Orations (other than the Theological Orations) 2.35–2.37

As for the distribution of the word (to speak last of the first of our concerns: I mean the divine and lofty word, about which everyone now philosophizes), if anyone else is confident and undertakes it with all his understanding, I admire his intelligence, not to say his simplicity. To me at least it seems no slight matter, and to require no little of the Spirit, to give each his portion of the word in due season, and to dispense with judgment the truth of our doctrines: all that has been philosophized about worlds or the world, about matter, about soul, about mind and the intelligent natures, better and worse, about the providence that binds together and directs all things, both what seems to happen according to reason and what is contrary to reason here below and human.

And further, all that concerns our first formation and our final re-formation, types and truth, the covenants, the first and second coming of Christ, his incarnation and sufferings and departure; all that concerns the resurrection, the end, the judgment and the recompense, both the gloomier and the more glorious; and, the sum of all, what is to be thought about the original and blessed Trinity. Here indeed lies the greatest danger for those entrusted with enlightening others: lest, through fear of polytheism, they contract the doctrine into one hypostasis and leave us bare names, supposing the same one to be Father and Son and Holy Spirit; or else divide it into three that are either alien and foreign, or without order and without principle and, so to speak, rival gods, and so fall from the opposite side into an equal evil, like a plant bent far over the other way to correct its warp.

For there are three diseases now affecting theology: atheism, Judaism, and polytheism. Of the first Sabellius the Libyan was the champion, of the second Arius of Alexandria, of the third some of those among us who are excessively orthodox. What is my view? That we should escape what is harmful in all three and remain within the bounds of piety: neither be led into the atheism of Sabellius by this new analysis, or rather synthesis, lest by defining all as one we make each nothing rather than all one (for things that pass into one another and change into one another escape being what they are), or picture for ourselves some composite and absurd God, like the fabulous animals that are painted and modelled; nor, cutting the natures apart according to the well-named madness of Arius, be shut up in Jewish poverty and bring envy into the divine nature, limiting the Godhead to the Unbegotten alone, as though afraid that God would be destroyed for us if he were Father of a true God, equal in honour by nature; nor, setting three principles against one another or ranking them side by side, introduce the Greek polyarchy from which we have fled.