Panarion (Against Heresies) 1 part 74/82

or by way of subordination finding one God beneath another, and moreover ranking the Holy Spirit too in a lesser and inferior order - either way, whether he will thus have a lesser God, or by not numbering this Spirit together with the Trinity, this pitiable little man will prove utterly alien to Christians, and shall rather be proclaimed a most complete Greek, and in reckoning a Sadducee - alien indeed to the Holy Spirit, as in fact he is, yet in his position comparable to the Greeks, since he affirms one great God and one small one, one true and one not true, just as the Greeks confess one great God while naming the others lesser gods. But divine Scripture clearly refutes him: concerning the Father it says, the true God, and likewise concerning the Son, God; and concerning the Father, God is light, while concerning the Son, it was the true light; and concerning the Holy Spirit, that it is the Spirit of truth.

Truly, then, the Trinity is proclaimed to us in wisdom and the depth of riches.

Then again, following on, he says, 'and by the Jesus Christ who was sent'; and he was not ashamed to deem the Only-Begotten unworthy of the name of God, but used it only as a bare word, just as he had confessed in his earlier chapters, allotting to the Son the honor of the name only so far as a bare title.

And he says that the Son truly subsisted before the ages, and truly is of a begotten hypostasis.

And he says, 'he will keep you from impiety.'

It is the habit of every base woman to anticipate her own ways in others and to impute them to them beforehand.

For not seeing the extent of his own impiety, he considers himself pious, just as those afflicted with madness think themselves to be of sound mind, and think others to be raving.

And here, having set down 'in Christ Jesus,' he did not even dare to render the title 'our Lord,' but ironically said 'our Savior.'

And he says, 'through whom be all glory to God the Father, both now and always and to the ages of ages.'

And this very phrase 'all glory' is used so as to strip the Son of honor and glory.

This is something none of the pious, who have received from the Holy Spirit the gift of the true faith, would ever tolerate.

Having now dealt with all these things said by this Aëtius, in a certain dialectical art and syllogistic conjecture of human trickery, in thirty-seven chapters, which we urge you to read attentively -

and you will at once know, O children of Christians and servants of Christ and sons of the truth, all his earthly, empty chatter and teaching alien to the Holy Spirit.

He who did not dare even in a single phrase to recall a divine word or a saying from the Old or New Testament - neither from the Law, nor from the Prophets, nor from the Gospels, nor from the Apostles; nor did he adduce the testimony of any of the patriarchs, nor ever a word of the Savior himself, nor of the Father, nor of the Holy Spirit spoken through the apostles or through the prophets - so that he might be caught utterly red-handed by the friends of truth, as being altogether alien to God and to his faith.

And I think that we have, to the best of our ability, adequately met his propositions in plain, unlearned speech, with support drawn from the divine Scriptures and from pious reasoning itself.

And since we have sufficiently and clearly discoursed on the faith in our refutations against him, we consider it enough, lest by adding more we create some further difficulty in the reading.

But once more I will briefly touch upon a few of the things which, out of the exaltation of his own mind following his strange faith and hostility toward Christ and toward his Holy Spirit, his mouth and the mouths of his disciples dared, in insolence, to lift up their thinking on high and to blaspheme in monstrous terms - taking these up again, I shall speak of them concisely.

Concerning knowledge: as I have already noted somewhere above, they claim not simply to know God by the knowledge that comes of faith, but as one might know something visible and touched by one's own hands - as if someone took in hand a stone, or a piece of wood, or a tool of some other material. So too this fine fellow declared, 'I know God in this way, just as I know myself - and indeed I do not know myself as much as I know God.'

As for the rest, to speak and to hear such foolish things leads many into deception, but for the discerning it is a matter for ridicule.

For who among those possessed of mental derangement and madness cannot also drive others mad, especially those who follow along and obey them? For if someone were to question him and his followers -

'Do not tell me that you know God, the incomparable and incomprehensible, who is not grasped as to his form, but is known by faith to his servants; rather, tell me of the foundations of the earth, the storehouses of the abyss, the veins of the sea, the place of Hades, the measures of the air, the shape and thickness of the heavens, what is the summit of the things above, what the limit of the things below, what is on the right and what on the left of creation, the account of your own formation, the number and measure of the countless things upon the earth.' Then, having heard these things - as we ourselves have heard from those deceived by him - those instructed by him, turning aside to sophistic pretexts, say with irony, 'All these are bodily things, and they exist, yet we are unable to know them.'

'But as for God, who made all these things, we know clearly of what sort he is, and how he is, and what kind he is, and who he is.'

