On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia 26–32

After this, as though they had changed their minds, they gather their assembly again three years later, and send Eudoxius, Martyrius, and Macedonius of Cilicia, and some others with them, to the parts of Italy, carrying a faith written at length and having very many additions beyond the former ones; for they set off carrying these things as though they had devised something newer. I. “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, creator and maker of all things, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named; and in his only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who was begotten from the Father before all the ages, God from God, Light from Light, through whom all things came to be in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible; who is Word and Wisdom and Power and Life and true Light; who in the last days became man for us and was born of the holy Virgin, was crucified and died and was buried, and rose from the dead on the third day, and was taken up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of the Father, and is coming at the consummation of the age to judge living and dead and to render to each according to his works; whose kingdom, being unceasing, remains to the infinite ages; for he sits at the right hand of the Father not only in this age but also in the one to come. We believe also in the Holy Spirit, that is, the Paraclete, whom, having promised him to the apostles, he sent after his ascent into heaven to teach them and to remind them of all things, through whom also the souls of those who have sincerely believed in him will be sanctified. II. But those who say that the Son is from nothing, or from another hypostasis and not from God, and that there was ever a time or an age when he was not, the catholic and holy church knows as aliens. Likewise those who say that there are three Gods, or that Christ is not God, or that before the ages he was neither Christ nor Son of God, or that the same is Father and Son and Holy Spirit, or that the Son is unbegotten, or that the Father begot the Son not by choice nor by will, the holy and catholic church anathematizes. III. For neither is it safe to say that the Son is from nothing, since this is nowhere said of him in the divinely inspired Scriptures; nor from some other hypostasis existing beforehand besides the Father; but we define that he was genuinely begotten from God alone; for the divine word teaches that the Father of Christ is one, unbegotten and without beginning. Nor, saying ‘there was once when he was not’ on unscriptural grounds, which is unsafe, must one conceive of any interval of time before him, but only God, who begot him timelessly; for times and ages came to be through him. Nor must the Son be thought to be co-unoriginate and co-unbegotten with the Father; for no one would properly be called father or son of one who is co-unoriginate and co-unbegotten. But we know that the Father alone, being without beginning and unbegotten, begot in a way unattainable and incomprehensible to all; and that the Son was begotten before the ages, and is not, like the Father, himself unbegotten too, but has as his beginning the Father who begot him; for ‘the head of Christ is God.’ IV. Nor, though we confess three realities and three persons, of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, according to the Scriptures, do we therefore make the Gods three; since we know the self-complete and unbegotten, without beginning and invisible God to be one only, the God and Father of the Only-begotten, who alone has being from himself and alone grants it ungrudgingly to all others. Nor, though we say that the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the only God, the only unbegotten, do we therefore deny that Christ too is God before the ages, as do the followers of Paul of Samosata, who say that he was later, after the incarnation, made God by advancement, having by nature become a mere man. For we know that he, though he is subject to the Father and God, yet, begotten from God before the ages, is by nature perfect and true God, and did not afterwards become God from being a man, but from being God became man for us, and never lost his being. V. Besides these we abhor and anathematize also those who falsely call him only a mere word of God, without real existence, having its being in another—now as what some call the uttered word, now as the inward word—and who will not have him be Christ and Son of God and