Tractatus de Deo Trino secundum personas

«By the common faith handed down by the Fathers before the Council of Nicaea, at the beginning of the fourth century the Church professed one God and one divine nature in three distinct persons; in accordance with which faith, as a most clear definition against the new heresy, the creed was established in the Council of Nicaea, that the Son is consubstantial with the Father».

I. What was the universal and constant faith of the Church at the time when Arius first put forward his doctrine appears both from the manner in which the heresy was denounced to the Church and the denunciation was received, and from the fraudulent arts by which the heretics strove to conceal it.

1°. When Arius first openly disclosed his opinion, Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, wrote to Alexander of Constantinople (as it is inscribed in Theodoret)¹, and from the Council

held at Alexandria he gave letters to the Bishops of the whole world, by which he denounced the heretic to the whole Church and set forth his novelty against the faith handed down according to the genuine sense of Arius, lest he himself with his as yet few confederates be able to conceal the heresy by fraud and varnished words, and so creep into ecclesiastical communion somewhere. For Alexander and his Council did not at all doubt that, once Arius' sense was known—he who denied the one nature of the Word with the Father—he would be condemned as impious by all the Bishops everywhere in the world. «Having much to say,» he says in the ep. to Alexander (in Theodoret. H. E. I. I. c. 3.), «I refrain, because I think it troublesome to admonish at greater length unanimous teachers. For you yourselves, taught by God, are not ignorant that this teaching which has lately risen up against ecclesiastical piety is the doctrine of Ebion and Artemas, and the emulation of Paul of Samosata, who in the synod and judgment of the Bishops who are everywhere was cast out of the Church». It is asked, that Arius and his few followers, «calumniating the whole apostolic glory,» by denying the divinity of Christ «confirm the impious opinion of the Jews and Gentiles concerning Christ» ibid. p. 525. In the second letter to all the Bishops Alexander writes with his Council: «many heresies indeed also before these have arisen, which, more audacious than was right, lapsed into madness. But these, striving by all their little opinions to overturn the divinity of the Word, as being in a certain way nearer to Antichrist, justified those; wherefore they were condemned and cut off from the Church. We indeed grieve that these, who themselves were once imbued with the doctrine of the Church, have now fallen away from it» (Opp. Athanas. T. I. p. 399). «Who ever,» he exclaims, «heard such things: or who, hearing now, would not be astonished and stop his ears, lest the filth of such words contaminate his hearing?» ibid. p. 398.

The Bishops rendered the universal consensus manifest even before the Council of Nicaea by letters written to Alexander, as he himself testifies in the ep. to his namesake of Constantinople², since only very few—and those themselves under ambiguous words dissimulating the heresy—favored Arius; but above all the consensus appeared most clearly in the Council itself. «The Bishops, who had assembled, more or less three hundred,» says Athanasius, «mildly and most courteously asked them to give an account of their doctrine and pious proofs. When they began to speak, they were judged worthy of condemnation, and they themselves quarreled among themselves, and seeing the inextricable absurdity of their heresy remained silent... Therefore, with the words invented by them abolished, the Bishops set forth against them the sound and ecclesiastical faith (the creed), to which when all subscribed, the Eusebians also subscribed» Athan. de decret. Nic. n. 3. One should rightly note with Rufinus that among these condemners of the novelty there were especially those not few Bishops who at the time of the persecution had been Confessors for the same Christian faith. «Since in the same Council there was a great number of Confessor priests, all opposed Arius' novelties. But men cunning in questions, and for that reason adverse to the simplicity of the faith, favored him» Ruf. H. E. 1. I. c. 2.

2°. Arius himself, and much more afterward the Arians, were compelled to conceal their heresy in those words and expressions which in their obvious sense would present the Son as true God and by that very fact one in nature with the Father, lest, once their genuine opinion was laid bare, they be straightway regarded as impious by all. Arius indeed himself, e. g. in the letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia, both perverts the doctrine of Alexander in absurd ways, as if by teaching the eternity of the Son he had denied that He is begotten, and presents his own opinion as if, admitting the Son to be true and eternal God, he had only taught that the Father is the principle of the Son. «But we,» he says, «have taught and do teach that the Son is not unbegotten, nor in any way a part of the unbegotten, nor from some subject (οὐδὲ ἐξ ὑποκειμένου τινός), but that by will and counsel, before times and before ages, He existed as full God (Θεὸν πλήρη, μονογενῆ, ἄτρεπτον), only-begotten, immutable; and that before He was begotten or created or defined or founded, He was not; for He was not unbegotten. We are harassed because we said that the Son has a principle, but that God is without principle. Therefore we are harassed also because we said that the Son is from non-existent things (ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων); but this we said insofar as He is neither a part of God nor from some subject» (in Theodoret.

