{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/204/2040347.htm","path":"chr/ecf/204/2040347.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/204/2040347.htm","text":"Chapter II.\u2014Extracts from the Thalia of Arius. Arius maintains that God became a Father, and the Son was not always; the Son out of nothing; once He was not; He was not before his generation; He was created; named Wisdom and Word after God\u2019s attributes; made that He might make us; one out of many powers of God; alterable; exalted on God\u2019s foreknowledge of what He was to be; not very God; but called so as others by participation; foreign in essence from the Father; does not know or see the Father; does not know Himself.\n5. Now the commencement of Arius\u2019s Thalia and flippancy, effeminate in tune and nature, runs thus:\u2014\n\u2018According to faith of God\u2019s elect, God\u2019s prudent ones,\nHoly children, rightly dividing, God\u2019s Holy Spirit receiving,\nHave I learned this from the partakers of wisdom,\nAccomplished, divinely taught, and wise in all things.\nAlong their track, have I been walking, with like opinions.\nI the very famous, the much suffering for God\u2019s glory;\nAnd taught of God, I have acquired wisdom and knowledge.\u2019\nAnd the mockeries which he utters in it, repulsive and most irreligious, are such as these 1839 :\u2014\u2018God was not always a Father;\u2019 but \u2018once God was alone, and not yet a Father, but afterwards He became a Father.\u2019 \u2018The Son was not always;\u2019 for, whereas all things were made out of nothing, and all existing creatures and works were made, so the Word of God Himself was \u2018made out of nothing,\u2019 and \u2018once He was not,\u2019 and \u2018He was not before His p. 309 origination,\u2019 but He as others \u2018had an origin of creation.\u2019 \u2018For God,\u2019 he says, \u2018was alone, and the Word as yet was not, nor the Wisdom. Then, wishing to form us, thereupon He made a certain one, and named Him Word and Wisdom and Son, that He might form us by means of Him.\u2019 Accordingly, he says that there are two wisdoms, first, the attribute co-existent with God, and next, that in this wisdom the Son was originated, and was only named Wisdom and Word as partaking of it. \u2018For Wisdom,\u2019 saith he, \u2018by the will of the wise God, had its existence in Wisdom.\u2019 In like manner, he says, that there is another Word in God besides the Son, and that the Son again, as partaking of it, is named Word and Son according to grace. And this too is an idea proper to their heresy, as shewn in other works of theirs, that there are many powers; one of which is God\u2019s own by nature and eternal; but that Christ, on the other hand, is not the true power of God; but, as others, one of the so-called powers, one of which, namely, the locust and the caterpillar 1840 , is called in Scripture, not merely the power, but the \u2018great power.\u2019 The others are many and are like the Son, and of them David speaks in the Psalms, when he says, \u2018The Lord of hosts\u2019 or \u2018powers 1841 .\u2019 And by nature, as all others, so the Word Himself is alterable, and remains good by His own free will, while He chooseth; when, however, He wills, He can alter as we can, as being of an alterable nature. For \u2018therefore,\u2019 saith he, \u2018as foreknowing that He would be good, did God by anticipation bestow on Him this glory, which afterwards, as man, He attained from virtue. Thus in consequence of His works fore-known 1842 , did God bring it to pass that He being such, should come to be.\u2019\n6. Moreover he has dared to say, that \u2018the Word is not the very God;\u2019 \u2018though He is called God, yet He is not very God,\u2019 but \u2018by participation of grace, He, as others, is God only in name.\u2019 And, whereas all beings are foreign and different from God in essence, so too is \u2018the Word alien and unlike in all things to the Father\u2019s essence and propriety,\u2019 but belongs to things originated and created, and is one of these. Afterwards, as though he had succeeded to the devil\u2019s recklessness, he has stated in his Thalia, that \u2018even to the Son the Father is invisible,\u2019 and \u2018the Word cannot perfectly and exactly either see or know His own Father;\u2019 but even what He knows and what He sees, He knows and sees \u2018in proportion to His own measure,\u2019 as we also know according to our own power. For the Son, too, he says, not only knows not the Father exactly, for He fails in comprehension 1843 , but \u2018He knows not even His own essence;\u2019\u2014and that \u2018the essences of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, are separate in nature, and estranged, and disconnected, and alien 1844 , and without participation of each other 1845 ;\u2019 and, in his own words, \u2018utterly unlike from each other in essence and glory, unto infinity.\u2019 Thus as to \u2018likeness of glory and essence,\u2019 he says that the Word is entirely diverse from both the Father and the Holy Ghost. With such words hath the irreligious spoken; maintaining that the Son is distinct by Himself, and in no respect partaker of the Father. These are portions of Arius\u2019s fables as they occur in that jocose composition.