Panarion (Against Heresies) 1 part 68/82

It was a mindset of vainglory or arrogance that produced it, or the appetite of desire, or envy toward one's neighbors, or provocation, or rashness.

But the whole of that blindness is from the devil — not that the devil has power to deceive one who is unwilling, but that each person becomes to himself the cause of the working of sin, 'in order that,' as it says, 'those who are approved may be made manifest.'

This Aerius is still alive in the flesh even to this day and survives in this life, being entirely an Arian.

For he thinks in no other way but as Arius did, and has sought after the doctrines of Arius even further and more extremely, being sharp of tongue and armed in his lips in this respect, so as to draw to himself a deceived host and multitude of those who are ever tickled in their hearing and slackened in their understanding.

For he himself too devised for his manner of life a certain great and fabulous vainglory, which produces something laughable to those of sound mind, yet through it he deceived and drew along many.

This man became a fellow-student of Eustathius of Sebaste, of the region called Pontus, that is, Lesser Armenia.

For the aforementioned Eustathius and Aerius were practicing asceticism together.

But when Eustathius attained to the episcopate, that man desired it all the more, but did not attain to it.

Eustathius seemed to court Aerius persistently.

For soon afterward he appointed him presbyter and entrusted to him the guest-house, which in Pontus is called the poorhouse.

For the leaders of the churches construct such institutions out of hospitality, and, having the maimed and the infirm lodge there, they supply them with provisions according to their means.

Since, then, his resentment did not cease, day by day the disputes increased and jealousy advanced between them, and evil words and slanders were spoken by Aerius against Eustathius.

And Bishop Eustathius, summoning Aerius, would flatter him, exhort him, threaten him, sternly rebuke him, entreat him — and accomplished nothing.

For that which had been sown from the beginning drove the matter on into great evil.

In the end, then, Aerius abandoned the poorhouse and withdrew; from that point on, like one wishing to find a pretext against an enemy or to loose an arrow against a foe, he kept searching for grounds, and thereafter, slandering Eustathius to everyone, he would say:

'He is no longer such a man, but has inclined toward the amassing of money and toward the acquisition of possessions of every kind.'

But these were slanderous accusations on his part; for in truth Eustathius, having the needs of the church in his hands, could not have acted otherwise.

And yet what Aerius said sounded plausible.

Now someone might suppose, since in speaking against Aerius we have brought forward Eustathius, that we also hold Eustathius in commendation.

For indeed not a few men admire his life and conduct.

Would that he had also thought rightly in matters of faith!

For he himself too held to the doctrine of Arius from beginning to end, and not even the afflictions of persecution corrected him.

For he was persecuted along with Basil, Eleusius, and the rest.

He also seems to have gone as an envoy, together with other bishops, to the late Liberius of Rome, and to have subscribed both to the exposition of the council held at Nicaea and to the confession of orthodoxy.

But afterward, as though he had recalled himself and risen up as from a dream, he did not cease to revisit again his original convictions belonging to the false doctrine of the Arians.

Nevertheless, our discourse concerns Aerius.

Therefore we must turn back again to him.

This Aerius, on account of such talk, at first prided himself on renunciation, but having abandoned the poorhouse, he drew along a great throng of both men and women.

And he himself, together with his faction, was driven away from the churches, and from the fields, villages, and the other cities.

Often, together with a great crowd of their own, they would continue on, snowed upon in the open country, lodging in the open air and under rocks, taking refuge in the woods.

His speech was more that of a madman than of one in a sound human condition, and he says:

'...a presbyter? This one differs in no way from that one:'

'for there is one order, and one honor,' he says, 'and one dignity.'

'The bishop lays on hands,' he says, 'but so does the presbyter also:'

'The bishop confers the washing, and likewise also the presbyter:'

'The bishop performs the service of the sacred dispensation, and the presbyter does so likewise:'

'The bishop sits upon the throne, and the presbyter sits also.'

By this he deceived many, who indeed took him as their leader.

'What is this Passover which is kept among you? You cling once more to Jewish fables.'

'For it is not necessary,' he says, 'to keep the Passover:'

'for Christ our Passover has been sacrificed.'

'By what reasoning,' he says, 'do you name the names of the dead after their death? For if the living one prays,' he says, 'or performs some good office, what benefit will the dead one receive? But if the prayer of those here altogether benefits those there, then let no one at all be pious or do good, but let him acquire some friends, by whatever means he wishes—either persuading them with money or engaging friends at his death—and let them pray on his behalf, so that he may suffer nothing there, and so that the incurable sins he committed may not be called to account.'

