Chapter 8: The Second Exile (Rome 338–45)
8
The Second Exile (Rome 338–45)
Athanasius and his entourage arrived in Rome in June or July 339. He left a brief recollection of this period in his Defense before Constantius, which was written subsequently. “When I left Alexandria,” Athanasius reported, “[I] did not go to your brother’s [Constans] head-quarters, or to any other persons, but only to Rome; and having laid my case before the Church (for this was my only concern), I spent my time in public worship.”350 The primary concern of this portion of Athanasius’s Defense was to deny that he had met with the Western emperor Constans in order to gain his support against the Eastern emperor Constantius, but the same passage also locates Athanasius at Rome, and mentions that he was there to clear his reputation and engage in (probably lead) public worship.
When Athanasius reported that he “laid his case before the Church,” he was referring primarily to Bishop (or Pope) Julius of Rome. We know from a lengthy letter that Julius wrote to the Eusebians, who were assembled in council at Antioch in 341,351 that the Bishop of Rome had called a church council to examine the charges raised against both Athanasius and Marcellus, and had found them innocent of all complaints against them. After reviewing all the charges against Athanasius, including those raised earlier at the Synod of Tyre, Julius pointed out that the elevation of Gregory in his place, even supposing that it “was in the position of a criminal after the Council,” was handled in a manner that was both illegal and contrary to the rule of the church. If Athanasius was to be replaced, his removal and replacement should have originated in the church of Alexandria, not the Council of Antioch, and among his fellow Egyptians, not among his theological opponents. “Moreover,” Julius wrote,
the account which is given of the conduct of Gregory on his entry into the city, plainly shows the character of his appointment. In such peaceful times, as those who came from Alexandria declared them to have been, and as the Bishops also represented in their letters, the Church was set on fire; Virgins were stripped; Monks were trodden under foot; Presbyters and many of the people were scourged and suffered violence; Bishops were cast into prison; multitudes were dragged about from place to place; the holy Mysteries, about which they accused the Presbyter Macarius, were seized upon by heathens and cast upon the ground; and all to constrain certain persons to admit the appointment of Gregory. Such conduct plainly shows who they are that transgress the Canons [of church law].352
In short, Julius surmised, “Had the appointment been lawful, he would not have had recourse to illegal proceedings to compel the obedience of those who in a legal way resisted him.”353
Athanasius may have “laid his case before the church” in another way as well. A few contemporary scholars date his Defense Against the Arians (Apologia contra Arianos) from this same period.354 Sozomen reported,
Those who were opposed to the doctrines of the Nicaean Council thought this a favorable opportunity to calumniate the bishops whom they had deposed, and to procure their ejection from the church as abettors of false doctrine, and as disturbers of the public peace; and to accuse them of having sought, during the life of Constans, to excite a misunderstanding between the emperors . . . Their efforts were principally directed against Athanasius, towards whom they entertained so great an aversion that, even when he was protected by Constans, they could not conceal their enmity. Narcissus, bishop of Cilicia, Theodore, bishop of Thrace, Eugenius, bishop of Nicaea, Patrophilus, bishop of Scythopolis, Menophantes, bishop of Ephesus, and other bishops, to the number of thirty, assembled in Antioch, and wrote a letter to all the bishops of every region, in which they stated that Athanasius had returned to his bishopric in violation of the rules of the Church, that he had not justified himself in any council, and that he was only supported by some of his own faction; and they exhorted them not to hold communion with him, nor to write to him, but to enter into communion with George, who had been ordained to succeed him.355
It is not clear whether or not Athanasius had returned to Alexandria, as his detractors reported. But it is sometimes assumed, based on this passage, that Defense Against the Arians was written during this period and sent by Athanasius to the Council of Antioch, as a defense of his actions.
The Defense amounted to a collection of important documents, given in support of Athanasius’s case and cause. Timothy Barnes ably summarized the contents of this work:
1. the letter of the Council of Alexandria in the early months of 338 (3–19);
2. the letter of Julius in 341 replying to the synodical letter of the “Dedication Council” at Antioch (21–35);
3. three letters of the Western bishops at Serdica: the first letter addressed specifically to the church of Alexandria (37–40), the second a letter in almost identical terms to the bishops of Egypt and Libya (41), the third the synodical letter to bishops of the Catholic Church everywhere—with no fewer than 280 names appended as signatories (42–50);
4. eight letters relating to Athanasius’s return to Alexandria in 346, including six written by Constantius (52–57);
5. the letters of Ursacius and Valens to Julius and Athanasius withdrawing their charges against Athanasius (58).356
The bishop’s tenth Festal Letter (338) clearly reflects the location and trials of Athanasius’s exile. While he wrote to inform and comfort the church, it is clear that Athanasius was feeling the pain of exile and the pressure caused by the schemes of his opponents:
Although I have traveled all this distance from you, my brethren, I have not forgotten the custom that obtains among you, which has been delivered to us by the fathers, so as to be silent without notifying to you the time of the annual holy feast, and the day for its celebration. For although I have been hindered by those afflictions of which you have doubtless heard, and severe trials have been laid upon me, and a great distance has separated us; while the enemies of the truth have followed our tracks, laying snares to discover a letter from us, so that by their accusations, they might add to the pain of our wounds; yet the Lord, strengthening and comforting us in our afflictions, we have not feared, even when held fast in the midst of such machinations and conspiracies, to indicate and make known to you our saving Easter-feast, even from the ends of the earth.357
He informed his congregants that he had committed all his own affairs to God and was completely confident that “‘nothing separates us from the love of Christ; neither affliction, nor distress, nor persecution, nor famine, nor nakedness, nor peril, nor sword’ [Rom 8:35]. Thus keeping the feast myself, I was desirous that you also, my beloved, should keep it . . .”358 Their current sufferings were viewed as nothing when compared to what Jesus Christ suffered for them and for their salvation.359 But the “Ario-maniacs” ignorantly “smite Him who is their Helper with their tongue, and blaspheme Him who set [them] free, and hold all manner of different opinions against the Savior.”360 The same letter also strongly warns against the doctrine and the schismatic tendencies of the opposition. “For they have learned,” he wrote, “to rend the seamless coat of God; they think it not strange to divide the indivisible Son from the Father.”361
In his eleventh Festal Letter (339), Athanasius reminded his readers that persecution for the truth is not to be associated with wickedness, but rather it befalls one who is godly. For that reason, too, Paul urged his readers—as Athanasius urged his own—to “avoid profane conversations, for they increase unto more ungodliness, and their word takes hold as doth a canker . . .”362 Therefore, the saints of Alexandria should rejoice in the Easter feast, as well as in their persecutions:
Let us make a joyful noise with the saints, and let no one of us fail of his duty in these things; counting as nothing the affliction or the trials which, especially at this time, have been enviously directed against us by the party of Eusebius. Even now they wish to injure us, and by their accusations to compass our death, because of that godliness, whose helper is the Lord. But, as faithful servants of God, knowing that He is our salvation in the time of trouble:—for the Lord promised beforehand, saying, “Blessed are ye when men revile you and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for My sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for your reward is great in heaven” [Matt 5:11–12].363
Athanasius’s thirteenth Festal Letter, written in 341, sounded the same clarion call to steadfast faith amidst suffering, trials, and affliction. “Let us rejoice as we keep the feast, my brethren, knowing that our salvation is ordered in the time of affliction,” he wrote. “For our Savior did not redeem us by inactivity, but by suffering for us He abolished death. And respecting this, He intimated to us before, saying, ‘In the world ye shall have tribulation’ [John 16:33]. But He did not say this to every man, but to those who diligently and faithfully perform good service to Him, knowing beforehand, that they should be persecuted who would live godly toward Him.”364
While we know a lot about Athanasius’s attitude concerning his exile from the Festal Letters, we know very little about the day-to-day events of Athanasius’s stay in Rome. It is clear that he enjoyed the support and fellowship of the western bishops like Julius and Hosius of Cordova. It is also clear that during this hiatus from his frenetic pastoral activities in Alexandria, Athanasius began to construct his defense of the Nicene theology, and a defense of his own character, through a literary assault upon Arianism. One of these works, which was produced either prior to leaving Alexandria or shortly after his arrival in Rome, was a homiletical treatment of Luke 10:22 (par. Matt 11:21). This sermon was probably part of his preaching ministry in Rome.
