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{10} Chapter 3. The Meaning of the word Son as applied to our Lord
§. 6. 1. THEY say then what the others held and dared to maintain before them; "Not always Father, always Son; for the Son was not before His generation, but, as others, came to be from nothing; and in consequence God was not always Father of the Son; but, when the Son came to be and was created, then was God called His Father. For the Word is a creature and work, and foreign and unlike the Father in substance; and the Son is neither by nature the Father's true Word, nor His only and true Wisdom; but being a creature and one of the works, He is by a strong figure [Note S] called Word and Wisdom; for by the Word which is in God was He made, as were all things. Wherefore the Son is not true God [Note T]." 2. Now it may serve to make them understand what they are saying, to ask them first this, what in fact a son is, and of what is that name significant [Note U]. In truth, Divine Scripture {11} acquaints us with a double sense of this word:—one which Moses sets before us in the Law, When thou shalt hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, to keep all His commandments which I command thee this day, to do that which is right in the eyes of the Lord thy God, ye shall be children of the Lord your God [Deut. xiii. 18; xiv. 1.]; as also in the Gospel, John says, But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God [John i. 12.]:—and the other sense, that in which Isaac is son of Abraham, and Jacob of Isaac, and the Patriarchs of Jacob. Now in which of these two senses do they understand the Son of God in such fables as the foregoing? for I feel sure they will issue in the same irreligious tenet with the Eusebians. 3. If in the first, which belongs to those who gain the name by grace from moral improvement, and receive power to become Sons of God, (for this is what their predecessors said,) then He would seem to differ from us in nothing; no, nor would He be Only-begotten, as having obtained the title of Son as others from His virtue. For granting what they say, that, whereas His qualifications were foreknown [Note 1], He therefore received grace from the first, the name, and the glory of the name, from His very first beginning, still there will be no difference between Him and those who receive the name upon their actions, so long as this is the ground on which He as others has the character of son. For Adam too, though he received grace from the first, and upon his creation was at once placed in paradise, differed in no respect either from Enoch, who was translated thither after his birth on his pleasing God, or from the Apostle, who likewise was caught up to Paradise after his actions; nay, not from the thief, who on the ground of his confession, received a promise that he should be forthwith in paradise. {12} §. 7. 4. When thus pressed, they will perhaps make an answer which has brought them into trouble many times already; "We consider that the Son has this prerogative over others, and therefore is called Only-begotten, because He alone was brought to be [Note 2] by God alone, and all other things were created by God through the Son." [Note X] Now I wonder who it was [Note Y] that suggested to you so futile and novel an idea as that the Father alone wrought with His own hand the Son alone, and that all other things were brought to be by the Son as by an under-worker [Note 3]. If for the toil-sake God was content with making the Son only, instead of making all things at once, this is an irreligious thought, especially in those who know the words of Esaias, The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, hungereth not, neither is weary; there is no searching of His understanding [Is. xl. 28. Ib. 29.]. Rather it is He who gives strength to the hungry, and through His Word refreshes the labouring. Again, it is irreligious to suppose that He disdained, as if a humble task, to form the creatures Himself which came after the Son; for there is no pride in that God, who goes down with Jacob into Egypt, and for Abraham's sake corrects Abimelec because of Sara, and speaks face to face with Moses, himself a man, and descends upon Mount Sinai, and by His secret grace fights for the people against Amalec. However, you are false in your fact, for we are told, He made us, and not we ourselves [Ps. c. 2.]. He it is who through His Word made all things small and great, and we may not divide the creation, and say this is the Father's, and this the Son's, but they are of one God, who uses His proper [Note 4] Word as a Hand [Note Z], and in Him does all things. As God Himself shews us, when He {13} says, All these things hath My hand made [Is. lxvi. 2.]; and Paul taught us as he had learned [Note A], that There is one God, from whom all things; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things [1 Cor. viii. 6.]. Thus He, always as now, speaks to the sun and it rises, and commands the clouds and it rains upon one place; and where it does not rain, it is dried up. And He bids the earth to bear fruit, and fashions Jeremias in the womb. But if He now does all this, assuredly at the beginning also He did not disdain to make all things Himself through the Word; for these are but parts of the whole. §. 8. 