Alexander’s Letter Against Arius

To his most honored and like-minded brother Alexander, Alexander sends greetings in the Lord. Driven by greed and ambition, evil-minded people have always plotted against the welfare of the most important dioceses. Under various pretexts they attack the religion of the church. Maddened by the devil who works in them, they swerve away from all godliness as they please and trample underfoot the fear of God’s judgment. Since I am suffering from them myself, I think it necessary to inform Your Piety, so that you may be on your guard against them. Otherwise they, or some of their party, may presume to enter your diocese (these cheats are skilled at deceiving), or they may circulate false and plausible letters designed to mislead someone who has given himself to the simple and pure faith.

Arius and Achillas recently formed a conspiracy, and in rivalry with the ambition of Colluthus they have gone far beyond him. He at least tried to find an excuse for his own harmful course in the charges he brought against them. But when they saw him making a trade of Christ for gain, they refused to remain any longer under the church’s authority. Instead they built themselves caves, like robbers, and now they meet in them constantly, and day and night they pour out slanders there against Christ and against us. They revile every godly, apostolic teaching. In the manner of the Jews they have organized a gang to fight against Christ, denying his divinity and declaring him to be on a level with other men. They pick out every passage that refers to the plan of salvation and to his humbling of himself for our sake, and from these they try to gather support for their own ungodly claim, while they evade all the passages that declare his eternal divinity and the unceasing glory he has with the Father. They hold the same ungodly view of Jesus Christ that the Greeks and the Jews hold, and so by every means in their power they hunt for their applause. Everything that outsiders mock in us, they busily put into practice. Every day they stir up persecutions and riots against us. On the one hand they bring accusations against us before the courts, putting up as false witnesses certain unprincipled women whom they have seduced into error. On the other hand they bring disgrace on Christianity by letting their young women wander about the streets. They have even had the audacity to tear the seamless garment of Christ, which the soldiers did not dare to divide. [a] These actions, which are in keeping with their way of life, and the ungodly undertaking they had long kept hidden, came to our knowledge late. When they did, we unanimously expelled them from the church, which worships the divinity of Christ. Then they ran here and there to form cliques against us. They even approached our fellow ministers who were of one mind with us, pretending to seek peace and unity with them, but in truth trying with fair words to sweep some of them away into their own disease. They ask them to write a wordy letter, and then they read its contents to the people they have deceived, so that these will not take back what they have said but will be confirmed in their ungodliness when they find that bishops agree with them and support their views. They make no acknowledgment of the evil teachings and practices for which we expelled them. Either they pass these along without comment, or they keep up the deception with tricks of argument and forgeries. So, hiding their destructive teaching under persuasive and cringing language, they catch the unwary and miss no chance to slander our religion. That is how several have been led to sign their letter and to receive them into communion. I consider this conduct on the part of our fellow ministers deserving of strong blame, for in this way they not only disobey the apostles’ rule but even help to inflame the devil’s work these men are doing against Christ. That is why, beloved brothers, I have lost no time in rousing myself to inform you of the unbelief of certain people who say, “There was a time when the Son of God did not exist,” and, “He who did not exist before came into existence afterward; and when at some time he came into existence, he became just what every other man is.” God, they say, created all things out of nothing, and among the creatures, both rational and irrational, they count even the Son of God. In keeping with this teaching, they say as a necessary consequence that he is by nature capable of change, and capable of both virtue and vice. And so, by their theory that he was created out of nothing, they overthrow the witness of the divine Scriptures, which declare that the Word cannot change, and declare the divinity of the Wisdom of the Word, and that Word and Wisdom is Christ. “We too,” say these accursed wretches, “are able to become like him, sons of God, for it is written, ‘I have nourished and brought up children.’” When the rest of this text is put to them, “and they have rebelled against me,” and it is objected that these words do not fit the Savior’s nature, which cannot change, they throw off all reverence. They claim that God foreknew and foresaw that his Son would not rebel against him, and that for this reason he chose him over all the others. They also say that he was not chosen because he had by nature anything superior to the other sons of God, for no one, they say, is a son of God by nature or has any special relation to him. He was chosen, they claim, because, although he was changeable by nature, his diligent character did not decline. As though, if a Paul or a Peter made the same efforts, their sonship would differ from his in no way at all! [g]