The sermon on Luke 10:22 seems to be fragmentary, at the beginning, in so far as it starts quite abruptly, but it is evidently complete throughout the length of the text. The biblical passage was chosen because it was one that the Arians used to demonstrate the subordination of the Son to the Father. In the gospel passage, Jesus explains, “All things were delivered to Me by My Father. And no one knows the Son except the Father; and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.” Read through an Arian interpretive lens this passage seems to imply that if “all things” had to be given to the Son, then there was a time when He was without them. Among these “all things,” the Arians opined, were Christ’s Divine Sonship; therefore, they concluded, there was a time when the Son did not have full deity, and in fact did not exist. Athanasius described the “impious” Arian argument this way: “they say, if all things were delivered (meaning by ‘all’ the Lordship of Creation), there was once a time when He had them not. But if He had them not, He is not of the Father, for if He were, He would on that account have them always, and would not have [been] required to receive them.”365
Athanasius responded to the Arian interpretation by completely denying its premise. The “all things” in this passage “does not refer to the Lordship over Creation, nor to presiding over the works of God, but is meant to reveal in part the intention of the Incarnation.”366 Furthermore, if the Arian interpretation of this passage was correct, “what becomes of the text ‘in Him all things consist’ (Col 1:17)?”367 No, on this basis the Arian premise is clearly wrong. In this passage the Son is speaking about His own incarnation, when the Father and the Son participated together in the creation of “all things.” The delivery of “all things” to the Son, at that time, Athanasius mused, was a bit superfluous because “all things were made by Him (John 1:3).”368 Hence, Athanasius concluded, “For in making them [“all things”] He was Lord of the things that were being originated.”369 Even if “all things” were delivered to the Son, immediately and subsequently to their having been created, this signified a shared a partnership of dominion by the Father and the Son.370 Thus, it is clear that the Father retains dominion over creation, since “not even a sparrow falls to the ground without the Father (Matt 10:29), nor is the grass clothed without God (Matt 6:30), but at once the Father worketh, and the Son worketh hitherto (John 5:17).”371
In exploring to what end “all things” were delivered to the incarnate Son, Athanasius began to tell the story of Christian redemption, just as he had done earlier in On the Incarnation of the Word of God. The reason, simply stated, was human sin: “Whereas man sinned, and is fallen, and by his fall all things are in confusion: death prevailed from Adam to Moses (Rom 5:14), the earth was cursed, Hades was opened, Paradise shut, Heaven offended, man, lastly, corrupted and brutalized (Ps 49:12), while the devil was exulting against us . . .”372 But God, “in His loving-kindness, not willing man made in His own image to perish, said, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go?’ (Isa 6:8).”373 While all in heaven held their peace, the Son said, “‘Here am I, send Me.’ And then it was that, saying ‘Go Thou,’ He ‘delivered’ to Him man, that the Word Himself might be made Flesh, and by taking the Flesh, restore it wholly. For to Him, as to a Physician, man ‘was delivered’ to heal the bite of the serpent; as to life, to raise what was dead; as to light, to illuminate the darkness; and, because He was Word, to renew the rational nature.”374 In short, “Since then all things ‘were delivered’ to Him, and He is made Man, straightway all things were set right and perfected.”375 Because of the saving action of the Incarnate Word, “Earth receives blessing instead of a curse, Paradise was opened to the robber, Hades cowered, the tombs were opened and the dead raised, the gates of Heaven were lifted up to await Him that ‘cometh from Edom’ (Ps 24:7; Isa 63:1).”376
Asking the question of why all things were delivered to the Son caused Athanasius to reflect upon the character of our Lord, Jesus Christ: “The Savior Himself expressly signifies in what sense ‘all things were delivered’ to Him, when He continues, as Matthew tells us: ‘Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest’ (Matt 11:28). Yes, ye ‘were delivered’ to Me to give rest to those who had labored and life to the dead. And what is written in John’s Gospel harmonizes with this: ‘The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand’ (John 3:35). Given, in order that, just as all things were made by Him, so in Him all things might be renewed.”377 Here we see, again, the basic argument that Athanasius had mounted in On the Incarnation.