5. But let us suppose that the other creatures could not endure to be wrought by the absolute Hand of the Ingenerate [Note 5], and therefore the Son alone was brought into being by the Father alone, and other things by the Son as an underworker and assistant, for this is what Asterius the sacrificer [Note B] has written, and Arius has transcribed [Note 6] and bequeathed to his own friends, and from that time they use this form of words, broken reed as it is, being ignorant, the bewildered men, how brittle it is. For if it was impossible for things generated to bear the hand of God, and you hold the Son to be one of their number, how was He too equal to this formation by God alone? and if a Mediator became necessary that things generated might come to be, and you hold the Son to be generate, then must there have been some medium before Him, for His creation; and that Mediator himself again being a creature, it follows that he too needed another Mediator for his own constitution. And though we were to devise another, we must first devise his Mediator, so that we shall never come to an end. And thus a Mediator being ever in request, never will the creation be constituted, because nothing generate, as you say, can bear the absolute hand of the Ingenerate [Note C]. And if, on your perceiving the extravagance of this, you begin to say that the Son, though a creature, was made capable of {14} being made by the Ingenerate, then it follows that other things also, though generated, are capable of being wrought immediately by the Ingenerate; for the Son too is but a creature in your judgment, as all of them. And accordingly the generation of the Word is superfluous, according to your irreligious and futile imagination, God being sufficient for the immediate formation of all things, and all things generate being capable of sustaining His absolute hand. 6. These irreligious men then having so little mind amid their madness, let us see whether this particular sophism be not even more irrational than the others. Adam was created alone by God alone through the Word; yet no one would say that Adam had any prerogative over other men, or was different from those who came after him, granting that he alone was made and fashioned by God alone, and we all spring from Adam, and consist according to succession of the race, so long as he was fashioned from the earth as others, and at first not being, afterwards came to be. §. 9. But though we were to allow some prerogative to the Protoplast as having been vouchsafed the hand of God, still it must be one of honour not of nature. For he came of the earth, as other men; and the hand which then fashioned Adam, now also and ever is fashioning and giving entire consistence to those who come after him. And God Himself declares this to Jeremias, as I said before; Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee [Jer. i. 5.]; and so He says of all, All those things hath My hand made [Is. lxvi. 2.]; and again by Esaias, Thus saith the Lord, thy redeemer, and He that formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by Myself [Is. lxiv. 24.]. And David, knowing this, says in the Psalm, Thy hands have made me and fashioned me [Ps. cxix. 76.]; and He who says in Esaias, Thus saith the Lord who formed me from the womb to be His servant [Is. xlix. 5.], signifies the same. Therefore, in respect of nature, he differs nothing from us though he precede us in time, so long as we all consist and are created by the same hand. If then these be your thoughts, O Arians, about the Son of God too, that thus He subsists and came to be, then in your judgment He will differ nothing on the score of nature from others, so long as He too was not, and came to be, {15} and the name was by grace united to Him in His creation for His virtue's sake. For He Himself is one of those, from what you say, of whom the Spirit says in the Psalms, He spake the word, and they were made; He commanded, and they were created [Ps. xxxiii. 9.]. If so, who was it to whom God gave command [Note D] for the Son's creation? for a Word there must be to whom God gave command, and in whom the works are created; but ye have no other to shew than the Word ye deny, unless indeed you should devise again some new notion. 7. "Yes," they will say, "we have another;" (which indeed I have formerly heard the Eusebians use), "on this score do we consider that the Son of God has a prerogative over others, and is called Only-begotten, because He alone partakes the Father, and all other things partake the Son." Thus they weary themselves in changing and varying their professions, like so many hues; however, this shall not save them from an exposure, as men who speak words to no purpose out of the earth, and wallow as in the mire of their own devices [Note 7]. §. 10. For if He were called God's Son, and we the Son's sons, their fiction were plausible; but if we too are said to be sons of that God, of whom He is Son, then we too partake the Father [Note E], who says, I have begotten and exalted children [Is. i. 2.]. For if we did not partake Him, He had not said, I have begotten; but if He Himself begat us, no other than He is our Father [Note F]. And, as before, it matters not, whether the Son has something more and was made first, but {16} we something less, and were made afterwards, so long as we all partake, and are called sons, of the same Father [Note G]. For the more or less does not indicate a different nature; but attaches to each according to the practice of virtue; and one is placed over ten cities, another over five; and some sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel; and others hear the words, Come, ye blessed of My Father [Matt. xxv. 34.], and, Well done, good and faithful servant [Matt. xxi. 23.]