Dionysius of Alexandria, Saint: Elenchus et Apologia (Fragmenta)

These are fragments of the defence that Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, addressed to his namesake Pope Dionysius of Rome, after he had been accused of separating the Son from the Father in his writings against the Sabellians. The excerpts, arranged by the books from which they come, are preserved by Athanasius, whose comments are woven into the text. Dionysius affirms that there was never a time when God was not Father, and that the Son, as the radiance of eternal light, is himself eternal, using the image of the sun and its brightness. Elsewhere he insists that Father, Son and Spirit cannot be separated, and that he extends the indivisible unity into a Trinity and draws the Trinity back into unity.

The fragments are important evidence for third-century debate about the Trinity, between the dangers of Sabellianism, which merged Father and Son, and language that seemed to subordinate the Son. Athanasius quoted them in the fourth century to show that Dionysius was no forerunner of Arius. The Patrologia Latina gives a Latin version with the Greek, and some passages appear in Greek. They remain a primary source for the so-called affair of the two Dionysii.