. But since God himself, to refute the madness of those who refuse to believe, deigned to pronounce this concerning himself, so that more evidently through the designation of a womb he might teach that he generated the Son not from outside, not from elsewhere, but from himself, that is, from his own substance—why do you brand me with marks of vicious credulity, when you could rather say this to God: If you have a womb, you will be composed. If you have begotten from yourself, you will be subject to corruption. For a womb is understood in God without any composition of members, just as eyes and ears and hands and feet are said to be in him without any lines of distinctions. Therefore, just as you ought to understand eyes because he sees all things, ears because he hears all things, hands because he works all things, feet because he is everywhere, so also a womb because he ineffably begot from himself.

IX. Nor should you faithlessly suppose this, because if he begot from himself, he could surely have been corrupted; but it is fitting to faithfully maintain that he, being omnipotent, was able both to generate incorruptibly and could not be corrupted by that very generation. For if he is believed to have been born wonderfully from a Virgin, contrary to the nature of things, incorruptibly, how much more must it be believed that he was begotten incorruptibly from the Father? For if the substantial nature of the Virgin, which from that very condition of corruptible nature could be subject to suffering and corruption, generated a son with the unimpaired integrity of her chastity and with the virginal enclosures unbroken, by the wondrous integrity of incorruption, why should we not rather believe (as I said) that the incorruptible God, having begotten from himself an incorruptible Son, could not be corrupted? It is a new and unspeakable, damnable fear of a monstrous opinion to confess that a Virgin cannot be corrupted by childbirth, and yet to dread that God might be subject to the defect of corruption if he willed to generate from his own substance! Therefore, with God willing, the Virgin of corruptible nature generated without any defect of corruption; and could he himself, who is more incorruptible than all natures, who incorruptibly caused generation, not have granted this to himself, that he could generate a Son from his own substance incorruptibly?

Therefore, since both the utterances of the divine Scriptures testify that God begot the Son from himself, and Arius himself confessed this in his earlier argument, judge (best of men, Probus) which view agrees more with the divine Scriptures: whether I, who for this reason profess that the Son is of one substance with the Father, namely because he is known to have been born from him and not from elsewhere, and for this reason again profess that he begot incorruptibly, because the most excellent substance of the divine majesty cannot, through its ineffable power, be subject to corruption; or is it he who is placed in such a crisis of doubtful understanding that he does not know where to set the foot of his faith. For unwilling to confess that God incorruptibly begot from his own substance, he is drawn into this necessity of confession, that he deny that he begot at all. But this very denial he will never without doubt be able to maintain, since on every side the prophetic and apostolic voices oppose him and cry out with clear proclamation.

X. The judge Probus said: Whatever I have been able to learn from the assertion of your arguments, the final sentence of our examination will retain. But now, if you think that anything still remains for you from the divine Scriptures consonant with your faith, deign to bring it forward, so that by the progress of the disputation we may most easily investigate what the reasoning of truth contains.

Arius said: That I used such brief and slight questions throughout all the narration of my disputation was a matter of Christian modesty and reverence, so that the course of our disputation might begin with light beginnings. But because I see Athanasius shaking the most robust firmness of perspicuous truth with certain impulses of battering questions, I think I must strive against him more sharply and more vigorously. He says, then, that the Father and the Son are of one substance, but that that undefiled and ineffable essence, which the Father is, was never overflowing in itself, so that by a kind of excess, without loss to itself, it begot the Son in the same substance, since of that essence which is infinite and immense and incorporeal beyond all other things, nothing can be overflowing. For it belongs to things that are bounded to overflow, which is, as it were, to flow outside itself. But God, who encompasses all things and has nothing outside himself, either into which he can diffuse himself, or in which, being infinite, he could overflow—since it belongs to those things that receive increase to flow out?

If he has received [increase] at any time, he must necessarily always receive it, and nonetheless always beget with an equal abundance. But if he has not received increase—which they themselves also admit—then he neither flows nor overflows. Since such a being is said to be with the Father, when he begot the Son from himself, he surely divided his own substance into the Son; and he named the Son only the portion of the paternal substance set apart and cut off from himself in proportion—and the Father subtracted from himself as much as he conferred upon the Son. Therefore, whatever the Son is, either the Father today lacks it and is not perfect, or, if he does not need it, it has abounded as superfluous. Neither of these falls upon God, since in this very matter the name of Father and Son cannot exist where there is no generation but rather a division that has been made; and further, because it is necessary that everything which can be divided can also be corrupted. If, as has been shown, these things cannot exist in God, why do we not rather confess that the Son is of will and love? Indeed, this will is not less free even in men, much less is it bound by any law in God. But if he is not a Son of will, it remains that God seems to have brought forth the Son as if compelled by some law of nature. In this generation, if what was begotten is what belonged to the Father, the Son is named a certain part of the Father; and it is uncertain what the Father and what the Son ought to be named, since the substance has been divided equally into two parts.

XI. But that which he brought forward as if to demonstrate the property of the natural substance—the testimony of the Father's oracle—so that we might rightly believe that the Father begot the Son from that which he himself is, because he said: "From the womb, before the morning star, I begot you" (Ps. 104:3)—I will most openly demonstrate how absurd and how inept this is. For not only certain things that consist in the order of rational creatures, but also things subsisting in the sensible quality of the elements, we read proceeded from the womb of God. For it says: "Who is the father of the rain, or from whose womb does the snow come forth?" (Job 38:28). Therefore, because this quality of a stiff and sluggish element is read to proceed from the divine womb, is it for that reason believed to be of one and the same substance with God? Or again, because we read that God begot men (as he himself says: "Sons I have begotten and exalted" [Isa. 1:2], and again: "My son, the firstborn of Israel" [Exod. 4:22], and again: "Everyone who has been born of God does not sin" [1 John 3:9]), shall we for that reason more rightly think that men are of one substance with God? Or because the Apostle likewise, comprehending the whole universe of creation in a general pronouncement, asserts that all things are from God, saying: "For from him, and through him, and in him are all things" (Rom.

