Aristides of Athens (c. 125)

 Aristides of Athens (c. 125) was a prestigious early apologist who had the great privilege of presenting a defense of the faith to the emperor Hadrian. His Apology survives in a Greek version and in a Syriac translation. The original language was of course Greek. The Greek version survives in The History of Barlaam and Josaphat and differs somewhat from the Syriac. Hence, I will concern myself with the Greek text and only secondarily with the Syriac. Aristides describes his God this way.

"God who is without beginning and without end, immortal and self-sufficing, above all passions and infirmities, above anger and forgetfulness and ignorance and the rest." (Apol. 1) 

In the Syriac it adds, "God is not born." Elsewhere he says that Christians "know God, the Creator and Fashioner of all things through the only-begotten Son and the Holy Spirit; and beside Him they worship no other God." (Apol. 15.) He calls him elsewhere "the invisible and all-seeing and all-creating God." (Apol. 13.) Aristides describes our Lord as in this way,

"Now the Christians trace their origin from the Lord Jesus Christ. And He is acknowledged by the Holy Spirit to be the son of the most high God, who came down from heaven for the salvation of men. And being born of a pure virgin, unbegotten and immaculate, He assumed flesh and revealed himself among men that He might recall them to Himself from their wandering after many gods. And having accomplished His wonderful dispensation, by a voluntary choice He tasted death on the cross, fulfilling an august dispensation. And after three days He came to life again and ascended into heaven." (Apol. 15.)

Aristides goes on to explain that the Son took an active role in the incarnation "And it is said that God came down from heaven, and from a Hebrew virgin assumed and clothed himself with flesh; and the Son of God lived in a daughter of man." (Ibid.)