On the Opinion of Dionysius
Letter of Athanasius concerning Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, showing that he too was against the Arian heresy, like the Synod of Nicæa, and that the Arians in vain libel him in claiming him as on their side.
- The Arian appeal to Dionysius a slander against him.
You have been tardy in informing me of the present argument between yourself and the enemies of Christ; for even before your courtesy wrote to me, I had made diligent enquiry, and learned about the matter, of which I heard with pleasure. I approved of the right opinion entertained by your piety concerning our blessed fathers, while on the present occasion I once more recognise the unreasonableness of the Arian madmen. For whereas their heresy has no ground in reason, nor express proof from holy writ, they were always resorting to shameless subterfuges and plausible fallacies. But they have now also ventured to slander the fathers: and this is not inconsistent, but fully of a piece with their perversity. For what marvel is it if men who have presumed to ‘take counsel against the Lord and against His Christ,’ are also vilifying the blessed Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, as a partisan and accomplice of their own? For if they are pleased to extol a man, for the support of their own heresy, even if they call him blessed, they cast upon him no slight affront, but a great one indeed; just like robbers or men of evil life who, when branded for their own practices, claim sober persons as being of their number, and thus defame their sober character.
- The Arian position inconsistent with Holy Scripture.
If then they have confidence in their opinions and statements, let them broach their heresy nakedly, and show from it if they think they have any religious argument whether from Scripture, or from human reason, in their defense. But if they have nothing of the kind, let them hold their peace. For they will find nothing from any quarter except the greater condemnation of themselves. Firstly from the Scriptures, in that John says, ‘In the beginning was the Word.’ whereas they say, ‘he was not before he was begotten:’ while David sings, in the character of the Father, ‘my heart uttered a good Word’, whom they allege to be in thought only, and originated from nothing. Further, whereas John once more says in the Gospel, ‘all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made,’ while Paul writes, ‘there is one Lord Jesus Christ by whom are all things’, and elsewhere, ‘all things were created in Him’, how will they have the boldness (or rather how will they escape disgrace) to oppose the sayings of the saints, by saying that the artificer of all things is a creature, and that He is a created thing in whom all things created have come into being and subsist? Nor, secondly, is any religious argument from human reason left them in their defense. For what man, Greek or barbarian, presumes to call one, whom he confesses to be God, a created thing, or to say that he was not before he was made? Or what man, when he has heard Him whom he believes to be God alone say, ‘This is My beloved Son?’, and ‘my heart uttered a good Word,’ will venture even to say that the Word out of the heart of God has come to being out of nothing? Or that the Son is a created thing and not the very offspring of Him that speaks? Or again, who that hears Him whom he believes to be Lord and Saviour say, ‘I am in the Father and the Father in Me,’ and ‘I and the Father are one’, will presume to put asunder what He has made one and maintained indivisible?
- The Arians appeal to Dionysius as the Jews did to Abraham: but with equally little reason.
Seeing this themselves, accordingly, and having no confidence in their own position, they utter falsehoods against religious men. But it would be better for them, when isolated, and perceiving that under examination they were at a loss and put to silence on all sides, rather to have turned back from the way of error and not to claim men whom they do not know, lest being confuted by them also they should carry off all the more disgrace. But perhaps they do not wish ever to depart from this wickedness of theirs; for they emulate this characteristic of Caiaphas and his party, just as they have learned from them to deny Christ. For they too, when the Lord had done so so many works, by which He showed Himself to be the Christ the Son of the Living God, and being convicted by him, from thenceforth in all things thinking and speaking against the Scripture, and unable for a moment to face the proofs against themselves, betook themselves to the patriarch with the words, ‘We have Abraham to our father’, thus thinking to cloke their own unreasonableness. But neither did they gain anything by these words, nor will these men, by speaking of Dionysius, be able to escape the guilt of the others. For the Lord convicted the latter of their wicked deeds by the words, ‘This did not Abraham ’, while the same truth again shall convict these men of their impiety and falsehood. For the Bishop Dionysius did not hold with Arius, nor was he ignorant of the truth. On the contrary, both the Jews of that day, and the new Jews of the present day inherited their mad enmity against Christ from their father the devil. Well then, a strong proof that here once more these men are saying what is not true, but are maligning the man, is the fact that neither was he condemned and expelled from the church for impiety by other bishops, as these men have been from the clergy, nor did he of his own accord leave the church as the partisan of a heresy, but died honourably within it, and his memory is retained and registered along with the fathers to the present day. For if he had held with these men, or not vindicated what he had written, without doubt he too would have been treated as these men have been.