Against the Arians

Contents

Reading pages: 1–15 · 16–23

1. 1Phoebadius explains that he writes against the new creed only because it passes off heresy as orthodox faith and condemns the orthodox as heretics.
2. 2Phoebadius outlines the errors of the Sirmian creed: its veiled denial of one God, its banning of the word “substance,” and its making the Son lesser, temporal, and subject like a slave.
3. 3Phoebadius argues that the creed’s “one God, the almighty Father” is a trap: it confesses one Father, not one God, and calls the Son God only as men may be called gods.
4. 4Phoebadius answers the creed’s denial of “two gods” by showing that it uses Christ’s words in his humanity to make the Son a creature, failing to distinguish his two states.
5. 5Phoebadius rejects Potamius’s teaching that Christ’s spirit and flesh were fused so that God became passible, arguing that Christ’s divine and human substances each kept their own properties.
6. 6Phoebadius laments that the bishops at Sirmium have forbidden the term “one substance,” overturning the faith defined by the Council of Nicaea.
7. 7Phoebadius defends the word “substance” by its meaning and by many occurrences of substantia in the Latin Bible.
8. 8Phoebadius argues that “one substance” means one divinity, power, and glory in Father and Son, and that the Arians reject it because they divide the Son from the Father.
9. 9Phoebadius argues that the Arians cannot both assign the Son a beginning and declare his birth unknown, and explains “Who will declare his generation?” as pointing to an eternal and indescribable birth.
10. 10Phoebadius explains “from, with, and in” the Father, compares the Arian claim that the Son’s origin is unknown to the unbelief of the Jews in John 9, and notes that the Son reveals the Father to whom he wills.
11. 11Phoebadius argues that the Son’s birth has been revealed through the Spirit and Scripture, and describes it as an eternal birth of whole from whole, one from one, true from true.
12. 12Phoebadius answers the Arian use of “The Father is greater than I” by showing from John that the Son shares the Father’s honour, works, and divinity.
13. 13Phoebadius explains “The Father is greater than I” as referring to the Father as unoriginate source, and shows that “I in the Father and the Father in me” rules out both Sabellius and Arius.
14. 14Phoebadius argues from John that the Son does all the Father’s works, is one with him by nature, and knows him perfectly, which would be impossible if the Son had a beginning.
15. 15Phoebadius argues that making the Son subject to the Father along with creation numbers him among creatures, contradicting the Scriptures that God is one and that the Son bears the Father’s name.
16. 16Phoebadius argues that the Father’s having no beginning does not imply that the Son has one, since the Father was never without his Word and Wisdom, and he explains Prov 8:22 of Wisdom’s eternal birth.
17. 17Phoebadius argues that the Son, like the Father, is invisible in his divine nature, since the Old Testament appearances of God were seen only in dreams, mirrors, and visions.
18. 18Phoebadius argues that the Son, as God, is neither visible, mortal, nor passible; the sufferings belonged to the human nature, to which the Son was united without leaving heaven.
19. 19Phoebadius warns that the Arians use “God from God, light from light” to make the Son a second, separate God, and rejects their claim that the Son “suffered with” the man he took, since as God he is impassible.
20. 20Phoebadius argues that Father and Son are one God in two persons, distinct but not divided, and that the Son is the Word, Wisdom, and Spirit of God, a real substance, not an empty sound.
21. 21Phoebadius explains Phil 2 of the Word’s self-humbling and Rom 11:36 (“from him, through him, in him”) of the distinct but inseparable Father and Son.
22. 22Phoebadius sets the Catholic rule between the Patripassian and Arian errors: one substance in distinct persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God.
23. 23Phoebadius answers the appeal to the aged Hosius of Cordoba, who had signed the Sirmian creed, by noting that his authority now contradicts his own past defence of Nicaea.