1 This was but the opposite aspect of the tenet of our Lord’s consubstantiality or eternal generation. For if He came into being at the will of God, by the same will He might cease to be; but if His existence is unconditional and necessary, as God’s attributes might be, then as He had no beginning, so can He have no end; for He is in, and one with, the Father, who has neither beginning nor end. On the question of the ‘will of God’ as it affects the doctrine, vid. Orat. ii. § 59, &c.
Truth was not always in God, which it were a sin to say; for, since the Father was, there was ever in Him the Truth, which is the Son, who says, ‘I am the Truth,” And the Subsistence existing, of course there was forthwith its Expression and Image; for God’s Image 1s not delineated from without 5, but God Himself hath begotten it; in which seeing Himself, He has delight, as the Son Himself says, ‘1 was His delight®.’ When then did the Father not see Himself in His own Image? or when had He not delight, that a man should dare to say, ‘the Image is out of nothing,’ and ‘ The Father had not delight before the Image was originated?? and how should the Maker and Creator see Himself in a created and originated essence? for such as is the Father, such must be the Image. 4 21. Proceed we then to consider the attributes of the Father, and we shall come to know whether this Image is really His. The Father is eternal, immortal, powerful, light, King, Sovereign, God, Lord, Creator, and Maker. These attributes must be in the Image, to make it true that he ‘that hath seen’ the Son ‘hath seen the Father?.’ If the Son be not all this, but, as the Arians consider, originate, and not eternal, this is not a true Image of the Father, unless indeed they give up shame, and go on to say, that the title of Image, given to the Son, is not a token of a similar essence 8, but His name? only. But this, on the other hand, O ye enemies of Christ, is not an Image, nor is it an Expression. For what is the likeness of what is out of nothing to Him who brought what was nothing into being? or how can that which is not, be like Him that is, being short of Him in once not being, and in its having its place among things originate? However, such the Arians wishing Him to be, devised for themselves arguments such as this;—‘If the Son is the Father’s offspring and Image, and is like in all things'’® to the Father, then it neces- 4 John xiv. 6.
4 John xiv. 6.
5 Athan. argues from the very name Image for our Lord’s eternity. An Image, to be really such, must be an expression from the Original, not an external and detached imitation. vid. supr. note ro, infr. § 26. Hence S. Basil, ‘He is an Image not made with the hand, or a work of art, but a living Image,’ &c. vid. also contr. Eunom. ii. 16, 17. Epiph. Her. 76. 3. Hilar. Trin. vii. 41 fin. Origen observes that man, on the contrary, is an example of an external or improper image of God. Peviarch. i. 2. § 6. It might have been more direct to have argued from the name of Image to our Lord’s consubstantiality rather than eternity, as, e.g. S. Gregory Naz. ‘He is Image as one in essence, OMoovovoy,...for this is the nature of an image, to be a copy of the archetype.’ Ovat. 30. 20. vid. also de Decr. §§ 20, 23, but for whatever reason Athan. avoids the word omoovcvoyv in these Discourses. S. Chrys. on Col. i. 15.
6 Prov. vili 30. 7 John xiv. 9.
8 buolas ovaias. And so § 20 init. buovcov Kar’ ovciay, and dpovos THS ovcias, § 26, Gmotos Kar ovELay, iii. 26. and SpoLos Kara ™myv ovaiay tov matpos. Hp. Afg. 17. Also Alex. Zp. Encyci. 2. Considering what he says in the de Sym. § 38, &c., in controversy with the semi-Arians a year or two later, this use of their formula, in preference to the ouoovcvov (vid. foregoing note), deserves our attention. 9 De Decr. § 16. 10 De Syn. 27 (5) note 1, and DISCOURSE I, sarily holds that as He is begotten, so He begets, and He too becomes father of a son. And again, he who is begotten from Him, begets in his turn, and so on without limit; for this is to make the Begotten like Him that begat Him.’ Authors of blasphemy, verily, are these foes of God! who, sooner than confess that the Son is the Father’s Image’, conceive material and earthly ideas concerning the Father Himself, ascribing to Him severings and? effluences and influences. If then God be as man, let Him become also a parent as man, so that His Son should be father of another, and so in succession one from another, till the series they imagine grows into a multitude of gods. But if God be not as man, as He is not, we must not impute to Him the attributes of man. For brutes and men, after a Creator has begun them, are begotten by succession; end the son, having been begotten of a father who was a son, becomes accordingly in his turn a father to a son, in inheriting from his father that by which he himself has come to be. Hence in such instances there is not, properly speaking, either father or son, nor do the father and the son stay in their respective characters, for the son himself becomes a father, being