'But neither,' he says, 'shall there be any appointed fast,'

'for these things are Jewish, and under a yoke of slavery:'

'for the law is not laid down for the righteous man, but for patricides and matricides and the rest.'

'For if I wish to fast at all, I shall choose for myself whatever day I please to fast, on account of my freedom.'

Hence among them it has become rather a point of honor to fast on the Lord's Day, but to eat on Wednesday and on the eve of the Sabbath.

Often, however, he says, they also fast on Wednesday—not by any rule, but by their own private choice.

And during the days of the Passover, when among us there is sleeping upon the ground, chastity, hardship, dry-eating, prayers, vigils and fasts, and all the soul-saving observances of the holy Pascha, they themselves from early morning purchase meat and wine, filling their own veins, and burst out into laughter, mocking those who perform this holy service of the week of the Passover.

For even if these men have adopted the manner of the renunciant life, it is not actually practiced among them; rather, a great deal of meat-eating and wine-drinking goes on—except perhaps if some rare individuals among them should wish, of their own choice, to do otherwise.

Rather, the majority of them indulge in abundant feasts of meat-eating and wine-drinking, as I have often said.

These are the things which Aerius has vomited forth upon human life.

He thus discloses both his way of thinking and his unbelief, and, again, the follies which through him have been thunderstruck into human life as a maliciously contrived art.

Let us now come to the refutations directed against him, relating a few things and so passing on.

And that the whole thing is full of folly is evident, to those possessed of understanding, from this very point—his saying that bishop and presbyter are equal.

For how could this be possible? For the one office is that which generates fathers:

for it begets fathers for the church, whereas the other, being unable to beget fathers, begets children for the church through the regeneration of the washing, but not fathers or teachers.

And how would it be possible for the presbyter to appoint a bishop, when he does not have the laying on of hands for ordination, or to say that he is equal to the bishop? The aforesaid Aerius was deceived by his own contentiousness and zeal.

He brings forward, to his own deception and that of his hearers, the fact that the apostle writes to presbyters and deacons and does not write to bishops, and yet says to the bishop, 'Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which you received through the laying on of the hands of the presbytery'; while again in another place he writes to bishops and deacons—so that, he says, the bishop and the presbyter are one and the same.

But he who has failed to understand the sequence of the truth, and has not encountered the deepest histories, does not know that, the preaching being still new, the holy apostle wrote according to whatever circumstances presented themselves.

Where bishops had already been appointed, he wrote to bishops and deacons:

for the apostles were not able to establish everything at once.

For through these two offices the affairs of the church can be fulfilled.

But where no one worthy of the episcopate was found, the place remained without a bishop:

but where there was need, and there were men worthy of the episcopate, bishops were appointed.

But where there was no great number of people, no presbyters were found among them to be appointed, and they were content with the bishop alone for that place.

But it is impossible for there to be a bishop without a deacon.

And the holy apostle took care that there should be deacons for the bishop, for the sake of service, the church thus receiving the fullness of its ordered dispensation.

Such, at that time, was the state of the various places:

for indeed no single thing possessed everything from the very beginning, but as time went on, the things needed for its completion were being furnished.

For at once, according to the old covenant, Moses is sent into Egypt, sent by God with a rod alone.

But upon his entering Egypt, his brother Aaron is added to him as a help.

Then, after his brother came to believe him, the council of elders and the leaders of the people at that time gathered to him.

And after this, as the work grew strong and its order was being drawn together, he passed through the sea.

And things were not yet arranged according to the law, until the Lord called him up to the mountain.

He gives him the tablets and shows him how to construct a tabernacle, and to appoint leaders—rulers of ten, rulers of fifty, rulers of a hundred, rulers of a thousand.

And do you see how things gradually expand? 'See,' he says, 'that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on Mount Sinai.'

And do you see how there was added to the legislation the seven-branched lampstand, the ankle-length robe, the priestly vestments, the bells and mantles, the ephods and headdresses, the mitres and settings of various stones, ladles, censers, lavers, altars, dishes, the masmaroth (which are strainers), the midikoth (which are called ladles), the machonoth (which are stands), and all that the law relates—the cherubim and the rest, the ark of the covenant, its carrying-poles and rings, the tabernacle with its curtains and skins dyed red, its clasps and other fittings, the gatekeepers and trumpets both hammered and curved, of gold and of silver, of bronze and of horn, and everything else that the law prescribed—various sacrifices, and teachings.

Since these things did not exist from the beginning, did not matters attain to stability only after the order came into being? So it was too with what was written by the apostle, until the church was enlarged, until it advanced to its own proper measure, until it filled the world with understanding—she who has been most rightly ordered by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And so the argument of Aerius fell to the ground.