. With such ideas, however, no wonder they imagine that of such a Son God was not always Father, and such a Son was not always in being, but was generated from nothing as a creature, and was not before His generation; for such an one is other than the True Son of God. 8. But to persist in such teaching does not consist with piety [Note H], for it is rather the tone of thought of Sadducees and Samosatene [Note I]; it remains then to say that the Son of God is so called according to the other sense, in which Isaac was son of Abraham; for what is naturally begotten from any one and does not accrue to him from without, that in the nature of things is a son, and that is what the name implies [Note K]. Is then the Son's generation one of human [Note 8] affection? {17} (for this perhaps, as their predecessors [Note L], they too will be ready to object in their ignorance;)—in no wise; for God is not as man, nor man as God. Men are created of matter, and that passible [Note 9]; but God is immaterial and incorporeal. And if so be the same terms are used of God and man in divine Scripture, yet the clear-sighted, as Paul injoins, will study it, and thereby discriminate, and dispose of what is written according to the nature of each subject, and avoid any confusion of sense, so as neither to conceive of the things of God in a human way, nor to ascribe the things of man to God [Note M]. For this were to mix wine with water [Note 10], and to place upon the altar strange fire with that which is divine. §. 11. 9. For God creates, and to create is also ascribed to men; and God has being [Note 11], and men are said to be, having received from God this gift also. Yet does God create as men do? or is His being as man's being? Perish the thought; we understand the terms in one sense of God, and in another of men. For God creates, in that He calls what is not into being, needing nothing thereunto; but men work some existing material, first praying, and so gaining the wit to make, from that God who has framed all things by His proper Word. And again men, being incapable of self-existence, are inclosed in place, and consist in the Word of God; but {18} God is self-existent, inclosing all things, and inclosed by none; within all according to His own goodness and power, yet without all in His proper nature [Note N]. As then men create not as God creates, as their being is not such as God's being, so men's generation is in one way, and the Son is from the Father in another [Note O]. For the offspring of men are portions of their fathers, since the very nature of bodies is not uncompounded, but transitive [Note P], and composed of parts; and men lose their substance [Note 12] in begetting, and again they gain substance from the accession of food. And on this account men in their time become fathers of many children; {19} but God, being without parts, is Father of the Son without partition or passion; for there is neither effluence [Note 13] [Note Q] of the Immaterial, nor accession from without, as among men; and being uncompounded in nature, He is Father of One Only Son. This is why He is Only-begotten, and alone in the Father's bosom, and alone is acknowledged by the Father to be from Him, saying, This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased [Mat. iii. 17.]. And He too is the Father's Word, from which may be understood the impassible and impartitive nature of the Father, in that not even a human word is begotten with passion or partition, much less the Word of God [Note R]. Wherefore also He sits, as Word, at the Father's right hand: for where the Father is, there also is His Word; but we, as His works, stand in judgment before Him; and He is adorable, because He is Son of the adorable Father, but we adore, confessing Him Lord and God, because we are creatures and other than He. §. 12. 10. The case being thus, let who will among them consider the matter, so that one may abash them by the following question; Is it right to say that what is God's offspring and proper to Him is out of nothing? or is it reasonable in the very idea, that what is from God has accrued to Him, that a man should dare to say that the Son was not always? For in this again the generation of the Son exceeds and transcends the thoughts of man, that we become fathers of our own children in time, since we ourselves first were not and then came into being; but God, in that He ever is, is ever Father of the Son [Note S]. {20} And the generation of mankind is brought home to us from things that are parallel; but, since no one knoweth the Son but the Father, and no one knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him [Mat. xi. 27.], therefore the sacred writers to whom the Son has revealed Him, have given us a certain image from things visible, saying, Who is the brightness of His glory, and the Expression of His Person [Heb. i. 3.]; and again, For with Thee is the well of life, and in Thy light shall we see light [Ps. xxxvi. 9.]; and when the Word chides Israel, He says, Thou hast forsaken the Fountain of wisdom [Bar. iii. 12.]; and this Fountain it is which says, They have forsaken Me the Fountain of living waters [Jer. ii. 13.] [Note T]. And mean indeed and very dim is the illustration [Note 14] compared with what we desiderate; but yet it is possible from it to understand something above man's nature, instead of thinking the Son's generation to be on a level with ours. For who can even imagine that the radiance of light ever was not, so that he should dare to say that the Son was not always, or that the Son was not before His generation? or who is capable of separating the radiance from the sun, or to conceive of the fountain as ever void of life, that he should madly say, "The Son is from nothing," who says, I am the life [John xiv. 6.], or "alien to the Father's substance," who says, He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father [Ib. vi. 9.]