mediator and image of God before the ages, but say that he became Christ and Son of God from the time he took our flesh from the Virgin, not quite four hundred years ago. For they will have it that Christ had a beginning of his reign from that time, and that it will have an end after the consummation and the judgment. VI. Such are the followers of Marcellus and of Scotinus, the Ancyro-Galatians, who, like the Jews, set aside the pre-eternal existence of Christ and his divinity and his endless reign, on the pretext of appearing to uphold the monarchy. For we know him not simply as God’s uttered or inward word, but as living God, the Word subsisting by himself, and Son of God and Christ; not as being with his Father before the ages and abiding with him by foreknowledge only, but as having ministered to him for the whole creation, of things visible and invisible. For he it is to whom the Father said, ‘Let us make man in our image and likeness’; who also appeared in his own person to the patriarchs, gave the law, spoke through the prophets, and at last became man, and manifested his own Father to all men, and reigns to the endless ages. For Christ has taken on no new dignity; but we have believed him to be perfect from the beginning and like the Father in all things. VII. And those who say that Father and Son and Holy Spirit are the same, impiously taking the three names of one and the same reality and person, we rightly expel from the church, because they suppose that the uncontainable and impassible Father becomes contained and at the same time passible through the incarnation; for such are those called Patripassians among the Romans and Sabellians among us. For we know that the Father who sent remained in the proper state of his unchangeable divinity, while Christ who was sent fulfilled the dispensation of the incarnation. VIII. Likewise those who have irreverently said that the Son was begotten not by choice nor by will—thus plainly encompassing God with a necessity he did not will or choose, so that he begot the Son unwillingly—we recognize as most impious and strangers to the church, because they have dared to define such things about him contrary to the common notions about God, and indeed contrary to the intention of the divinely inspired Scripture. For knowing God to be absolute and Lord of himself, we have piously held that he begot the Son voluntarily and willingly. And believing with reverence him who says of himself, ‘The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works,’ we do not understand that he came to be in the same way as the creatures or works made through him. For it is impious and alien to the church’s faith to compare the Creator with the works created through him, and to think that he has the same manner of generation as the others. For the divine Scriptures teach us that the only-begotten Son alone, and alone in this manner, was genuinely and truly begotten. IX. But neither, though we say that the Son exists and lives and subsists by himself like the Father, do we therefore separate him from the Father, conceiving places and intervals between their union in a bodily way. For we have believed that they are joined to one another without mediation or interval and exist inseparable from each other—the whole Father embracing the Son, and the whole Son hanging upon and adhering to the Father, and alone resting continually in the Father’s bosom. Believing, then, in the all-perfect and most holy Triad, that is, in the Father and in the Son and in the Holy Spirit, and calling the Father God and the Son God, we confess not these two Gods, but one dignity of the Godhead and one exact concord of the kingdom—the Father alone ruling over all things universally, including the Son himself, while the Son is subject to the Father, but, apart from him, reigns after him over all things that came to be through him, and bestows the grace of the Holy Spirit ungrudgingly on the saints by the Father’s will. For so the sacred words have handed down to us the account of the monarchy with respect to Christ. X. We have been compelled, after the faith set forth above in summary, to work out these things more fully, not from excessive ambition, but to clear away every suspicion foreign to our view among those who do not know our affairs, and so that all in the West may know both the shamelessness of the slander of the heterodox and the ecclesiastical mind in the Lord of the Easterners, borne witness to without constraint by the divinely inspired Scriptures among those who are not perverse.”