In exploring the question, “What was ‘delivered up’ to the Son?” Athanasius surmised that what He did not previously possess, and what was given to Him by the Father was not His Divinity (as the Arians suggested) but His humanity, which the Son did not possess prior to the Incarnation. As he explained, “For He was not man previously, but became man for the sake of saving man. And the Word was not in the beginning flesh, but has been made flesh subsequently (John 1:1), in which Flesh, as the Apostle says, He reconciled the enmity which was against us (Col 1:20; 2:14; Eph 2:15, 16) and destroyed the law of the commandments in ordinances, that He might make the two into one new man, making peace, and reconcile both in one body to the Father.”378
Athanasius then turned to John 16:15, in order to explain the essential relationship of the Father and the Son within the Godhead. In that passage Jesus states, “All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that He will take what is mine and declare it to you.” Using an analogy describing the way light comes from the Sun, the bishop argued that this passage shows that the Sun (the Father) and the Light (the Son) are of the same essence and nature. He wrote, “piety would have us perceive that the Divine Essence of the Word is united by nature to His own Father. For the text before us will put our problem in the clearest possible light, seeing that the Savior said, ‘All things whatsoever the Father hath are Mine’; which shows that He is ever with the Father. For ‘whatsoever He hath’ shows that the Father wields the Lordship, while ‘are Mine’ shows the inseparable union.”379 This fact of the inseparable union between Father and Son belied the Arian Christology; for if the Father “is not a creature, so neither is the Son; and as it is not possible to say of Him ‘there was a time when He was not,’ nor ‘made of nothing,’ so it is not proper to say the like of the Son either.”380 Hence, Athanasius urged, “For this is why the Only begotten, having life in Himself as the Father has, also knows alone Who the Father is, namely, because He is in the Father and the Father in Him. For He is His Image, and consequently, because He is His Image, all that belongs to the Father is in Him. He is an exact seal, showing in Himself the Father; living Word and true, Power, Wisdom, our Sanctification and Redemption (1 Cor 1:30). For ‘in Him we both live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28), and ‘no man knoweth Who is the Father, save the Son, and Who is the Son, save the Father’ (Luke 10:22).”381
In his closing paragraphs Athanasius urged that the Arians cannot even make proper sense of the Trisagion (“three Holies”) used in Scripture and in sacred worship to refer to the Godhead. Using the term “Monad” to stress the Unity of the Godhead and the term “Triad” to explain its “Threeness,” the exiled bishop of Alexandria wrote, “For the Triad, praised, reverenced, and adored, is one and indivisible and without degrees. It is united without confusion, just as the Monad also is distinguished without separation. For the fact of those venerable living creatures (Isa. vi ; Rev. iv. 8) offering their praises three times, saying ‘Holy, Holy, Holy,’ proves that the Three Subsistences are perfect, just as in saying ‘Lord,’ they declare the One Essence.”382 Hence, the Arians blaspheme God with their assertions: “They then that depreciate the Only-begotten Son of God blaspheme God, defaming His perfection and accusing Him of imperfection, and render themselves liable to the severest chastisement.”383
During his stay in Rome, while teaching, preaching, and leading worship there, Athanasius’s case had been referred to Emperor Constans by Bishop Julius. Constans was the youngest of Constantine’s sons and ruler of Gaul and the West. He was an orthodox Christian and an admirer of Athanasius for that reason. Prior to leaving Alexandria for Rome, Athanasius had sent a letter of self-defense to Constans along with the gift of several bound volumes of the Holy Scripture. Soon after his arrival in Rome, Constans invited Athanasius to come to Milan for a personal interview. Sozomen, the early church historian, reported that Constans readily supported Athanasius’s cause and was won to his defense because he quickly saw through the false charges of his opponents. And when a delegation arrived from the East to urge the excommunication of Paul of Constantinople and Athanasius, Constans refused to heed them or their charges: “Constans perceived that they had unjustly entrapped both Paul and Athanasius, and had ejected them from communion, not for charges against their conduct, as the depositions held, but simply on account of differences in doctrine; and he accordingly dismissed the deputation without giving any credit to the representations for which they had come.”384
Apparently, Constans had decided that a general church council should be held to review Athanasius’s case, and the other controversial matters that faced the church. He had already written to his brother Constantius to this effect, prior to Athanasius’s arrival in Milan, and then informed him of that development at that time. After that meeting, Constans hurried off to Gaul for a military campaign against the Franks. He subsequently wrote to request Athanasius’s presence with him in Treveri (Treves), in Gaul; there Athanasius met the venerable Spaniard, Hosius of Cordova, and many others in the spring of 343. He also learned that the two emperors had agreed to hold the general council at Serdica (now Sophia, Bulgaria) during the next summer. Hence, Athanasius’s Easter Letter for 343 may have been written from either Milan or Treves, and he must have celebrated Easter in Gaul that year.385
The Council of Serdica probably met for most of the month of August 343. So scant are the surviving records that we cannot ascertain the exact dates of the beginning and conclusion of the meeting. It held the promise of being a genuine ecumenical, churchwide council, with about 170 bishops in attendance; of these more than ninety-six came from the Latin West. Hosius of Cordova was the venerable leader of this delegation, and he was selected to chair the council. The Western delegation arrived first, and more than seventy bishops from the Eastern churches arrived soon thereafter. The Eastern delegation had been making plans en route, and upon their arrival reported that they would not participate in the conciliar discussions, but only report themselves “present” if Athanasius were allowed to sit in on the deliberations. To mollify the Eastern delegation they were housed in the imperial palace, while the Western delegates met in the cathedral, and several times they were urged to join the council in its deliberations. The Eastern bishops replied that Athanasius and several others had been duly deposed by Eastern synods and had no right to be at the meeting. Hosius and his colleagues retorted that the Roman synod that cleared Athanasius had as much authority as the previous Eastern synods of Tyre and Antioch (which had deposed Athanasius), and besides the emperors had both agreed to reopen the investigation of Athanasius’s case, and that was the principal object of the assembly. Messages flew back and forth from the cathedral to the palace, and from the palace to the cathedral, but to no avail. No compromise could be reached. And by night, the Eastern delegation withdrew to the city of Philippopolis, on the excuse that they had just heard that Constantius had won a great military victory over the Persians, and they must hasten off to offer their congratulations. The Eastern delegation left behind an encyclical letter that reinstated the depositions of Athanasius and his colleagues, and added to the list several others, including Julius of Rome, Hosius of Cordova, and Maximin of Treves (all of whom were guilty of supporting Athanasius). This document, along with a creed and a long section of anathemas, was sent on to Constans. Left to their own deliberations, the remaining majority of the Council of Serdica, the Western bishops, heard the case against Athanasius, Marcellus, and others, and acquitted them all. It too issued an encyclical letter to all the bishops and established numerous important canons for the governance of the church. While the Council of Serdica was a marked victory and a vindication for Athanasius, ultimately it was a significant failure for the entire church because it had the effect of widening the chasm that had been growing between the Eastern and Western wings of the Christian church.386
The opinion of those in the Eastern Church who opposed Athanasius and brought charges against him has been preserved in one of the writings of Hilary of Poitiers:
In the case of Athanasius, formerly bishop of Alexandria, you are to understand what was enacted. He was charged with the grave offense of sacrilege and profanation of the holy Church’s sacraments. With his own hands he broke a chalice consecrated to God and Christ, tore down the august altar itself, overturned the bishop’s throne and razed the basilica itself, God’s house, Christ’s house, to the ground. The presbyter himself, an earnest and upright man called Scyras, he delivered to military custody. In addition to this, Athanasius was charged with unlawful acts, with the use of force, with murder and the killing of bishops. Raging like a tyrant even during the most holy days of Easter, he was accompanied by the military and officials of the imperial government who, on his authority, confined some to custody, beat and whipped some and forced the rest into sacrilegious communion with him by various acts of torture (innocent men would never have behaved so). Athanasius hoped that in this way his own people and his own faction would get the upper hand; and so he forced unwilling people into communion by means of military officials, judges, prisons, whippings and various acts of torture.387
It seems that the Roman exile might have also been the period of time in which Athanasius began writing his Four Orations Against the Arians. Robertson, the editor of the largest English-language edition of Athanasius’s works, reminded his readers, “There is no absolutely conclusive evidence as to the date of these Discourses, in fact they would appear from the language of ii.1 to have been issued at intervals.”388 Robertson is correct in both of these statements, but I believe (following more modern commentators389) that these four Discourses or Orations were begun—though perhaps not completed—during Athanasius’s exile in Rome.390 There is, furthermore, some question whether these works, although they are frequently called “Orations” or “Discourses,” were intended to be delivered as homilies. The length and complicated argumentation of their contents seem to suggest otherwise. As Robertson opined, “The title ‘Orations’ is consecrated by long use, and cannot be displaced, but it is unfortunate as implying, to our ears, oratorical delivery, for which the Discourses were never meant.”391
The first Oration sets the stage for the other three and is a lengthy document in its own right; it is comprised of thirteen chapters and sixty-three long paragraphs. Chapter 1 explained that Athanasius was writing to raise the church from her slumber about Arianism, which he terms a “heresy” and a “madness.” The bishop of Alexandria believed that many pious people in the church were indifferent in their opinions about Arianism, and so he wrote to raise their consciousness of the heretical problem and the dangers it posed to the Christian community. In the first chapter we learn that Arius’s Thalia was patterned upon the “dissolute and effeminate tone” of Sotades’s Odes. Thus people “frolicked in his blasphemies against the Savior; till the victims of his heresy lose their wits and go foolish, and change the Name of the Lord of glory into the likeness of the ‘image of corruptible man.’”392 Because they blaspheme the Name and Nature of Jesus Christ, the Arians do not even deserve the name of “Christian.” Hence, Athanasius wrote, “How then can they be Christians, who for Christians are Ario-maniacs? Or how are they of the Catholic Church, who have shaken off the Apostolic faith, and become authors of fresh evils? Who, after abandoning the oracles of divine Scripture, call Arius’s Thalia a new wisdom? And with reason too, for they are announcing a new heresy.”393
In the second chapter of Discourse I Athanasius offered extracts from Arius’s Thalia along with theological analysis of them. According to Athanasius, the Thalia began with these words:
According to faith of God’s elect, God’s prudent ones,
Holy children, rightly dividing, God’s Holy Spirit receiving,
Have I learned this from the partakers of wisdom,
Accomplished, divinely taught, and wise in all things.
Along their track, have I been walking, with like opinions,
I the very famous, the much suffering for God’s glory;
And taught of God, I have acquired wisdom and knowledge.394
After reporting Arius’s pleas for special knowledge of God and piety, Athanasius detailed the Christology of the Thalia, which he found deeply objectionable:
The mockeries which he utters in it, repulsive and most irreligious, are such as these:—“God was not always a Father”; but “once God was alone, and not yet a Father, but afterwards He became a Father.” “The Son was not always”; for, whereas all things were made out of nothing, and all existing creatures and works were made, so the Word of God Himself was “made out of nothing,” and “once He was not,” and “He was not before His origination,” but He as others “had an origin of creation.” “For God,” he says, “was 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.” 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. “For Wisdom,” saith he, “by the will of the wise God, had its existence in Wisdom.” 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 shown in other works of theirs, that there are many powers; one of which is God’s 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, is called in Scripture, not merely the power, but “great power.” The others are many and are like the Son, and of them David speaks in the Psalms, when he says, “The Lord of hosts” or “powers” [Ps 24:10]. 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 “therefore,” saith he, “as 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 foreknown, did God bring it to pass that He, being such, should come to be.”395
In this long and somewhat complicated paragraph, Athanasius was reporting that the Thalia taught that the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son or Wisdom of God, did not always exist, but that the Son was a created Being, made out of nothing by God the Father. The Son, therefore, was not eternal, as God Himself was and is, but rather had a definite beginning and origin. The song-poem further argued that what the Christian church has esteemed as the Son’s deity and divine nature was really His moral goodness and virtue. His goodness being known and anticipated by God before the Son’s creation allowed God to describe the Son as being godly or divine. Therefore, Athanasius concluded his summary of the Thalia by reporting that in it, Arius “has dared to say, that ‘the Word is not the very God’; ‘though He is called God, yet He is not very God,’ but ‘by participation of grace, He, as others, is God only in name.’”396
Athanasius marveled with near incredulity which pious person could accept this doctrine and not hate Arius for propounding it. As he wrote, “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? Who but must regard him, when he pretends to name God and speak of God, but as the serpent counseling 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?”397
Chapter 3 of Discourse I stressed, once again, the importance of this subject. It argued that while the Arians seem to use scriptural language to mount their arguments, in the final analysis their views are unscriptural. They walk in darkness and do not know the Light. In order to distinguish what would become the orthodox point of view from that of his Arian opponents, Athanasius wrote,
For, behold, we take divine Scripture, and thence discourse with freedom of the religious Faith, and set it up as a light upon its candlestick, saying:—Very Son of the Father, natural and genuine, proper to His essence, Wisdom Only-begotten, and Very and Only Word of God is He; not a creature or work, but an offspring proper to the Father’s essence. Wherefore He is very God, existing one in essence with the very Father; while other beings, to whom He said, “I said ye are Gods,” had this grace from the Father, only by participation of the Word, through the Spirit. For He is the expression of the Father’s Person, and Light from Light, and Power, and very Image of the Father’s essence. For this too the Lord has said, “He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father” [John 14:9].398
These two theologies of Christ and His Lordship are irreconcilable. One must choose between them. And the reader of the Oration is urged to choose the theology “that we have spoken and maintained from the Scriptures,” over that which was vomited forth by Arius in his Thalia.399 Athanasius also charged the Arians with duplicity. They used language and images that intentionally camouflage their heretical views.