? for the sacred writers wishing us thus to understand, have given these illustrations; and it is indecent and most irreligious, when Scripture contains such images, to form ideas concerning our Lord from others which are neither in Scripture, nor have any religious bearing. §. 13. 11. Therefore let them tell us, from what teacher or by what tradition they derived these notions concerning the Saviour? "We have read," they will say, "in the Proverbs, The Lord hath created Me a beginning of His ways unto His works [Prov. viii. 22.] [Note 15]; this the Eusebians used to insist on [Note U], and you write me word, {21} that the present men also, though overthrown and confuted by an abundance of arguments, still were putting about in every quarter this passage, and saying that the Son was one of the creatures, and reckoning Him with things generated [Note 16]. But they seem to me to have a wrong understanding of this passage also; for it has a religious and very orthodox sense, which, had they understood, they would not have blasphemed the Lord of glory. For on comparing what has been above stated with this passage, they will find a great difference between them [Note X]. For what man of right understanding does not perceive, that what are created and made are external to the maker; but the Son, as the foregoing argument has shewn, exists not externally, but from the Father who begat Him? for man too both builds a house and begets a son, and no one would mismatch things, and say that the house or the ship were begotten by the builder [Note 17], but the Son was created and made by him; nor again that the house was an image of the maker, but the son unlike him who begat him; but rather he will confess that the son is an image of the father, but the house a work of art, unless his mind be disordered, and he beside himself. Plainly, divine Scripture, which knows better than any the nature of every thing, says through Moses, of the creatures, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth [Gen. i. 1.]; but of the Son it introduces the Father Himself saying, I have begotten Thee from the womb before the morning star [Ps. cx. 3.]; and again, Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee [Ps. ii. 7.]. And the Lord says of Himself in the Proverbs, Before all the hills He begets Me [Prov. viii. 25.]; and concerning things generated and created John speaks, All things were made by Him [John i. 3.]; but preaching of the Lord, he says, The Only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him [Ib. 18]. If then son, therefore not creature; if creature, not son; for great is the difference between them, and son and creature cannot be the same, unless his substance be considered to be at once from God, and external to God. {22} §. 14. 12. "Has then the passage no meaning?" for this, like a swarm of gnats, they are droning about us [Note Y]. No surely, it is not without meaning, but has a very apposite one; for it is true to say that the Son was created too, but this took place when He became man; for creation belongs to man. And any one may find this sense duly given in the divine oracles, who, instead of accounting their study a secondary matter, investigates the time and characters [Note Z], and the object, and thus studies and ponders what he reads. Now as to the season spoken of, he will find for certain that, whereas the Lord always is, at length in fulness of the ages [Note 18] He became man; and whereas He is Son of God, He became Son of man also. And as to the object he will understand, that, wishing to annul our death, He took on Himself a body from the Virgin Mary; that by offering this unto the Father a sacrifice for all, He might deliver us all, who by fear of death were all our life through subject to bondage [Note 19]. And as to the character, it is indeed the Saviour's, but is said of Him when He took a body and said, The Lord has created Me a beginning of His ways unto His works [Prov. viii. 22.]. For as it properly belongs to God's Son to be everlasting, and in the Father's bosom, so on His becoming man, the words befitted Him, The Lord created Me. For then it is said of Him, and He hungered, and He thirsted, and He asked where Lazarus lay, and He suffered, and He rose again [Note 20]. And as, when we hear of Him as Lord and God and true Light, we understand Him as being from the Father, so on hearing, The Lord created, and Servant, and He suffered, we shall justly ascribe this, not to the Godhead, for it is irrelevant, but we must interpret it by that flesh which He bore for our sakes; for to it these things are proper, and this flesh was none other's than the Word's. And if we wish to know the object attained {23} by this, we shall find it to be as follows; that the Word was made flesh in order to offer up this body for all, and that we, partaking of His Spirit, might be made gods, a gift which we could not otherwise have gained than by His clothing Himself in our created body [Note 21]; for hence we derive our name of "men of God" and "men in Christ." But as we, by receiving the Spirit, do not lose our own proper substance, so the Lord, when made man for us, and bearing a body, was no less God; for He was not lessened by the envelopment of the body, but rather deified it and rendered it immortal [Note A]. FootnotesS. [katachrestikos].This word is
noticed and protested against by Alexander, Socr. Hist. i. 6. p. 11.
