Reference Dok. 12; CPG 2061
Incipit Provisor omnium
Date c. 322
Ancient source Vat. lat 5750, p. 175
Modern edition Gustave Bardy. Recherches sur saint Lucien d’Antioche et son école. (Paris: Beauchesne, 1936), pp. 207-08.

Like Dok. 11, this extract comes from the Cilician bishop Athanasius of Anazarbus. Not included in Opitz’s collection of Urkunden, it survives only in a 7th century Latin manuscript, and it was published by De Bruyne (“Deux. letters inconnues de Theognius, l’eveque arien de Nice.” ZNW 27 [1928], 110). In it, as Hanson (Search, 42, n.76) has suggested, Athanasius first (§3) provides a Christological quotation from a certain Dionysius, probably the famed mid-third-century bishop of Alexandria, then follows this with his own interpretation (§4). It is impossible to tell if it belongs to the same letter as Dok. 11, but probably dates to the same general period (so AW 3.3:33 and 87).

The Latin text below is that as restored by G. Bardy (Recherches sur saint Lucien d’Antioche et son école [Paris: Beauchesne, 1936], pp. 207-08. The English translation is that of Glen Thompson. Hanson also provides a translation (Search, 41-42).

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[Athanasius episcopus Cilicius dixit … ] [The Cilician bishop Athanasius said]
1. Prouisor omnium, iudex et dispensator Deus, qui omnia creauit et construxit, qui fecit omnia ex nihilo 1. [The Son] is God, the overseer, judge and administrator of all things, who created and framed all things, who made everything out of nothing.
2. Iterum idem ipse Athanasius antiquorum profert memoriam ac Dionysi episcopi, utostendat ante esse patrem quamfilius generaretur:2. Again the same Athanasius calls to mind the ancients, and bishop Dionysius, to show that the Father existed before the Son was begotten, saying:
3. Ita pater quidem, pater et non filius; non quia factus est, sed quia est; non ex aliquo, sed in se permanens; filius autem et non pater; non quia erat, sed quia factus est; non de se, sed ex eo qui eum fecit filii dignitatem sortitus est. 3. So the Father indeed is father and not son; because he has not been made, but rather he is; he is not from anything, but subsists in himself. Neither is the Son father; not because he was existing, but because he has been made. He has obtained the dignity of a Son not from himself, but from him who made him.
4. Deinde ipse Athanasius: 4. Then Athanasius himself:
Non enim se erigit filius contra patrem, neque putat [rapinum] paria esse Deo; cedit autem patri suo et fatetur … docens omnes quia pater maior <se est, maior> autem non uastitate neque magnitudine, quae quidem corpororum propria sunt, sed perpetuitate et inenarrabili eius patema ac generandi uirtute, et quia ipse quidem sempitemus est et in se plenitudinem habens et a nullo uitam habens …For the Son does not set himself up against the Father, nor does he think that he is equal to God, but he yields to his Father and confesses, teaching everyone that the Father is greater <than himself; greater> however, not in vastness or magnitude, which are attributes of corporeal bodies, but in his eternal and indescribable paternal power and power to beget, because he himself is eternal and in himself has fullness and has life from no one else.

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