Saint of Alexandria Dionysius

“ None of the many influential occupants of the see of Alexandria and of the many distinguished heads of the Catechetical School in that city seem to have been held in higher respect by the ancients than Dionysius. By common consent he is styled “the Great,” while Athanasius, one of his most famous-successors as Bishop, calls him “Teacher of the Church universal,” and Basil (of Cæsarea) refers to him as “a person of canonical authority” (κανονικός) . ”

“ The foregoing sketch is sufficient to show that, as a man of action and a ruler of the Church, Dionysius’s [32] personality is no less striking than as a student, a writer and a thinker. He was clearly a strong yet conciliatory administrator of his province as Bishop of Alexandria, just as he had been a competent and successful teacher and director of sacred studies as head of the Catechetical Schools—one who in each capacity carried on and maintained the great traditions which he inherited from S. Mark and his successors, from Pantænus, Clement and Origen. ”

“ Otherwise let them state the reason why, both being without beginning, God is not subject to treatment, unchangeable, immovable, productive, and matter is the opposite, subject to treatment, changeable, mobile, varying.
Again, how is it that God and matter came in contact and combined? Was it that God adapted Himself to match the nature of matter and exercised His craft upon it? Nay, that is absurd that God, like men, should work in gold and stone and busy Himself in the other handicrafts which the various materials can give shape and form to. ”

“ LETTERS To Fabian, Bishop of Antioch
(Eus., H. E. vi. 41, 42, and 44)
(1) The persecution did not begin amongst us with the Imperial edict; for it anticipated that by a whole year. And the prophet and poet of evil to this city, whoever he was, [13] was beforehand in moving and exciting the heathen crowds against us, rekindling their zeal for the national superstitions. So they being aroused by him and availing themselves of all lawful authority for their unholy doings, conceived that the only piety, the proper worship of their gods was this—to thirst for our blood. ”

“ Dionysius’s literary style is excellent for the age in which he lived, and so far confirms the truth of the statement that he had been a master of rhetoric before his conversion. He gives evidence of having read widely and to good purpose both in classical and in religious literature. As to the former, he actually quotes from or refers to Homer, Hesiod, Thucydides, Aristotle, and Democritus: but his language is really saturated with classical uses, and a large number of the words and phrases which he employs recall the best writers of antiquity. ”

“ However, I withdraw from the much foolishness into which I am falling through Germanus; wherefore I refrain from giving a detailed account of events to the brethren who know all.
(To Novatian)
(Eus., H. E. vi. 45)
If it was against thy will, as thou sayest, that thou wast promoted, [62] thou wilt prove this by retiring of thine own accord. It were good to suffer anything and everything so to escape dividing the Church of God. And martyrdom [63] to avoid schism is no less glorious than martyrdom to avoid idolatry. Nay, it is to my mind greater. ”

“ Do atoms, ye blind, bring you winter and rains, in order that the earth may produce food for you and all the animals upon it? do they introduce summer that ye may receive for your enjoyment the fruits of the trees also? then why do you not bow down and sacrifice to the atoms that are the guardians of earth’s fruits? ungrateful truly ye are, never offering them the smallest firstfruits of the many gifts ye have from them. ”

“ Consequently, while those who are untaught in any craft and are imperfect from want of practice and familiarity with the processes do find toil involved in their endeavours, those who make progress in it, and still more those who have reached perfection, are cheered by their easy success in what they aim at, and would rather accomplish and bring to completion the tasks they are accustomed to than have all the good things of mankind. At all events, Democritus himself, so they say, used to maintain that he would rather discover a single reason for a fact than gain the Persian kingdom ”

“ For if God is of Himself without beginning and the being without beginning is, as some would say, His very essence, matter will not be without beginning, too: for matter and God are not identical. But, if each is what it is independently, and to both belongs in addition the property of being without beginning, it is clear that the being without beginning is different from either and older and higher than both. ”

“ Decius’s reversal of his predecessor’s policy towards the Christians was probably due to reasons of state and expediency rather than, as Eusebius implies, to mere spite and hatred of Philip and all his ways. Anyhow, the severity of the Decian persecution is undoubted, and it fell with great force upon the Church at Alexandria. The Prefect of Egypt, Sabinus, lost no time in attacking Dionysius and his followers. Many endured tortures or death, or both. ”

“ To work and to administer and to benefit and to provide and the like are perchance vexatious to the idle and thoughtless and feeble and iniquitous, amongst whom Epicurus enrolled himself, when he conceived such ideas about the gods. But to the earnest and capable and intelligent and sober-minded, such as those who love wisdom (or philosophers) ought to be (and how much more the gods?) , they are not only not unpleasing and irksome but rather most delightful and of all things most agreeable ”

“ As we understand this literally, we do not admit those who accept the interpretation of the statements as referring to the soul and the body; for it is by no means justified, seeing that the soul has the entire control over the ruling and governing both of itself and of the body, whereas the body is the bondman of the soul, subservient and enthralled to it in all its decisions. ”

“ For the particular number and kind that made the sun by being united in a particular way would never have condescended to produce the moon, nor would the intertwinings of the moon atoms have ever become the sun. Moreover, even Arcturus, bright as he is, would never plume himself on having the atoms of Lucifer, nor the Pleiads those of Orion. For Paul has well distinguished when he says: “There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for star differeth from star in glory.” ”

“ In Libya the heresy gained such a hold upon the Church that it even infected certain of the Bishops, and the Son of God was no longer preached. Dionysius, therefore, feeling his responsibility for the churches under his care, became active in trying to eradicate the evil. Among a number of letters which he wrote on the subject, there was one (about the year 260) in which he made use of certain expressions and illustrations with regard to the Son of God, which were seized hold of by some members of the Church either at Alexandria or in the Pentapolis as heretical. ”