XI, 36); for this reason we shall more prudently infer that the whole of creation is that which God is, or is of one substance with him; which indeed is read to have subsisted from him. So therefore we also confess that the Son proceeded from the womb of God the Father, not as an indication of one nature, but we ought fittingly to accept that this was said for the hidden secrets of unsearchable mysteries.

XII. Athanasius said: In the theatrical games, those who are changed by the variety of figures appear indeed diverse and other to the eyes of onlookers. For the same man who had once walked stiffly in the guise of a fitted image, again with his countenance fitted to this very thing, playing with alternating movements of his limbs, is dissolved into the softness of women. So now Arius seems to me, with the images of his questions changed, as if conjecturing different things, to be formed by a variety of likeness. For what he had recently attempted with polished and very brief objections of disputation, repeating it again and more often under the pretext of another image, he by no means departs from the propriety of the question brought forward. For it is not because he now extends the sequence of his proposition more widely and diffusely with a tangled circumlocution of words, that he is therefore to be seen as having done anything other than what he is shown above to have done.

For he said that for this reason the Father and the Son cannot be of one substance, because the same paternal substance could not flow forth into an abundance of increase by an overflowing of a most ample derivation (as being that which, driven by no boundary limits, could be confined by final bounds; since it belongs to that abundance to overflow, which, as we said, is concluded by a certain limit): nor again did it suffer any loss of a portion as if of something whole and undiminished. But all these kinds of passion, not fitting to the divine nature, he is already recognized above to have intended more calumniously than truly. To these things it is established that we have suitably given answer by the understanding of the religious faith.

XIII. For neither do we call the Son an overflowing of a substance abounding, nor again do we name him a little portion of a nature cut off; but we believe that a perfect Father, a perfect Son, not from those things which abounded in him as superfluous overflowings (which to say is a crime), but from himself, that is, from that which he himself is, impassibly, indivisibly, incorporeally, without diminution, without division, without a redundancy of flowing abundance, without any kind of passion at all, was ineffably born. And therefore we confess that he is of one substance, because not from elsewhere, not from nothing, not from underlying or preceding qualities of materials; but we faithfully confess that God properly from God, light from light, power from power, wisdom from wisdom has come forth.

For if the Son were of another and different substance (as Arius supposes), he would not say: "Just as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son also to have life in himself" (John 5:26); and again: "Just as the Father knows me, I also know the Father" (John 10:15). What then is "Just as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son also to have life in himself," except "Just as the Father is, so also is the Son"? And if they have the same being, they are undoubtedly of one substance. For it is not one thing for the Father to be and another to live, but to live is the same as to be; that is, the Father himself is not one thing and his life another, but life is his essence and his essence is life. Otherwise he will appear composite, subsisting from diversity, if he himself seems to signify one thing and his life another. Since, therefore, it appears that the life of the Father is what he himself is; just as he has life in himself, so he has given the Son to have life; that is, the being of the Son is as the being of the Father; there is no doubt that the Father and the Son are of one essence and one nature.

XIV. For also what he says: "As the Father knows me, and I know the Father" (John 10:15), he undoubtedly wished to indicate the unity of substance; because according to the understanding of the preceding disputation, to know the Father is not one thing and to be another. For the very thing that he is, he knows, and what he knows, he is; because he does not know in one way and exist in another. And because the Son knows the Father just as the Father knows him, and we have said that in God knowledge is essence, there is no doubt that as the Father is, so also is the Son; and thus the matter that subsists in one and a similar manner does not admit a diversity of essence. Finally, so that we might more fully know this substance of the unity of the Father and the Son, the divine Scriptures have set before us certain examples of visible things, by which they might more religiously provoke us to the understanding of invisible things. For they set the Son as the splendor of the paternal light and the image of his goodness; not that examples of corporeal forms suffice for measuring divine things, but because that ineffable nature could not be expressed, certain indications of likeness are brought forth from these things which are seen. So that just as splendor and fire are not different substances; or just as an image cannot differ in anything from that of which it is the image (lest, retaining something diverse in itself, it cannot be perfect and true), so the Father and the Son are believed to be not of diverse, but of one substance.

And because he brought forward certain testimonies by way of example, by which he maintained that all things are from God, yet are not believed to have proceeded from his substance, I ask whether he asserts that the Son existed from the Father in the same way as all things are said to have existed from him. What then do you say? Do we so accept that the Son proceeded from the Father's womb, or was begotten from the Father, as men are born from God, or as nothing is read to proceed from his womb—or far otherwise? But I ask that you answer one of the two: that is, say either similarly or not similarly.

XV. Arius said: All things did not exist or were not begotten from God similarly as the Son. For the Son existed in one way, the creature in another.

Athanasius said: If you confess that the Son existed far otherwise than the creature, why did you bring forward examples of created things in the generation of his nativity? For those things which have taken the beginning of their own origin in dissimilar ways do not seem to be compared with an equal understanding of meaning. Since the intent of your argument tends to this, it appears that you are defending the sacrilegious error of the doctrine of Photinus, which you had long since repudiated.

