Defense of Dionysius, Part 1

On the Opinion of Dionysius. A letter of Athanasius about Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, showing that he too was against the Arian heresy, as the Synod of Nicaea was, and that the Arians slander him to no purpose when they claim him as one of their own.

You have been slow to tell me about the present argument between you and the enemies of Christ. Even before Your Courtesy wrote to me, I had made careful inquiries and learned about the matter, and I was glad to hear of it. I approved of the right opinion Your Piety holds about our blessed fathers, and on this occasion I see once again how unreasonable the Arian madmen are. Their heresy has no ground in reason and no clear proof from Holy Scripture, and so they were always resorting to shameless evasions and plausible fallacies. But now they have also dared to slander the fathers. This is not out of character; it is entirely of a piece with their perversity. For is it any wonder that men who have presumed to “take counsel against the Lord and against his Christ” also vilify the blessed Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, as a partisan and accomplice of theirs? For if they are pleased to praise a man in support of their own heresy, then even if they call him blessed, they do him no slight insult, but a very great one. They are like robbers or men of evil life who, when they are branded for their own practices, claim sober men as belonging to their number, and so defame their sober character. [a]

If, then, they have confidence in their opinions and statements, let them set out their heresy openly, and show from it whatever godly argument they think they have in their defense, whether from Scripture or from human reason. But if they have nothing of the kind, let them hold their peace. For from every quarter they will find nothing but greater condemnation of themselves. First, from the Scriptures. John says, “In the beginning was the Word,” but they say, “He was not before he was begotten.” David sings, speaking in the person of the Father, “My heart uttered a good Word,” and they claim that this Word exists in thought only and came into being from nothing. Again, John says in the Gospel, “All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made,” and Paul writes, “There is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things,” and elsewhere, “All things were created in him.” How, then, will they have the boldness (or rather, how will they escape disgrace) to oppose the sayings of the saints by saying that the maker of all things is a creature, and that he in whom all created things have come into being and hold together is himself a created thing? Nor, second, is any godly argument from human reason left to them in their defense. What man, Greek or barbarian, would dare to call one whom he confesses to be God a created thing, or to say that he did not exist before he was made? Or what man, having heard the one he believes to be the only God say, “This is my beloved Son,” and “My heart uttered a good Word,” will venture even to say that the Word from the heart of God came into being out of nothing? Or that the Son is a created thing, and not the very offspring of the one who speaks? Or again, who that hears the one he believes to be Lord and Savior say, “I am in the Father and the Father in me,” and “I and the Father are one,” will dare to divide what he has made one and kept undivided? [c]

They see this themselves, and since they have no confidence in their own position, they tell lies against godly men. Isolated as they are, and seeing that under examination they are at a loss and silenced on every side, it would have been better for them to turn back from the way of error, and not to claim men whom they do not know, for fear that, refuted by these men too, they would carry off still greater disgrace. But perhaps they never want to leave this wickedness of theirs. They copy this trait of Caiaphas and his party, just as they learned from them to deny Christ. For those men too, when the Lord had done so many works by which he showed himself to be the Christ, the Son of the living God, and they had been convicted by him, from then on thought and spoke against the Scripture in everything. Unable to face the proofs against them even for a moment, they took refuge in the patriarch, saying, “We have Abraham as our father,” and thought in this way to cloak their own unreasonableness. But they gained nothing by these words, and neither will these men, by speaking of Dionysius, escape the guilt of the others. For the Lord convicted the first of their wicked deeds with the words, “Abraham did not do this,” and the same truth will convict these men of their ungodliness and falsehood. For Bishop Dionysius did not agree with Arius, nor was he ignorant of the truth. On the contrary, both the Jews of that day and the new Jews of today inherited their mad hostility to Christ from their father the devil. Here, then, is a strong proof that these men are once more saying what is not true and are maligning the man. He was not condemned by other bishops and expelled from the church for ungodliness, as these men have been expelled from the clergy. Nor did he leave the church of his own accord as the partisan of a heresy. He died with honor within it, and his memory is kept and recorded among the fathers to this day. If he had agreed with these men, or had not defended what he had written, he too would without doubt have been treated as they have been. [f]

