A Source Book for Ancient Church HistoryAyer, Joseph Cullen
History
A Source Book for Ancient Church History
Ayer, Joseph Cullen
Church history -- Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600 -- Sources
A statement of the position of Alexander made to Alexander, bishop
of Constantinople.
This extract is to be found at the end of the letter; it is
evidently based upon the creed which is reproduced with somewhat
free glosses. The omissions in the extract are of the less
important glosses and proof-texts. For the position of Alexander
the letter of Arius to Eusebius of Nicomedia given below (_c_)
should also be examined.
We believe as the Apostolic Church teaches, In one unbegotten Father, who
of His being has no cause, immutable and invariable, and who subsists
always in one state of being, admitting neither of progression nor
diminution; who gave the law and the prophets and the Gospel; of
patriarchs and Apostles and all saints, Lord; and in one Lord Jesus
Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten not out of that which is
not, but of the Father, who is; yet not after the manner of material
bodies, by severance or emanation, as Sabellius and Valentinus taught, but
in an inexpressible and inexplicable manner.… We have learned that the Son
is immutable and unchangeable, all-sufficient and perfect, like the
Father, lacking only His “unbegottenness.” He is the exact and precisely
similar image of His Father.… And in accordance with this we believe that
the Son always existed of the Father.… Therefore His own individual
dignity must be reserved to the Father as the Unbegotten One, no one being
called the cause of His existence: to the Son, likewise, must be given the
honor which befits Him, there being to Him a generation from the Father
which has no beginning.… And in addition to this pious belief respecting
the Father and the Son, we confess as the sacred Scriptures teach us, one
Holy Spirit, who moved the saints of the Old Testament, and the divine
teachers of that which is called the New. We believe in one and only
Catholic and Apostolic Church, which can never be destroyed even though
all the world were to take counsel to fight against it, and which gains
the victory over all the impious attacks of the heterodox.… After this we
receive the resurrection from the dead, of which Jesus Christ our Lord
became the first-fruits; who bore a body, in truth, not in semblance,
derived from Mary, the mother of God [theotokos] in the fulness of time
sojourning among the race, for the remission of sins: who was crucified
and died, yet for all this suffered no diminution of His Godhead. He rose
from the dead, was taken into heaven, and sat down on the right hand of
the Majesty on high.
(_c_) Arius, _Ep. ad Eusebium_, in Theodoret, _Hist. Ec._, I, 4. (MSG,
88:909.)
A statement in the words of Arius of his own position and that of
Alexander addressed to Eusebius of Nicomedia.
To his very dear lord, the man of God, the faithful and orthodox Eusebius,
Arius unjustly persecuted by Alexander the Pope, on account of that
all-conquering truth of which you are also the champion, sendeth greeting
in the Lord.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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