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“Arius, The Thalia of - Greek Text with English translation”

From Athanaius, Adversus Arianos Oratio Prima, 1. 5 and De Synodis, 15. The theology of Arius, set in verse.

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Click here to read at earlychurchtexts.com in the original Greek (with dictionary lookup links). The English translation below is from the NPNF series.

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4. ..... And so too, this counterfeit and Sotadean Arius, feigns to speak of God, introducing Scripture language, but is on all sides recognised as godless Arius, denying the Son, and reckoning Him among the creatures.


5. Now the commencement of Arius’s Thalia and flippancy, effeminate in tune and nature, runs thus:—
According to faith of God’s elect, God’s prudent ones,
Holy children, rightly dividing, God’s Holy Spirit receiving,
Have I learned this from the partakers of wisdom,
Accomplished, divinely taught, and wise in all things.
Along their track, have I been walking, with like opinions.
I the very famous, the much suffering for God’s glory;
And taught of God, I have acquired wisdom and knowledge.


15. Arius and those with him thought and professed thus: ‘God made the Son out of nothing, and called Him His Son;’ ‘The Word of God is one of the creatures;’ and ‘Once He was not;’ and ‘He is alterable; capable, when it is His Will, of altering.’ Accordingly they were expelled from the Church by the blessed Alexander.
However, after his expulsion, when he was with Eusebius and his fellows, he drew up his heresy upon paper, and imitating in the Thalia no grave writer, but the Egyptian Sotades, in the dissolute tone of his metre he writes at great length, for instance as follows:—
Blasphemies of Arius.
God Himself then, in His own nature, is ineffable by all men.
Equal or like Himself He alone has none, or one in glory.
And Ingenerate we call Him, because of Him who is generate by nature.
We praise Him as without beginning because of Him who has a beginning.
And adore Him as everlasting, because of Him who in time has come to be.
The Unbegun made the Son a beginning of things originated;
and advanced Him as a Son to Himself by adoption.
He has nothing proper to God in proper subsistence.
For He is not equal, no, nor one in essence with Him.
Wise is God, for He is the teacher of Wisdom.
There is full proof that God is invisible to all beings;
both to things which are through the Son, and to the Son He is invisible.
I will say it expressly, how by the Son is seen the Invisible;
by that power by which God sees, and in His own measure,
the Son endures to see the Father, as is lawful.
Thus there is a Triad, not in equal glories.
Not intermingling with each other are their subsistences.
One more glorious than the other in their glories unto immensity.
Foreign from the Son in essence is the Father, for He is without beginning.
Understand that the Monad was; but the Dyad was not, before it was in existence.
It follows at once that, though the Son was not, the Father was God.
Hence the Son, not being (for He existed at the will of the Father),
is God Only-begotten, and He is alien from either.
Wisdom existed as Wisdom by the will of the Wise God.
Hence He is conceived in numberless conceptions:
Spirit, Power, Wisdom,
God's glory, Truth, Image, and Word.
Understand that He is conceived to be Radiance and Light.
One equal to the Son, the Superior is able to beget;
but one more excellent, or superior, or greater, He is not able.
At God's will the Son is what and whatsoever He is.
And when and since He was, from that time He has subsisted from God.
He, being a strong God, praises in His degree the Superior.
To speak in brief, God is ineffable to His Son.
For He is to Himself what He is, that is, unspeakable.
So that nothing which is called comprehensible does the Son
know to speak about; for it is impossible for Him
to investigate the Father, who is by Himself.
For the Son does not know His own essence,
For, being Son, He really existed, at the will of the Father.
What argument then allows, that He who is from the Father
should know His own parent by comprehension?
For it is plain that for that which hath a beginning to conceive how the Unbegun is,
or to grasp the idea, is not possible.

 

 

 

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Thalia of Arius
Θαλεία

Θαλία
Ἀρειανῆς Θαλείας
Σωτάδειος Ἄρειος
Arius in Verse and music
Original Greek text
Greek text of Thalia of Arius
Arius in Greek
Athanasius opposes Arius
The heresy of Arius

On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia
Against the Arians. (Orationes contra Arianos IV.)
Arius Christology
Arius' Christology
Migne Greek Text
Patrologiae Graecae Cursus Completus
Patrologia Graeca

 

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