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Translated by Cardinal Newman.
St Athanasius the Great Resources Online and in Print
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This Part: 128 Pages
Page 25
Chapter VII.--Objections to the Foregoing Proof. Whether, in the generation of the Son, God made One that was already, or One that was not.
22 (continued). Ranking Him among these, according to the teaching of Eusebius, and accounting Him such as the things which come into being through Him, Arius and his fellows revolted from the truth, and used, when they commenced this heresy, to go about with dishonest phrases which they had got together; nay, up to this time some of them [1968] , when they fall in with boys in the market-place, question them, not out of divine Scripture, but thus, as if bursting with 'the abundance of their heart [1969] ;'--'He who is, did He make him who was not, from that which was [not], or him who was? therefore did He make the Son, whereas He was, or whereas He was not [1970] ?' And again, 'Is the Unoriginate one or two?' and 'Has He free will, and yet does not alter at His own choice, as being of an alterable nature? for He is not as a stone to remain by Himself unmoveable.' Next they turn to silly women, and address them in turn in this womanish language; 'Hadst thou a son before bearing? now, as thou hadst not, so neither was the Son of God before His generation.' In such language do the disgraceful men sport and revel, and liken God to men, pretending to be Christians, but changing God's glory 'into an image made like to corruptible man [1971] .'
[1968] This miserable procedure, of making sacred and mysterious subjects a matter of popular talk and debate, which is a sure mark of heresy, had received a great stimulus about this time by the rise of the Anomoeans. Eusebius's testimony to the profaneness which attended Arianism upon its rise will be given de Syn. 2, note 1. The Thalia is another instance of it. S. Alexander speaks of the interference, even judicial, in its behalf against himself, of disobedient women, di' entuchias gunaikarion atakton ha epatesan, and of the busy and indecent gadding about of the younger, ek tou peritrochazein pasan aguian asemnos. ap. Theod. H. E. i. 3. p. 730, also p. 747; also of the men's buffoon conversation, p. 731. Socrates says that 'in the Imperial Court, the officers of the bedchamber held disputes with the women, and in the city in every house there was a war of dialectics.' Hist. ii. 2. This mania raged especially in Constantinople, and S. Gregory Naz. speaks of 'Jezebels in as thick a crop as hemlock in a field.' Orat. 35. 3, cf. de Syn. 13, n. 4. He speaks of the heretics as 'aiming at one thing only, how to make good or refute points of argument,' making 'every market-place resound with their words, and spoiling every entertainment with their trifling and offensive talk.' Orat. 27. 2. The most remarkable testimony of the kind though not concerning Constantinople, is given by S. Gregory Nyssen, and often quoted, 'Men of yesterday and the day before, mere mechanics, off-hand dogmatists in theology, servants too and slaves that have been flogged, runaways from servile work, are solemn with us and philosophical about things incomprehensible....With such the whole city is full; its smaller gates, forums, squares, thoroughfares; the clothes-venders, the money-lenders, the victuallers. Ask about pence, and he will discuss the Generate and Ingenerate; inquire the price of bread, he answers, Greater is the Father, and the Son is subject; say that a bath would suit you, and he defines that the Son is out of nothing.' t. 2. p. 898.
[1969] Matt. xii. 34.
[1970] This objection is found in Alex. Ep. Encycl. 2. ho on theos ton me onta ek tou me ontos. Again, onta gegenneke e ouk onta. Greg. Orat. 29. 9. who answers it. Pseudo-Basil. contr. Eunom. iv. p. 281. 2. Basil calls the question poluthrulleton, contr. Eunom. ii. 14. It will be seen to be but the Arian formula of 'He was not before His generation,' in another shape; being but this, that the very fact of His being begotten or a Son, implies a beginning, that is, a time when He was not: it being by the very force of the words absurd to say that 'God begat Him that was,' or to deny that 'God begat Him that was not.' For the symbol, ouk en prin gennethe, vid. Excursus B. at the end of this Discourse.
[1971] Rom. i. 23, and S:2.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athanasius/discourses-against-arians.asp?pg=25
