Oration III Against the Arians

Contents

Reading pages: 1–9 · 10–18 · 19–28 · 29–40 · 41–52 · 53–63 · 64–67

1. 1Athanasius opens the third oration with the Arian mockery of John 14:10, “I am in the Father and the Father in me,” and rejects any bodily or merely participatory sense.
2. 2Asterius explains John 14:10 as meaning only that Christ's words and works came from the Father; Athanasius replies that this makes the saying true of every prophet and saint.
3. 3The Son is in the Father because his whole being is proper to the Father's substance, and the Father is in the Son as sun in radiance, mind in word, spring in river.
4. 4Father and Son are two, not one person named twice as Sabellius taught, yet one in nature and Godhead, like sun and radiance; so all that is said of the Father is said of the Son except “Father.”
5. 5John 10:30, 10:38, and 14:9 have one sense; as a king's portrait can say “I and the king are one,” so the Son, the Father's image, shows the Father's Godhead in himself.
6. 6The Son is the fullness of the Father's Godhead; to name the Father is to imply the Son, so faith, honor, and worship are one, and texts on the “only” God exclude false gods, not the Son.
7. 7Texts calling God “one” and “only” are not aimed at the Son, who is no rival to the Father but glorifies him; they are directed against the false gods made by human beings.
8. 8God's “I alone” is spoken through his Word against idols, as the sun might say “I alone am the light” against a painted board without meaning to deny its own radiance.
9. 9“The only true God” excludes false gods, not the Son, whom Christ joins with the Father (John 17:3); “I alone,” “one,” and “first” include the Word, through whom God made all things.
10. 10If the Son were one with the Father only by agreement of will and teaching, angels, stars, and saints would be sons and images too; only the Son is the Father's true and natural image.
11. 11Likeness and unity must belong to the Son's substance, not merely to his teaching; so the grace and peace of Father and Son are one gift, as Paul's singular verb in 1 Thess 3:11 shows.
12. 12No one prays for gifts from God and an angel together, but from the Father and the Son; the “angel” Jacob invoked with God (Gen 48:16) was the Word, the “angel of great counsel.”
13. 13Deliverance and blessing come from God alone, so the “angel” Jacob joined with God was the Word; every gift is from the Father through the Son, as light shines through its radiance.
14. 14Angels only minister and announce; those who saw angels knew they had not seen God; but whoever sees and hears the Son sees and hears the Father.
15. 15The sun-and-radiance image shows one principle, not three gods as Greeks charge; it is the Arians, with a created Son and Spirit, who fall into polytheism, while the church confesses one Godhead in the Trinity.
16. 16A created Son who is also called God would give the Arians two gods, two lords, and two faiths, like the Greeks; but the Son is the Father's own form, so God and faith are one.
17. 17The Arians now argue from John 17:11, 21–23 that the Son is one with the Father only as believers become one in God; Athanasius calls this the devil's presumption of equality with God.
18. 18If the Word differed from us only in time, he would share our name and nature; Scripture uses natural things, like animals, as examples for human conduct, not as statements of nature.
19. 19Commands like “Be merciful as your Father” call for imitation, not equality; so too John 17 does not make us one with the Father as the Son is, since we are sons and “gods” by grace.
20. 20Christ offers his natural unity with the Father as a model for believers' unity of mind, as he offered his gentleness for imitation, not for equality.
21. 21“In us” (John 17:21) means that believers learn unity from the Father and Son, or are made one by their power; “as” signifies a pattern, not identity.
22. 22In John 17:23 Christ asks that believers be perfected into one through his body, “one body and one spirit”; the word “as” still marks the distance in nature between them and him.
23. 23As Christ was in the earth “as” Jonah was in the fish without being Jonah, so believers are one “as” the Father and Son without being equal to them; their perfection comes from the Word made flesh and the gift of the Spirit.
24. 24According to 1 John 4:13, 15, we are in God by participating in the Spirit, whom the Son gives; the Son is in the Father by nature and does not receive the Spirit to be joined to him.
25. 25Christ's prayer that believers be one “in us” asks the Father to give them the Spirit through the Son; our being in God is the Spirit's gift, which the sinner can lose, as Saul did.
26. 26The Arians cite the Gospels' human sayings of Christ—receiving authority, being troubled, praying, advancing in wisdom, not knowing the day, being forsaken—as proof that he is a needy creature.
27. 27The Arians, stumbling at Christ's human experiences, repeat the objections of those who rejected him in the Gospels, and both deny the Word's Godhead because of his flesh.
28. 28Athanasius urges the Arians to stop echoing Christ's opponents and to read the Gospels by the rule of the church's faith: the Son is eternal as the Father's own offspring.
29. 29Scripture's scope is a twofold account of the Saviour: eternally God and Son, and later made man from the Virgin Mary for us; John 1 and Phil 2 show both.
30. 30The Word became man; he did not merely come into a man as the word of God came to the prophets, and “flesh” in John 1:14 means a human being.
31. 31Unlike his visits to the saints, the Word truly became man from Mary; so the flesh's weaknesses are called his, while his divine works were done through his own body.
32. 32The Word was never outside his flesh: he healed with human gestures and divine power, and the sufferings of his body are rightly called his, so that salvation and worship are directed to the Son himself.
33. 33Because the Word made the flesh's weaknesses his own, they are destroyed in him; even holy people before Christ remained mortal, but now we are reborn in him and raised to incorruption.
34. 34Following 1 Pet 4:1, every human weakness of Christ—hunger, ignorance, fear, asking that the cup pass—is to be said of him “for us in the flesh,” while the Word remains impassible and frees our flesh from these passions.