Now who, hearing this, would not immediately burst out laughing? For it is utterly foolish that he claims to know and to have precisely grasped the Craftsman who is incomparable and indescribable - would that he had said he knew and had precisely grasped him by faith! Instead he dares, and his followers dare, to speak as if by a kind of perceptual, tangible knowledge - while he says that he and his followers do not know the things made by the Incomparable One, things which by their visible form are capable of being marveled at exceedingly by those who behold them; and this though the divine Scriptures everywhere clearly proclaim concerning God that he is invisible, incomprehensible, and inconceivable, and is known only by faith in truth - that he is, and that he becomes a rewarder to those who love him.

But whenever one of those who rightly hold the true opinion concerning God - in faith and love and the acknowledgment of his incomprehensibility - says to them, 'We know God as incomprehensible, God as invisible and indescribable; we know that he truly exists, though he is invisible and incomprehensible,' this man, who brings us his novel dialectic, mockingly and glibly, as though relating some fable, dared to say -

'To what, then, are you and your faith like? To a virgin who has been corrupted, yet is blind and deaf and mute: it is plain to all who know her that she has been corrupted, but when asked who the corrupter was, she cannot hear so as to learn, nor has she seen the one who corrupted her, being blind, nor can she report it, being mute.'

so that it turns back upon him and his own fable, according to what is written: 'His mischief shall return upon his own head, and he shall fall into the pit that he made,' and the like.

For he himself resembles a man born blind from birth, who nevertheless speaks, and speaks a great deal, and hears; and who knows the name of white and of black, of blue and of green and of red and of the other various colors, and of light and darkness - names which resound in his ears, yet he does not know what their appearance is, nor is he able at all to explain it, because he was born blind from the beginning and is ignorant of the change of each quality of color, and of its appearance.

For the proper distinction corresponding to each of these names has its verification through the sense of sight, but it cannot be tested by verbal description for one who has never known the appearance from the beginning, nor by groping and touch.

purple, too, and scarlet, and the other colors - when asked by us about the quality of their appearance and the color of each quality, they can neither say, nor be taught by us; but by mere words they merely persuade their own minds, and deceive their hearers, as though they knew perfectly about the distinction, even though they speak the word, while in fact possessing ignorance through their incomprehension of it.

So too this man comes to us speaking of God, and mockingly imputes the corruption of the mute, deaf, and blind virgin to our faith, while he himself, by his own blasphemy, is the more corrupted, and possesses ignorance like a blindness from birth - speaking of God, yet merely making comparisons in words; and moreover he has prepared his own disciples for shamelessness -

for there is nothing they will not dare.

They blaspheme, then, the names of the prophets and apostles, whenever, being refuted by someone and hard pressed, they immediately run off and leap away, saying -

'This the apostle said merely as a man.'

'Why do you bring me things from the Old Testament?' But this is not surprising, according to what was said by the Savior: if they called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more those of his household? If, then, they deny the Lord himself and his true glory, how much more his prophets and apostles? And his disciples, raised to still greater madness, together with their successor - a certain Eunomius, falsely so named, who is still alive to this very day, a great evil in the world - have committed a daring act:

For he rebaptizes those who have already been baptized - not only those coming to him from the orthodox and from the other heresies, but even those coming from the Arians themselves.

And he rebaptizes them into the name of an uncreated God, and into the name of a created Son, and into the name of a sanctifying Spirit that was itself created by the created Son.

And so that their whole workshop might be seen to be one of dice-playing, of the theater, and of the stage - since what is proclaimed by them is no longer faith, but, one might almost say, a workshop of mimes - some have affirmed with certainty that he baptizes those being rebaptized head downward, with their feet up and their head down.

And in this way he forces them, under oath, to swear that they will not leap away from this heresy contrived by him.

They say that this same Aëtius, after the death of Constantius, having been recalled from exile by Julian who became emperor, while still a deacon of his own heresy, was advanced to the episcopate by a bishop of his own heresy.

These, then, are the things that have come to us concerning Aëtius and his disciples, on whom some have imposed the name Anomoean, because he held even more terribly to a heresy going beyond that of Arius.

Having, then, gone through all this in God as thoroughly as possible, and having trampled underfoot with the foot of truth this many-footed centipede and the creeping thing called the millipede, and crushed it with the true confession of the Only-Begotten - giving thanks to God as is our custom, and calling upon his power to the aid of our weakness - let us proceed, beloved, to the remaining heresies according to our ability and comprehension, invoking, as I said, the Master himself to be present with us for the exposure of those heresies and their overturning, so that by his power we may be able to fulfill the promise of our own smallness and brevity.