To support this insane teaching they insult the Scriptures, and they bring forward what is said of Christ in the Psalms: “You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore your God has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions.” But that the Son of God was not created out of nothing, and that there was never a time when he did not exist, is plainly taught by John the evangelist, who speaks of him as “the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father.” This divine teacher wanted to show that the Father and the Son cannot be separated, and that is why he said that “the Son is in the bosom of the Father.” The same John also states that the Word of God is not counted among the things created out of nothing, for he says that “all things were made through him.” He also shows his own distinct being in these words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.… All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made.” If, then, all things were made through him, how could he who gave existence to all things ever have had no existence himself? The Word, the power that creates, can in no way be defined as having the same nature as the things created, if indeed he was in the beginning, and all things were made through him and were called by him out of nothing into being. “That which is” must be of an opposite nature to the things created out of nothing, and essentially different from them. This also shows that there is no separation between the Father and the Son, and that the idea of separation cannot even be conceived by the mind. The creation of the world out of nothing, on the other hand, means that its very existence had a later and new beginning, since all things were given such a beginning of existence by the Father through the Son. John, the most devout apostle, saw that the word “was,” applied to the Word of God, lay far beyond and above the understanding of created beings. So he did not presume to speak of his generation or his creation, nor did he dare to name the Maker and the creature in the same syllables. This is not because the Son of God is unbegotten, for the Father alone is unbegotten. It is because the inexpressible being of the only Son, who is God, is beyond the keenest grasp of the evangelists, and perhaps even of angels. So I do not think that people should be considered devout who presume to investigate this subject, disobeying the command, “Do not seek what is too hard for you, and do not search into what is too high for you.” The knowledge of many other things, incomparably lower, is beyond the capacity of the human mind and cannot be reached. As Paul has said, “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for those who love him.” God also told Abraham that he could not number the stars, and it is said too, “Who will number the grains of sand by the seashore, or the drops of rain?” How, then, can anyone but a madman presume to inquire into the nature of the Word of God? The Spirit of prophecy says, “Who will declare his generation?” And so our Savior, in his kindness to those men who were the pillars of the whole world, and wanting to free them from the burden of striving after this knowledge, told them that it was beyond the reach of their nature, and that the Father alone could discern this most divine mystery. “No one,” he said, “knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son.” It was about this same subject, I think, that the Father said, “My secret is for me and for those who are mine.” [i]