son of his father, but father of his son. But it is not so in the Godhead; for not as man is God; for the Father is not from a father; therefore doth He not beget one who shall become a father; nor is the Son from effluence of the Father, nor is He begotten from a father that was begotten; theret The objection is this, that, if our Lord be the Father’s Image, He ought to resemble Him in being a Father. S. Athanasius answers that God is not as man; with us a son becomes a father because our nature is pevorn, transitive and without stay, ever shifting and passing on into new forms and relations; but that God is perfect and ever the same, what He is once that He continues to be; God the Father remains Father, and God the Son remains Son. Moreover men become fathers by detachment and transmission, and what is received is handed on in a succession; whereas the Father, by imparting Himself wholly, begets the Son: and a perfect nativity finds its termination in itself. The Son has not a Son, because the Father has not a Father. Thus the Father is the only true Father, and the Son alone true Son; the Father only a Father, the Son only a Son; being really in their Persons what human fathers are but by office, character, accident, and name; vid. De Decry. 11, note 6. And since the Father is unchangeable as Father, in nothing does the Son more fulfil the idea of a perfect Image than in being unchangeable too. Thus S. Cyril also, Thesaur. 10. p. 124. And this perhaps may illustrate a strong and almost startling implication of some of the Greek Fathers, that the First Person in the Holy Trinity, is not God [in virtue of His Fatherhood]. E.g. et 6é Oeds 6 vLbds, OVK Emel Vids: Omoiws Kal 6 TaTHp, OVK Emel Tarp, BEds* GAN émei ovaia Tordbe, els éori maTHp Kal 6 vlds Oeds, Nyssen. t. i.
. 915. vid. Petav. de Deoi. 9. § 13. Should it be asked, ‘ What is the Father if not God?’ it is enough to answer, ‘the Father.’ Men differ from each other as being individuals, but the characteristic difference between Father and Son is, not that they are individuals, but that they ave Father and Son. In these extreme statements it must be ever borne in mind that we are contemplating divine things according to our notions, not in fact: i.e. speaking of the Almighty Father, as such; there being no real separation between His Person and His Substance. It may be added, that, though theologians differ in their decisions, it would appear that our Lord is not the Image of the Father’s person, but of the Father's substance; in other words, not of the Father considered as Father, but considered as God. That is, God the Son is like and equal to God the Father, because they are both the same God. De Sy. 49. note 4, also next note.
2 Ep. Eus. 7, ae Decr. 11, note 8, t fore neither is He begotten so as to beget. Thus it belongs to the Godhead alone, that the Father is properly3 father, and the Son properly son, and in Them, and Them only, does it hold that the Father is ever Father and the Son ever Son.
22. Therefore he who asks why the Son is not to beget a son, must inquire why the Father had not a father. But both suppositions are unseemly and full of impiety. For as the Father is ever Father and never could become Son, so the Son is ever Son and never could become Father. For in this rather is He shewn to be the Father’s Expression and Image, remaining what He is and not changing, but thus receiying from the Father to be one and the same. If then the Father change, let the Image change; for so is the Image and Radiance in its relation towards Him who begat It. But if the Father is unalterable, and what He is that He continues, necessarily does the Image also continue what He is, and will not alter. Now He is Son from the Father; therefore He will not become other than is proper to the Father’s essence. Idly then have the foolish ones devised this objection also, wishing to separate the Image from the Father, that they might level the Son with things originated.
CHAPTER VII. OBJECTIONS TO THE FOREGOING PROOF.
Whether, in the generation of the Son, God made One that was already, or One that was not.
22 (continued). RANKING Him among these, according to the teaching of Eusebius, and accounting Him such as the things which come into being through Him, Arius and his fellows revolted from the truth, and used, when they commenced this heresy, to go about with dishonest — phrases which they had got together; nay, up to this time some of them*, when they fall in 3 Kupiws, de Decr. 11, note 6. Elsewhere Athan. says, ‘The Father being one and only is Father of a Son one and only; and in the instance of Godhead only have the names Father and Son stay, and are ever; for of men if any one be called father, yet he has been son of another; and if he be called son, yet is he called father of another; so that in the case of men the names father and son do not properly, kupiws, hold.’ ad Sera. i. 16. also ibid. iv. 4 fin. and 6. vid. also cupéws, Greg. Naz. Orat. 20. 5. ad7ndas, Orat. 25,16. dvtws, Basil. contr, Hunom. \, 5. p. 215.
