On Receiving the Homoousion

De homoousio recipiendo

1Victorinus opens his short appeal for accepting homoousion by setting Christian faith in one God, Father and Son, between pagan polytheism and Jewish monotheism, and explaining that God's being is substance (ousia or hypostasis).
2Victorinus shows that Scripture speaks of God's substance (Jeremiah 23, Psalm 139, Hebrews 1:3) and explains that homoousion means both “of the same substance” and “substance together”, excluding Arius's “from nothing” and “there was when he was not”.
3Victorinus charges his opponents with being new Arians who say “God from God” yet mean “from nothing”, and answers their argument that generation would divide or diminish God, since spiritual beings beget without change.
4Victorinus answers the appeal to “Who can tell his generation?” (Isaiah 53:8), offers Latin equivalents of homoousion, cites Psalm 36:9 for “light in light”, and rejects “like substance” from Isaiah and the Psalms.

About this work

Author: Marius Victorinus
Attribution: authentic · Accepted as Marius Victorinus's own; a short summary of the Nicene argument.
Standing: Not honoured as a saint or in a church calendar by the Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant traditions. Writer in the church of his time, not venerated by any of the three traditions.
Date: ca. 357–362 (approximate) · After his conversion (ca. 355) and before he left teaching under Julian's edict (362); the Trinitarian treatises are dated to the late 350s.
Written at: Rome, Italy (probable)
Language: Latin
Genre: treatise
Reference system: chapter (Roman numerals as in Migne, PL 8:1137–1140)
SBL abbreviation: Hom. rec.Not yet checked
Clavis: CPL 98 (not yet checked)
Text from: J.-P. Migne, ed., Patrologiae cursus completus, series Latina, vol. 8 (Paris, 1844), from the editions of A. Mai (Rome, 1828) and the Benedictine Mabillon (Analecta) (Printed edition (Migne, 1844) in the public domain; digital text CC BY-SA 4.0)