In chapters 4 through 6 Athanasius offered three proofs for the controverted doctrine that the Son was/is eternal, that He was not a creature, was not created, and did not have a beginning. Passages such as Romans 1:20, illuminated by John 1:1–2 and Isaiah 11:28, were used to show (firstly) that “it is plain then from the above that the Scriptures declare the Son’s eternity . . .”400 The second proof of the eternality of the Word is the fact of His Divine Sonship. Because of His unique Sonship, the Word participates in the God the Father’s nature, and it is in the Father’s nature to be eternal; so also the Son is eternal.401 The third scriptural proof of the Son’s eternality is that His shared essence with the Father makes Him the Creator of all things, and One who with God the Father is the Creator of all that is. Belonging to the Trinity by nature and essence, the Son is before all things that were created, and is indeed the Creator of them. If the Son were generated by the Father, He could not be in the Image and Form of the Godhead, nor could He say, “I am Truth.”402 Chapters 7 through 10 answered various objections that the Arians raised against the doctrine of the eternality of the Son or Word.403
Beginning in chapter 11, Athanasius explained a series of Scripture passages that were sometimes used by his Arian opponents to assail the orthodox (or Nicene) theology of Christ. The first of these was Philippians 2:9–10.404 Athanasius explained this passage as containing the inner logic of the Incarnation, which controverts the Arian teaching of the Son becoming more and more divine (godly) because of His virtue. The bishop wrote, “Therefore He was not man, and then became God, but He was God, and then became man, and that to deify us.”405 Here again, we meet the famous argument from his earlier work On the Incarnation of the Word of God. Numerous passages (including John 17:5 and Ps 28:9, 13) were used to flesh out the theology of incarnation in a way that described it not as a growth in godliness (or divinity) but as God taking human flesh in the person of God’s Son. This controverted the Arian claim that the phraseology of this passage suggested that the Son gained divinity though a life of godliness, Athanasius claimed, by showing that the passage in fact described the Son’s reception of true humanity, which he bore in a humble and self-giving manner that deserved the praise of God and indeed that of the entire world.
The second passage addressed in Discoure I was Psalm 45:7–8.406 In his exposition of this passage Athanasius argued against the idea that the Word was being rewarded for His virtuous choices and action. The Arian notion that the Son was “anointed” with the Holy Spirit at His baptism in the Jordan River, as a way of sanctifying His human nature and therefore enabling Him to become more godly, was also attacked. The descent of the Holy Spirit at Jesus’s baptism, Athanasius opined, did not have to do with the sanctification of the Word—as though He was not holy and fully divine prior to that event; rather, that event signified the sanctification of humanity, through the coming of the Word among us in real human flesh. Hence, Athanasius wrote, “If then for our sake He sanctifies Himself, and does this when He is become man, it is very plain that the Spirit’s descent on Him in Jordan was a descent upon us, because of His bearing our body. And it did not take place for promotion to the Word, but again for our sanctification, that we might share His anointing, and of us it might be said, ‘Know ye not that ye are God’s Temple, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you’ [1 Cor 3:16]? For when the Lord, as man, was washed in Jordan, it was we who were washed in Him and by Him.”407
The third passage that the Arians used and that was taken up by Athanasius for refutation was Hebrews 1:4.408 Central to this argument is whether the phrase “having become” implies the creation of the Word or not. This Arian interpretation was augmented by stressing the development implied by those words. Once again, Athanasius argued, his theological opponents do not understand the meaning or take seriously the import of the Incarnation of Christ; they are either ashamed of or they ignore the text “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14). The “having become” in this passage implies not the creation of the Word, before the foundations of the world, but the Incarnation of the Word into real human flesh, Hence, the bishop urged, “Scripture, in speaking thus, implies, O Arians, not that the Son is originate, but rather other than things originate, and proper to the Father, being in His bosom.”409
The exegetical case against Arianism continued throughout Discourse II as well. There his opponents’ interpretation of Hebrews 3:2, Acts 2:36, and Proverbs 8:22 was challenged and attacked. The Rule of Faith, which demands that one scripture shall not contradict another, does not support their reading of the Hebrews passage because there are many other Scripture passages that contradict the strained Arian interpretation.410 Of these the Proverbs 8:22 passage is the foundational one, since the Arians used it to inform and shape their interpretation of the others.411 Athanasius explained,
They misunderstand the passage in Proverbs, “The Lord hath created me a beginning of His ways for His works,” and the words of the Apostle, “Who was faithful to Him that made Him,” and straightway argue, that the Son of God is a work and a creature. But although they might have learned from what is said above, had they not utterly lost their power of apprehension, that the Son is not from nothing nor in the number of things originate [created] at all.412
Once again the Arians, in this interpretation, misunderstand passages that refer to the Incarnation of the Word, and treat them as though they refer instead to the Word having been created at the beginning, out of nothing. Indeed, Athanasius argued, a whole chain of crucial passages provide the proper theological context for interpreting the passage in Proverbs 8:22. Among these are the following:
by John, “The Word became flesh” [John 1:14], and so by Peter, “He hath made Him Lord and Christ” [Acts 2:36]; —as by means of Solomon in the Person of the Lord Himself, “The Lord created me a beginning of His ways for His works” [Prov 8:22]; so by Paul, “Become so much better than the Angels” [Heb 1:4]; and again, “He emptied Himself, and took upon Him the form of a servant” [Phil 2:7]; and again “Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Jesus, who was faithful to Him that made Him” [Heb 3:1, 2]. For all these texts have the same force and meaning, a religious one, declarative of the divinity of the Word, even those of them which speak humanly concerning Him, as having become the Son of man.413
In taking these passages together, Athanasius argued, we see that the Son is of the essence of the Father and that this shared nature comes before the other terms (i.e., “made” or “become”) that describe some subsequent work of the Son. Hence, as a Son, Christ the Word shared in the Divine essence prior to “becoming” flesh, or being “made” man, or a creature.414 “This being so,” he wrote, “when persons ask whether the Lord is a creature or work, it is proper to ask them this first, whether He is Son and Word and Wisdom. For if this is shown, the surmise about work and creation falls to the ground at once and is ended.”415