... of those admired for their life and always proclaimed with praise for their orthodoxy.

For this indeed is the work of him who from the beginning envied our father Adam and is hostile to all mankind, just as it has also been said somewhere by certain wise men, that envy is ever the adversary of great successes.

So also, through persons of greater standing, he cast in certain pretexts, so as not to allow us and the holy church of God to be free from grief, but rather always to be in turmoil and under attack.

For it seemed good to some who have arisen from among us, men of great disposition, always praised by us and extolled to the heights by all the orthodox, to exclude the mind from the incarnate presence of Christ, and to say that our Lord Christ, when he came, took flesh and a soul, but did not take a mind - that is, did not take complete man.

What benefit they have contributed to life by this, I do not know how to say, nor from whom before them they learned it, nor what profit they have gained by it, nor what they have granted to us and to those who hear and to the holy church of God - nothing more than working turmoil and division among us, and grief, and the loss of the sweetness and love we had for one another.

For, abandoning the coherence and rectitude of the divine Scriptures and the confession of guilelessness, and the prophetic, evangelical, and apostolic faith, they introduced to us a sophistic and mythical mode of speech, with which comes also a train of many terrible consequences, thereby fulfilling in themselves what was spoken: that some will fall away from sound teaching, giving heed to myths and empty chatter.

The old and venerable man, ever beloved by us and by the late Pope Athanasius of blessed memory and by all the orthodox - Apollinarius of Laodicea - it was he who originally devised this statement and put it forward.

And at first, hearing this from some of his disciples, we did not believe it - wondering whether a man of such stature had really introduced this statement into common life - still patiently waiting in the expectation of hope, until we might learn the precise truth.

For we said that the pupils who came to us from him, not understanding the profound things said by such a learned, wise, and skilled teacher, were fabricating these things on their own, not having actually learned them from him.

For there were many things that were disputed even among those very persons who came to us.

For some of them dared to say that Christ had brought his body down from above.

And this strange doctrine, persisting in the minds of men, kept advancing toward ever greater monstrosity.

For others among them even denied that Christ had taken a soul.

And some even dared to say that the body of Christ is consubstantial with the Godhead, and they threw the eastern regions into great turmoil; because of them it became necessary for a synod to be convened and to anathematize such persons.

Moreover, records were also drawn up, copies of which were sent to the late Pope Athanasius of blessed memory; and because of these records, the blessed man himself was compelled to write a letter against those who said such things, rebuking with words of threat the most reverend bishop Epictetus, because he had deigned even to give an answer on this matter to those who had caused the disturbance.

And this same man of blessed memory, having clearly written concerning the faith, in that same letter also renounced those who asserted such things and caused disturbance.

I have thought it altogether necessary to append here a copy of that letter.

Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, to Epictetus, bishop of Corinth.

I, for my part, supposed that all the empty talk of all who are heretics, whoever they might be, had ceased as a result of the synod held at Nicaea.

For the faith confessed there by the Fathers, according to the holy Scriptures, is sufficient for the overthrow of all impiety and for the establishment of pious faith in Christ.

... those who were still concealing themselves and holding the views of Arius — I mean Auxentius of Milan, and Ursacius, and Valens, and Gaius, from Pannonia — these they anathematized with one accord, as though moved by a single spirit.

And they wrote everywhere, because such people invent for themselves names of synods, [insisting] that no synod is to be named in the catholic Church except the one alone that took place at Nicaea — a trophy of every heresy, and especially of the Arian, on whose account chiefly that synod was then convened.

How then do some still, after so many things, attempt to dispute or inquire? If indeed they are of the Arians, it is nothing to marvel at that they slander what has been written against themselves, just as the Greeks too, hearing that the idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of men's hands, consider foolish the teaching concerning the †Holy Spirit.

But if there are among those who seem to believe rightly and to love the things declared by the fathers some who wish, through inquiry, to overturn them, they do nothing else than, according to what is written, give their neighbor a muddy draught to drink, and wage word-battles for no useful purpose but for the ruin of the guileless.

I write these things thus, having come upon the memoranda drawn up by your piety — which ought not even to have been written — so that not even a memory of them might come to those who live after us.