This alone would be enough to refute completely the new Jews, who deny the Lord, slander the fathers, and try to deceive all Christians. But since they think they have found pretexts for slandering the bishop in certain parts of his letter, come, let us look at these also. Then even from them the emptiness of their reasoning may be exposed, and they may at last stop blaspheming the Lord, and at least, like the soldiers, when they see creation bearing witness, confess that he truly is the Son of God and not one of the created things. They say, then, that in a letter the blessed Dionysius said “that the Son of God is a creature and made, and not the Father’s own by nature, but in substance foreign to the Father, just as the vinedresser is to the vine, or the shipbuilder to the boat; for, being a creature, he did not exist before he came to be.” Yes, he wrote it, and we too admit that his letter reads this way. But just as he wrote this, he also wrote a great many other letters, and they ought to consult those as well, so that the man’s faith may be made clear from all of them and not from this one alone. The skill of a shipbuilder who has built many warships is judged not from one of them but from all. So if he wrote this letter they speak of simply as a statement of his faith, or if this was his only letter, let them accuse him as much as they like, for what they are suggesting really amounts to an accusation. But if he was led to write as he did by the occasion and the person concerned, and he also wrote other letters defending himself where he had been suspected, then they ought not to have ignored his reasons and hastily cast a slur on the man. Otherwise they will seem to be hunting for stray expressions while passing over the truth that is found in his other letters. [g]

A farmer, too, treats trees of the same kind now in one way and now in another, according to the character of the soil he is dealing with. No one would blame him because he cuts back one, grafts another, plants another, and digs up yet another. On the contrary, once a person learns the reason, he admires the versatility of his skill all the more. Well then, unless they have read the letter only superficially, let them state its main subject; for that will bring out how malicious and unscrupulous their design is. But since they do not know it, or are ashamed to state it, we must state it ourselves.

At that time certain bishops in Pentapolis, in Upper Libya, held the views of Sabellius. And they were so successful with their opinions that the Son of God was hardly preached any longer in the churches. When Dionysius heard of this, since he had charge of those churches, he sent men to advise the guilty ones to give up their error. But they did not give it up; they grew even more shameless in their ungodliness. So he was compelled to meet their shamelessness by writing the letter in question, and to set out from the Gospels the human nature of the Savior. Those men were growing bolder in denying the Son and in ascribing his human actions to the Father. So by showing that it was the Son, and not the Father, who was made man for us, he meant to persuade the ignorant that the Father is not a Son, and so to lead them up step by step to the truth that the Son is truly God, and to the knowledge of the Father. This is the main subject of the letter, and this is why he wrote it: because of those who had so shamelessly chosen to alter the true faith.

Well then, what does the heresy of Arius have in common with the opinion of Dionysius? Why should Dionysius be called like Arius, when they differ so widely? The one is a teacher of the catholic church; the other invented a new heresy. To set out his own error, Arius wrote a Thalia in an effeminate and ridiculous style, like that of Sotades the Egyptian. Dionysius, on the other hand, not only wrote other letters too, but also composed a defense of himself on the points that had raised suspicion, and came out plainly as holding right opinions. If his writings contradict one another, then let them not draw him over to their side, for on that assumption he is not worth believing. But suppose that after he had written his letter to Ammonius and had fallen under suspicion, he made his defense so as to improve on what he had said before, yet did so without changing it. Then it must be clear that he wrote the suspected passages to suit a particular purpose. And what is written or done for such a purpose, people have no business twisting maliciously, each to a meaning of his own. A physician, too, often applies to the wounds he has to deal with, in keeping with his knowledge, remedies that seem unsuitable to some, with no other aim than health. In the same way it is the practice of a wise teacher to arrange and deliver his lessons to suit the character of his pupils, until he has brought them over to the way of perfection. [k]