a. by the Semiarians at Ancyra, Epiph. Hær. 73. n. 5. by Basil,
contr. Eunom. ii. 23. and by Cyril, Dial. ii. t. v. i. pp. 432, 3. T.
vid. ad Ep. Æg. 12. Orat. i. §. 5, 6. de Synod. 15, 16. Athanas.
seems to have had in mind Socr. i. 6. p. 10, 11, or the like. U.
vid. Orat. i. §. 38. The controversy turned on the question what was
meant by the word "Son." Though the Arians would not allow with the
Catholics that our Lord was Son by nature, and maintained that
the word implied a beginning of existence, they did not dare to
say that He was Son merely in the sense in which we are sons, though,
as Athan. contends, they necessarily tended to this conclusion,
directly they receded from the Catholic view. Thus Arius said that He
was a creature, "but not as one of the creatures." Orat. ii. §. 19.
[infra p. 307] Valens at Ariminum said the same. Jerom. adv. Lucifer.
18. Hilary says, that not daring directly to deny that He was God, the
Arians merely asked "whether He was a Son." de Trin. viii. 3.
Athanasius remarks upon this reluctance to speak out, challenging them
to present "the heresy naked," de Sent. Dionys. 2. init. "No
one," he says elsewhere, "puts a light under a bushel; let them shew
the world their heresy naked." ad Ep. Æg. 18. vid. ibid. 10. In like
manner, Basil says that (though Arius was really like Eunomius, in
faith, contr. Eunom. i. 4.) Aetius his master was the first to teach
openly ([phaneros]), that the Father's substance was
unlike, [anomoios], the Son's. ibid. i. 1. Epiphanius Hær.
76. p. 949. seems to say that the elder Arians held the divine
generation in a sense in which Aetius did not; that is, they were not
so consistent and definite as he. Athan. goes on to mention some of
the attempts of the Arians to find some theory short of orthodoxy, yet
short of that extreme heresy, on the other hand, which they felt
ashamed to avow. X.
This is celebrated as an explanation of the Anomœans. vid. Basil.
contr. Eunom. ii. 20, 21. though Athan. speaks of it as belonging to
the elder Arians. vid. Socr. Hist. i. 6. p. 11. Y.
i.e. what is your authority? is it not a novel, and
therefore a wrong doctrine? vid. infr. §. 13. ad Serap. i. 3. Also
Orat. i. §. 8. [infra pp. 190, 191] "Who ever heard such
doctrine? or whence or from whom did they hear it? who, when
they were under catechising, spoke thus to them? If they
themselves confess that they now hear it for the first time, they must
grant that their heresy is alien, and not from the Fathers."
vid. ii. §. 34. and Socr. i. 6. p. 11. c. Z.
vid. infr. §. 17. Orat. ii. §. 31. 71. Irenæus calls the Son and
Holy Spirit the Hands of God. Hær. iv. præf. [p. 310, O.T.
cf. also pp. 452, 458, 460, 517] vid. also Hilar. de Trin. vii. 22.
This image is in contrast to that of instrument, [organon],
which the Arians would use of the Son, vid. Socr. i. 6. p. 11. as
implying He was external to God, whereas the word Hand implies
His consubstantiality with the Father. A.
[mathon edidasken], implying the traditional nature of
the teaching. And so St. Paul himself, 1 Cor. xv. 3. vid. for an
illustration, supr. §. 5. init. also note y. B.
Asterius is one of the most famous of the elder Arians, and his work
in defence of the heresy is frequently quoted by Athanasius. vid. infr.
20. Orat. i. §. 31. ii. §. 24. 28. 37. 40. iii. §. 2. 60. de Synod.
§. 18. 19. He was by profession a Sophist, and a pupil of Lucian's.
He lapsed in the persecution of Maximian, and sacrificed, as intimated
in the text. C.
vid. infr. §. 24. Orat. i. §. 15. fin. ii. §. 29. Epiph. Hær. 76.
p. 951. D.