“ For a garment is not woven by the woof standing up without a weaver, nor yet by the warp weaving itself of its own accord: but when it is becoming worn out, the torn rags fall asunder. And a house or a city is built not by receiving certain stones which volunteer for the foundations and others which jump into the courses of the walls, but because the builder brings the stones that fit in the proper order: but when the building is thrown down, each stone falls to the ground just as it may. ”

“ For up till now the Prefect does not cease from cruelly slaying some of those who are brought before him, as I have already said, and from tearing others in pieces with instruments of torture, while he crushes the spirits of others again with chains and imprisonment, forbidding any to visit them and making search lest any should be found doing so. Nevertheless, God gives them some respite from their miseries through the zeal and steadfast efforts of the brethren. ”

“ The truth is that, while practical men and even philosophers find their highest pleasure in benefiting others, by this theory the gods are to be kept from any share in such pleasure.
One other inconsistency in the Epicurean writings Dionysius next deals with, and that is Epicurus’s own constant use of oaths and adjurations, in which the names of those very beings occur whose influence upon men’s affairs he so depreciates. ”

“ And not only at home and within his own jurisdiction, as we have seen, did he worthily “magnify his office” and “make full proof of his ministry”; for he made his influence for good felt throughout Christendom. Bishops and clergy from all parts naturally turned to him in their difficulties for advice and guidance; and it is impossible not to feel that his wonderful breadth of judgment and his love of conciliation were of the greatest value to the Church of the third century, and will remain a model for imitation to each succeeding age. ”

“ In these days there are lamentations everywhere, and all are mourning: wailings resound through the city by reason of the number of the dead and the dying day by day. For, as it is written about the firstborn of the Egyptians, so now also “a great cry arose: for there is not a house in which there is not one dead.” ”

“ For such mist from the ground and breezes from the sea, airs from the rivers and vapours from the harbours are given off that for dew we have the impure fluids of corpses rotting in all their component elements. ”

“ Sabellius was a native of the district, and his heresy consisted in laying too much stress on [19] the unity of the Godhead and in so hopelessly confounding the Three Persons in the Trinity as to imply that the Person of the Father was incarnate in Christ. It is in 257 that we first find Dionysius, in a letter to Xystus II (see p. 55) , calling the attention of the Bishop of Rome to these views, by which time Sabellius was himself probably already dead. ”

“ His next point appears to be that the difference in durability, which Epicurus postulates for the various bodies produced by atoms, goes to upset his theory. If some products (e. g. the gods) are eternal and some are short-lived, what determines the difference? Some of the senseless atoms themselves must be gifted with powers of directing, arranging and ruling. But if it is mere chance, then Epicurus asks us, who study the order and the phenomena of earth and heaven, to believe the impossible. ”

“ He that is full of Love craves leave to suffer and endure: to be in evil case, he thinks, gives opportunity for being helped, and he will do the greatest favour to another, not himself, if through that other the evil, which is his own, is made to cease. [161]
To Basilides, Bishop of the Churches in the Pentapolis (Cyrenaica) [This canonical Letter was accepted at the third Council of Constantinople in Trullo (A.D. 680) ]
Dionysius to Basilides my beloved son and brother and godly fellow-worker, greeting in the Lord. ”

“ Those who were baptized in the name of the three Persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—though they were baptized by heretics who confess the three Persons, shall not be re-baptized. But those who are converted from other heresies shall be perfected by the baptism of the Holy Church. ”

“ The extracts given by Eusebius appear to be fairly continuous throughout: they deal (1) with the atomistic portion of the Epicurean philosophy, and (2) with the more strictly “theological” portion of it, the references to the hedonistic doctrine being only slight and passing.
Dionysius begins by remarking that of the various hypotheses which have been started as to the origin of the universe, one of the least satisfactory is that of Epicurus, viz. that it is the result of a chance concourse of an infinite number of atoms, as they rush through space. ”

“ What ought we to do? Shall we acquiesce and assent to them and maintain their decision and concession and treat kindly those to whom they have extended mercy? or shall we hold their judgment wrong and set ourselves up as critics of their decision and vex their kind hearts and reverse their arrangement?
[A further extract on the subject of the lapsed]
I will set out the following single example that happened amongst us. There was a certain aged believer amongst us, Sarapion, who had lived blamelessly for a long time but yielded to temptation. ”

“ And yet they take no warning from the small, ordinary instances at their feet, from which they may learn [215] that no necessary and profitable work is produced without design or haphazard, but is adapted to its proper purpose by handiwork, whereas when it falls into a useless and unprofitable state, it then breaks up and comes to pieces indefinite, and, as it chances, because the wisdom which was concerned in its construction no longer superintends and directs it. ”

“ No doubt Macrianus is meant, who is mentioned further on, but it is difficult to account for the exact epithets which Dionysius here applies to him. Apparently he had been Valerian’s tutor in some kind of magic, and had allied himself somehow with the Jewish colony in Alexandria (hence ἀρχισυνάγωγος) , who would, of course, be hostile to the Christians.
[131] Christian exorcists must be meant, though the claim to supernatural powers which Dionysius makes for them is sufficiently remarkable. ”

“ I will come to close quarters with our violent accuser, Germanus. I came before Æmilian [49] not alone; for there followed with me my fellow-presbyter [50] Maximus, and deacons Faustus, Eusebius and Chæremon. And one of the brethren who was present from Rome came in with us. Now Æmilian did not say to me at the start, “Do not summon” (the brethren for public worship) : for that was superfluous and the last thing (to insist on) , since he was going back to the very beginning of the matter. ”