Beginning in chapter 16 of Discourse II, Athanasius mounted an extended explanation and interpretation of Proverbs 8:22, which continued through chapter 24 and was comprised of more than thirty-six large pages of text. Since Proverbs 8:22 was the exegetical foundation of the Arian assertion that the Word was created and had a beginning, he explored that assertion and interpretation with great care and acumen. His method of argumentation was to show parallel passages from Scripture (applying the Rule of Faith) that contradicted and made impossible, in his view, the Arian reading of Proverbs 8:22. As he moved towards the conclusion of his exposition, Athanasius urged, “Let the Word then be excepted from the works, and as Creator be restored to the Father, and be confessed to be Son by nature; or if simply He be a creature, then let Him be assigned the same condition as the rest one with another, and let them as well as He be said every one of them to be ‘a creature, but not as one of the creatures, offspring or work, but not as one of the works or offsprings.’”416 So if the Son is not of the essence of the Father, and partaker of the Father’s Divine nature, but is a creature, then He is no different from the other created works of the Father—so saying, Athanasius argued that Scripture denied the existence of a middle place between Divine and created nature, which could, in the Arian syllogism, be occupied by the Word. Hence “God’s Word is not merely pronounced, as one may say, nor a sound of accents, nor by His Son is meant His command; but as radiance of light, so is He perfect offspring from perfect. Hence He is God also, as being God’s Image; for ‘the Word was God’ [John 1:1], says Scripture.”417
Hence, when the text in Proverbs 8:22—a figurative text, Athanasius reminded his reader—declared that the Father “created” Him (the Word), it was not speaking of His nature, but of his work as a servant; thus this passage, in a figurative manner, also speaks of the Incarnation of the Word, just as did John 1:14, “the Word became flesh,” and Philippians 2:7, “taking the form of a servant.”418 Athanasius explained, “For the very passage proves that it is only an invention of your own to call the Lord creature. For the Lord, knowing His own Essence to be the Only-begotten Wisdom and Offspring of the Father, and other than things originate and natural creatures, says in love to man, ‘The Lord created me a beginning of His ways,’ as if to say, ‘My Father hath prepared for Me a body, and has created Me for men in behalf of their salvation.’”419 And this did not imply a loss of the Word’s Divine nature, but it meant as the Word and Wisdom and Son, He was clothed in our flesh for our salvation. In an extensive and elegant passage Athanasius explained,
as when John says, “The Word was made flesh,” we do not conceive the whole Word Himself to be flesh, but to have put on flesh and become man, and on hearing, “Christ hath become a curse for us,” and “He hath made Him sin for us who knew no sin,” we do not simply conceive this, that [the] whole Christ has become curse and sin, but that He has taken on Him the curse which lay against us (as the Apostle has said, “Has redeemed us from the curse,” and “has carried,” as Isaiah has said, “our sins,” and as Peter has written, “has borne them in the body on the wood”); so, if it is said in the Proverbs “He created,” we must not conceive that the whole Word is in nature a creature, but that He put on the created body and that God created Him for our sakes, preparing for Him the created body, as it is written, for us, that in Him we might be capable of being renewed and defied.420
If the Word is “begotten” of the Father, then the Word is God’s Son, and is a partaker of the Divine nature, and not a creature of any sort; hence the Word is without beginning, as God is without beginning. As Athanasius explained, “The being of things originate [created] is measured by their becoming, and from some beginning does God begin to make them through the Word, that it may be known that they were not before their origination; but the Word has His beginning, in no other beginning than the Father, whom they [the Arians] allow to be without beginning, so that He too exists without beginning in the Father, being His Offspring, not His creature.”421
After extensively addressing the phrase from Proverbs 8:22, “He founded me before the world,” Athanasius explained that this refers not to the Godhead of the Word but to his Incarnate Presence, which was planned and established prior to the Incarnation of the Son for our sakes.422 He then ended the second Discourse or Oration with a note of triumph over the exegesis of the Arians, whom he addressed directly: “Vain then is your vaunt as is on all sides shown, O Christ’s enemies, and vainly did ye parade and circulate everywhere your text, ‘The Lord created me a beginning of His ways,’ perverting its sense, and publishing, not Solomon’s meaning, but your own comment. For behold your sense is proved to be but a fantasy; but the passage in the Proverbs, as well as all that is above said, proves that the Son is not a creature in nature and essence, but the proper Offspring of the Father, true Wisdom and Word, by whom ‘all things were made,’ and ‘without Him was made not one thing’ [John 1:3].”423
In Discourse III Athanasius continued his exegetical attack upon Arianism. It began with a vitriolic summary of what had been argued in previous books:
The Ario-maniacs, as it appears, having once made up their minds to transgress and revolt from the Truth, are strenuous in appropriating the words of Scripture, “When the impious cometh into a depth of evils, he despiseth” [Prov 18:3, Septuagint]; for refutation does not stop them, nor perplexity abash them; but, as having “a whore’s forehead,” they “refuse to be ashamed” [Jer 3:3] before all men in their irreligion. For whereas the passages that they alleged, “The Lord created me” [Prov 8:22], and “Made better than the Angels” [Heb 1:4], and “First-born” [John 1:1], and “Faithful to Him that made Him” [Heb 2:17], have a right sense, and inculcate religiousness towards Christ, so it is that these men still, as if bedewed with the serpent’s poison, not seeing what they ought to see, nor understanding what they read, as if in vomit from the depth of their irreligious heart, have next proceeded to disparage our Lord’s words, “I in the Father and the Father in Me” [John 14:10] . . .424
In urging what he believed to be the true interpretation of Jesus’s words, Athanasius wrote, “For the Son said, ‘I am in the Father and the Father in Me,’ because His discourses were not His own words but the Father’s, and so of His works . . .”425 But this relationship between the Father and the Son goes even further, Athanasius suggested, to the point of shared attributes and shared Divine essence. Hence “the Son is in the Father, as it is allowed us to know, because the whole Being of the Son is proper to the Father’s essence, as radiance from light, and stream from fountain; so that whoso sees the Son, sees what is proper to the Father, and knows that the Son’s Being, because from the Father, is therefore in the Father.”426 And respecting their shared attributes, the bishop wrote,
And so, since they are one, and the Godhead itself one, the same things are said of the Son, which are said of the Father, except His being said to be Father:—for instance, that He is God, “And the Word was God” [John 1:1]; Almighty, “Thus saith He which was and is and is to come, the Almighty” [Rev 1:8]; Lord, “One Lord Jesus Christ” [1 Cor 8:6]; that He is Light, “I am the Light” [John 8:12]; that He wipes out sins, “that ye may know,” He says, “that the Son of man hath power upon earth to forgive sins” [Luke 5:24]; and so with other attributes. For “all things,” says the Son Himself, “whatsoever the Father hath, are Mine” [John 16:15]; and again, “And Mine are Thine” [John 17:10].427