H. E. 1. I. c. 5). With the same fraud in the profession of faith offered to Constantine, Athanasius relates that Arius «concealed his own words of impiety» (ep. ad Episc. Aegypti n. 18; cf. Socrates H. E. 1. I. c. 26). It is evident that all these expressions: «the Son is full God, He is begotten before the ages, He is immutable, the Father is without principle and is the principle of the Son», are taken from the doctrine of the whole Church, which even then was so universal and ratified that the heretic himself was compelled to speak in the same way, and to subject to this public profession—to be understood by that very fact in its obvious sense—twisted meanings which could come into no one's mind except to one attempting by sophistical arts to wrench the clearest words to a signification contrary to that which they necessarily have from the common sense of all in any sincere speech, and much more in the public daily profession of faith of the whole Christian people.

With the same frauds the Arians were also compelled to act afterward, namely that they should use words by which the peoples would think the divinity of the Son was being asserted, and should then subject to them an alien sense intelligible to none but sophists; but those ecclesiastical expressions which could by no art be twisted into another sense, they said they rejected not because they denied the true divinity of the Son, but for other fabricated reasons, for instance that the words were not found in the Scriptures, that they could be understood in a Sabellian sense, that they could indicate a division or multiplication of the divine nature, and (as Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaur. 1. IX. T. V. P. I. p. 68, reports from Eunomius) a «section of the nature into duality». And yet frauds of this kind evidently show that the common faith and profession of all the Churches, when this new plague was brought in, was this: that the Son is true God no less than the Father, and by that very fact the Father and the Son and (by parity of reason) the Holy Spirit are three who are one God. Concerning this dissimulation of the Arians St. Athanasius complains. «If they trust and think this faith (of Arius) to be ecclesiastical, let them openly declare their opinion. For no one puts a lit lamp under a bushel but on a lampstand, that it may shine to all who enter. If therefore they can defend it, let them write the things cited above (the genuine words of Arius), and exhibit their heresy naked to all as a lamp; let them openly accuse Alexander, the Bishop of blessed memory, because he unjustly cast out Arius saying these things; let them complain of the Nicene Synod, which, having rejected the impiety, signed and published the pious faith. But that they will not do this, I hold for certain; for neither are they so ignorant of the evils which they have devised and strive to spread, but they know well that, although at the beginning they stole away the more simple by a vain artifice, their opinion is straightway to be extinguished as the lamp of the impious, and that they are to be marked with ignominy everywhere as enemies of the truth. Hence it is that.... they hide their lamp under a bushel, that it may be thought to shine, and lest, if it appeared, being known and reprobated, it be extinguished» Ath. ep. ad Episc. Aegypti n. 18. The Christian people, namely, under the words which the Arians were compelled to retain, understood the sense which had up to then been believed and preached by the whole Church. «And by the fraud of this impiety it is brought about even up to now,» says St. Hilary, «that under the priests of Antichrist the people of Christ does not perish, while they think that to be of the faith which is of the voice. They hear God Christ; they think it is what is said; they hear Son of God; they think that in the nativity of God the truth of God is present; they hear before times; they think that that which always is is itself before times. The ears of the common people are holier than the hearts of the priests» Hilar. contr. Auxent. n. 6. By these arts not only the common people but sometimes even catholic Bishops were led—understanding the formulas of the Arians in the obvious sense of the words—to admit communion with them; this is established from the history of the creeds, which, very many of them, were published by the Arians within a few years and again rejected (vid. Hieronym. dialog. cum Luciferian. n. 17-19). Cf. Maranum de Div. D. N. Iesu Christi 1. II. c. 6.

II. In keeping with the common faith, in direct opposition to the heresy of the Arians—who taught that the Son explicitly (and by necessary consequence the Holy Spirit) is not of the divine substance and nature but of another, different nature, and accordingly is not true God nor in the proper sense a Son begotten by the Father but created—the Nicene Fathers defined: «we believe in one God, the Father almighty.... and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, born of the Father only-begotten, that is, from the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father, through whom all things were made.... and in the Holy Spirit. But those who say: there was a time when He was not, and before He was born He was not, and that He was made from non-existent things, or who say that He is from another substance or essence, or that the Son of God is created, or convertible, or mutable; these the catholic and apostolic Church anathematizes» ³.

Here is defined the true generation of the Son from the Father by communication of nature, in opposition to the production of the Son by free creation asserted by the Arians; and indeed the nature which is in the Father and through which the Father is God is taught to be communicated in such a way that the same nature is in the Son, and through the same the Son is God; accordingly there is taught not the production of another nature, which is only specifically the same as the nature of the Father, as happens in human generations, but the communication of that very non-multipliable nature by which the Father is God, so that by that same numerically one nature the Son is God; therefore the Father and the Son are not two Gods but one God. These things are manifest from the very words of the creed and still more from the history of its definition.