In like manner, "Men were made through the Word, when the Father
Himself willed." Orat. i. 63. [infra p. 269] "The Word forms
matter as injoined by, and ministering to, God." [prostattomenos
kai hypourgon]. ibid. ii. §. 22. [infra p. 311]
contr. Gent. 46. vid. p. 311, note i. E.
His argument is, that if the Son but partook the Father in the sense
in which we partake the Son, then the Son would not impart to us the
Father, but Himself, and would be a separating as well as uniting
medium between the Father and us; whereas He brings us so near to the
Father, that we are the Father's children, not His, and therefore He
must be Himself one with the Father, or the Father must be in Him with
an incomprehensible completeness. vid. de Synod. §. 51. contr. Gent.
46. fin. Hence St. Austin says, "As the Father has life in Himself, so
hath He given also to the Son to have life in Himself, not by
participating, but in Himself. For we have not life in ourselves,
but in our God. But that Father, who has life in Himself, begat a Son
such, as to have life in Himself, not to become partaker of life, but to
be Himself life; and of that life to make us partakers." Serm.
127. de Verb. Evang. 9. [on the N.T. pp. 558, 559 O.T.] F.
"To say God is wholly partaken, is the same as saying that God
begets." Orat. i. §. 16. [infra p. 203] And in like manner, our
inferior participation involves such sonship as is vouchsafed to us. G.
And so in Orat. ii. §. 19-22. "Though the Son surpassed other things
on a comparison, yet He were equally a creature with them; for even in
those things which are of a created nature, we may find some things
surpassing others. Star, for instance, differs from star in glory, yet
it does not follow that some are sovereign, and others serve, &c."
ii. §. 20. [infra p. 309] And so Gregory Nyssen contr. Eunom. iii. p.
132. D. Epiph. Hær. 76. p. 970. H.
i.e. since it is impossible they can persist in evasions so manifest
as these, nothing is left but to take the other sense of the word. I.
Paul of Samosata is called Samosatene, as John of Damascus Damascene,
from the frequent adoption of the names Paul and John. Hence also John
Chrysostom, Peter Chrysologus, John Philoponus. Paul was Bishop of
Antioch in the middle of the third century, and was deposed for a sort
of Sabellianism. He was the friend of Lucian, from whose school the
principal Arians issued. His prominent tenet, to which Athan. seems
here to allude, was that our Lord became the Son by [prokope],
or growth in holiness, (vid. Luke ii. 53. [proekopte],) "advancing
as a man," Orat. iii. §. 51. [infra p. 472] Or he may be alluding to
his doctrine of our Lord's predestination, referred to supr. §.
6. cir. fin. for Paul spoke of Him as "God predestined before
ages, but from Mary receiving the origin of His existence." contr.
Apoll. i. 20. K.
The force lies in the word [physei], "naturally," which the
Council expressed still more definitely by "substance." Thus Cyril
says, "the term 'Son' denotes the substantial origin from the Father."
Dial. 5. p. 573. And Gregory Nyssen, "the title 'Son' does not simply
express the being from another" (vid. infra, §. 19.), but relationship
according to nature. contr. Eunom. ii. p. 91. Again St. Basil
says, that Father is "a term of relationship," [oikeioseos].
contr. Eunom. ii. 24. init. And hence he remarks, that we too are
properly, [kurios], sons of God, as becoming related to
Him through works of the Spirit. ii. 23. So also Cyril, loc. cit.
Elsewhere, St. Basil defines father "one who gives to another the
origin of being according to a nature like his own;" and a son "one
who possesses the origin of being from another by generation." contr.
Eun. ii. 22. On the other hand, the Arians at the first denied that "by
nature there was any Son of God." Theod. Hist. . 3. p. 732. L.
vid. Eusebius, in his Letter subjoined: also Socr. Hist. i. 8. Epiphan.
Hær. 69. n. 8. and 15. M.
One of the characteristic points in Athanasius is his constant
attention to the sense of doctrine, or the meaning of
writers, in preference to the words used. Thus he scarcely uses the
symbol [homoousion], one in substance, throughout his Orations,
and in the de Synod. acknowledges the Semiarians as brethren. Hence
infr. §. 18. [p. 32] he says, that orthodox doctrine "is revered by
all, though expressed in strange language, provided the speaker means
religiously, and wishes to convey by it a religious sense." vid. also
§. 21. He says, that Catholics are able to "speak freely," or to
expatiate, [parrhesiazomena], "out of Divine Scripture."
