The Illustration from the Gifts of the Spirit

Arius, then, raves when he says that the Son is from nothing and that once he was not. Sabellius also raves when he says that the Father is Son, and again that the Son is Father, one in hypostasis and two in name. And he raves also in using the grace of the Spirit as an example. For he says, “As there are ‘varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit,’ so also the Father is the same, but is widened into Son and Spirit.” Now this is full of absurdity. For if it is with God as it is with the Spirit, the Father will be Word and Holy Spirit, becoming Father to one, Son to another, and Spirit to another, fitting himself to the need of each. He will be Son and Spirit in name, but in reality Father only. He will have a beginning, in that he becomes a Son, and will then cease to be called Father. He will be made man in name, but in truth will not even come among us. He will speak untruly in saying, “I and the Father,” while in reality he is the Father himself. And all the other absurdities will follow that result in the case of Sabellius. And the names of Son and Spirit will necessarily cease when the need has been met, and what happens will be nothing but make-believe, because it has been displayed in name and not in truth. And if the name of Son ceases, as they hold, then the grace of baptism will cease too, for it was given in the Son. Indeed, what will follow but the annihilation of the creation? For if the Word came forth so that we might be created, and when he had come forth we came to be, it is plain that when he withdraws into the Father, as they say, we will be no longer. For he will be as he was; so also we will not be, just as then we were not. For when he has no longer gone forth, there will no longer be a creation. This, then, is absurd. [a]