St Athanasius the Great ON THE OPINION OF DIONYSIUS, Complete

Translated by Cardinal Newman.

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Page 4

At the same time we cannot but see that the Arians had good prima facie ground for their appeal. Here were their special formulae, those anathematised at Nicaea, en pote hote ouk en and the rest, adopted, and the homoousion implicitly rejected, by the most renowned bishop Alexandria had yet had. (Newman, in de Decr. 26, note 7, fails to appreciate the reference to the language of Dion. Alex.) Moreover it is only fair to admit that not only in language, but in thought also, Athanasius had advanced upon his predecessors of the Alexandrian School. The rude shock of Arianism had shewn him and the other Nicene leaders the necessity of greater consistency than had characterised the theology of Origen and his school, a consistency to be gained only by breaking with one side of it altogether. While on the one hand Origen held fast to the Godhead of the Logos (kat' ousian esti theos), and to His co-eternity with the Father (aei gennatai ho soter hupo tou patros, and see de Decr. S:27); he had yet, using ousia in its 'first' sense, spoken of Him as heteros kat' ousian tou patros (de Orat. 15), and placed him, after the manner of Philo, as an intermediary between God and the Universe. He had spoken of the unity of the Father and the Son as moral (Cels. viii. 12, te homonoi& 139; kai te sumphoni& 139;), insisted upon the huperoche of the Father (i.e. 'subordination' of the Son), and spoken (De Orat) as though the highest worship of all were to be reserved for the Father (Jerome ascribes still stronger language to him). Yet there is no real doubt that, as regards the core of the question, Athanasius and not his opponents is the true successor of Origen. The essential difference between Athanasius and the 'Conservatives' of the period following the great council consisted in the fact that the former saw clearly what the latter failed to realise, namely the insufficiency of the formulae of the third century to meet the problem of the fourth. We may then, without disparagement to Dionysius, admit that he was not absolutely consistent in his language; that he failed to distinguish the ambiguities which beset the words ousia, hupostasis, and even poiein and genesthai, and that he used language (ouk en prin gennethe and the like) which we, with our minds cleared by the Arian controversy, cannot reconcile with the more deliberate and guarded statements of the 'Refutation and Defence [965] .'

[965] It may be added that the letter to Paul of Samosata quoted by Bull, Def. III. iv. 3, Petavius, Trin. I. iv. is not genuine. Posterity, which enveloped the name of Origen with storms of controversy, did not entirely spare his pupil: Basil (Ep. 41) taxes him with sowing the first seeds of the Anomoean heresy, Gennadius (Eccl. Dogm. iv.) calls him 'Fons Arii.'

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