For who ever heard such things? And who is it that taught them, or who learned them? For out of Zion shall go forth the word of the Lord, and the law of God out of Jerusalem. But whence did these things go forth? What Hades belched forth the notion of saying that the body from Mary is consubstantial with the divinity of the Word, or that the Word has been changed into flesh and bones and hair and a whole body, and altered from its own nature? And who ever at all heard from Christians that the Son has borne a body by adoption and not by nature, or who has been so impious as to say — and at the same time to think — that his divinity, which is consubstantial with the Father, was itself circumcised, and became imperfect from having been perfect, and that what was nailed upon the wood was not the body, but the very creative essence of Wisdom herself? And who, hearing that the Word transformed for himself, not from Mary but from his own essence, a passible body, would call the one who says these things a Christian? And who has devised this unlawful impiety, so as even to come to the thought and say that the one who says the lordly body is from Mary no longer holds a Trinity in the Godhead but a Quaternity? — so that on this account those so disposed say that the flesh which the Savior put on from Mary belongs to the essence of the Trinity.

These things were stated in various ways in the memoranda, but they held one and the same meaning, one that looked toward impiety.

On account of these things those who prided themselves on the confession of the fathers made at Nicaea were divided and contended against one another.

He set this before them, so that either, on hearing it, they might grow quiet, or, if they contradicted it, they might be reckoned as heretics.

For the aforesaid things are neither to be spoken nor to be heard among Christians, but are in every way alien to the apostolic teaching.

For this reason, then, I too have had the things from them, as has been said, written down nakedly in the letter, so that the hearer alone, merely by hearing, may perceive the shame and impiety in them.

And even though it would be necessary to accuse and refute at greater length the shame of those who devised these things, yet it is also good to stop the letter at this point and write nothing further — for things so plainly shown to be base ought not to be exercised over further and scrutinized in detail, lest they be thought debatable by those who love contention.

To such things it suffices to answer and say only this: that these things do not belong to the catholic Church, nor did the fathers hold them. But so that the inventors of these evils may not, from our utter silence, procure for themselves a shameless pretext, it is good to call to mind a few things from the divine Scriptures.

For perhaps, being thus put to shame, they will even cease from these filthy inventions.

Whence, O you people, did it occur to you to say that the body is consubstantial with the divinity of the Word? For it is good to begin from this, so that, this being shown to be rotten, all the other such claims may likewise be shown to be so.

Now from the Scriptures it is not possible to find this.

For they say that God has come to be in a human body.

But indeed the fathers too, who assembled at Nicaea, said not the body, but the Son himself, to be consubstantial with the Father.

And they confessed that he is from the essence of the Father, while the body, again according to the Scriptures, is from Mary.

Therefore either deny the synod at Nicaea and, as heretics, introduce these things, or, if you wish to be children of the fathers, do not hold views contrary to what they themselves wrote.

And indeed from this too it is possible for you to perceive the absurdity.

If the Word is consubstantial with the body, which has its nature from the earth, and the Word is consubstantial with the Father according to the confession of the fathers, then the Father himself will also be consubstantial with the body that came to be from the earth.

And why then do you still fault the Arians for saying the Son is a creature, when you yourselves also say the Father is consubstantial with creatures, and, passing over into another impiety, assert that the Word has been changed into flesh and bones and hair and sinews and a whole body, and altered from its own nature? For it is time for you to say plainly that he came to be from earth.

For from the earth is the nature of the bones and of the whole body.

What then is this great derangement, that you even do battle against yourselves? By saying the Word is consubstantial with the body, you signify one thing over against another; but by supposing him to have been changed into flesh, you imagine a mutation of the Word himself.

And who any longer will endure you, merely uttering such things? For you have turned aside into impiety more than every heresy.

For if the Word is consubstantial with the body, then the mention and need of Mary become superfluous, since the body could also have existed eternally even before Mary, just as the Word himself also does, if indeed, as you say, he is consubstantial with the body.

And what need, then, was there for the sojourning of the Word — that he should either put on that which is consubstantial with himself, or, having been turned from his own nature, become a body? For divinity does not lay hold of itself, so as also to put on that which is consubstantial with it.

But indeed the Word, who redeems the sins of others, did not himself sin, so that he should need to be turned into a body in order to offer himself as a sacrifice on his own behalf and redeem himself.

But it is not so — may it never be!

For he takes hold of the seed of Abraham, as the apostle said.

Wherefore he was obliged to be made like his brethren in all things and to take a body like ours.

For this reason, then, Mary too truly stands beneath it, so that from her he might take this and, as his own, offer it up on our behalf.

A virgin betrothed to a man, so that from the betrothal he might show Mary to be truly a human being.

And the Scripture also makes mention of her giving birth, and says that she wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and that blessed were the breasts which he sucked, and that a sacrifice was offered, as for one who, having been born, had opened the womb.

All these were the marks of a virgin giving birth.

