Writing on whether
it is proper for Athanasius to use extra-biblical terms such as “same substance”
(homoousios):
“But,” they [the Arians] say, “all this is not
written: and we reject these words as unscriptural.” But this again, is an
unblushing excuse in their mouths. For if they think everything must be rejected
which is not written, wherefore, when the Arian party invent such a heap of
phrases, not from Scripture, “out of nothing,” and “the Son was not before His
generation,” and “Once He was not,” and “He is unalterable,” and “The Father is
ineffable and invisible to the Son,” and “the Son knows not even His own
essence,” and all that Arius has vomited in his light and irreligious Thalia,
why do not they speak against these, but rather take their part, and on that
account content with their own fathers? And, in what Scripture did they on
their part find “Unoriginate,” and “the term essence,” and “there are three
subsistences,” and “Christ is not very God,” and “He is one of the hundred
sheep,” and “God’s Wisdom is ingenerate and without beginning, but the created
powers are many, of which Christ is one?” or how, when in the so-called
Dedication, Acacius and Eusebius and their fellows used expressions not in
Scripture, and said that “the First-born of the creation” was “the exact Image
of the essence and power and will and glory,” do they complain of the Fathers,
for making mention of unscriptural expressions, and especially of essence? For
they out either to complain of themselves, or to find no fault with the
Fathers.
Taken from Athanasius,
Councils of Ariminum and Selucia, 36 in Schaff, Nicene and Post-Nicene
Fathers series II, vol. 4 p. 470.
The above
quotation, one of many similar comments by Athanasius, should be carefully
considered when apologists for sola scriptura claim Athanasius held to the
formal sufficiency of the biblical texts. Not only should one be careful with
the supposed biblical “proof-texts” one hears offered for any given position,
one must also be weary of eisegesis being performed on a patristic author.