If they accuse the blessed man simply for writing in this way (for the arguments of the Arians about him are in fact accusations against him), what will they do when they hear even the great and blessed apostles in the Acts? First there is Peter, saying, “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved by God to us by mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know, this man, handed over by the set purpose and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.” And again: “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by him this man stands here before you whole.” Then there is Paul, telling in Antioch of Pisidia how God, “when he had removed Saul, raised up David to be king, to whom he also bore witness and said, I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after my heart, who will do my will. From this man’s descendants God has, according to his promise, brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus.” And again at Athens: “The times of ignorance, then, God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has appointed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” Or there is Stephen, the great martyr, when he says, “Look, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” Why, it is high time for them to brazen it out, since nothing is too daring for them, and claim that the apostles themselves agreed with Arius. For the apostles declare Christ to have been a man from Nazareth, and capable of suffering. [m]

Since these men imagine such things, did the apostles, because they used this language, regard Christ as only a man and nothing more? God forbid! The very idea is unthinkable. Here too they acted as wise master builders and stewards of the mysteries of God, and they had good reason for it. The Jews of that day, who were in error themselves and were misleading the Gentiles, thought that the Christ would come as a mere man of the line of David, like the rest of David’s descendants. They would not believe that he was God, or that the Word became flesh. For this reason the blessed apostles very wisely began by proclaiming to the Jews the human traits of the Savior. They meant first to persuade them fully, from the things that could be seen and the miracles that had been done, that the Christ had come, and then to lead them on to faith that he is God, by showing that the works he had done were not the works of a man but of God. Why, Peter, who calls Christ a man capable of suffering, at once went on to add, “He is the Prince of Life,” while in the Gospel he confesses, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And in his letter he calls him Bishop of souls, and Lord both of himself and of angels and powers. Again, Paul, who calls Christ a man of the line of David, wrote this to the Hebrews: “Who, being the radiance of his glory and the exact imprint of his being,” and to the Philippians: “Who, being in the form of God, did not count it a prize to be equal with God.” But what can it mean to call him Prince of Life, Son of God, radiance, exact imprint, equal with God, Lord, and Bishop of souls, unless that in the body he was the Word of God, through whom all things were made, and is as inseparable from the Father as the radiance is from the light? [n]

Dionysius, then, did as he had learned from the apostles. As the heresy of Sabellius was creeping on, he was compelled, as I said before, to write the letter in question, and to hurl at them what is said of the Savior with regard to his humanity and his humbling. He did this so as to bar them, by means of his human attributes, from saying that the Father was a son, and so to make the teaching that the Son is God easier for them, when in his other letters he calls him, from the Scriptures, the Word, Wisdom, Power, Breath, and Radiance of the Father. In the letters written in his own defense, for example, speaking as I have described, he speaks boldly in the faith and in devotion toward Christ. The apostles, then, are not to be accused because of their human language about the Lord, since the Lord has become man; they deserve all the more admiration for their wise reserve and well-timed teaching. In the same way Dionysius is no Arian because of his letter to Euphranor and Ammonius against Sabellius. Even if he did use lowly phrases and examples, they too come from the Gospels, and his justification for them is the Savior’s coming in the flesh, because of which not only these things but others like them are written. For just as he is the Word of God, so afterward “the Word became flesh.” “In the beginning was the Word,” and at the end of the ages the Virgin conceived, and the Lord has become man. And the one pointed to by both statements is one person, for “the Word became flesh.” But the expressions used about his being God and about his becoming man must be interpreted with discernment, each as suits its own context. The one who writes of the human attributes of the Word also knows what concerns his being God, and the one who explains his being God is not ignorant of what belongs to his coming in the flesh. Telling each apart like a skilled and “approved money changer,” he will walk in the straight way of godliness. So when he speaks of his weeping, he knows that the Lord, having become man, shows his human nature in weeping, while as God he raises Lazarus. He knows that he used to hunger and thirst in the body, while as God he fed five thousand people from five loaves. And he knows that while a human body lay in the tomb, it was raised as God’s body by the Word himself. [p]

Dionysius taught exactly this. In his letter to Euphranor and Ammonius, with Sabellius in view, he wrote about what is said of the Savior as man. To that class belong the sayings, “I am the vine, and my Father is the vinedresser,” and “faithful to him who made him,” and “He created me,” and “made so much better than the angels.” But he was not ignorant of the passages, “I am in the Father and the Father in me,” and “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” We know that he mentioned these in his other letters, and while mentioning them there, he also mentioned the human attributes of the Lord. For just as “being in the form of God he did not count it a prize to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,” and “though he was rich, yet for our sake he became poor,” so, while there are lofty and rich descriptions of his divinity, there are also humble and poor expressions that relate to his coming in the flesh. [s]