Orat. i. §. 9. vid. de Sent. Dionys. §. 20. init. Again: "The devil
spoke from Scripture, but was silenced by the Saviour; Paul spoke from
profane writers, yet, being a saint, he has a religious meaning." de
Syn. §. 39. also ad Ep. Æg. 8. Again, speaking of the apparent
contrariety between two Councils, "It were unseemly to make the one
conflict with the other, for all their members are fathers; and it
were profane to decide that these spoke well and those ill, for all of
them have slept in Christ." §. 43. also §. 47. Again: "Not the
phrase, but the meaning and the religious life, is the recommendation
of the faithful." ad Ep. Æg. §. 9. N.
Vid. also Incarn. §. 17. This contrast is not commonly found in
ecclesiastical writers, who are used to say that God is present every
where, in substance as well as by energy or power. S. Clement,
however, expresses himself still more strongly in the same way, "In
substance far off, (for how can the generate come close to the
Ingenerate?) but most close in power, in which the universe is
embosomed." Strom. 2. circ. init. but the parenthesis explains
his meaning. vid. Cyril. Thesaur. 6. p. 44. The common doctrine of the
Fathers is, that God is present every where in substance. vid.
Petav. de Deo, iii. 8. and 9. It may be remarked, that S. Clement
continues "neither inclosing nor inclosed." O.
In Almighty God is the perfection and first pattern of what is seen in
shadow in human nature, according to the imperfection of the subject
matter; and this remark applies, as to creation, so to generation.
Athanasius is led to state this more distinctly in another connection
in Orat. i. §. 21. fin. [infra p. 212] "It belongs to the Godhead
alone, that the Father is properly ([kurios]) Father,
and the Son properly ([kurios]) Son; and in Them and
Them only does it hold that the Father is ever Father, and the Son
ever Son." Accordingly he proceeds shortly afterwards, as in the text,
to argue, "[The heretics] ought in creation also to supply God with
materials, and so to deny Him to be Creator; but if the bare idea of
God transcends such thoughts, and a man believes that He is in being,
not as we are, and yet in being, as God, and that He creates not as
man creates, but yet creates as God, therefore He begets also, not as
men beget, but begets as God. For God does not make men His pattern,
but rather we men, for that God is properly and alone truly
Father of His Son, are also called fathers of our own children, for 'of
Him is every father-hood in heaven and on earth named.' §. 23. [p.
214] The Semiarians at Ancyra quote the same text for the same
doctrine. Epiphan. Hær. 73. 5. As do Cyril. in Joan. iii. p. 24. [p.
27 O.T.] Thesaur. 32. p. 281. and Damascene de Fid. Orth. i. 8. The
same parallel, as existing between creation and generation, is
insisted on by Isidor. Pel. Ep. iii. 355. Basil. contr. Eun. iv. p.
280. A., Cyril Thesaur. 6. p. 43. Epiph. Hær. 69. 36. and Gregor. Naz.
Orat. 20. 9. who observes that God creates with a word, Ps.
148, 5. which evidently transcends human creations. Theodorus Abucara,
with the same object, draws out the parallel of life, [zoe],
as Athan. that of being, [einai]. Opusc. iii. p. 420-422. P.
vid. de Synod. §. 51. Orat. i. §. 15. 16. [rheuste].
vid. Orat. i. §. 28. Bas. in. Eun. ii. 23. [rhusin]. Bas. in
Eun. ii. 6. Greg.Naz. Orat. 28. 22. Vid. contr. Gentes, §. 41. where
Athan. without reference to the Arian controversy, draws out the
contrast between the Godhead and human nature. "The nature of things
generated, as having its subsistence from nothing, is of a transitive
([rheuste]) and feeble and mortal sort, considered by
itself; seeing then that it was transitive and dissoluble, lest
this should take place, and it should be resolved into its original
nothing, God governs and sustains it all by His own Word, who is
Himself God," and who, as he proceeds, §. 42. "remaining Himself
immoveable with the Father, moves all things in His own consistence,
as each may seem fit to His Father." Joan. i. p. 24 [p. 27 O.T.] Q.