35. 35Knowing what is proper to Godhead and to flesh, and that both belong to one Christ, keeps faith right; texts where the Son “receives” all things mean that he has eternally from the Father what the Father has.
36. 36Sayings like “was given to me” guard against Sabellius by showing that the Son is not the Father, while “as the Father has life … so the Son” shows that he has it eternally from the Father.
37. 37Christ's questions in the Gospels do not prove ignorance, since one may ask what one knows (John 6:6); ignorance belongs to the flesh, not to the Godhead, and he knew Lazarus had died while far away.
38. 38Ignorance, receiving, and being glorified belong to Christ's flesh; the Word bore our ignorance and received gifts as man so that grace, resting in him, might be secure for us, unlike Adam's.
39. 39If the Word himself needed and received glory and authority, he would have been improved by the body and humanity would have no hope; he already had what he asked for, and received it as man for us.
40. 40Christ had authority over Satan, sin, and death before his resurrection; he says he “received” it in human fashion so that human beings, sharing in the divine nature, might have it through him.
41. 41Human weaknesses in the Gospels belong to Christ's humanity, divine works to his Godhead, both in one Lord: true God in the flesh and true flesh in the Word.
42. 42Athanasius turns to Mark 13:32; the creator of times cannot be ignorant of a day, and Christ, who foretold the signs before the end, must know the end itself.
43. 43Christ said “nor the Son” of the last day as man, because of his flesh: as Word he knows the end of all things, as man he does not, and he did not say “the Son of God,” lest the Godhead seem ignorant.
44. 44Christ does not say “nor the Spirit,” showing that his not knowing is human; as the one who knows the Father, creates and determines all things, and has all that is the Father's, the Son knows the day.
45. 45Christ tells the disciples “you do not know,” never “I do not know” as God; and as the one who brought the flood and foretold it to Noah, he knows the day of his own coming.
46. 46In the parable of the virgins the ignorance is the disciples'; Christ, the coming judge and bridegroom, knows the hour, as he knew where Lazarus lay and what Peter would confess, though he asked in human fashion.
47. 47Paul says “I do not know” of his own vision though he knew, as Elisha kept silent about Elijah's ascent; if the Arians grant that Paul knew, much more must Christ know when he says “I do not know.”
48. 48Christ said “I do not know” for our profit, to end fruitless questions without lying, since he spoke as man; after the resurrection, with his flesh deified, he said instead, “It is not for you to know” (Acts 1:7).
49. 49Christ's “not even the Son knows” protects believers against demons and the Antichrist who claim to know the end, and keeps them watchful, since neither the world's end nor one's own death is known.
50. 50God asked Adam and Cain questions without being ignorant; so the same Son, now in the flesh, asks his disciples as man; Athanasius turns next to Luke 2:52.
51. 51Luke 2:52 cannot mean that the Word as God advanced, since he is equal to God, always in the Father, and himself the source of wisdom and grace to all.
52. 52Creatures advance in virtue, but the perfect Son has nowhere to advance; “advanced in wisdom and stature” refers to his body and to the growing manifestation of his Godhead through it.
53. 53The “advance” was the growing manifestation of the Godhead in the body and the deification of the human nature; Luke says “Jesus,” the name of the incarnate Lord, not “the Word.”
54. 54Christ's weeping, trouble, prayer about the cup, and cry of dereliction cannot mean that the Word feared death, since he gives courage to others, came to destroy death, and laid down his life freely.
55. 55The one who wept and hungered also raised Lazarus and gave sight to the blind; his sufferings show that the impassible God took passible flesh, and his works show that he is the Word.
56. 56Weeping, trouble, and the prayer about the cup belong to Christ's humanity, taken from mortal Mary; even his cry of abandonment was answered by signs showing that the Father was in him.
57. 57Christ willed the cup as God while his flesh shrank from it; by bearing this shrinking he took away our fear of death, as the courage of apostles and martyrs shows, and he laid down his life by his own authority.
58. 58Christ's suffering should cause wonder that the Word let his body suffer to make the flesh immortal; the heretics, like the hydra, keep producing new objections.
59. 59Now the Arians say the Son came into being “by the Father's will”; Athanasius argues that this means the same as “there was when he was not,” and that Scripture speaks only of the Son's “being.”
60. 60Scripture speaks of will only for creatures; the idea of a will preceding the Word comes from the Valentinian Ptolemy, and Asterius's argument makes the Son one of the things made.
61. 61God deliberates about creatures, which once were not, but his will for all things is in his Word; so the Word cannot himself come into being by a will, which would imply time before him and another Word.
62. 62The Arian dilemma “by will or by necessity” ignores what is by nature, which is above both; as God is good by nature, not by choice or compulsion, so he is Father of the Son by nature.
63. 63If the Word came by a prior will, the same would apply to the Father's own existence, which is absurd; the Son is himself the Father's living counsel, as Prov 8:14 says.
64. 64Creatures come by God's will, but the Word is that will and counsel itself; a will preceding him would make him second and a servant, not Lord united with the Father.
65. 65The Son is himself God's wisdom, understanding, and living counsel, in whom God's will lies; to say he came “by will” is to say Wisdom came to be in wisdom; the Father calls him simply “my Son.”
66. 66Being Son by nature does not make the Son unwilled; the Father loves and wills him as he wills his own goodness, with one will shared by Father and Son, yet no will precedes the Son's existence.
67. 67The Son is the Father's living counsel, not a product of will; human fathers too beget by nature, not by deliberation; the oration ends by urging the Arians to escape the devil's snare.