a) When the Nicene Fathers, as Athanasius relates (de decret. Nic. n. 19.), first wanted to write: «that the Son is not from non-existent things but from God», this expression «the Son from God» seemed ambiguous. For the Fathers, understanding the Son in the proper sense, with the efficient cause excluded, took that from God for the generating principle; the Arians, on the contrary, taking this very from God for the efficient cause, understood the Son in the improper sense, and therefore thought that this statement did not harm their opinion at all. Once this fraud was noticed, the Fathers added the declaration: «the Son is begotten of the Father, that is, from the substance of the Father» ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ Πατρός. The substance of the Father is indeed nothing other than the Father, as Athanasius notes ibid. n. 22, but the mode of signifying is different; for the principle "by which" of generation is expressly expressed when it is said that the Father begot the Son from His substance, but did not create Him from non-existent things. In the declaration of generation properly so called, in such a way that the Arians could no longer pervert the sense, it was contained that the substance, or οὐσίαν, of the Father, the generating principle, is the same communicated to the Son.

Hence b) the Bishops in the Council, in order also to declare explicitly the nature communicated to the Son by the Father, «said that it must be written that the Word is the true power and image of the Father, and is like the Father without any discrepancy in all things, and immutable, and always, and inseparably in Him (the Father); for the Word never did not exist, but always existed, existing eternally with the Father, as the splendor of light». All these things indeed seemed to signify sufficiently the divine nature in the Son; nevertheless the Arians trusted that they could still be twisted into an alien sense: «they were caught again murmuring among themselves and hinting with their eyes that these words—like, always, in power, and in Him—are common to us with the Son».

Up to this point, namely, the Council had not expressly named the same nature of the Son which is the Father's, but had described it in its characters and properties with names to which the heretics thought an improper sense could be subjected.

To avert this fraud the Bishops were compelled to express the very one nature of the Father and the Son, in such a way that the real distinction of persons was at the same time preserved. They had already said that the Son is begotten from the substance of the Father; by that very fact, therefore, it was said that the same substance is communicated from the Father into the Son; but the Father is one and the Son is another. This identity of substance in the Son from the Father, and at the same time the distinction of the two who have one divine οὐσίαν, they seemed to express most excellently by this token: the Son is ὁμοούσιος (consubstantial) with the Father. «When the Bishops noticed their dissimulation in this matter too, they were themselves compelled again to gather the sense from the Scriptures, and to signify more clearly the same things they had said before, and to write that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, so that the Son might be signified to be not only similar, but by the similitude from the Father one and the same» ⁴.

How certainly the Council by that «from the substance of the Father» willed to have expressed nature not only as it is in the Father, but the same nature as to be communicated in the Father and communicated in the Son, is clear also from the other declaration, where those are condemned who say that the Son is «from another substance or essence». No Arian ever said that the Son is from another substance or essence as from a producing principle than the Father; indeed in this they placed the distinction of the Son from the other creatures, that while the others were made by the Son, the Son Himself alone was produced by the Father—yet not by true generation nor accordingly by communication of the «paternal substance or essence», but by a free operation, which they fraudulently called generation ⁵, so that they might retain the biblical names of Father and only-begotten Son and more easily deceive the catholics. Because therefore they denied that the Son is in the proper sense begotten by the Father by communication of the paternal essence, or that He is «from the substance or essence of the Father» as from the principle "by which" of generation; therefore they said that He is «from another substance or essence», namely from a created essence as from a constituting principle, but not from the communicated essence of the Father. Wherefore in the condemnation of this heresy, just as that «from the substance of the Father» immediately designates the nature as it is in the Father, and co-signifies the same nature as it is in the begotten Son; so the other, that the Son «is not from another substance or essence» ⁶, immediately signifies that the nature of the Son is not another but the very nature of the Father. «And He is from the substance of the Father, and the Son Himself is Son by substance»; «the Word is from the substance of God (the Father), nor is He Himself of a diverse nature» (ἑτεροουσίας); «unless perhaps the impious dare again to contend that the substance of the Son is another, and that the light which is from the Father in the Son is another thing, so that the light indeed in the Son is one with the Father, but He Himself according to substance is alien as being a creature; but this is manifestly the sense of Caiaphas and Samosatenus, which the Church condemned» Athan. l. c. n. 22. 23. 24.

Moreover, as to the matter itself, surely nothing else is said by this declaration, «that the Son is ὁμοούσιον with the Father», than if it be said: the Son of God the Father, begotten by the Father, the Father is God and the Son is God, the Father and the Son are one—provided these are understood in the proper sense: «this is that ὁμοούσιον which the ancient faith had brought forth» Aug. contr. Maxim. l. II. c. 14. n. 3. But the excellence of that formula consists in this very thing, that it most clearly enunciates the rationale of filiation, generation, deity, unity as constituted in the communication of the divine essence from the Father into the Son. From then on ὁμοούσιον remained the most certain token of the catholic faith against the contrary heresies denying either the unity of nature in distinct persons, or the distinct persons in the unity of nature. (Vide the Fathers in Petav. l. IV. c. 5. n. 4. sqq.).