A Source Book for Ancient Church History

by Joseph Cullen Ayer

… Alexander has driven us out of the city as atheists, because we do not concur in what he publicly preaches; namely, “God is always, the Son is always; as the Father so the Son; the Son coexists unbegotten with God; He is everlastingly begotten; He is the unbegotten begotten; neither by thought nor by any interval does God precede the Son; always God, always the Son; the Son is of God himself.”… To these impieties we cannot listen even though heretics threaten us with a thousand deaths. But we say and believe and have taught and do teach, that the Son is not unbegotten, nor in any way part of the Unbegotten; nor from any substance [hypokeimenon],[99] but that of His own will and counsel He has subsisted before time and before ages, as perfect God only begotten and unchangeable, and that before He was begotten or created or purposed or established He was not. For He was not unbegotten. We are persecuted because we say that the Son has a beginning, but that God is without beginning. This is the cause of our persecution, and likewise because we say that He is of that which is not.[100] And this we say because He is neither part of God, nor of any substance [hypokeimenon]. For this we are persecuted; the rest you know. I bid thee farewell in the Lord, remembering [pg 303] our afflictions, my fellow-Lucianist and true Eusebius [i.e., pious].

(d) Arius, Thalia, in Athanasius, Orat. contra Arianos, I, 2. (MSG, 26:21.)

The following extracts from the Thalia, although given by Athanasius, the opponent of Arius, are so in harmony with what Arius and his followers asserted repeatedly that they may be regarded as correctly representing the work from which they profess to be taken.

God was not always Father; but there was when God was alone and was not yet Father; afterward He became a Father. The Son was not always; for since all things have come into existence from nothing, and all things are creatures and have been made, so also the Logos of God himself came into existence from nothing and there was a time when He was not; and that before He came into existence He was not; but He also had a beginning of His being created. For God, he says, was alone and not yet was there the Logos and Wisdom. Afterward He willed to create us, then He made a certain one and named Him Logos and Wisdom and Son, in order that by Him He might create us. He says, therefore, that there are two wisdoms, one proper to, and existing together with, God; but the Son came into existence by that wisdom, and was made a partaker of it and was only named Wisdom and Logos. For Wisdom existed by wisdom and the will of God's wisdom. So, he says, that there is another Logos besides the Son in God, and the Son partaking of that Logos is again named Logos and Son by grace.… There are many powers; and there is one which is by nature proper to God and eternal; but Christ, again, is not the true power of God, but is one of those which are called powers, of whom also the locust and the caterpillar are called not only a power but a great power [Joel 2:2], and there are many other things like to the Son, concerning whom David says in the Psalms: “The Lord of Powers”;[101] likewise the Logos is mutable, as are all [pg 304] things, and by His own free choice, so far as He wills, remains good; because when He wills He is able to change, as also we are, since His nature is subject to change. Then, says he, God foreseeing that He would be good, gave by anticipation to Him that glory, which as a man He afterward had from His virtue; so that on account of His works, which God foresaw, God made Him to become such as He is now.

(e) Council of Alexandria, A. D. 320, Epistula encyclica, in Socrates, Hist. Ec., I, 6. (MSG, 67:45.) Cf. Kirch, nn. 353 ff.

The encyclical of the Council of Alexandria under Alexander, in which Arius and his sympathizers were deposed, was possibly composed by Athanasius. It is commonly found in his works, entitled Depositio Arii. It is also found in the Ecclesiastical History of Socrates. For council, see Hefele, § 20.

Those who became apostates were Arius, Achillas, Æithales, Carpones, another Arius, and Sarmates, who were then presbyters; Euzoius, Lucius, Julianus, Menas, Helladius, and Gaius, who were then deacons; and with them Secundus and Theonas, then called bishops. And the novelties which they have invented and put forth contrary to the Scriptures are the following: God was not always a Father, but there was a time when He was not a Father. The Logos of God was not always, but came into existence from things that were not; wherefore there was a time when He was not; for the Son is a creature and a work. Neither is He like in essence to the Father. Neither is He truly by nature the Logos of the Father; neither is He His true Wisdom; but He is one of the things made and created, and is called the Logos and Wisdom by an abuse of terms, since He himself originated by God's own logos and by the wisdom that is in God, by which God has made not only all things but Him also. Wherefore He is in His nature subject to change and variation as are all rational creatures. And the Logos is foreign, is alien and separated from the being [ousia] of God. And the Father cannot be[102] [pg 305] described by the Son, for the Logos does not know the Father perfectly and accurately, neither can He see Him perfectly. Moreover, the Son knows not His own essence as it really is; for He was made on account of us, that God might create us by Him as by an instrument; and He would not have existed had not God willed to create us. Accordingly some one asked them whether the Logos of God is able to change as the devil changed, and they were not afraid to say that He can change; for being something made and created, His nature is subject to change.