That these are used of the Savior as man is clear on the following grounds. The vinedresser is different in substance from the vine, while the branches are of one substance with it and akin to it, and are in fact undivided from the vine, it and they having one and the same origin. But, as the Lord said, he is the vine, and we are the branches. If, then, the Son is of one substance with us and has the same origin as we do, let us grant that in this respect the Son is different in substance from the Father, as the vine is from the vinedresser. But if the Son is different from what we are, and he is the Word of the Father, while we are made of earth and are descendants of Adam, then this expression ought not to be applied to the Word in his divinity, but to his coming as man. For so the Savior also said: “I am the vine, you are the branches, my Father is the vinedresser.” We are akin to the Lord according to the body, and for that reason he said, “I will declare your name to my brothers.” And just as the branches are of one substance with the vine and come from it, so we too, having bodies of the same kind as the Lord’s body, receive from his fullness, and have that body as our root for our resurrection and our salvation. But the Father is called the vinedresser, for it was he who through his Word cultivated the vine, that is, the Savior’s humanity, and who through his own Word prepared for us a way to a kingdom; and no one comes to the Lord unless the Father draws him to him.

This being the sense of the expression, it follows that it is of the vine, understood in this way, that it is written, “who was faithful to him who created him,” and “made so much better than the angels,” and “He created me.” For when he had taken what he was to offer on our behalf, that is, his body from the Virgin Mary, then it is written of him that he had been created and formed and made; for such phrases are fitting for men. Moreover, it is not after taking the body that he was made better than the angels; otherwise he would seem to have been less than them, or equal to them, before. But writing to Jews, and comparing the Lord’s human ministry with Moses, he said, “having been made so much better than the angels,” because the law was spoken through angels; for “the law was given through Moses, but grace came through Jesus Christ,” and the gift of the Spirit. And whereas in those days the law was preached from Dan to Beersheba, now “their sound has gone out into all lands,” and the Gentiles worship Christ, and through him know the Father. These things, then, are written of the Savior as man, and in no other way. [u]

Well then, when Dionysius wrote of the Son’s human traits and so called him a creature, did he mean, as the enemies of Christ keep repeating, that he was one man among others? Or when he said that the Word was not the Father’s own in substance, did he hold that he was of one substance with us men? Certainly he did not write that way in his other letters. In them he not only shows a correct opinion, but all but cries out through them against these people, as if to say: “I do not share your opinion, you enemies of God, and my writings did not give Arius a pretext for ungodliness. But when I wrote to Ammon and Euphranor because of those who were following Sabellius, I mentioned the vine and the vinedresser and used other expressions like them, so that by pointing out the human traits of the Lord I might persuade those men not to say that it was the Father who was made man. For just as the vinedresser is not the vine, so the one who came in the body was not the Father but the Word. And the Word, having come to be in the vine, was called the vine because of his bodily kinship with the branches, that is, with us. In this sense, then, I wrote as I did to Euphranor and Ammonius. But I confront your shamelessness with the other letters I have written, so that people of sound mind may know the defense they contain, and my right mind in the faith of Christ.” If the Arians had sound minds, then, this is how they should have thought and judged about the bishop, “for all things are plain to those who understand, and right to those who find knowledge.” But they have not understood the faith of the catholic church, and so they have fallen into ungodliness. Crippled in their understanding as a result, they think even straight things are crooked; they call light darkness, and think darkness is light. So it is necessary to quote also from the other letters of Dionysius, and to state why they were written, to the greater condemnation of the heretic. For it was from them that we ourselves learned to think and write about the man as we are doing. [w]

