A Letter of Eusebius That Exposes the Arians

I will insert here the letter about the faith written by Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, because it shows how brazen the Arians are. They not only despise our fathers but reject their own, and the letter gives convincing proof of their madness. They certainly honor Eusebius, because he adopted their views, yet they openly contradict what he wrote. He wrote this letter to some of the Arians, who were accusing him, it seems, of treachery. The letter itself explains the writer’s purpose. [a]

The letter of Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, which he wrote from Nicaea while the great council was assembled. “You have probably learned from other sources what was decided about the faith of the church at the general Council of Nicaea, for the report of great events usually runs ahead of an exact account of them. But so that rumors that are not strictly true may not reach you, I think it necessary to send you, first, the statement of faith we ourselves first put forward, and next, the second one, which was published with additions to our wording. Here is our statement, which was read in the presence of our most devout emperor and declared to be rightly and properly worded.

“The faith we put forward. “‘We received it from the bishops before us, in our first instruction in the faith and at the time of our baptism. We have learned it from the Holy Scriptures. Both as presbyters and as bishops we were accustomed to believe it and teach it. So we believe now, and so we declare our faith. It is as follows. “‘We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, the Maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, God from God, Light from Light, Life from Life, the only Son, the firstborn of all creation, begotten of the Father before all ages, through whom all things were made; who for our salvation became flesh and lived his life among men. He suffered and rose again on the third day, and ascended to the Father, and he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. We also believe in one Holy Spirit. [b] “‘We believe that each of these has being and continuing existence: that the Father is truly Father, the Son truly Son, and the Holy Spirit truly Holy Spirit. So our Lord said, when he sent out his disciples to preach the good news, “Go and teach all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” We firmly affirm that we hold this faith, that we have always held it, and that we hold to it until death, condemning every ungodly heresy. “‘We testify before God Almighty and our Lord Jesus Christ that we have thought this from the heart and from the soul ever since we have known ourselves. And we are able to show, and indeed to convince you, that in time past we have always believed and preached this way.’ [c]

“When we had put forward this statement, there was no room to contradict it. Our beloved emperor himself was the first to testify that it was entirely orthodox and that he agreed with it. He urged the others to sign it and to accept everything it taught, with the single addition of one word: ‘of one substance.’ “He explained that this term did not mean any bodily condition or change. For the Son did not receive his existence from the Father by division or by being cut off from him, since a nature that is immaterial, belongs to the realm of mind, and has no body could not be subject to any bodily condition or change. These things must be understood in a divine and mysterious sense. So reasoned our most wise and devout emperor. The addition of the word ‘of one substance’ led to the drawing up of the following statement. [d]

“The creed published by the council. “‘We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, the only Son, that is, of the substance of the Father; God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God; begotten, not made; being of one substance with the Father; through whom all things were made, both in heaven and on earth; who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, became flesh, and became man. He suffered, and rose again on the third day. He ascended into heaven, and is coming to judge the living and the dead. And we believe in the Holy Spirit. “‘The holy catholic and apostolic church anathematizes all who say that there was a time when the Son of God did not exist; that before he was begotten he did not exist; that he was made out of what does not exist; or that he is of a different essence and of a different substance from the Father; or that he is subject to alteration or change.’ [e]

“When they had put forward this statement, we did not let pass without examination the passage that says the Son is of the substance of the Father and of one substance with the Father. Questions and arguments followed, and the meaning of the terms was tested closely. In this way they came to confess that ‘of one substance’ means that the Son is from the Father, but not as a part of the Father. We thought it right to accept this sense, for that teaching is sound which says that the Son is from the Father but not part of his substance. For the love of peace, and so as not to fall away from the true belief, we too accept this view, and we do not reject the term ‘of one substance.’ “For the same reason we accepted the expression ‘begotten, not made.’ They said that the word ‘made’ applies generally to all the things that were created by the Son, which the Son in no way resembles. And so, they said, he is not a created thing, like the things made by him, but is of a substance higher than every created thing. The Holy Scriptures teach that he was begotten of the Father, in a manner of begetting that no created being can grasp or explain. “So too the term ‘of one substance with the Father,’ when it was examined, was accepted not in the sense of bodily relations or of likeness to mortal beings. For it was also shown that it implies no division of the substance, no cutting off, and no alteration, change, or lessening in the Father’s power, since all such things are foreign to the nature of the unbegotten Father. “It was concluded that the phrase ‘being of one substance with the Father’ means that the Son of God bears no resemblance in any respect to the creatures he has made, but that he is in every way perfectly like the Father alone, who begot him; for he is of the essence and of the substance of no one except the Father. Once this interpretation of the doctrine had been given, it seemed right to us to agree to it, especially since we knew that some learned and famous bishops and writers of old have used the term ‘of one substance’ of the divinity of the Father and of the Son.

“These are the facts I had to tell you about the published statement of faith. We all agreed to it, not without inquiry. We had thoroughly examined the views put before us in the presence of our most beloved emperor, and for the reasons given above we all accepted it. We also agreed that the anathema they added to their statement of faith should be accepted, because it forbids the use of words not found in Scripture, which have caused almost all the disorder and trouble in the church. “No passage of inspired Scripture uses the phrases ‘out of what does not exist’ or ‘there was a time when he did not exist,’ or any of the other phrases of the same kind. So it did not seem reasonable to say or teach such things. For this reason we thought it right to agree to this view, since in fact we had never at any time before been in the habit of using such terms. “Moreover, condemning the claim that ‘before he was begotten he did not exist’ did not seem to involve anything out of place, because all agree that he was the Son of God before he was begotten according to the flesh. And at this point our emperor, most beloved by God, began to reason about his divine origin and his existence before all ages. He was in the Father potentially, without being begotten, even before he was actually begotten. For the Father has always been Father, just as he has always been King and Savior, and potentially all things, and has never known any change of being or of action. [f]

“We have thought it necessary, beloved brothers, to send you an account of these things, to show you how carefully we examined and investigated all the questions we had to decide. We also wanted to show how at one time we held out firmly, even to the last hour, when doctrines badly expressed offended us; and how at another time we accepted without dispute the articles that contained nothing objectionable, when, after a thorough and honest inquiry into their meaning, they appeared fully in agreement with what we ourselves had confessed in the statement of faith we had published.”