And Gabriel too surely brought her good tidings with careful precision, saying not simply 'that which is begotten in you' — lest the body be thought to have been introduced into her from outside — but 'from you,' so that what is begotten might be believed to be from her by nature; nature itself also plainly demonstrating this, since it is impossible for the body of a virgin who has not given birth to bear milk, and impossible for a body to be nourished with milk and swaddled unless it had first been born by nature.

This is he who was circumcised on the eighth day.

This is he whom Simeon received into his arms.

This one became an infant and grew, becoming twelve years old, and came to his thirtieth year.

For it was not, as some have supposed, that the very essence of the Word itself, having been transformed, was circumcised — for it is unalterable and immutable, the Savior himself saying, 'Behold me, that it is I, and I have not changed,' and Paul writing, 'Jesus Christ, yesterday and today, the same also forever.'

Rather, in the body that was circumcised, and carried, and ate, and grew weary, and was nailed on the wood, and suffered, was the impassible and incorporeal Word of God.

This is he who was laid in the tomb, at the time when he himself went to preach also to the spirits in prison, as Peter said.

This especially exposes the folly of those who say the Word has been changed into bones and flesh.

For if this were so, there would have been no need of a tomb.

For the body itself would have gone by itself to preach to the spirits in Hades.

But as it is, he himself went to preach, while Joseph, having wrapped the body in a linen cloth, laid it away at Golgotha.

And it has been shown to all that the body was not the Word, but the body belonged to the Word.

And this Thomas, after the resurrection from the dead, felt and saw in it the marks of the nails — which the Word himself endured, watching them being driven into his own body, and though able to prevent it, did not prevent it, but even made his own, as his own, the properties belonging to the body, incorporeal though he was.

Indeed, when the body was being struck by the attendant, he, as though himself suffering, said, 'Why do you strike me?' And though by nature untouchable, he nevertheless said, 'I gave my back to the scourges, and my face I did not turn away from spitting.'

For the things which the human [nature] of the Word suffered, these the Word, being present with it, referred to himself, so that we might be able to partake of the divinity of the Word.

And it was a paradox that he himself was both the one suffering and not suffering: suffering, because his own body suffered and he was present in the very one that suffered; not suffering, because the Word, being by nature God, is impassible.

And he himself, the incorporeal one, was in the passible body, while the body had within itself the impassible Word, causing the weaknesses of the body itself to vanish.

And he did this, and it came about thus, so that, receiving our [weaknesses] and offering them up as a sacrifice, he might obliterate them, and, henceforth clothing us with what is his own, might cause the apostle to say, 'This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.'

These things did not happen by adoption — may it never be, as some again have supposed — but rather, the Savior having in reality and truth become man, the salvation of the whole man came about.

For if the Word was in the body by adoption according to them, and what is called 'by adoption' is a mere appearance, then the salvation and the resurrection of human beings, spoken of according to the most impious Manichaeus, is found to be a matter of illusion.

But indeed our salvation was not an illusion, nor was it of the body alone, but of the whole man — of soul and body — truly salvation came about in him.

Human, then, by nature, according to the divine Scriptures, is the body from Mary, and true, [is that body] of the Savior.

And it was true, because it was the very same as ours.

For Mary belongs to us, since we are all from Adam as well.

And no one could doubt this, remembering what Luke wrote.

For after he rose from the dead, since some supposed that they were not seeing the Lord in the body from Mary, but instead beholding a spirit, he said, 'See my hands and my feet, and the marks of the nails, that it is I myself.'

'Handle me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see me having.'

And having said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.

From this too those who have dared to say the Lord has been altered into flesh and bones can again be refuted.

For he did not say, 'as you see me being flesh and bones,' but 'having,' so that the Word himself might not be thought to have been changed into these, but that he himself might be believed to exist in these both before death and after the resurrection.

These things being so, the proof being sufficient, it is superfluous still to take up the other points and to exercise any further effort concerning them.

For the body in which the Word was, not being consubstantial with the divinity but truly born of Mary, and the Word himself not having been changed into bones and flesh but having come to be in flesh — for what is said in John, 'the Word became flesh,' has this meaning, as can also be found from a similar usage.

For it is written concerning Paul, 'Christ became a curse for us'; and just as he himself did not become a curse, but because he took upon himself the curse on our behalf, he is said to have become a curse — so also he 'became flesh,' not having been turned into flesh, but because he took on flesh on our behalf and became man.

For indeed to say 'the Word became flesh' is again equivalent to saying that he became man, according to what is said in Joel: 'I will pour out from my Spirit upon all flesh.'