The occasion of his writing the other letters was this. Bishop Dionysius had heard about affairs in Pentapolis and, out of zeal for religion, had written, as I said above, his letter to Euphranor and Ammonius against the heresy of Sabellius. Some of the brothers belonging to the church, men of right opinions, did not ask him so as to learn from himself how he had written, but went up to Rome and spoke against him in the presence of his namesake Dionysius, the bishop of Rome. When the bishop of Rome heard it, he wrote at the same time against the partisans of Sabellius and against those who held the very opinions Arius was cast out of the church for voicing. He called it an equal and opposite ungodliness to agree with Sabellius, or with those who say that the Word of God is a thing made and formed and originated. He also wrote to Dionysius to tell him what they had said about him. And Dionysius at once wrote back, and gave his books the title “A Refutation and a Defense.” Here, mark the detestable gang of Christ’s enemies, and how they themselves have stirred up their own disgrace against themselves. Since Dionysius, bishop of Rome, also wrote against those who said that the Son of God was a creature and a created thing, it is plain that the heresy of the Arian enemies of Christ has been anathematized by everyone, not now for the first time, but from long ago. And Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, in making his defense about the letter he had written, shows in his turn that he neither thinks as they claim nor ever held the Arian error at all.

The mere fact that Dionysius made a defense about the matters these people harp on is enough to condemn the Arians completely and to show their malice. For he did not write in angry controversy, but to defend himself on the points where he was under suspicion. And in defending himself against charges, what does he do but dispose of every charge he was suspected of, and by that very fact convict the Arian madmen of malice? But to complete their confusion by means of what he wrote in his defense, come, let me set his actual words before you. From them you will learn, first, that the Arians are malicious, and second, that Dionysius has nothing to do with their error. To begin with, then, he wrote his letter as a Refutation and a Defense. Surely this means that he aims to refute false statements and is defending what he has written, showing that he did not write as Arius supposed, but that when he mentioned what is said of the Lord in his human aspect, he was not unaware that he was the Word and Wisdom, undivided from the Father. Next, he blames those who spoke against him for not quoting his words as a whole, but cutting them up, and for speaking not in good faith but dishonestly and as they pleased. And he compares them to those who used to attack the letters of the blessed apostle. This complaint of his entirely clears him of any sinister suspicion. For if he considers Paul’s detractors to be like his own, he shows precisely this: that he wrote as he did in Paul’s sense. At any rate, in answering his opponents’ charges one by one, he explains all the passages they cited; and while in these he overthrows Sabellius, in his later letters he shows how sound and godly his own faith is. So, whereas they would have it that Dionysius held that “God was not always a Father; the Son did not always exist, but God existed without the Word, and the Son himself did not exist before he was begotten; on the contrary, there was a time when he was not, for he is not eternal but came into being later,” see how he replies! Most of what he said, whether in the form of inquiries, or of inferences drawn together, or of refutations by questioning, or of charges against his accusers, I leave out because of the length of his treatises, and I insert only what bears strictly on the charges against him. In answer to these, after some preliminary matter, he writes as follows in the first book, titled “Refutation and Defense.”

“For there was never a time when God was not a Father.” And he acknowledges this in what follows, “that Christ exists forever, being Word and Wisdom and Power. For it is not to be supposed that God, having at first no such offspring, afterward begot a Son. Rather, the Son has his being not from himself but from the Father.” A little further on he adds on the same subject: “But since he is the radiance of eternal light, he himself is certainly eternal. For since the light always exists, it is clear that the radiance must always exist as well. It is by its shining that the existence of light is perceived, and there cannot be light that does not give light. “Let us come back to our examples. If there is a sun, there is sunlight, there is day. If none of these exists, it is quite impossible for there to be a sun. If, then, the sun were eternal, the day too would never end. But in fact, since that is not so, the day begins and ends with the sun. But God is eternal light, never beginning and never ending. So the radiance lies before him eternally, and is with him without beginning and always begotten, shining in his presence, being that Wisdom which said, ‘I was the one in whom he rejoiced, and daily I was glad in his presence at all times.’” And again, after a little, he takes up the same subject in these words: “Since the Father, then, is eternal, the Son is eternal, being Light from Light. For if there is a parent, there is also a child. But if there were no child, how and of whom could there be a parent? But there are both, and that eternally.” Then again he adds: “Since God, then, is light, Christ is radiance; and since God is Spirit, for ‘God is Spirit,’ in the same way Christ is called breath, for he is ‘the breath of the power of God.’” And again, to quote the second book, he says: “But only the Son, who is always with the Father and is filled with the One who is, himself also is, from the Father.” [y]