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.
5. Now the commencement of Arius's Thalia and flippancy, effeminate in
tune and nature, runs thus:-- '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.'
And the mockeries which he utters in it, repulsive and most irreligious,
are such as these(1):--'God was not always a Father;(1) 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
309
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
shewn 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(2), is called in Scripture, not
merely the power, but the '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(3).' 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 fore-known(4), did God bring it
to pass that He being such, should come to be.'
6. Moreover he 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.' And, whereas all beings are
foreign and different from God in essence, so too is 'the Word alien and
unlike in all things to the Father's essence and propriety,' but belongs to
things originated and created, and is one of these. Afterwards, as though he
had succeeded to the devil's recklessness, he has stated in his Thalia, that
'even to the Son the Father is invisible,' and 'the Word cannot perfectly and
exactly either see or know His own Father;' but even what He knows and what He
sees, He knows and sees 'in proportion to His own measure,' 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(5), but 'He knows not even His
own essence;'--and that 'the essences of the Father and the Son and the Holy
Ghost, are separate in nature, and estranged, and disconnected, and alien(6),
and without participation of each other(7);' and, in his own words, 'utterly
unlike from each other in essence and glory, unto infinity.' Thus as to
'likeness of glory and essence,' 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's fables as they occur in
that jocose composition.
7. Who is there that hears all this, nay, the of the Thalia, but must
hate, and justly hate, this Arius jesting on such matters as on a stage(8)?
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? 'The heaven,' as the Prophet says, 'was
astonished, and the earth shuddered(9)' 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's
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, 'Woe unto them, for they
have fled from Me; destruction upon
310
them, for they have transgressed against Me; though I have redeemed them, yet
they have spoken lies against Me(10).' And soon after, 'They imagine mischief
against Me; they turn away to nothing(11).' 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(1) Council, when Arius thus
spoke, cast him from the Church, and anathematized him, as impatient of such
irreligion. And ever since has Arius's error been reckoned for a heresy more
than ordinary, being known as Christ's foe, and harbinger(2) of Antichrist.
Though then so great a condemnation be itself of special weight to make men
flee from that irreligious heresy(3), 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.
© 1996-2008 The Museum Of Jurassic Technology, 9341 Venice Boulevard, Culver City, CA 90232