For he too, when he denied that the Son of God was begotten of the Father, and was pressed by such testimonies of proofs by which it is shown more clearly than light that the Son of God is truly and properly God begotten of the Father's substance, turned the efforts of his impiety to this, that by the same means and the same order of reasoning he should assert that the Son was born of the Father just as we read that men have been consecrated into offspring of divine generation by the grace of adoption. And you also, though walking by other indications of the paths, have nevertheless arrived at the same crossroads of unbelief: asserting that the Son ought not for this reason to be understood as born of that ineffable substance of the Father, because he is begotten of God, or because he is read to have proceeded from the Father's womb: since by a like reasoning not only are men said to be born of God, but even the qualities of insensible elements are read to have proceeded from the generation of the paternal womb. And although you have already dissolved the narrative of your entire prosecution by the utterance of one word, when you said that the Son came forth from God far otherwise than a creature: nevertheless, because in the brevity of your speech you brought forth your points rather obscurely and perplexingly, you have clouded the understanding of readers with certain foul mists: therefore now I will bring forth more lucidly and plainly, into the manifestation of a most brilliant notion, the things that are obscure and overshadow the truth.

XVI. I shall show, therefore, as far as pertains to the propriety of divine generation, that to be born of God is this: to be begotten of him. And that I may use the clearer testimonies of the divine Scriptures, I shall bring forward the Gospel proof. The angel speaks thus to Mary, saying: The Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you. Therefore also the holy thing that shall be born of you shall be called the Son of God (Luke 1:35). And again the Apostle: But when the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, made under the law (Galatians 4:4). Is it therefore because the angel addressed Mary in such a way as to say that the Son was to be begotten not of her but from her; because the Apostle asserted that the Son was born of a woman; that on this account we shall by no means profess the nativity of the true man in Christ; or believe that he came forth from outside, and not properly from the virginal womb? You see, therefore, that you have superfluously brought forward examples of visible creatures in the nativity of the divine generation, since it appears from the clearer proofs of testimonies that to be from him is the same as to be begotten of him. Hence I confess that I marvel how, when you shrink from the name of creature in the Son, and believe him not made but truly (as must be professed) begotten of the Father, you have imitated the dogma of that impiety of Pholinus with certain statements of arguments, even if not whole, yet nevertheless similar.

Arius said: Who rather follows the perfidy of Photinus—is it I, who take what the Son spoke to demonstrate the far inferior nature of his divinity, and not in all things like, as said according to his deity; or is it you yourself, who attribute almost all examples of humanity, performed not with feigned words nor by the accomplishment of simulated works, to the man assumed? For to show that he was not only other than, but also inferior to, the Father, he said: The Father is greater than I (John 14:28). By this profession it is more evidently declared that the substances of the Father and the Son are different.

XVII. Athanasius said: Do you profess that the Son of God, God, submitted to the servile form of our race, or not?

Arius said: Who impious man would deny this—namely that Christ is God, and likewise to be confessed as true man?

Athanasius said: Shall we, then, ascribe some of the things Christ spoke to his divinity and some to his humanity; or, without any distinction of partition, assign all things either to God or to man?

Arius said: This will be judged not only irreligious, but also of the greatest madness, that we should think he spoke all things either according to his divinity or according to his humanity.

Athanasius said: If therefore, according to the opinion of your profession, some things are to be ascribed to the divinity and certain things to the humanity, why do we not reckon to the humanity what he said, "The Father is greater than I," and to the divinity what he said, "I and the Father are one"? For indeed, so that you may know that he said "greater than I" according to that which he was as man, he says: "If you loved me, you would indeed rejoice, because I go to the Father, because the Father is greater than I." I ask therefore, since the Son according to the power of his divinity fills all things, nor is there any place empty of that same divinity (as one who fills heaven and earth and the underworld with equal omnipotence), how does he say, "I go to the Father," with whom he had both always been and from whom he had never departed (for it belongs to him to go and to come who is circumscribed by certain boundaries of places, so that leaving the place in which he was, he comes to another where he was not), unless indeed he was speaking of that man whom he had assumed, that he himself was going to the Father, from whom he is also to come to judge the living and the dead? Otherwise, where the divinity is, which, as we have said, filling all things, is bounded by no intervals of places, just as there is nothing from which it departs, so there is nothing to which it comes.

XVIII. And in this way it appears that, according to what he is as man, he is less not only than the Father but also than the angels. For if you are unwilling to accept that he is less according to what he is as God, by an equal necessity of condition, he will be seen to be less even than the angels according to the nature of divinity. Finally the Apostle says: You made him a little lower than the angels (Heb 2:7). If, then, it is admitted by no reasoning that he is held to be less than the angels according to what he is as God, it appears that this office of being lesser is to be reckoned not to God the Word but to the man assumed.

Probus the judge said: So that your assertion may be supported in all things by truth, it is fitting that on your part you prove, by the reading of divine testimonies, that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are of one substance.

Athanasius said: Since I perceive that your Excellency presses upon this matter most urgently and faithfully, that we demonstrate that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are of one substance, and that we prove from the divine volumes that the Son was born of the substance of the Father—although the sense of all my arguments is shown to stand thus, that just as the race of men or of any animals whatsoever begets offspring similar to its own substance, and neither does a man beget a sheep nor an ox beget a man, but each thing procreates according to its own likeness, that is, of its own substance—I ought certainly not to wonder that God could beget a Son from his own substance, to whom all power is subject.