And that they cannot be the same the divine word teaches through the holy apostle, indicating who is a bishop and who is a presbyter, as he says to Timothy, who was a bishop: 'Do not rebuke a presbyter, but exhort him as a father.'

What need would there be for a bishop not to rebuke a presbyter harshly, if he did not hold authority above the presbyter? As again he says: 'Do not readily entertain an accusation against a presbyter, except on the testimony of two or three witnesses:'

and he did not say to any of the presbyters:

'Do not entertain an accusation against a bishop'; nor did he write to any of the presbyters that he should not rebuke a bishop.

And you see that the fall of everyone who is shaken by the devil is no small thing.

Let us now look also at his other teachings, and examine them carefully.

And let us speak first concerning the Passover, since he says, 'Christ our Passover has been sacrificed:'

let us see whether the very one who said this did not himself keep it.

For it is written that he hastened, so that he might keep Pentecost in Jerusalem.

As for the Passover, it is evident how they command that nothing at all be partaken of except bread and salt and water, and on what day it is to be observed, and how the fast is to be broken at the dawning of the Lord's Day.

But who knows these things better—this deceived man, who has but lately appeared and still to this day lives out his life among us, or those who were witnesses before us, holding the tradition of the church before we did, and having thus received it from the fathers themselves, the fathers in their turn having learned it from those who came before them—just as the church, having received it from her own fathers, holds fast even to this day the true faith and the traditions? So let his notion concerning the Passover fall to the ground once more.

Then again, even if the same apostles had not spoken concerning this very matter of the Wednesday and Friday fasts in the Ordinance, we would still be able to demonstrate it from every other quarter:

yet in fact they write about this precisely, and the church has received it, and it has been agreed upon throughout the whole world—for this was so before Aerius and the Aerians who came from him ever existed.

For perhaps in this too he has received a most fitting name:

for he had an airy spirit, out of uncleanness, from the aerial spirits of wickedness, which had come to dwell within him against the church. (A play on the name 'Aerius' and the Greek word for 'airy.')

Next, concerning the naming of the names of the departed, what could be more urgent than this? What more timely and admirable than this—that the living should believe that those who have gone before are alive, and are not reduced to non-existence, but exist and live with the Master; and how the most solemn preaching would set it forth, namely, that there is hope for those who pray on behalf of their brethren, as though they were merely away on a journey? The prayer made on their behalf is likewise beneficial, even if it does not remove their faults altogether, yet still, because we, being often in this world, stumble both unwillingly and willingly, so that the more perfect love might thereby be shown.

For indeed we make remembrance both on behalf of the righteous and on behalf of sinners:

on behalf of sinners, entreating the mercy of God; but on behalf of the righteous, and the fathers, and the patriarchs, prophets and apostles and evangelists and martyrs and confessors, bishops and anchorites, and every rank of the saints—so that we may set the Lord Jesus Christ apart from the rank of human beings, and render to him honor and reverence, being mindful that the Lord is not to be equated with any human being, even though each of them should have accomplished ten thousand deeds of righteousness and more.

For how could this be possible? For the one is God, and the other is man; the one is in heaven, while the other, because of the remains that are upon the earth, is on the earth—save for those who rose and entered together with him into the bridal chamber, as the holy Gospel says: 'And many bodies of the saints arose, and entered with him into the holy city.'

But which holy city does he mean? For the statement is fulfilled in both senses, with reference to the one here and to the one above.

That they first entered the earthly Jerusalem together with him, this is clear.

But before the Savior ascended into heaven, no one had ascended, until they ascended together with him.

For no one has ascended into heaven except him who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.

But concerning these matters, when we came to that place, we set forth the two statements.

But if someone should say, 'Did they then enter into Jerusalem?' —

let him learn that on that day, when the doors were shut, Jesus stood in the place where the disciples were gathered, and said to them:

Then I shall again take up the sequence concerning this, showing that the church necessarily performs this, having received the tradition from the fathers.

But who will be able to abolish a mother's ordinance or a father's law? As the words spoken by Solomon signify: 'Hear, my son, the words of your father, and do not reject the ordinances of your mother,' showing that the Father — that is, God — together with the Only-begotten and the Holy Spirit, taught both in writing and unwritten.

But our mother the church has ordinances laid down within her that are indissoluble, incapable of being abolished.

Since, then, the ordinances in the church are both excellent and all wondrously effective, this deceiver too has again been refuted.

And having passed by this one too, crushing him like a dung-beetle, or a blister-beetle, or the creature called the buprestis, by the firm foundation of the church and by the power of God, let us again proceed to what follows, calling upon God as our helper.

Against the Anomoeans, [Heresy] 50, but 70 in the series.