But the insane folly of imagining that the Son of God came into being out of what had no being, and that his being sent forth happened in time, is plain from the very words “what had no being,” although the foolish cannot see the folly of their own sayings. For the phrase “he did not exist” must refer either to time or to some interval in the ages. If, then, it is true that all things were made through him, it is clear that every age, every time, every interval of time, and that “when” in which the “did not exist” has its place, were made through him. And is it not absurd to say that there was a time when he did not exist who created all time, and the ages and the seasons, with which the “did not exist” is mixed up? For it would be the height of ignorance, and against all reason, to claim that the cause of anything that has been made can come after the thing it caused. According to their opinion, the interval during which they say the Son was not yet begotten of the Father came before the wisdom of God, through whom all things were created. So they contradict the Scripture, which declares him to be “the firstborn of all creation.” In agreement with this, Paul, with his usual mighty voice, cries out concerning him: “whom he has appointed heir of all things, through whom he also made the worlds.” “For by him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers: all things were created through him and for him, and he is before all things.” Since the theory implied in the phrase “out of nothing” is plainly ungodly, it follows that the Father is always Father. He is Father because the Son is always present with him, and it is because of the Son that he is called Father. And since the Son is always present with him, the Father is always perfect, lacking no good thing. For he did not beget his only Son in time, or in any interval of time, or out of what did not exist before. [r] Is it not ungodly, then, to say that there was a time when the wisdom of God did not exist, the Wisdom who says, “I was beside him as one brought up with him; I was his delight day by day”? Or to say that the power of God, or his Word, or anything else by which the Son is known or the Father is described, was ever once lacking? To claim that the brightness of the Father’s glory “once did not exist” does away also with the original light whose brightness it is. And if there was ever a time when the image of God did not exist, it is plain that he whose image he is does not always exist either. Indeed, if the exact imprint of God’s being did not exist, then he too is done away with, of whom this is always the exact imprint. From this it can be seen that the sonship of our Savior has nothing at all in common with the sonship of human beings. It has been shown that the nature of his existence cannot be expressed in words, and that it surpasses beyond all measure in excellence everything to which he has given being. In the same way his sonship, which by nature shares in his Father’s divinity, is inexpressibly different from the sonship of those who have been adopted as sons by his appointment. He is by nature unchangeable, perfect and lacking nothing, while human beings are liable to change and need his help. What further advance can the wisdom of God make? What can the Truth itself, or God the Word, add to itself? How can the Life or the True Light be improved in any way? And is it not still more against nature to suppose that wisdom can be capable of folly? that the power of God can be joined with weakness? that reason itself can be clouded by unreason, or that darkness can be mixed with the true light? Does not the apostle say, “What fellowship has light with darkness? And what harmony has Christ with Belial?” And Solomon says that “the way of a serpent upon a rock” was “too wonderful” for the human mind to grasp; and this “rock,” according to Saint Paul, is Christ. Men and angels, however, who are his creatures, have received his blessing, which enables them to train themselves in virtue and in obedience to his commands, and so to avoid sin. That is why our Lord, who is by nature the Son of the Father, is worshiped by all. And those who have put off the spirit of slavery, and by brave deeds and progress in virtue have received the spirit of adoption through the kindness of him who is the Son of God by nature, also become sons by adoption. [s]

His true, proper, natural and special sonship was declared by Paul, who says of God that “he did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us,” who are not his sons by nature. It was to set him apart from those who are not “his own” that Paul called him “his own Son.” It is also written in the Gospel, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” And in the Psalms the Savior says, “The Lord said to me, You are my Son.” By proclaiming his natural sonship he shows that there are no other natural sons besides himself. [v] And do not these words, “I begot you from the womb before the morning,” plainly show the natural sonship of a birth from the Father? It belongs to one who has it not by diligent conduct or by training in moral progress, but by his own individual nature. It follows that the sonship of the only Son of the Father cannot fall away. But the adoption of rational beings, who are not his sons by nature but only because of fitness of character and by the generosity of God, can fall away, as it is written in the word, “The sons of God saw the daughters of men, and took them as wives,” and so on. And God, speaking through Isaiah, said, “I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.” [w]

I have many things to say, beloved, but I pass them by, because I fear I would grow tiresome by further admonishing teachers who are of one mind with me. You have been taught by God, and so you are not unaware that this teaching, which has just arisen in opposition to the religion of the church, is the same as that spread by Ebion and Artemas. It rivals the teaching of Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch, who was cut off from communion by a council of all the bishops. Lucian, his successor, withdrew from communion with these bishops for many years. [x] And now among us there have sprung up, “out of nothing,” men who have greedily drunk down the dregs of this ungodliness, shoots of the same stock: I mean Arius and Achillas and all their gang of rogues. Three bishops of Syria, appointed no one knows how, inflame them to a more deadly heat by agreeing with them. I leave the judgment on them to you. They keep in memory everything they can gather about his suffering, his humbling, his emptying of himself and his so-called poverty, and everything else whose name the Savior accepted for our sake as something acquired. They bring these passages forward to disprove his eternal existence and divinity, while they forget all the passages that declare his glory and nobility and his abiding with the Father, such as, “I and my Father are one.” In these words the Lord does not proclaim that he is the Father, nor does he make two natures out to be one. He means that the essence of the Son of the Father keeps the likeness of the Father exactly, since his nature has taken on the imprint of likeness to him in all things, being the exact image of the Father and the precise stamp of the original. So when Philip, wanting to see the Father, said to him, “Lord, show us the Father,” the Lord answered him with great plainness, “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” as though the Father were seen in the spotless and living mirror of his image. The same idea is expressed in the Psalms, where the saints say, “In your light we will see light.” That is why “he who honors the Son honors the Father.” And rightly so, for every ungodly word people dare to speak against the Son is spoken against the Father as well. [aa]