But so that my discourse may not wander without the testimony of the Scriptures, I undertake, fortified by his own assistance, to prove from the divine oracles that the Son was ineffably born from the Substance of the Father; so that while I show by the bright path of disputation—not coming from the argument of philosophical art, but, as I said, from divine documents—then at last Arius may fall silent, when he has learned, with me as teacher, by the legal utterances that the Son was begotten from the Father's substance.

XIX. The apostle Paul, writing to the Hebrews concerning the Son, says: Since he is, he says, the image of the invisible God, and bearing the figure of his substance (Heb. 1:5; Col. 1:15). Jeremiah also, the wisest of the prophets, speaks concerning the person of the Father, and says: If they had stood in my substance, and had heard my word, they would have turned them away from their most wicked pursuits (Jer. 23:22, according to the LXX). And to prove that he said this concerning the Son, the same prophet adds and says: Who has stood in my substance, and has seen my word (Ibid., 18)? For that the Son is the Word, the prophet David declares concerning the person of the Father, saying: My heart has uttered a good word (Ps. 44:2). John also the evangelist, knowing that the Word, that is the Son, was with the Father from the beginning, and that the Word was never separated from the Father, placed at the beginning of his Gospel, that is of his announcement, saying: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word (John 1:1).

And again, in another place, Scripture hands down, saying: "The beginning of the work is the Word" (Sirach 17:20). Not that in the creation of the Word—that is, from the creation of the Son—he began to make the other creatures; but because through the Word of God, that is, through the Son, all things are known to have been created. Whence the prophet David sings and says: "By the Word of the Lord the heavens were established" (Psalm 33:6). And to show that the Holy Spirit is a partner in this work, he continued, saying: "and by the Spirit of his mouth all their power." Finally, there are many testimonies of the divine Scriptures concerning the Son, by which he is shown to be from the Substance of the Father—that is, from that which he himself is—begotten; from which Substance the Son is proved not merely similar to the Father. This is the faith that Christ handed down to the apostles, and from the apostles it has come down to us. Nor can we alter it in any respect, since it is established that we ought to preserve it faithfully from the beginning, as it was given.

XX. Judge Probus said: Although the course of your discourse is carried through various byways of questions in a fitting order of disputation, and, as it were, necessarily deviating a little from the straight line of rightness that was proposed, wanders into the crooked winding of a tortuous path—evidently for this reason surveying every out-of-the-way place, so that it leaves nothing at all unexplored, nothing untouched—nevertheless, since Arius's prosecution, which he had long ago bound up with the tighter knots of questions, leaves this ambiguous sense of doubt in the hearers, in that not all, but only certain particular heads of objection appear to have been dissolved by Athanasius's replies, it seems consequent to me that, in order to settle the rest of them, in which the hearers' attention especially is stuck, Athanasius ought to turn back the course of his discourse. Indeed, that very point moves in us a greater scruple of hesitation, which the same Arius stated: that the Father did not beget the Son naturally, lest He seem to be subject to the natural necessities of conditions; but brought Him forth by the voluntary affection of love, so that through these things an indication of free power might be shown in God; and thus He is understood to have begotten Him rather externally and from elsewhere than from Himself: and rightly, by the affection of the paternal will, and by love rather than by nature, the Son is to be believed to be; whom (as has been said) He is discerned to have brought forth by will, and not by natural law.

Since, then, as I said, Athanasius has left this solution of the knotty question—whether through forgetfulness or through difficulty—unresolved, now, if it seems good, let the thrust of his reply be directed against those points which, perhaps because of its length, escaped his discourse.

XXI. Arius said: With the most skillful intent of mind, as befits a most vigilant examiner, you employ more cautious provisions. For this article of the question had almost slipped from my memory. Let Athanasius therefore declare how, if the Father naturally begot the Son, he is not bound by the necessities of nature, where not the will but the force of nature grants the capacity of begetting. For it is necessary that those things which are done by natural motions cannot be free, and that the Father is less free in the affection of his own will to the extent that the laws of his nature also dominate.

Athanasius said: Than these things which Arius babbles as if from an impregnable question, nothing more inept, nothing more absurd could ever be found; and for this reason I had believed it unworthy even to strike them with a reply, since sometimes whoever prefers to refute the most foolish sayings is wont to incur the mark of folly. Therefore, because he trusts that there is very great aid for him in this same question, which he thought should be inflicted with the brow of rather petulant boasting, as if it were an inevitable snare of the syllogistic art, let him answer whether he professes God to be mutable or immutable.

Arius said: I profess him immutable.

Athanasius said: You confess, then, that he is good, wise, just, omnipotent, and perfect.

Arius said: Yes.

Athanasius said: Is he immutable by will, or does he remain changeable by nature?

Arius said: I do not sufficiently understand what you mean.

XXII. Judge Probus said: What he is asking is very clear, and it is veiled by no covering of obscurity. For he asks whether you say God is immutable by will or by nature. That is, is God, in that very respect in which he is believed to be good and wise, such by will, or does he possess these affections of the virtues by the privilege of majesty and by a certain right of nature?

Arius said: I do not dare rashly to pronounce on any of these things.

Judge Probus said: Consider, then, what answer you ought to give. If you deny both, you hold neither; and so you will be deprived of the piety of the divine profession, if you retain no religious opinion of the faith concerning God. Or if you choose one of the two, lest you be held empty of the divine utterance, say whether God is to be professed immutable by will or by nature.