There are again certain people called Anomoeans.

They had as their leader a certain deacon named Aetius, who was advanced because of his idle chatter by George of Alexandria, who had become bishop of both the Arians and the Melitians, and who, in the days of Julian — as I have already indicated above — was paraded through the city on a camel; and who, first having been shut up and having suffered much at the hands of the Greeks, and having been paraded, as I said, and beaten with clubs, was then dragged through nearly the whole city and so died, and after death was burned, and, together with the bones of many cattle and animals, was gathered into ashes, and afterward was scattered to the winds by them, and so met his end.

Now someone might say concerning him who died in this way: 'Did he not then bear witness, having suffered these things at the hands of the Greeks?' And if indeed his struggle had been on behalf of the truth, and these things had happened to him at the hands of the Greeks out of envy and because of his confession of Christ, he would truly have been ranked among the martyrs, and not among the least.

But the cause was not his confession of Christ; rather, it was because, in what was called his so-called episcopate, he inflicted much violence upon the city and the populace, in one instance seizing from people the inheritances left to them by their parents.

And, lest we should be slandering the man —

for there are many things that were done by him to the Alexandrians — how he seized all the natron trade for himself, and how he devised means to administer the marshes of papyrus and reed and the salt-lakes, and to divert their profits to himself.

So that no shameful means of gain, through much scheming, was neglected by him, even down to the smallest matters — he even devised biers of a certain fixed number for the bodies of those who died, and without those appointed by him, no body of the deceased could be carried out for burial, especially in the case of strangers — not out of hospitality, but, as they used to say, for the sake of worldly profit.

For if anyone buried a body by himself, he incurred danger.

And thus some profit was brought to him from each body that was carried out.

And I pass over in silence the other things — how much the man indulged in luxuries and other things, and also in cruelty.

For all these reasons, then, the sons of the Alexandrians — the Greeks especially — having harbored wrath against him, brought about this end for him.

Now, the occasion for my speaking of this arose from the fact that, having heard of the death of Constantius, the Alexandrians themselves immediately destroyed him in this manner; my subject-matter concerning this has arisen for no other reason than because of Aetius, whom he had appointed deacon.

This Aetius was, according to worldly learning, uneducated up until his full maturity, as the account goes.

But he conceived the idea — having gone down and studied in Alexandria under an Aristotelian philosopher and sophist, and having supposedly learned their art of dialectic — of doing nothing else but fashioning arguments about the doctrine of God into syllogistic forms.

He undertook this at his leisure, rising at dawn and sitting continually at it until evening — I mean, at speaking and defining about God by means of a kind of geometry and figures — teaching and completing his system.

And being a most thoroughgoing Arian and holding the frenzied teaching of Arius, he became an even greater destroyer, wearing himself out on these matters, and daily sharpening his tongue against the Son of God and against the Holy Spirit.

He was accused by certain persons and reported to Constantius himself, and underwent exile in the regions of the Taurus.

He gave himself away, bringing his views out into the open with brazen impudence.

For having rubbed off his forehead in exceeding shamelessness, he displayed the vomitings of his evil teaching without omission.

For he dared to say that the Son is unlike the Father, and that he is not the same in Godhead with the Father.

Not that we ourselves rely upon mere likeness —

for we know that the Son is related to the Father beyond mere likeness, as the same in Godhead, and equal, and not altered in any way at all.

For there are many things made like unto God, yet not the same as, or equal to, the Godhead — just as man too is according to his image and likeness, yet not the same as God in point of equality.

And the kingdom of heaven is likened to a grain of mustard seed, yet the seed is not the same as the kingdom, nor does it in any way partake of its nature; and it is likened to leaven, and likened to ten virgins, and to a man who was a householder, as regards likeness, but not as regards identity.

But since the Son is like the Father, and more than like — because he is identical with the Father and equal to the Father — it has been our earnest care to establish for you not merely the likeness, but the identity and equality: as God from God, and Son from Father, and not other in essence than he, but begotten from him.

So also concerning the Holy Spirit.

But to this fine fellow Aetius, it did not even seem right to hold the Son to be like the Father.

We, however, do not confess by relying solely upon the term 'like,' but by truly maintaining the constitution of the faith and the honoring of the Trinity.

For silver is likened to tin, and gold to bronze, and lead to iron, and precious stones are made to resemble glass; and the likeness does not indicate identity of nature, but only a resemblance.

Here, too, concerning the Scripture, which confesses that the Son is the image of the invisible God, we — having through a divine gift precisely determined the force of the divine Scripture, which said to the Pharisees, 'You know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God' — understand, then, that this relationship is twofold; and taking the usage as drawn from human analogy for the sake of illustrating the expression, we make it clear.