Continuing along these lines, Athanasius explained the proper meaning of John 17:3—“And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent”—against the Arian claim that in distinguishing between the Father (“the only true God”) and the Son (“Jesus Christ”), this passage and others like it hint that the Son is not the “only true God” like the Father. Athanasius replied to this assertion by strongly affirming the Oneness of God, from passages like Deuteronomy 6:4 and Deuteronomy 32:39, and arguing—based on the preceding exegesis—that what was said of God the Father is also said of God the Son, and vice versa. Hence, “If then the Father be called the only true God, this is said not to be the denial of Him who said, ‘I am the Truth’ [John 14:6], but of those on the other hand who by nature are not true, as the Father and His Word are.”428 Passages like John 10:30 and John 17:11 were considered in a similar vein, as distinguishing between the nature of the Father and the Son, and this Arian interpretation was readily dismissed and textually disproved as leading to polytheism.429
In a new section and new line of approach, beginning in chapter 26, Athanasius set out to attack the Arian doctrines from the standpoint of the Incarnation of the Word, as Jesus Christ. He pointedly argued that the Word did not simply come into man (as the Arians suggested) but actually became human, and therefore had the actions, the feelings and the emotions of bearing real human flesh. This was done for us, and for our salvation, so that human flesh might be purified and humans might become more and more like God, who made them (1 Pet 4:1). Thus, for Athanasius, the Incarnation of the Word is the most important thing that can be said about the nature of our Lord Jesus Christ, that He was/is, in the words of the creed, “Very God and Very Man.” The bishop marshaled a myriad of biblical passages and wove them into a tapestry of evidence for this assertion. He began this long section in this manner: “Now the scope and character of Holy Scripture, as we have often said, is this—it contains a double account of the Savior; that He was ever God, and is the Son, being the Father’s Word and Radiance and Wisdom; and that afterwards for us He took flesh of a Virgin, Mary Bearer of God, and was made man.”430 Making the same point, based on a sampling of biblical passages, Athanasius affirmed,
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was made not one thing” [John 1:1–3]; next, “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of one Only-begotten from the Father” [John 1:14]; and next Paul writing, “Who being in the form of God, thought it not a prize to be equal with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion like a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross” [Phil 2:6–8].431
Thus, if the whole of scripture is read from the vantage point of this perspective, including the Gospels, it is clear that the Scriptures uniformly teach “that the Lord became man; for ‘the Word,’ he says, ‘became flesh, and dwelt among us’ [John 1:14]. And He became man, and did not come into man; for this it is necessary to know, lest perchance these irreligious men fall into this notion also, and beguile any into thinking, that, as in former times the Word was used to come into each of the Saints, so now He sojourned in a man, hallowing him also, and manifesting Himself as in the others.”432 Thus, the implicit adoptionism that Athanasius believed was part and parcel to the Arian Christology was to be undercut by a close reading of the Holy Scriptures and by subjecting that interpretation to what the Rule of Faith teaches about the Incarnation of the Word of God.
In chapter 27, passages like Matthew 11:27 and John 3:35 were expounded and explained as not leading to Sabellianism—that is, the notion that the whole of the Godhead was subsumed into the Son during the Incarnation, and that the Trinity possessed its threefold nature only over time, with God first being the Father, then becoming the Son, and finally becoming the Holy Spirit, each in succession. This and adoptionism were wholly disproved by noticing that in the Scriptures, Jesus Christ was simultaneously both true God and true Man, or as Athanasius wrote, “He was Very God in the flesh, and He was true flesh in the Word. Therefore from His works He revealed both Himself as Son of God, and His own Father, and from the affections of the flesh He showed that He bore a true body, and that it was His own.”433
It was in this theological context, then, that Athanasius explored the Arian assertion that passages like Mark 13:32, Matthew 24:42, and Luke 2:52, which show ignorance of some fact or information on the part of the Son, indicate a limitation to the Deity of Jesus Christ. He asserted, “For this as [said] before is not the Word’s deficiency, but of that human nature whose property it is to be ignorant. And this again will be well seen by honestly examining into the occasion, when and to whom the Savior spoke thus. Not then when the heaven was made by Him, nor when He was with the Father Himself, the Word ‘disposing all things’ [Prov 8:27, Septuagint], nor before He became man did He say it, but when ‘the Word became flesh’ [John 1:14]. On this account it is reasonable to ascribe to His manhood everything which, after He became man, He speaks humanly.”434
In a similar way, the truth of the Incarnation countered the Arian assertion that the Word could not weep or be afraid (Matt 26:39; John 12:27). The Rule of Faith, which is the overall witness of Scripture, teaches that the Word was God, and that the Word became Flesh (John 1:14); hence it was in His true human flesh that Jesus Christ experienced sadness and fear. Once again these objections became a foundation upon which Athanasius attacked the “Ario-maniacs.” “Idle then is the excuse for stumbling,” he wrote, “and petty the notions concerning the Word, of these Ario-maniacs, because it is written, ‘He was troubled,’ and ‘He wept.’ For they seem not even to have human feeling, if they are thus ignorant of man’s nature and properties; which do but make it the greater wonder, that the Word should be in such a suffering flesh, and neither prevented those who were conspiring against Him, nor took vengeance of those who were putting Him to death, though He was able, He who hindered some from dying, and raised others from the dead.”435 Thus, these objections only cause us to gaze with awe at the depths of the Son’s love for us in taking true humanity, with all its limitations and capacity for suffering, for our sakes and the sake of our salvation.
In chapter 30, a few concluding Arian objections were answered, such as that which says, if the Son is begotten of the Father by the Father’s will, does that not make the Son a lesser God than the Father? Athanasius countered this argument by showing that this view is contrary to the Rule of Faith (that is, the whole witness of Scripture), since the Scriptures show that the Son is begotten of the Father’s nature, and is in His own nature Divine. It is, of course, with the Father’s will and good pleasure that the Word became flesh, but that does not signify that the Word which became flesh was simply the Father’s will. Hence, the bishop concluded, “Therefore call not the Son a work of good pleasure; nor bring in the doctrine of Valentinus436 into the Church; but be He the Living Counsel, and Offspring in truth and nature, as Radiance from the Light. For thus has the Father spoken, ‘My heart uttered a good Word’; and the Son conformably, ‘I in the Father and the Father in Me.’”437
The authenticity of the fourth Discourse has long been questioned by scholars on the basis of internal and external evidence.438 It was, apparently, either not known or not quoted in Christian antiquity. The fundamental argument of Discourse IV is consistent with that of the other three, in that the full divinity and full humanity of the Word, Jesus Christ, are stressed, along with the Son’s consubstantial nature with the Father, but the method of argumentation has changed and there seems to be no literary connection between the first three Discourses and the fourth.