\n7. Who is there that hears all this, nay, the tune of the Thalia, but must hate, and justly hate, this Arius jesting on such matters as on a stage 1846 ? who but must regard him, when he pretends to name God and speak of God, but as the serpent counselling the woman? who, on reading what follows in his work, but must discern in his irreligious doctrine that error, into which by his sophistries the serpent in the sequel seduced the woman? who at such blasphemies is not transported? \u2018The heaven,\u2019 as the Prophet says, \u2018was astonished, and the earth shuddered 1847 \u2019 at the transgression of the Law. But the sun, with greater horror, impatient of the bodily contumelies, which the common Lord of all voluntarily endured for us, turned away, and recalling his rays made that day sunless. And shall not all human kind at Arius\u2019s blasphemies be struck speechless, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, to escape hearing them or seeing their author? Rather, will not the Lord Himself have reason to denounce men so irreligious, nay, so unthankful, in the words which He has already uttered by the prophet Hosea, \u2018Woe unto them, for they have fled from Me; destruction upon p. 310 them, for they have transgressed against Me; though I have redeemed them, yet they have spoken lies against Me 1848 .\u2019 And soon after, \u2018They imagine mischief against Me; they turn away to nothing 1849 .\u2019 For to turn away from the Word of God, which is, and to fashion to themselves one that is not, is to fall to what is nothing. For this was why the Ecumenical 1850 Council, when Arius thus spoke, cast him from the Church, and anathematized him, as impatient of such irreligion. And ever since has Arius\u2019s error been reckoned for a heresy more than ordinary, being known as Christ\u2019s foe, and harbinger 1851 of Antichrist. Though then so great a condemnation be itself of special weight to make men flee from that irreligious heresy 1852 , as I said above, yet since certain persons called Christian, either in ignorance or pretence, think it, as I then said, little different from the Truth, and call its professors Christians; proceed we to put some questions to them, according to our powers, thereby to expose the unscrupulousness of the heresy. Perhaps, when thus caught, they will be silenced, and flee from it, as from the sight of a serpent.\nde Syn. \u00a715. [where the metre of the Thalia is discussed in a note.]\n309:1840\nde Syn. \u00a718; Joel ii. 25.\n309:1841 309:1842\nde Syn. 26, note 7, de Decr. 6, note 8.\n309:1843\nVid. de Syn. 15, note 6. \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03ac\u03bb\u03b7\u03c8\u03b9\u03c2 was originally a Stoic word, and even when considered perfect, was, properly speaking, attributable only to an imperfect being. For it is used in contrast to the Platonic doctrine of \u1f34\u03b4\u03b5\u03b1\u03b9, to express the hold of things obtained by the mind through the senses; it being a Stoical maxim, nihil esse in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu. In this sense it is also used by the Fathers, to mean real and certain knowledge after inquiry, though it is also ascribed to Almighty God. As to the position of Arius, since we are told in Scripture that none \u2018knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him,\u2019 if \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03ac\u03bb\u03b7\u03c8\u03b9\u03c2 be an exact and complete knowledge of the object of contemplation, to deny that the Son comprehended the Father, was to deny that He was in the Father, i.e. the doctrine of the \u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u03b9\u03c7\u03ce\u03c1\u03b7\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2, de Syn. 15, \u1f00\u03bd\u03b5\u03c0\u03b9\u03bc\u03b9\u03ba\u03c4\u03bf\u03af, or to maintain that He was a distinct, and therefore a created, being. On the other hand Scripture asserts that, as the Holy Spirit which is in God, \u2018searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God,\u2019 so the Son, as being \u2018in the bosom of the Father,\u2019 alone \u2018hath declared Him.\u2019 vid. Clement. Strom. v. 12. And thus Athan. speaking of Mark xiii. 32, \u2019If the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son, and the Father knows the day and the hour, it is plain that the Son too, being in the Father, and knowing the things in the Father, Himself also knows the day and the hour.\u201d Orat. iii. 44.\n309:1844 309:1845 309:1846\nEp. Encycl. 6; Epiph. H\u00e6r. 73. 1.\n309:1847 310:1848 310:1849\nHos. 7.15. lxx.\n310:1850 310:1851 310:1852\nAnd so Vigilius of the heresies about the Incarnation, Etiamsi in erroris eorum destructionem nulli conderentur libri, hoc ipsum solum, quod h\u00e6retici sunt pronunciati, orthodoxorum securitati sufficeret. contr. Eutych. i. p. 494.","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. II, Vol. IV: Against the Arians. (Orationes contra Arianos IV.): Extracts from the Thalia of Arius. Arius maintains that God became a Father, and the Son was not always; the Son out of nothing; once He was not; He was not before his generation; He was created; named Wisdom and Word after God's attributes; made that He might make us; one out of many powers of God; alterable; exalted on God's foreknowledge of what He was to be; not very God; but called so as others by participation; foreign in essence from the Father; does not know or see the Father; does not know Himself.","type":"page"}