Eternal Generation of the Son

Chapter II. 12. Arian statements. Now the Bishop Alexander of blessed memory cast Arius out of the Church for holding and maintaining the following opinions: ‘God was not always a Father: The Son wa

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Epistleson the Arian Heresy And the Deposition of Arius. ———————————— I.—To Alexander, Bishop of the City of Constantinople. To the most reverend and like-minded brother, Alexander, Alexander sen

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66. But if you will constrain me to the rule of human generation, that you may be allowed to say that the Father existed before the Son, then consider whether instances, taken from the generation of e

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101. With the consideration whereof we must join another most blasphemous objection of theirs, which covers a subtle purpose to confuse the sense and understanding of simple folk. They ask whether eve

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The Capitula of the Council. (Labbe and Cossart, Concilia, Tom. V., col. 568.) I. If anyone shall not confess that the nature or essence of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is one, as

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This passage is commonly taken by the Fathers to refer to the Oriental sects of the early centuries, who fulfilled one or other of those conditions which it specifies. It is quoted against the Marcion

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For ever, O Lord, Thy Word is settled in heavenHe sent His Word and healed themThou sendest forth Thy Spirit, they are createdBy the word of the Lord were the heavens made: and all the host of them by

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11. They fall into the same folly with the Arians; for Arians also say that He was created for us, that He might create us, as if God waited till our creation for His issue, as the one party say, or H

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80. For if the Father is Almighty by reason of begetting the Son, then, certainly, either the Son is co-eternal with the Father, because if the Father is eternally Almighty, then the Son also is etern

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The Nicene Creed. (Found in the Acts of the Ecumenical Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, in the Epistle of Eusebius of Cæsarea to his own Church, in the Epistle of St. Athanasius Ad Jovianum Imp., i

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7. When you hear the word “Son,” you must not think of a nativity after the flesh; but remember that it is spoken of an incorporeal substance, and a simple and uncompounded nature. For if, as we said

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Again; only in the case of the creation is it true to speak of ‘priority.’ The sequence of works was there displayed in the order of the days; and the heavens may be said to have preceded by so much t

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It admits not of a doubt, then, that they will not be able to find at all the other portion, corresponding to the first portion of their fancied interval, except they were to suppose some beginning of

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We have shewn, then, by what we have said that the Only-begotten and the Holy Spirit are not to be looked for in the creation but are to be believed above it; and that while the creation may perhaps b

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For I challenge him to say why a believer in the Son as having come into being from the Father must advance to the opinion that there are two First Causes; and let him tell us who is most guilty of th

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But let us look to the thought in it below the words. ‘If God is Ungenerate because He has begotten a Son, He was not Ungenerate before He begat Him.’ The answer to that is plain; it consists in the s

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As it is, however, no one is so earth-bound in imagination, so uninitiated in the sublimities of our Faith, as to fail, when once he has apprehended the Cause of the universe, to embrace in one collec

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These names have a different meaning with us, Eunomius; when we come to the transcendent energies they yield another sense. Wide, indeed, is the interval in all else that divides the human from the di

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Since, then, He who is with the Father, in some inconceivable category, before the ages admits not of a ‘sometime,’ He exists by generation indeed, but nevertheless He never begins to exist. His life

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And now let us return once more to the precise statement of Eunomius. “We believe also in the Son of God, the only begotten God, the first-born of all creation, very Son, not Ungenerate, verily begott

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