But they did not abide by these either; for, meeting again at Sirmium against Photinus, they then composed a faith once more, no longer so long-drawn-out nor so wordy, but, taking away most things and adding others, as though they had heard them at someone’s prompting, they wrote this: “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, the creator and maker of all things, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named; and in his only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who was begotten from the Father before all the ages, God from God, Light from Light, through whom all things came to be, those in the heavens and those on the earth, visible and invisible; who is Word and Wisdom and true Light and Life; who in the last days became man for us and was born of the holy Virgin, and was crucified and died and was buried, and rose from the dead on the third day, and was taken up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of the Father, and is coming at the consummation of the age to judge living and dead and to render to each according to his works; whose kingdom, being unceasing, remains to the infinite ages; for he will be sitting at the right hand of the Father not only in this age but also in the one to come; and in the Holy Spirit, that is, the Paraclete, whom, having promised him to the apostles, after his … into heaven … I. But those who say that the Son is from nothing, or from another hypostasis and not from God, and that there was a time or an age when he was not, the holy and catholic church knows as aliens. II. Again, then, we will say: If anyone says that the Father and the Son are two Gods, let him be anathema. III. And if anyone, while saying that Christ is God, Son of God before the ages, does not confess that he ministered to the Father in the creation of all things, let him be anathema. IV. If anyone dares to say that the Unbegotten, or a part of him, was born of Mary, let him be anathema. V. If anyone says that the Son existed before Mary only by foreknowledge, and not that he was begotten from the Father before the ages and was with God, and that all things came to be through him, let him be anathema. VI. If anyone asserts that the essence of God is expanded or contracted, let him be anathema. VII. If anyone says that the essence of God, being expanded, makes the Son, or calls the expansion of his essence the Son, let him be anathema. VIII. If anyone says that the Son of God is the inward or the uttered word, let him be anathema. IX. If anyone says that the Son who is from Mary is man only, let him be anathema. X. If anyone, while saying that he who is from Mary is God and man, means by this the unbegotten God, let him be anathema. XI. If anyone takes ‘I am God, the first, and I am after these things, and besides me there is no God,’ which was said for the overthrow of idols and of gods that are not, in the Jewish manner, for the overthrow of the only-begotten God before the ages, let him be anathema. XII. If anyone, hearing ‘The Word became flesh,’ thinks that the Word was changed into flesh, or says that he took flesh by undergoing a change, let him be anathema. XIII. If anyone, hearing that the only-begotten Son of God was crucified, says that his divinity underwent corruption, or suffering, or change, or diminution, or destruction, let him be anathema. XIV. If anyone says that ‘Let us make man’ was said not by the Father to the Son, but that God said it to himself, let him be anathema. XV. If anyone says that it was not the Son who was seen by Abraham, but the unbegotten God or a part of him, let him be anathema. XVI. If anyone says that it was not the Son who wrestled with Jacob as a man, but the unbegotten God or a part of him, let him be anathema. XVII. If anyone does not take ‘The Lord rained fire from the Lord’ of the Father and the Son, but says that he rained from himself, let him be anathema; for the Lord, the Son, rained from the Lord, the Father. XVIII. If anyone, hearing that the Father is Lord and the Son is Lord, and the Father and the Son are Lord, since he is Lord from Lord, says that there are two Gods, let him be anathema. For we do not rank the Son with the Father, but as subject to the Father. For he did not come down upon Sodom without the counsel of the Father, nor did he rain from himself, but from the Lord, the Father evidently having the authority; nor does he sit at the right hand of himself, but he hears the Father saying, ‘Sit at my right hand.’ XIX. If anyone says that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one person, let him be anathema. XX. If anyone, while saying that the Holy Spirit is the Paraclete, means the unbegotten God, let him be anathema. XXI. If anyone does not say, as the Lord taught us, that the Paraclete is other than the Son—for he said, ‘And the Father will send you another Paraclete, whom I will ask’—let him be anathema. XXII. If anyone says that the Holy Spirit is a part of the Father or of the Son, let him be anathema. XXIII. If anyone says that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are three Gods, let him be anathema. XXIV. If anyone says that the Son of God came to be by the will of God as one of the works, let him be anathema. XXV. If anyone says that the Son was begotten without the Father’s willing it, let him be anathema. For the Father did not beget the Son under compulsion, led by natural necessity, as though he did not will it; but as soon as he willed, he begot him from himself timelessly and impassibly and displayed him. XXVI. If anyone says that the Son is unbegotten and without beginning, as though speaking of two without beginning and two unbegotten, and making two Gods, let him be anathema. For the head, which is the beginning of all things, is the Son; and the head, which is the beginning of Christ, is God; for so we piously refer all things through the Son to the one beginning of all things, which is without beginning. XXVII. And again, defining exactly the idea of Christianity, we say: If anyone does not say that Christ is God, the Son of God, existing before the ages and having ministered to the Father in the creation of all things, but says that only from the time he was born of Mary was he called Christ and Son, and received the beginning of being God, let him be anathema.”

