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LETTER OF MARIUS VICTORINUS, RHETOR OF THE CITY OF ROME, TO CANDIDUS THE ARIAN I. PROLOGUE: THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF SPEAKING OF GOD OUR GREAT INTELLIGENCE, 0 NOBLE CANDIDUS,l who has bewitched it? To discourse on God2 is an audacity too great for man. Yet because the nous patrikos (paternal nous) is innate to our soul and the spirit sent from heaven arouses analogies of ideas which have been engraved within our soul from all eternity, our soul by a kind of spiritual elevation wishes to see ineffable things and the inscrutable mysteries of the will or works of God. And yet, dwelling in this 1 In his commentary on this letter ad Cand., Hadot (TTT 689) asserts that it has not the dialectical rigor of Candidus's letter; Candidus was forceful, precise and demonstrative, while Victorinus affirms more than he demonstrates . Since that statement, there has appeared an article suggesting that Candidus is a fictitious name, even a pseudonym for Victorinus himself as skeptical believer (cf. Introd., n. 44). In his more recent work (PV I 40 n. 3), Hadot admits that ad Cando was written by Victorinus, but, unlike Nautin, he thinks that Victorinus simply used Candidus to reconstruct around this name the objections which any Neo-Arian would make; the philosophical principles are shared by Victorinus and Candidus, but Victorinus shows that philosophers starting from the same premises can arrive at opposed conclusions. Both admit that God is a unique act of being, of living and of thinking, but Candidus concludes that God is not only unbegotten but unbegetting. Gore (DeB 4.1131-35) thinks that Candidus was indeed an actual correspondent who feared that the generation of the Son would introduce "change" into God. It was F. Kohnke (see Introd., n. 56) who first recognized in this letter of Victorinus the influence of Porphyry's Commentary on the Sophist. Hadot (TTT 689) states that he and Kohnke worked independently of each other but have converged on important points. 2 The difficulty of naming God has a long tradition from Plato through Albinus and Neoplatonists, and after Victorinus through Proclus and the Pseudo-Dionysius. Cf. A. Festugiere, La Revetation d'Hermes Trismegiste, vol. 4, Le Dieu inconnu et fa gnose (Paris 1954) 216. Cf. also H. Wolfson, 59 60 MARIUS VICTORINUS body, it is difficult for the soul to understand these things, but impossible to express them. For the blessed Paul says: "0 the depth of the riches, of the wisdom, and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are the judgments of God and how unsearchable his ways.,,3 And Isaiah also says: "Who then has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor?,,4 You see therefore a saint's knowledge of God. II. TEACHING OF SCRIPTURE: JESUS CHRIST IS THE SON OF GOD Do you judge these Scriptures to be untrustworthy? But since , you are Christian in name, you must necessarily accept and venerate the Scripturess which proclaim the Lord Jesus Christ. If this is necessary for you it is also necessary to believe what is affirmed there of Christ and precisely as affirmed. For they affirm that Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God, as David the prophet says: "Thou art my Son, this day I have begotten thee.,,6 The blessed Paul also says: "He who has not spared even his own Son.,,7 Again: "Blessed be the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."s What is more, Jesus himself frequently said: "The Father and I are one.,,9 And "whoever has seen me has also seen the "The Knowability and Describability of God in Plato and Aristotle," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 56-57 (1947) 233-49; and "Albinus and Plotinus on Divine Attributes," The Harvard Theological Review 45 (1942) 115-30. In these two'paragraphs Victorinus chides Candidus for his overconfidence in reason and leads him to Christian faith in the scriptural revelation of God. Candidus ended his letter with Scripture whereas Victorinus begins with it. Within these paragraphs Victorinus also speaks of the soul awakened by the Holy Spirit becaus:J the soul has innate notions or symbols relating it to the intelligible world. This doctrine issues from the "Chaldaean Oracles"; cf. Hadot, TTT 690. 3 Rom 11.33. 4 Is 40.13. 5 Hilary argues in this same way in his De trinitate 6.22 (PL 10.173C; FC 25.189-90). Alexander of Alexandria's letter addressed to all the bishops...

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