Athanasius said: With what billows of reply, constrained by such narrow straits, he is driven about is more plainly evident to the senses of the hearers. For seeing himself entangled in the inextricable snares of my questioning, he was unwilling to profess God immutable either by will or by nature; but by a cunning device he kept silent about both, knowing that he would be caught on either side. But let us see how he who by speaking too arrogantly prescribed for himself has by more prudent silence provided for himself. For he said that the Father begot the Son not by nature but by will, lest he should seem to any to be subject to the necessities of nature. When I asked him more insistently whether he said God immutable by will or by nature, for this reason he kept silent about both. Because if he said he was immutable by nature, he would utterly overturn his whole question, which he had set forth, or at least he would have fallen into it as into a kind of abyss of a deeper precipice; it was necessary for us to turn back the darts of our question upon him, and immediately to reply: If God is immutable by nature, he must without doubt be confessed to be neither good nor evil; because everything that, according to you, is borne along by natural impulses lacks the judgment of free will, since the final boundary of nature keeps it enclosed within the limits of its condition; and it will be like any one of the elements, like water or earth, which can be nothing other than what it is, since it can neither be increased by better advances nor fall back into worse, with the laws of nature restraining it.

XXIII. Because he asserts that God is to be confessed by will rather than by nature, while he believes that the Son was begotten by the will of the Father's affection and relationship, not by natural power, let him hear how absurd a sense the reasoning of this profession arrives at. It will therefore be necessary that God be increased by the progress of a better choice, while by the good choice of things and by the reckoning of perfect virtues he tends toward the highest things with more prosperous success; and that there be someone superior to him, to whom he strives to be pleasing through the effect of good will. By whom it is to be feared that he might at some point fall away, if perhaps the intention of good will should abandon him; since it is necessary that the affection of a leftward will sometimes assail him who enjoys no support of natural aid. These things, the more irreligiously they are said of God, the more wickedly they are thought. You see clearly, therefore, O best of judges, that by a certain impulse of the highest impiety Arius wished to compare the laws of the divine nature and the substance of untainted virtue to the natures of created things; namely, that for this reason the Father begot the Son not by nature but by will, lest he seem to be subject to natural necessities after the manner of creatures, whether rational or devoid of reason.

But let anyone who holds such views have the freedom of his own opinion, since he will bear the penal judgment of his majesty for judging such foolish and such sacrilegious things. We, however, instructed by the teaching of the divine Scriptures, retain this judgment of religious opinion concerning God: that we believe his will is not one thing and his nature another.

XXIV. For in that we confess him to be wise, good, omnipotent, and perfect, we do not assert God to subsist as it were from a diversity of virtues, or to be composed by the quality of some distinct thing; because he is not wise in any other respect than because he is omnipotent, nor in any other respect than because he is held to be perfect; that is, in him goodness is not one thing and wisdom another, nor is omnipotence another thing than perfection; but all these things are held in God in one and the same way, yet they cannot be defined in a singular manner. Observe, however, lest, because we have said "manner" in God, you understand it as modified by certain limits—he who by the immensity of his power exceeds all things. For just as, when we call him immense, we do not wish him to be understood as unmeasured, or when we proclaim him perfect, we do not introduce one who is progressing; that is, we do not assert that by some gradual workings of virtues, advancing little by little through experience, he has arrived at the summit of perfection: so you ought also to accept this statement. But let us return to the matter at hand. Therefore, consider by how many names of words we call God, who is beyond doubt simple: wise, good, omnipotent, provident, and perfect. And these indeed refer to himself.

But as for us, no one will dare to assert that he who subsists in the singular omnipotence of virtue and is believed to be of a pure and simple nature is merciful, pious, just, and benign, and yet composed of a manifold quality of virtues. But this one and the same virtue of nature the understanding of the human condition, hindered by the natural obstacles of ignorance, could not set forth in a single word. And therefore it uses various and manifold appellations of names, so that from these it may be more easily inferred what and how great the nature of divine virtue is. Although it is one and the same and simple, yet we do not fully explain it in one word. For if, for example, we run through the diverse kinds of divine operation and inquire by what virtue he stretched out the vault of heaven with such sublimity, founded the earth with immovable stability, and poured forth the seas through the flowing channels of the plains—whether by wisdom or by omnipotence—it is certainly answered: by wisdom and by omnipotence. And yet will anyone say that he is composed of a diversity of virtues? By no means, but there are many kinds of signification of one virtue, because in him wisdom does not do one thing, omnipotence another, and providence another.

XXV. Finally it is written: God by his wisdom founded the earth, he established the heavens by prudence, by his understanding the abysses burst asunder (Prov. 3:19). Shall we then be so foolish as to say that the heaven indeed subsisted by one virtue, that is, prudence, but the earth by another, that is, wisdom, and that the abysses burst asunder by yet another virtue of God, that is, his understanding? But see how divine Scripture, in order to reject the error of this absurd opinion, gathers back again into one what had been divided by the species of names, and joins together the power of the appellation, saying: All things you have made in wisdom (Ps. 103:24). And again: All these things my hand has made (Acts 7:50). You see, therefore, that in God, whose nature is simple, whether it be hand, or wisdom, or prudence, or understanding, it indicates not a diversity of things, but one virtue. Since this is so, there now remains the place of the question already raised, by which it is asked whether God the Father begot the Son by will or by nature; since in God (as we have thoroughly taught) will is nothing other than wisdom, nor is wisdom anything other than nature, which is also called virtue. And since Christ is all these things, as the Apostle says: But we preach Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor.