For a man's image, too, is spoken of, and it is both like and unlike him.

For the one kind of image is represented by means of colors, while the other is by means of generative consubstantiality — as when a son who is begotten bears the stamp of his lineage in relation to his father; and thus the image is found, in the end, through identity and consubstantiality and exact impression.

And so for us the only-begotten Son of God is identical with the Father's Godhead and dignity, and equal, through a true image and a likeness that is not altered but unaltered — as a Son truly and consubstantially begotten of the Father.

So too in the case of the Holy Spirit, on account of his proceeding from the Father — even though he has not been begotten, because of the only-begottenness that belongs to the Son.

But this Aetius, wishing all the more to resist the confession of the truth, does not even attempt to confess the likeness of the Son to the Father.

For the other Arians, who took their pretext from Lucian and Origen, having come to be associated with a certain Asterius, one of the sophists, who had lapsed in the persecution that occurred under Maximian —

for some of them said that he was a creature, as has been shown by me in the heresies above, since each of the aforementioned defined the Son of God as a creature, and taught that the Holy Spirit was a creature of a creature; while others said that the Son was like the Father, even though they defined him as a creature.

But this man revealed the whole of their irony, and his own impiety, plainly showing the harshness and shamelessness of his doctrine toward the Lord.

And, as the truth stands, the precise reasoning of this Aetius, who is also called the Anomoean, is most justly directed against those who introduce the notion of 'creature.'

And just as his argument would indeed have force against the Arians who consider the Son of God and the Holy Spirit to be created, so too, later, being excommunicated by the Arians themselves — I mean by those around Eudoxius and Menophilus and others — he argued before the emperor at that time, saying that as they themselves hold, so do I hold, just as they all do.

But what is true in me, they conceal; and what I plainly reveal and confess, all these say the same thing, but conceal it — while the emperor at that time was not opposed to the Arian stage-craft, but supposed that he was thereby, so to speak, acting piously.

For refusing to confess the Son of God as a creature, he gave offense, and was consigned to banishment, as has already been indicated above.

From this point, the origin of the heresy came about; and the man, being carried, from this single starting-point, in his mind into a great torrent of evils, terribly wounded his own soul and the souls of those who were persuaded by him.

For this man later fell into the delusion of saying — he himself, and those who had been made his disciples — 'Thus,' he says, 'I know God most clearly, and I know and understand him to such a degree, that I do not know myself as well as I know God.'

And there are other things too which we have heard concerning him, showing how terribly the devil, through him, contrived to destroy the souls of men who were enticed.

For among them, no concern is shown for gravity of life, none for fasting, none for the commandments of God, none for any other of the things ordained by God for men unto life; rather, the only argument ready at hand for them is that, by means of a single word, one may lay hold of the whole of salvation.

It is as if someone, having thrown everything from a ship and made a total jettison of the whole cargo, should hold onto some one thing among the things loaded onto the ship — a piece of pottery, say, or something else — supposing that by means of a single vessel he could swim across the whole sea and thereby procure his own salvation; but such a person is deceived, and it does not turn out as he supposed regarding the vessel in his hand, and he is later submerged, so that he falls short of the whole enterprise and of his salvation.

So too this Aetius and the Anomoeans who come from him, bringing forward the saying spoken by the Lord in the gospel, expound the wording, but, not rightly grasping its meaning, both he himself is deceived, and they are deceived.

For whenever anyone happens to meet them and reminds them about the commandments, they say this, that the saying declares that there is nothing else that God seeks from us, but only that we should know him — just as, they say, Christ himself said, when he said: 'Father, grant them to have life in themselves.'

'And this is life eternal, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.'

For we have heard also some who say that they clearly heard from him the following, when certain persons were accused, having been caught in an indecency involving a woman, and were being condemned by them.

he, however, did not even take this matter seriously, but even mocked it as of no consequence, declaring that such a thing was nothing at all —

for it is merely a bodily need and a bodily service.

'For just as,' he said, 'we scratch around the ear' — and I myself am ashamed to repeat all that this unclean man related — 'taking,' he said, 'a feather or a straw, we scratch the ear, and thus we stop the itching about our hearing; so also this,' he said, 'happens according to nature, and if anyone performs it, he does not sin.'

And as for all such things, the man, relating them, taught everything in a watered-down and evil manner — so that from their very deeds it might be seen what sort of man he is — while the words of the Lord clearly shed light for us, as he said: 'Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves.'

'By their fruits you shall know them.'

'Do men gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles?' So too the audacity of this man's folly in everything is exposed from this quarter and from that.