Thrusting all this aside, and as though they had devised something better, they decree another faith, and write the following at Sirmium in Latin, translated into Greek: “Since it was decided that there should be some deliberation about the faith, everything was carefully investigated and examined at Sirmium in the presence of Valens and Ursacius and Germinius and the rest. It is established that there is one God, the Father Almighty, as is proclaimed in all the world, and his one only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, begotten from him before the ages. That one must not speak of two Gods, since the Lord himself said, ‘I go to my Father and your Father, and my God and your God.’ Therefore he is God of all, as the apostle also taught: ‘Or is he God of the Jews only? Is he not of the Gentiles also? Yes, of the Gentiles also, since God is one, who will justify the circumcision by faith and the uncircumcision through faith.’ And everything else is in agreement and has no ambiguity. But since some, indeed many, are disturbed about what is called in Latin substantia and in Greek ousia—that is, to make it known more exactly, ‘of the same essence’ or what is called ‘of like essence’—there ought to be no mention of any of these at all, nor should they be expounded in the church, for this reason and on this account: that they are not written of in the divine Scriptures, and that these things are beyond human knowledge and human understanding, and that no one can declare the generation of the Son, as it is written, ‘Who shall declare his generation?’ For it is plain that only the Father knows how he begot the Son, and in turn the Son how he was begotten by the Father. And it is doubtful to no one that the Father is greater; for no one could hesitate to say that the Father is greater in honor and dignity and divinity and in the very name of Father, the Son himself bearing witness: ‘The Father who sent me is greater than I.’ And no one is ignorant that this too is catholic: that there are two persons, of Father and Son, and that the Father is greater, while the Son is subject to the Father together with all the things that the Father subjected to him; that the Father has no beginning, and is invisible, and is immortal, and is impassible; but that the Son was begotten from the Father, God from God, Light from Light, and that no one knows his generation, as was said before, except the Father alone. And that the Son himself, our Lord and God, took flesh or a body, that is, a man, from Mary the Virgin, as the angel announced beforehand. And as all the Scriptures teach, and above all the apostle himself, the teacher of the Gentiles, Christ took a man from Mary the Virgin, through whom he suffered. And the sum of the whole faith and its security is that the Triad should always be kept, as we read in the Gospel: ‘Go, bap…’”

Having written this and changed their minds, they put together that one which they had produced with the consulship and then blushed for. And, as usual, as if they had condemned this one too, they had it snatched away from those who had copies, through Martinian the notary. And having made the emperor Constantius issue an edict against it, they decree another again, and, adding some words as they usually do, they write the following in Isauria: “We do not shun the authentic faith set forth at the Dedication at Antioch, but bring it forward, even though our fathers at that time met together chiefly on the subject then under inquiry. But since ‘of the same essence’ and ‘of like essence’ have troubled many in times past and up to the present, and since recently the ‘unlike’ of the Son with respect to the Father is said to have been newly introduced by some, for this reason we reject ‘of the same essence’ and ‘of like essence’ as alien to the Scriptures, and we anathematize ‘unlike,’ and regard all who are such as aliens from the church. But we clearly confess the likeness of the Son to the Father, according to the apostle, who says of the Son, ‘who is the image of the invisible God.’ And we confess and believe in one God, the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. And we believe also in our Lord Jesus Christ, his Son, who was begotten from him impassibly before all the ages, God the Word, only-begotten God from God, light, life, truth, wisdom, power, through whom all things came to be, those in the heavens and those on the earth, whether visible or invisible. We believe that he, at the consummation of the ages, for the putting away of sin, took flesh from the holy Virgin and became man; that he suffered for our sins, and rose, and was taken up into the heavens, and sits at the right hand of the Father; and that he is coming again in glory to judge living and dead. We believe also in the Holy Spirit, whom our Savior and Lord also named Paraclete, promising to send him to the disciples after he had departed, and whom he did send; through whom he also sanctifies those in the church who believe and are baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Those who preach anything else contrary to this faith, the catholic church knows as aliens. That the faith lately set forth at Sirmium in the presence of our emperor’s piety is equivalent to this faith, those who read it know.”