...it is evident that He was begotten from the Father with the free omnipotence of a natural power; since nature in God is not, as Arius ridiculously opines, thought to be under the condition of necessity (lest the Father Himself, who subsists naturally, should appear to subsist by necessity); but it is of free power, and no power is bound by necessities; and because it received nothing else besides that it should exist, therefore it is called nature as the fount and origin of all things. In this nature, then, the Son is, and subsisting in this fount of origin He proceeded as wisdom from the wise, as power from the strong, as splendor from the light. This profession or nativity (that is, the Son) demonstrates that there is in itself such power that He was always in the Father, and having been brought forth never departed from the Father: just as wisdom does not desert the wise, as his power does not leave the strong, as splendor does not separate itself from its own light.

XXVI. Arius said: The knot of the question you have raised against me, as it seems to me, you will never be able to untie. For above, so that I may repeat it, I remember having said that God, who encompasses all things and has nothing outside Himself, can nowhere flow away through increase of generation, and does not in the least overflow as infinite, or certainly did not divide His substance into the Son; and that He named the Son only as a certain portion of the paternal substance first set apart and cut off from Himself; and that He withdrew from Himself as much as He appears to have conferred upon the Son. To these things it is clear that you have given no response.

Athanatius said: See how far you are slipping into madness, in that you thought the mystery of the divine nativity—unknown even to the heavenly powers—could be investigated by philosophical reasonings rather than beheld with the veneration of faith; and though it is known only to the Son, the Father, and the Holy Spirit, as befits the dignity of its miracle, you confine it within the measure of human sense, and as though it were a commonplace matter and one of no secret, you handle it with the bold hand of disputation. And whereas reason cannot be given even for created things, which are before the sight of human contemplation (since they stand in the unsearchable working of miracles), you discuss their Creator, who far more wonderfully excels these things, you circumscribe Him with argument, and you wander about with unworthy and profane reasonings. But while you refuse to serve the faith, while you disdain to be subject to wondrous and ineffable things, you are agitated by the tides of impatience, and you measure immense and infinite things, and you bring the article of your intention to this point: that God either did not beget at all, or, if He begot, He was subject to all the conditions of necessity which you object.

XXVII. But you who babble such trifles with a sacrilegious mouth, and try to introduce a God subsisting in bodily bulk: for the things you object are fitting only for visible things and things that exist as palpable matter. For while you attempt to show that the Son is from outside and not begotten from the Father's substance, you have passed over, with the simplicity of faith abandoned, to the questions of a vain philosophical art; so that, because the divine nature cannot fall away from its own infinity, nor overflow more abundantly through flowing excesses of abundance, it is judged most like to dull and coarser matter, which cannot bestow anything from itself without its own loss. Therefore, since a corporeal thing admits increase, and a thing subject to death feels loss, let us see whether God, who is in none of these, by begetting the Son from himself, either divided his own substance according to a fixed portion, as Atius in vain fear and superfluous dread of terror supposes; or withdrew something from himself, which he conferred upon the Son, so that by this very fact he either lacks it today and is not perfect, or, if he does not need it, seems to abound superfluously. First, then, withdrawing from every description of corporeal passions, and leaving behind all conditions of visible natures, let us dispute spiritually about the spiritual nativity, and let us presume to think nothing about it from our own sense. Thus divine Scripture, to show the impassibility of the paternal generation, declared that the Son is sense, wisdom, power, word, light.

Namely, sense, by which all things are thought; wisdom, by which things thought are ordered; power, by which things ordered are accomplished; the Word, by which things accomplished are announced; light, by which things announced become clear. And all these kinds of names are not diverse, but one power.

XXVIII. For because the magnitude of him could not be known by the utterance of a single word, therefore it is distinguished by a manifold appellation of terms, so that from the diversity or quality of the name we may recognize the greatness of his power. Since, therefore, counsel is not separated from him whose counsel it is, since power is not cut off from the Lord, since wisdom is not distinguished from the wise one, since sense is not torn away from the one who senses, since the Word is not taken away from the eternal One, since splendor is not separated from its own light by any division; it is manifest that the Father has received no increase, nor has the Son felt any loss in begetting him; because these things are naturally in God, and he himself is naturally in them: as the Son himself declares more openly, saying: I am in the Father, and the Father in me. For to be and to be in is neither an overflowing abundance, that is, redundance beyond (because this very being in, that is, in the Father from himself, Arius does not accept, but cavils that it flows outward); nor is it a loss of detriment, while the heart begets wisdom, while the intellect generates counsel, while the mouth brings forth speech, while the light emits splendor.

For splendor is in light and light in splendor, and each subsists in the other by nature, so that neither can be without the other; because wherever there is light, there splendor shines with the equal brightness of the radiant light. Therefore the Father is not, by a superabundant overflow of plenty, as it were pouring forth outside himself; but from himself and in himself, as a wise one begot Wisdom, his Son, and for that reason he has in no way at all departed from the magnitude of his own infinity. Nor did he set apart a little portion of his substance from himself, in proportion to a share, because in begetting light, splendor is not subject to separation. And so, following each point through, you will find that the Father in his generation is neither increased by the abundance of a redundant heap, nor diminished by the loss of a divided portion, nor separated by the division of a divided substance: because the nature of things to which that sacred and ineffable generation is compared admits nothing in itself of such a kind as could be subject to overflow, or diminution, or loss.

XXIX. Probus the judge said: It is indeed certain that the nature of light, or of the Word and Wisdom and the other virtues you have mentioned, cannot be confined by these conditions. But whether, as you say, the birth of the paternal generation is to be compared to such examples, it is fitting for you to teach by divine testimonies.

