1. Ἡ μὲν περὶ τῆς
θεοσεβείας καὶ τῆς τῶν ὅλων ἀληθείας γνῶσις οὐ τοσοῦτον τῆς παρὰ τῶν ἀνθρώπων
διδασκαλίας δεῖται, ὅσον ἀφ’ ἑαυτῆς ἔχει τὸ γνώριμον· μόνον γὰρ οὐχὶ καθ’ ἡμέραν
τοῖς ἔργοις κέκραγε, καὶ ἡλίου λαμπρότερον ἑαυτὴν διὰ τῆς Χριστοῦ διδασκαλίας ἐπιδείκνυται·
ποθοῦντι δὲ σοι ὅμως τὰ περὶ ταύτης ἀκοῦσαι, φέρε, ὦ μακάριε, ὡς ἂν οἷοί τε ὦμεν,
ὀλίγα τῆς κατὰ Χριστὸν πίστεως ἐκθώμεθα, δυναμένῳ μὲν σοι καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν θείων
λογίων ταύτην εὑρεῖν, φιλοκάλως δὲ ὅμως καὶ παρ’ ἑτέρων ἀκούοντι. Αὐτάρκεις
μὲν γάρ εἰσιν αἱ ἅγιαι καὶ θεόπνευστοι Γραφαὶ πρὸς τὴν τῆς ἀληθείας ἀπαγγελίαν·
εἰσὶ δὲ καὶ πολλοὶ τῶν μακαρίων ἡμῶν διδασκάλων εἰς ταῦτα συνταχθέντες λόγοι· οἷς
ἐάν τις ἐντύχῃ, εἴσεται μέν πως τὴν τῶν Γραφῶν ἑρμηνείαν, ἧς δὲ ὀρέγεται
γνώσεως τυχεῖν δυνήσεται. Ἀλλ’ ἐπειδὴ τὰς τῶν διδασκάλων συντάξεις ἐν χερσὶ
νῦν οὐκ ἔχομεν, ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστιν ἃ παρ’ ἐκείνων ἐμάθομεν, ταῦτα καὶ ἀπαγγέλλειν
καὶ γράφειν σοι· λέγω δὴ τὴν κατὰ τὸν Σωτῆρα Χριστὸν πίστιν, ἵνα μήτε εὐτελῆ
τις τὴν τοῦ καθ’ ἡμᾶς λόγου διδασκαλίαν ἡγήσηται, μήτε ἄλογον τὴν εἰς Χριστὸν
πίστιν ὑπολάβῃ, ἥν ποτε διαβάλλοντες Ἕλληνες χλευάζουσι καὶ πλατὺ γελῶσι καθ’ ἡμῶν,
οὐδὲν ἕτερον ἢ τὸν σταυρὸν τοῦ Χριστοῦ προφέροντες, ἐφ’ ᾧ μάλιστα καὶ τὴν ἀναισθησίαν
αὐτῶν οἰκτειρήσειεν ἄν τις, ὅτι, τὸν σταυρὸν διαβάλλοντες, οὐχ ὁρῶσι τὴν τούτου
δύναμιν πᾶσαν τὴν οἰκουμένην πεπληρωκυῖαν, καὶ ὅτι δι’ αὐτοῦ τὰ τῆς θεογνωσίας ἔργα
πᾶσι πεφανέρωται. (Athanasius, Against the Heathen, Part 1.1 [Migne PG 25:4])
1. The knowledge of piety and of all truth does not need human teaching
so much as it has recognition from itself; for it almost cries out every day in
its works, and it shows itself brighter than the sun through the teaching of
Christ. Yet since you are eager to hear what concerns it, come, blessed one,
let us set forth, as best we can, a few things about the faith according to
Christ. You are able to find this from the holy writings, but you are also
willing to hear it from others. For the holy and God-breathed Scriptures are
sufficient for the proclamation of the truth; and there are also many
discourses of our blessed teachers composed on these matters. By consulting
them one may gain some understanding of the Scriptures and obtain the knowledge
one seeks. But since we do not now have the writings of the teachers at
hand, it is necessary that what we have learned from them we should also tell
and write to you: I mean the faith in Christ our Savior, so that no one may
think the teaching of our word is trivial, or suppose the faith in Christ to be
irrational, as the Greeks who slander it mock and laugh at us, bringing forward
nothing else than the cross of Christ. On that account one might especially
pity their insensibility, because while they slander the cross they do not see
its power filling the whole inhabited world, and because through it the works
of the knowledge of God have been made manifest to all.