After this, no one can wonder at the false slanders they are spreading against me and against our most devout people, my beloved brothers, which I am about to describe. They not only draw up their battle line against the divinity of Christ but also ungratefully insult us. They think it beneath them to be compared with any of the ancients, and they cannot bear to be put on a level with the teachers we have known since childhood. They will not admit that any of our fellow ministers anywhere has even ordinary intelligence. They say that they alone are the wise and the poor, the discoverers of doctrines, and that to them alone have been revealed truths which, they say, have never entered the mind of anyone else under the sun. What wicked arrogance! What boundless folly! What false boasting, joined with madness and Satanic pride, has hardened their ungodly hearts! They are not ashamed to oppose the godly clearness of the ancient Scriptures, and the united devotion of all our fellow ministers concerning Christ does not blunt their audacity. Even demons would not put up with ungodliness like this, for even they keep from speaking blasphemy against the Son of God. [ac] These, then, are the points I have to raise, as well as I am able, with those who, out of their crude resources, throw dust at Christ and try to slander our reverence for him. These inventors of silly tales claim that we, who reject their ungodly and unscriptural blasphemy that Christ was created out of nothing, teach that there are two unbegotten beings. For these ill-taught men argue that one of two things must hold: either he must be believed to have come out of nothing, or there are two unbegotten beings. In their ignorance and lack of practice in theology, they do not see how vast the distance must be between the Father, who is uncreated, and the creatures, rational or irrational, which he created out of nothing. Nor do they see that the nature of the only Son, of him who is the Word of God, through whom the Father created the universe out of nothing, stands, as it were, in the middle between the two, and was begotten of the Father, who exists of himself, as the Lord himself testified when he said, “Everyone who loves the Father loves also the Son who is begotten of him.” [ad]

We believe, as the apostolic church teaches, in one unbegotten Father alone, who has no cause of his being, unchangeable and unvarying, who always exists in one and the same state, admitting neither increase nor decrease; who gave the law and the prophets and the gospel; the Lord of the patriarchs and apostles and of all the saints. And we believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten not out of what does not exist but from the Father, who is. Yet he was not begotten in the manner of material bodies, by cutting off or by flowing out, as Sabellius and Valentinus taught, but in a way that cannot be expressed or explained, in keeping with the saying we quoted above, “Who will declare his generation?” For no mortal mind can grasp the nature of his being, just as the Father himself cannot be grasped, because the nature of rational beings cannot take in the way he was begotten of the Father. [ae] But those who are led by the Spirit of truth have no need to learn these things from me, for the words the Savior spoke long ago still sound in our ears: “No one knows who the Father is except the Son, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father.” We have learned that the Son is unchangeable and unalterable, lacking nothing and perfect, like the Father, falling short only in his being “unbegotten.” He is the exact and precisely similar image of his Father. For it is clear that the image fully contains everything by which the greater likeness exists, as the Lord taught us when he said, “My Father is greater than I.” In keeping with this we believe that the Son always existed from the Father, for he is “the brightness of his glory, and the exact imprint of his Father’s being.” But let no one be led by the word “always” to imagine that the Son is unbegotten, as some think whose minds have been blinded. For to say that he was, that he has always been, and that he was before all ages, is not to say that he is unbegotten. [af] The human mind could not possibly invent a term to express what is meant by being unbegotten. I believe that you are of this opinion, and indeed I am confident of your orthodox view that none of these terms in any way means “the unbegotten.” For all these terms seem to mean only a stretching out of time, and they are not adequate to express the divinity and, so to speak, the primeval being of the only Son. They were used by the holy men who earnestly tried to make the mystery clear, and who asked pardon of their hearers, with a reasonable excuse for falling short, by saying, “as far as our understanding has reached.” But if those who claim that what was “known in part” has been “done away” for them expect from human lips something beyond human powers, it is plain that the terms “was,” “always” and “before all ages” fall far short of this expectation. But whatever these terms mean, it is not the same as “the unbegotten.” So his own proper dignity must be reserved to the Father as the Unbegotten One, since no one is called the cause of his existence. To the Son likewise must be given the honor that befits him, since he has a generation from the Father that has no beginning. We must give him worship, as we have already said, only ascribing to him, devoutly and reverently, the “was,” the “always” and the “before all ages.” We do not reject his divinity, but ascribe to him a perfect likeness to his Father in all things, while to the Father alone we ascribe his own proper glory of being “the unbegotten,” even as the Savior himself says, “My Father is greater than I.” [ah] In addition to this devout belief concerning 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 what is called the New. We believe in one and only catholic church, the apostolic church, which can never be destroyed, even if the whole world were to plot to make war on it, and which wins the victory over all the ungodly attacks of those who hold false doctrines. For we take courage from the words of its Master: “Take heart, I have overcome the world.” After this, we hold the teaching of the resurrection from the dead, of which Jesus Christ our Lord became the firstfruits. He wore a body truly and not in appearance only, a body taken from Mary the mother of God. In the fullness of time he came to live among our race for the forgiveness of sins. He was crucified and died, yet for all this his Godhead suffered no loss. He rose from the dead, was taken up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. [ai]