In this treatise, unlike the others, the writer specifically used the term “consubstantial” or homoousia to describe the relationship of the nature of the Father and the Son (§§ 9, 10, 22), and this may signal a later writer, or at least a later time of writing for this work. It states, for example, “if the two [Father and Son] are one, then of necessity they are two, but one according to the Godhead, and according to the Son’s coessentiality with the Father, and the Word’s being from the Father Himself; so that there are two, because there is Father, and Son, namely the Word; and one because [there is] one God.”439 After a long discussion in which the threeness of the Trinity was defended against the charge of there being three different personalities and attributes, as in the modalism of Paul of Samosata, the writer of the fourth Discourse concluded, “God the Word Himself is Christ from Mary, God and Man; not some other Christ but One and the Same; He before ages from the Father, He too in the last times from the Virgin; invisible before even to the holy powers of heaven, visible now because of His being one with the Man who is visible; seen, I say, not in His invisible Godhead but in the operation of the Godhead through the human body and whole Man, which He has renewed by its appropriation to Himself.”440 Athanasius, though perhaps not the author of this portion of the treatise, would have certainly agreed with its premise about the consubstantial nature of the Father and Son and its argumentation against critics of the Nicene theology.
350. Athanasius, Defense before Constantius 4, NPNF, vol. IV, 239.
351. This letter is presented in full in Athanasius’s Defense Against the Arians, NPNF, vol. IV, 111–19.
352. Athanasius, Defense Against the Arians 30, NPNF, vol. IV, 116.
353. Ibid.
354. Barnes, Athanasius and Constantius, 98–99. In this they are following the suggestion of Sozomen, who connected the writing of this document with the Synod of Antioch, which was held in the autumn of 349.
355. Sozomen, Church History IV.8, NPNF, vol. II, 304.
356. Barnes, Athanasius and Constantius, 99–100. Cf. Robertson, Works of Athanasius, NPNF, vol. IV, 99–148.
357. Athanasius, Festal Letter 10, NPNF, vol. IV, 527.
358. Ibid., 528.
359. Ibid., 530.
360. Ibid., 531.
361. Ibid.
362. Athanasius, Festal Letter 11, NPNF, vol. IV, 536.
363. Ibid., 537.
364. Ibid., Festal Letter 13, NPNF, vol. IV, 541.
365. On Luke X.22, § 1, NPNF, vol. IV, 87.
366. Ibid.
367. Ibid.
368. Ibid.
369. Ibid.
370. Ibid.
371. Ibid.
372. On Luke X.22, § 2, NPNF, vol. IV, 87.
373. Ibid.
374. Ibid.
375. Ibid.
376. Ibid., 87–88.
377. Ibid., 88.
378. On Luke X.22, § 3, NPNF, vol. IV, 88.
379. On Luke X.22, § 4, NPNF, vol. IV, 89.
380. Ibid.
381. On Luke X.22, § 5, NPNF, vol. IV, 89–90.
382. On Luke X.22, § 6, NPNF, vol. IV, 90.
383. Ibid.
384. Sozomen, Church History III.10, NPNF, vol. II, 289.
385. Robertson, “Prolegomena,” NPNF, vol. IV, xlv.
386. Kidd, History of the Church, 2:83–85.
387. Against Valens and Ursacius I.2, 1–29; quoted in Gwynn, Athanasius of Alexandria, 36.
388. Robertson, introduction to Four Discourses Against the Arians, NPNF, vol. IV, 303.
389. For example, R. P. C. Hanson, Christian Doctrine of God, 419. Like most modern commentators, Hanson also doubts that Athanasius wrote the Fourth Oration.
390. In his introduction Robertson locates them in Athanasius’s third exile, instead of the second.
391. Ibid., 304.
392. Discourse I, I.2, NPNF, vol. IV, 307.
393. Discourse I, I.4, NPNF, vol. IV, 308.
394. Discourse I, II.5, NPNF, vol. IV, 308.
395. Ibid., 308–9.
396. Discourse I, II.6, NPNF, vol. IV, 309.
397. Discourse I, II.7, NPNF, vol. IV, 309.
398. Discourse I, III.9, NPNF, vol. IV, 311.
399. Ibid.
400. Discourse I, IV.13, NPNF, vol. IV, 313.
401. Discourse I, V, NPNF, vol. IV, 314–16.
402. Discourse I, VI.
403. Discourse I, VII–X, NPNF, vol. IV, 319–27.
404. “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name” (RSV).
405. Discourse I, XI.39, NPNF, vol. IV, 329.
406. “. . . you love righteousness and hate wickedness. / Therefore God, your God, has anointed you / with the oil of gladness above your fellows . . .” (RSV).
407. Discourse I, XII:47, NPNF, vol. IV, 333.
408. “having become as much superior to angels as the name he has obtained is more excellent than theirs” (RSV).
409. Discourse I, XIII:56, NPNF, vol. IV, 339.
410. “He was faithful to him who made him, just as Moses also was faithful in God’s house” (Athanasius’s translation).
411. “The Lord created me at the beginning of His ways, for His works” (Athanasius’s translation).
412. Discourse II, XIV.1, NPNF, vol. IV, 348.
413. Ibid.
414. Ibid., 350.
415. Discourse II, XIV.5, NPNF, vol. IV, 350.
416. Discourse II, XVI.20, NPNF, vol. IV, 359.
417. Discourse II, XVIII.35, NPNF, vol. IV, 367.
418. Discourse II, XIX, NPNF, vol. IV, 372ff.
419. Discourse II, XIX.47, NPNF, vol. IV, 374.
420. Ibid.
421. Discourse II, XXI.57, NPNF, vol. IV, 379.
422. Discourse II, XXII, NPNF, vol. IV, 388.
423. Discourse II, XXII.82, NPNF, vol. IV, 393.
424. Discourse III, XXIII.1, NPNF, vol. IV, 393.
425. Discourse III, XXIII.2, NPNF, vol. IV, 394.
426. Discourse III, XXIII.3, NPNF, vol. IV, 395.
427. Discourse III, XXIII.4, NPNF, vol. IV, 395.
428. Discourse III, XXIV.9, NPNF, vol. IV, 398.
429. Discourse III, XXV, NPNF, vol. IV, 399–407.
430. Discourse III, XXVI.29, NPNF, vol. IV, 409.
431. Ibid.
432. Discourse III, XXVI.30, NPNF, vol. IV, 410.
433. Discourse III, XXVII.41, NPNF, vol. IV, 416.
434. Discourse III, XXVIII.43, NPNF, vol. IV, 418.
435. Discourse III, XXIX.58, NPNF, vol. IV, 425.
436. Valentinus was an Alexandrian gnostic who taught that the Son of God was an emanation of the Father’s will.
437. Discourse III, XXX.67, NPNF, vol. IV, 430.
438. For a fuller discussion of this, see Robertson, “Excursus C: Introductory to the Fourth Discourse agains the Arians,” NPNF, vol. IV, 431–32.
439. Discourse IV, 9, NPNF, vol. IV, 436.
440. Discourse IV, 36, NPNF, vol. IV, 447.