Having written this in Isauria, they went up to Constantinople, and, as though they had changed their minds, they altered it as usual, and, adding some little phrases, so that not even “hypostasis” should be said of Father and Son and Holy Spirit, they sent it to those at Ariminum, and compelled those in these parts too to subscribe; and those who contradicted them they had exiled by Constantius. It is as follows: “… visible and invisible; begotten as only-begotten, alone from the Father alone, God from God, like the Father who begot him, according to the Scriptures; whose generation no one knows except the Father alone who begot him. We know that this only-begotten Son of God, the Father sending him, came from the heavens, as it is written, for the destruction of sin and death, and was born of the Holy Spirit, from Mary the Virgin according to the flesh, as it is written; and went about with the disciples; and, the whole dispensation having been fulfilled according to the Father’s will, was crucified and died and was buried and descended to the regions under the earth, before whom Hades itself cowered; who also rose from the dead on the third day, and stayed with the disciples, and, when forty days were fulfilled, was taken up into the heavens, and sits at the right hand of the Father, and will come on the last day of the resurrection in the Father’s glory, to render to each according to his works. And in the Holy Spirit, whom the only-begotten Son of God himself, Christ, our Lord and God, promised to send to the human race as Paraclete, as it is written, ‘the Spirit of truth,’ whom he sent to them when he ascended into the heavens. But as for the name ‘essence,’ which was set down by the fathers in simplicity, but, being unknown to the people, caused offense because the Scriptures do not contain it either, it seemed good that it be removed, and that no mention at all be made of it henceforth, since the divine Scriptures have nowhere mentioned the essence of Father and Son. For neither ought ‘hypostasis’ to be named concerning Father and Son and Holy Spirit. But we say that the Son is like the Father, as the divine Scriptures say …”

But they did not abide by these either; for, going down from Constantinople to Antioch, they regretted having written at all that the Son is like the Father “as the Scriptures say”; and, putting together what they had devised, they began again to run back to their first views, and to say that the Son is altogether unlike the Father and is in no respect like the Father; and they changed so far as to receive those who speak Arius’s views more nakedly and to hand the churches over to them, so that they might put forward their blasphemy freely. Because of the great shamelessness of their blasphemy, then, they were called Anomoeans by everyone, and they also have the name Exukontians, and the heretic Constantius as patron of their impiety; who, having continued in impiety to the end, and then, when dying, thought fit to be baptized, not by pious men, but by Euzoius, who had been deposed on account of the Arian heresy not once but many times, both when he was a deacon and when he was installed at Antioch.

So far, then, they had come, when they stopped, and the aforesaid were deposed. But not even so, I know well, will those who have now played the hypocrite stop; they will always form factions against the truth, until, coming to themselves, these too say: “Let us arise and go to our fathers and say to them: We anathematize the Arian heresy, and acknowledge the council of Nicaea”; for it is with this that they have their quarrel. Who, then, having even a little sense, will put up with them any longer? Who, seeing that at each council some things are taken away and others added, does not perceive that they have a suspicious and treacherous mind against Christ? Who, seeing them stretch out at length both the composition of their faith and their defense on the charges against them, does not see that they are condemning themselves and writing much on purpose, so that by their untimely ambition and so much verbosity they may seem to carry off the simple and escape notice for what they are in their heresy? But as the Gentiles, as the Lord said, gain nothing by babbling in their prayers, so these, having poured out so much, could not quench the judgment against the Arian heresy, but were rather refuted and deposed, and rightly so. For what writing of theirs will the hearer accept? Or with what confidence will they catechize those who come to them? For if all their creeds have one and the same agreement, what need is there of many? But if so many were needed, it is plain that each is deficient and incomplete, and they themselves prove this better than we, by changing and remaking them all. And the multitude of the councils and the differences in what was written show that those who met at them are fighting against the council of Nicaea and are weak against the truth.