In this letter I have mentioned these things only in part, since, as I have said, I think it tiresome to dwell in detail on each point, when they are well known to your devout diligence. These things we teach, these things we preach; these are the doctrines of the apostolic church. For them we are ready to die, and we care little for those who would force us to renounce them. We will never give up our hope in them, even if they try to compel us by tortures. Arius and Achillas, together with their fellow enemies, have been expelled from the church, because they have become strangers to our devout teaching. As the blessed Paul said, “If any of you preaches any other gospel than the one you have received, let him be accursed, even if he pretends to be an angel from heaven.” And again, “But if anyone teaches otherwise and does not agree to sound words, the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the teaching that is in keeping with godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing,” and so on. Since, then, they have been condemned by the brotherhood, let none of you receive them or pay any attention to what they say or write. They are deceivers who spread lies, and they never hold to the truth. They go around to different cities with no other aim than to deliver letters on the pretext of friendship and in the name of peace, and by hypocrisy and flattery to get other letters in return, so as to deceive a few “foolish women who are weighed down with sins.” I urge you, beloved brothers, to avoid those who have dared to act this way against Christ: who have publicly held up the Christian religion to ridicule, who have been eager to make a show before the courts, who have tried to stir up a persecution against us at a time of the most complete peace, and who have drained the force from the inexpressible mystery of Christ’s generation. Unite as one in opposing them, as some of our fellow ministers have already done; filled with indignation, they wrote to me against these men and signed our statement of faith. [ak] I have sent you these letters by my son Apion, the deacon. They are the letters of the ministers of all Egypt and the Thebaid, and also of Libya and the Pentapolis, of Syria, Lycia, Pamphylia, Asia, Cappadocia and the other neighboring countries. I trust that you too will follow their example. I have made many kind attempts to win back those who have been led astray, but no remedy has proved more effective in restoring the laity they have deceived and leading them to repentance than the open display of our fellow ministers’ unity. Greet one another, together with the brothers who are with you. I pray that you may be strong in the Lord, my beloved, and that I may receive the fruit of your love for Christ. [am] These are the names of those who have been anathematized as heretics: among the presbyters, Arius; among the deacons, Achillas, Euzoius, Aithales, Lucius, Sarmates, Julius, Menas, another Arius, and Helladius.

Alexander wrote in the same vein to Philogonius, bishop of Antioch, to Eustathius, who then governed the church of Beroea, and to all who defended the teachings of the apostles. But Arius could not bear to keep quiet, and he wrote to all those he believed agreed with his opinions. His letter to Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, is clear proof that the divine Alexander wrote nothing false about him. I will insert his letter here, so that the names of those who were caught up in his ungodliness may become widely known. [an]