Atius said: In my preceding argument I began thus, that Athanasius, through the blindness of his faithlessness, is headlong into the deep. For while he wishes to display the eloquence of his speech, he unwittingly falls into error, saying that it is of divine Scripture that the Son be equated in substance with the Father who begot him; although the Son himself testifies of himself and says: The Father is greater than I; and He who sent me gave me commandment; and I did not come of myself, but he sent me; and I did not come to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me; and As the Father said to me, so I speak; and Those whom you gave me I have kept; and All that the Father has given me, no one takes from me; and I will ask him, and he will furnish me with more than twelve legions of angels; and If this cup cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done; and Let this cup pass from me. Not as I will, but as you will; and The things that are pleasing to him I do always; and To sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to give you.

and gave him the name that is above every name; and he exalted his servant; and the Lord your God has blessed you; and he raised him from the dead. He seated him at his own right hand, and many similar things, which I omit for the sake of brevity. If therefore he has a greater, if he was sent by him, if he did not come by his own spontaneous will, if he did not do his own will, if he speaks what is said to him, if he guards what is given to him, if he asks, if he prays for the cup, if he received a name from another, if he is exalted by another, if he did not grant the seats to his disciples when they asked by his own power, if he does what the Father has appointed, and is raised from the dead by him, does it seem fair that one who says such great and numerous things about his own subjection should be made equal to the Father?

XXX. Probus the judge said: If against these abundant testimonies of divine authority, which have been brought forward by Arius concerning the Son's subjection, anything seems to belong to Athanasius, let him not delay to declare it, so that, with the superstructure of speech removed, the Son may be shown from the divine lights rather to be unlike or coequal to the Father; so that, once the truth is recognized, the things that accord with sound faith and reason may be strengthened.

Athanasius said: However much the cunning of Arius may wish to run on in the elation of his speech, and may applaud itself for the testimonies of the divine law which it has brought forward—by which, of course, it strives to separate the Son from equality with the Father—all the things which have been inserted at length by him to our harm will be frustrated by us, with the same testimonies, without any difficulty. Christ, therefore, the Son of God, in the form of a servant which he took from the Virgin, is said to be subject to the Father, the apostle Paul nonetheless affirming: When, he says, the fullness of times had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law (Gal 4:4). So he is said to be subject who is known to have been born of a woman under the law, and in that form he showed the Father to be greater than himself, which form he voluntarily took from the Virgin. For in the form of God the Father, the chorus of angels is proved to have offered service to him. For thus it is written in the Gospel: And the devil departed from him, and angels came and ministered to him (Mt 4:11). He objects that he did the will of the Father, and not his own. In this, the saying of this word ought rather to be praised and acknowledged, because he who did the Father's will with equanimity showed equality; the apostle confirming: This, he says, is the will of God in Christ Jesus (1 Thess 5:18). For because he added, As the Father said to me, so I speak (Jn 12:50). Why, then, is the human race, which understands what is right, disturbed when it hears this word?

For if Christ spoke otherwise than God the Father, then he would be shown to be unequal or unlike the Father. But if the Son speaks the very things the Father speaks, he is never found unequal or unlike the Father. "What you gave me," he says, "I have kept" (John 17:12); and "All that he has given me, no one takes from me" (John 6:39). The divine gifts are to be understood as attributed to the Son in this way.

XXXI. For the Father gave omnipotence to the omnipotent Son, he bestowed majesty upon majesty, he gave power to power, he gave prudence to prudence, he gave foreknowledge to foreknowledge, divinity to divinity, eternity to eternity, co-equality to co-equality, immortality to immortality, invisibility to invisibility, a kingdom to the king, life to life; and he gave not one thing other than what he has, and he gave as much as he has, and whatever else the Father is shown to have conferred upon the Son indivisibly and inseparably. But he is shown to have given all these things to one who possesses them rather than to one who lacks them, to whom it is said by the Son: "All my things are yours, and all your things are mine" (John 17:10). If all these things that the Father is said to have conferred on the Son appear to be one thing in him and another thing in the Son, we without doubt make the Son a liar, since he says that the things of the Father are his own. But if in these things he has said the Son is found to be a liar, then the evangelist too, who says "making himself equal to God" (John 5:18), is deceived in every respect; and thus neither is the Father shown to have conferred anything on the Son wholly and truly.

But if the things are true, as they are, which the Father conferred on the Son inseparably and without distinction, let the tongues of demented men fall silent, which are sent to separate the Son from the substance of the Father. The Son asks the Father, that he may maintain that he bears a true man. For to intimate the power of his divinity, he commanded the sea and the winds, and satisfied five thousand men from five loaves. He accepted the cup of passion as a sorrowful man, but as God he gave drink to believers from the fountain of living water springing up into eternal life. He received the name, so that in this name heavenly, earthly, and infernal things may adore. He was exalted from the lowest to the higher things, that is, ascending from the flesh of human frailty to God. He sits at the right hand of majesty, so that human infirmity may not hesitate to follow him where it has seen its head glorified. He was anointed, so that by the anointing of his own chrism we may be cleansed from the stain of the first man's transgression. He was raised from the dead, so that by the example of his resurrection we may be freed from the sting of death. He testifies to his disciples asking that he cannot give seats, lest a division be born among them. For he who said, It is not mine to give to you, has himself long since granted to the twelve disciples the power of judging seats. He did the things pleasing to the Father, because he does not know how to do contrary things. For because he came not to do his own will, but the will of him who sent him, he said: To do your will, O God, I have desired (Psalm 39:9); and I will sacrifice to you willingly (Psalm 54:8).

