Subordinationism

Chapter VI. Issue joined with those who assert that the Son is not with the Father, but after the Father. Also concerning the equal glory. 13. Our opponents, while they thus artfully and perversely

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But at all events he will allow that this supremacy of being betokens no excess of power, or of goodness, or of anything of that kind. Every one knows that, not to mention those whose knowledge is sup

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I suspect that their author himself would find it difficult to tell us what he meant when he wrote those words. Their thought is obscured by the rhetorical mud, which is so thick that one can hardly s

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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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Now the drift of Eunomius’ excessive concern about the Ungenerate has been often explained before; and it shall here be briefly discovered yet again. For as the term Father points to no difference of

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“Existing in the Beginning,” he says, “not without beginning.” In what fashion does he who plumes himself on his superior discernment understand the oracles of God? He declares Him Who was in the begi

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The beginning of his accusation was that we are ashamed of the Cross of Him Who for our sakes underwent the Passion. Surely he does not intend to charge against us also that we preach the doctrine of

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But his cogent proof of this absurdity he brings forward in the words, “as the essence which controls even Him attracts to itself the conception of the Existent.” Let us say nothing about the awkwardn

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2 Cor. iii. 16, 17. S. Athanasius observes, Serap. i. 4–7, that the Holy Ghost is never in Scripture called simply ‘Spirit’ without the addition ‘of God’ or ‘of the Father’ or ‘from Me’ or of the arti

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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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219. We have been taught therefore that the Son of God is not ignorant of the future. If they confess this, I too—that I may now answer why He declared that neither angels, nor the Son, but only the F

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there is the Supreme and Absolute Being, and another Being existing through the First, but after It. The language of this exposition of Eunomius is Aristotelian: but the contents nevertheless are noth

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If, then, he denies that we can regard the Only-begotten as completely existing,—for to this depth his statement seems to lead,—in withholding from Him a proper existence, let him deny it even in a le

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But let us still scrutinize his words. He declares each of these Beings, whom he has shadowed forth in his exposition, to be single and absolutely one. We believe that the most boorish and simple-mind

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uncreate intelligible nature is far removed from such distinctions. This was the impregnable position that Athanasius had taken up. To admit that the Son is less than the Father, and the Spirit less t

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Book XII. §1. This twelfth book gives a notable interpretation of the words of the Lord to Mary, “Touch Me not, for I am not yet ascended to My Father.” But let us see what is the next addition that

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The word ἀγγέν[ν]ητον was in the philosophical schools synonymous with ‘God;’ hence by asking whether there were two Unoriginates, the Arians implied that there were two Gods, if Christ was God in the

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But it is time to examine the argument that leads to this profanity, and see how, as regards itself, it is logically connected with his whole discourse. For after saying that it is absurd to compare G

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Nor does another cavil avail them, that Christ was God in his Father. For though we admit that, in respect of order and gradation, the beginning of divinity is in the Father, we hold it a detestable f

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Chapter II. The origin of the heretics’ close observation of syllables. 4. The petty exactitude of these men about syllables and words is not, as might be supposed, simple and straightforward; nor i

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