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Translated by Cardinal Newman.
St Athanasius the Great Resources Online and in Print
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56 Pages
Page 25
24. And one Theophronius [3538] , Bishop of Tyana, put forth before them all the following statement of his personal faith. And they subscribed it, accepting the faith of this man:--
God [3539] knows, whom I call as a witness upon my soul, that so I believe:--in God the Father Almighty, the Creator and Maker of the Universe, from whom are all things.
And in His Only-begotten Son, Word, Power, and Wisdom, our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things; who has been begotten from the Father before the ages, perfect God from perfect God [3540] , and was with God in subsistence, and in the last days descended, and was born of the Virgin according to the Scriptures, and was made man, and suffered, and rose again from the dead, and ascended into the heavens, and sat down on the right hand of His Father, and cometh again with glory and power to judge quick and dead, and remaineth for ever:
And in the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, the Spirit of truth (Joh. xv. 26), which also God promised by His Prophet to pour out (Joel ii. 28) upon His servants, and the Lord promised to send to His disciples: which also He sent, as the Acts of the Apostles witness.
But if any one teaches, or holds in his mind, aught beside this faith, be he anathema; or with Marcellus of Ancyra [3541] , or Sabellius, or Paul of Samosata, be he anathema, both himself and those who communicate with him.
[3538] On this Creed see Prolegg. ubi supr.
[3539] 3rd Confession or 3rd of Antioch, a.d. 341.
[3540] It need scarcely be said, that 'perfect from perfect' is a symbol on which the Catholics laid stress, Athan. Orat. ii. 35. Epiph. Haer. 76. p. 945. but it admitted of an evasion. An especial reason for insisting on it in the previous centuries had been the Sabellian doctrine, which considered the title 'Word' when applied to our Lord to be adequately explained by the ordinary sense of the term, as a word spoken by us. In consequence they insisted on His to teleion, perfection, which became almost synonymous with His personality. (Thus the Apollinarians, e.g. denied that our Lord was perfect man, because His person was not human. Athan. contr. Apoll. i. 2.) And Athan. condemns the notion of 'the logos en to theo ateles, gennetheis teleios, Orat. iv. 11. The Arians then, as being the especial opponents of the Sabellians, insisted on nothing so much as our Lord's being a real, living, substantial, Word. vid. Eusebius passim. 'The Father,' says Acacius against Marcellus, 'begat the Only-begotten, alone alone, and perfect perfect; for there is nothing imperfect in the Father, wherefore neither is there in the Son, but the Son's perfection is the genuine offspring of His perfection, and superperfection.' ap. Epiph. Haer. 72. 7. Teleios then was a relative word, varying with the subject matter, vid. Damasc. F. O. i. 8. p. 138. and when the Arians said that our Lord was perfect God, they meant, 'perfect, in that sense in which He is God'--i.e. as a secondary divinity.--Nay, in one point of view, holding as they did no real condescension or assumption of a really new state, they would use the term of His divine Nature more freely than the Catholics sometimes had. 'Nor was the Word,' says Hippolytus, 'before the flesh and by Himself, perfect Son, though being perfect Word, Only-begotten; nor could the flesh subsist by itself without the Word, because that in the Word it has its consistence: thus then He was manifested One perfect Son of God.' contr. Noet. 15.
[3541] [See Prolegg.] Marcellus wrote his work against Asterius in 335, the year of the Arian Council of Jerusalem, which at once took cognisance of it, and cited Marcellus to appear before them. The next year a Council held at Constantinople condemned and deposed him.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athanasius/councils.asp?pg=25