He who said, "The Father is greater than I" (John 14:28), also said, "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30); and "Let them be one in us, as I and you are one" (John 17:21-22); and "All things that are mine are yours, and yours are mine" (John 17:10); and "Do you believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?" (John 14:10-11); and "My Father works, and I work" (John 5:17); and "As the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he wills" (John 5:21); and "He who sees me sees also the Father" (John 14:9); and "He who hates me hates my Father also" (John 15:23); and "Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you" (John 17:1); and "I have glorified you on earth" (John 17:4); and "I have manifested your name to men" (John 17:6). And so that every murmur of human caviling may fall silent, I will bring forward as a witness John the evangelist, whose testimony I used above, who said: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." If these things, so fitting to divinity, by which we teach that the Father and your Son are one, do not suffice for the wicked, let us add others, if it seems good.

XXXII. Probus the judge said: If Arius has striven to oppose so strong and certain a proof, it is certain that he follows not reason but roams more unrestrainedly through the fields of irrational words. He who up to now, going around the reasoning of three substances, as he confessed above (just as Athanasius [confessed] of one, as he has shown by very many documents), through some nebulous darkness I know not what, has been unable to demonstrate his assertion.

Arius said: Is it because from the divine oracles Athanasius, by I know not what articles, with rash daring seemed to affirm that the Son is of one substance and coequal with the Father; and must he confer the Spirit, who is the minister of the Father and the Son, with the same equal confession? Since the Son Himself says: He will glorify me, because he shall receive of mine (John 16:14); and I will send you the Spirit of truth (John 15:26); and the Spirit shall proceed from me. Whom the Father will send in my name (John 14:26), and the Father says to the bones of the dead: I will give my Spirit into you, and you shall live (Ezekiel 37:5). Surely he who is sent or proceeds from the Father ought not to be equated with Him, since the prophet testifies concerning him, saying: Behold the Lord who establishes thunder and creates the spirit (Amos 4:13). By no means will it ever seem to me that a creature is equated with its creator, or that together with the same one it possesses power by command?

Athanasius said: That the Son of God is Wisdom and Virtue, I have indeed already demonstrated above, where I proved that the Apostle said, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24). But even now, more truly and clearly, if you judge it necessary, I repeat the testimonies concerning this same proof.

XXXIII. Wisdom herself, that is the Son, cries out through Solomon, saying: I came forth from the mouth of the Most High (Sir 24:5); and, He says, Before the hills he begot me (Prov 8:25). And that this same Wisdom is the splendor of the paternal light is confirmed by the testimony of the aforesaid Solomon, and equally of David and of the Apostle. Solomon also says: She is the splendor of eternal light, a spotless mirror (Wis 7:26), through which and in which the Father is undoubtedly seen, as the Son himself says in the Gospel: He who sees me sees also the Father (John 14:9). David also, declaring this more openly, speaks to the Father, saying: With you is the fountain of life, and in your light we shall see light (Ps 36:9). Do you hear that light is beheld in light, that is, that the Father is contemplated in the Son? Paul also proclaims things consonant with these, saying: Who, he says, being the splendor and image of his substance (Heb 1:3). He is also named the Word, as the Father declares, to demonstrate the impassibility of his generation, saying: My heart has uttered a good Word (Ps 45:1); and, By the Word of the Lord the heavens were established (Ps 33:6); and, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John

I, 1). God, he says, was the Word. Understand the Word not as uttered and passing away in the sound of a voice, but as subsisting substantially in his own virtue. But that he is also Counsel, Isaiah is witness, saying: He shall be called the Angel of great counsel (Isa 9:6), that is, the dispenser and author of the Father's deliberations or consolations—indeed, the consolation and deliberation itself. He is shown also to be the Sense of the Father's breast, as Solomon says: The Lord founded the earth by his wisdom, but established the heavens by prudence. By his sense the abysses were burst asunder. Of this sense Isaiah and the Apostle speak: Who has known the sense of the Lord (Isa 40:13; Rom 11:34)? according to that Gospel saying: For no one knows the Son except the Father (Matt 11:27). It has become clear, therefore, as I judge, that the Father, by generating the Son from himself and having the same in himself, was neither increased and diffused nor in any way diminished; since he who generates is recognized to remain in the substance of the perfect nature of the one born, and neither is diffused outside himself, since each is known to remain in the other. Thus Isaiah declares the Father and the Son not to be outside the infinity of the Father's nature, as though the Son flowed forth beyond himself, but to dwell in himself through the unity of their common substance, when he speaks to the Son himself, saying: In you is God, and there is no God besides you (Isa 45:14).

XXXIV. Judge Probus said: As far as the capacity of human sense allows the power of reason to be grasped, I think Athanasius has most fully cut away the knotty points of the former question and the ambiguities of the whole scrupulous opinion, in which our intention was stuck. If this same thing has also become clear to Arius, let it be brought out more openly; and from these matters let us at last, at some time, pass on to others (if indeed you think any still remain), so that we may be able to finish the business of this work more quickly.

Arius said: If with a watchful mind and a most sagacious sense you examine summarily and in detail the statements of the questions proposed by me, you will surely find that Athanasius has not given an answer to all of them.

Judge Probus said: What are those things in which you think you have not been satisfied? Point them out more clearly.

Arius said: What need is there to repeat the same things again and draw out the long rope of disputation, when it is already agreed that you should bring forth your final judgment concerning the knowledge?