S. Cyril, Dial. iv. init. p. 505 E. speaks of the [thrulloumene
aporrhoe], and disclaims it, Thesaur. 6. p. 43. Athanasius
disclaims it, Expos. §. 1. Orat. i. §. 21. So does Alexander, ap.
Theod. Hist. i. 3. p. 743. On the other hand, Athanasius quotes it in
a passage which he adduces from Theognostus, infra, §. 25. and
from Dionysius, de Sent. D. §. 23. and Origen uses it, Periarchon, i.
2. It is derived from Wisd. vii. 25. R.
The title "Word" implies the ineffable mode of the Son's generation,
as distinct from material parallels, vid. Gregory Nyssen,
contr. Eunom. iii. p. 107. Chrysostom in Joan. Hom. 2. §. 4. Cyril
Alex. Thesaur. 5. p. 37. Also it implies that there is but One
Son. vid. infra, §. 16. "As the Origin is one substance, so its Word
and Wisdom is one, substantial and subsisting." Athan. Orat. iv. 1.
fin. [infra p. 514] S.
"Man," says S. Cyril, "inasmuch as He had a beginning of being, also
has of necessity a beginning of begetting, as what is from Him is a
thing generate, but ... if God's substance transcend time, or origin,
or interval, His generation too will transcend these; nor does it
deprive the Divine Nature of the power of generating, that it doth not
this in time. For other than human is the manner of divine generation;
and together with God's existing is His generating implied, and the
Son was in Him by generation, nor did His generation precede His
existence, but He was always, and that by generation." Thesaur. v. p.
35. T.
vid. infra passim. All these titles, "Word, Wisdom, Light,"
&c. serve to guard the title "Son" from any notions of parts or
dimensions, e.g. "He is not composed of parts, but being impassible
and single, He is impassibly and indivisibly Father of the Son ... for
... the Word and Wisdom is neither creature, nor part of Him whose
Word He is, nor an offspring passibly begotten." Orat. i. §. 28.
[infra pp. 220, 221] U.
Eusebius of Nicomedia quotes it in his Letter to Paulinus, ap. Theodor.
Hist. i. 5. And Eusebius of Cæsarea Demonstr. Evang. v. 1. X.
i.e. "Granting that the primâ facie impression of this text is
in favour of our Lord's being a creature, yet so many arguments have
been already brought, and may be added, against His creation, that we
must interpret this text by them. It cannot mean that our Lord was
simply created, because we have already shewn that He is not
external to His Father." Y.
[peribombousin]. So in ad Afros. 5. init. And Sent. D. §. 19.
[perierchontai peribombountes]. And Gregory Nyssen. contr. Eun.
viii. p. 234. C. [hos an tous apeirous tais platonikais
kalliphoniais peribombeseien]. vid. also [perierchontai
hos hoi kantharoi]. Orat. iii. fin. Z.
[prosopa]. vid. Orat. i. §. 54. ii. §. 8. Sent. D. 4.
not persons, but characters; which must also be
considered the meaning of the word. contr. Apoll. ii. 2. and 10;
though it there approximates (even in phrase, [ouk en diairesei
prosopon]) to its ecclesiastical use, which seems to
have been later. Yet persona occurs in Tertull. in Prax. 27; it may be
questioned, however, whether in any genuine Greek treatise till the
Apollinarians. A.
"remaining Himself unalterable, and not changed by His human economy
and presence in the flesh." Orat. ii. 6. [infra p. 289] Margin Notes1. Theod. Hist. i. 3. p. 732. 2.
[gegone]. 3.
[di hypourgou]. 4.
[idioi]. 5.
[akratou agenetou] Orat. ii. §. 24. fin. 6.
vid. also infr. §. 20. de Synod. §. 17. 7.
ad Serap. i. 3. 8.
[anthropopathes] 9.
[pathetikes]. 10.
vid. Orat. iii. §. 35. 11.
[on esti]. 12.
[aporrheousi]. 13.
[aporrhoe]. 14.
vid. Ep. 1. ad Serap. 20. p. 669. a. b. 15.
vid. Orat. ii. throughout. 16.
[genetois]. 17.
Serap. 2, 6. 18.[aionon]. 19.Heb.
ii. 15. 20.
Sent. D. 9. Orat. 3. §. 26-41. 21.
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