In response to James White’s attempt to use this passage as
evidence of Athanasius holding to the formal sufficiency of Scripture:
The first thing we must recognize
in order to understand Athanasius’s “high view of Scripture” is that in much of
his writing he is referring to the doctrine of the Incarnation. Much of what
Athanasius wrote concerns his controversy with the Arians, who did not believe
in the deity of Christ. Athanasius puzzles at why the Arians distort such seemingly
clear passages as Isaiah 7:14 and Matthew 1:23: “But what does that mean, if
not that God has come in the Flesh?” (NPNF 4:577). In Athanasius’s opinion,
these Scriptures are clear and sufficient to provide the necessary truth about
the nature of Christ. We have the same frustrations today when we battle with
Jehovah Witnesses who deny the deity of Christ. What seems clear to us in John
1:1 is not clear to them. Be that as it may, even if Scripture is as clear as
Athanasius believes it to be on the issue of Christ’s deity, he concedes that
Scripture does not precisely define the issue as perhaps other God-given
authorities can define it, namely, the Council of Nicea which introduced the
term homoousios into dogma to clarify Christ’s nature more exactly
(NPNF4:172). This council’s definition forever sealed the line of demarcation
between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. It was the Magisterium that came to the
rescue to clarify the “sufficient” Scripture.
In these arguments we must
remember that “sufficiency” is a relative term, subject to the conceptions of
those who use it. The main question is: what is Scripture sufficient for?
Is it sufficient for general knowledge of salvation, how we can best glorify
God, specific doctrines and practices, history and science? And what degree of
sufficiency can one expect from Scripture? Does Scripture exhaust a particular
dogma, is its information implicit or explicit, does it ignore certain dogmas,
and if it does ignore them what are we to believe and to whom do we go for
answers? Hence to argue that Athanasius stood for the “sufficiency” of
Scripture is an open mine-field, subject to a high degree of misrepresentation
and distortion. This is especially true since “sufficiency,” as much as
Athanasius preferred to use Scriptural terminology, is not a term Scripture
uses to describe itself. What we have discovered so far, however, is that as
much as Athanasius used Scripture, probably more than some Protestants do
today, he still remained faithful to all the doctrines of the Catholic Church,
claiming to find in Scripture the very doctrines that most Protestants deny
today, including the present Protestant apologist. We have also discovered that
Athanasius, through he was one of the most competent and knowledgeable
Scripture scholars of is day, consistently deferred the ultimate interpretation
of Scripture to those who had gone before him, never once denying any
traditional interpretation that had been handed down to him. If the Protestant
apologist could demonstrate instances in which Athanasius had rejected the
official dogmatic interpretation of the Church prior to him, he would have
reason to question Athanasius’s view of Tradition; but, in fact, there are no
such instances.
As we close this section on
Athanasius, let us go back to our present apologist’s initial quote from
Athanasius: “…the Scriptures, by genuinely applying your mind to them, will
learn from them more completely and clearly the exact detail of what we have said.
For they were spoken and written by God, through men who spoke for God.” What
the apologist did not quote was the rest of the paragraph, which reads: “But we
impart of what we have learned from inspired teachers who have been
conversant with them, who have also become martyrs for the deity of Christ,
to your zeal for learning, in turn.” Again, Athanasius is not resting on his
own laurels as a mighty exegete of Scripture, but on the inspired teachers
and those who have conversed with them. The inspired teachers were the
apostles and those that conversed with them were the Fathers succeeding them,
as Athanasius writes elsewhere: “But our faith is right, and starts from the
teaching of the Apostles and tradition of the fathers, being confirmed both by
the New Testament and the Old” (NPNF 4:576-577). (Robert A. Sungenis,
“Protestant Objections & Catholic Answers,” in Not By Scripture Alone: A
Roman Catholic Critique of the Protestant Doctrine of Sola Scriptura, ed.
Robert A. Sungenis [2d ed.; State Line, Pa.: Catholic Apologetics International
Publishing, Inc., 2013], 290-93, emphasis in original)