I This miserable procedure, of making sacred and mysterious subjects a matter of popular talk and debate, which is a sure mark of co had received a great stimulus about this time by the rise of the Anomeeans. Eusebius’s testimony to the profaneness which attended Arianism upon its rise will be given de Syn, 2, note x. The Thalia is another instance of it. S. Alexander speaks of the interference, even judicial, in its behalf against himself, of disobedient women, &’ évtuxtas yuvotkapioy araxtwv & ardtnoov, and of the busy and indecent gadding about of the younger, €k Tov mepitpoxdcew macav ayuiav acéuves. ap. Theod. H.E. i. 3 p- 730, also p. 747; also of the men’s buffoon conversation, p. 731. Socrates says that ‘in the Imperial Court, the officers of the bedchamber held disputes with the women, and in the city in every house there was a war of dialectics.’ “7st. ii. 2. This mania raged especially in Constantinople, and S, Gregory Naz. speaks of ‘ Jezebels in as thick a crop as hemlock in a field.’ Orat. 35. 3, cf. de Syn. 13,n. 4. He speaks of the heretics as ‘aiming at one thing only, how to make good or refute points of argument,’ making ‘every market-place resound with their with boys in the market-place, question them, not out of divine Scripture, but thus, as if bursting with ‘the abundance of their heart?;’ —‘ He who is, did He make him who was not, from that which was [not], or him who was? therefore did He make the Son, whereas He was, or whereas He was not3?’ And again, ‘Is the Unoriginate one or two?’ and ‘Has He free will, and yet does not alter at His own choice, as being of an alterable nature? for He is not as a stone to remain by Himself unmoveable.’ Next they turn to silly women, and address them in turn in this womanish language; ‘Hadst thou a son before bearing? now, as thou hadst not, so neither was the Son of God before His generation.’ In such language do the disgraceful men sport and revel, and liken God to men, pretending to be Christians, but changing God’s glory ‘into an image made like to corruptible man 4,’ 23. Words so senseless and dull deserved no answer at all; however, lest their heresy appear to have any foundation, it may be might, though we go out of the way for it, to refute them even here, especially on account of the silly women who are so readily deceived by them When they thus speak, they should have inquired of an architect, whether he can build without materials; and if he cannot, whether it follows that God could not make the universe without materials 5. Or they should have asked every man, whether he can be without place; and if he cannot, whether it follows that God is in place, that so they may be brought to shame even by their audience. Or why is it that, on hearing that God has a Son, they deny Him by the parallel of themselves; whereas, if they hear that He creates and makes, no longer do they object their human ideas? they ought in creation also to entertain the same, and to supply God with materials, and so deny Him to be Creator, till they end in grovelling with words, and spoiling every entertainment with their trifling and offensive talk.’ Ovat. 27. 2. The most remarkable testimony of the kind though not concerning Constantinople, is given by S. Gregory Nyssen, and often quoted, ‘Men of yesterday and the day before, mere mechanics, off-hand dogmatists in theology, servants too and slaves that have been flogged, runaways from servile work, are solemn with us and philosophical about things incomprehensible...With such the whole city is full; its smaller gates, forums, squares, thoroughfares; the clothes-venders, the moneylenders, the victuallers. Ask about pence, and he will discuss the Generate and Ingenerate; inquire the price of bread, he answers, Greater is the Father, and the Son is subject; say that a bath would suit you, and he defines that the Son is out of nothing.’
_ 3 This objection is found in Alex. ZY. Encycl. 2. 6 dv beds Tov BY ovTa ex TOU My OVTOS. Again, dyTa yeyévynKe 7) OvK dvTa. Greg. Orat. 29. 9. who answers it. Pseudo-Basil. contr. Eunom. iv. p- 28r. 2. Basil calls the question roAv@pvAAnTov, contr. Eunont. li. 14. It will be seen to be but the Arian formula of ‘ He was not before His generation,’ in another shape; being but this, that the very fact of His being begotten or a Son, implies a beginning, that is, a time when He was not: it being by the very force of the words absurd to say that ‘God begat Him that was, or to deny that “God begat Him that was aoz.’ For the symbol, ovx Av Tp yevvnOn, vid. Lacursus B, at the end of this Discourse.
Manichees. But if the bare idea of God transcends such thoughts, and, on very first hearing, a man believes and knows that He is in being, not as we are, and yet in being as God, and creates not as man creates, but yet creates as God, it is plain that He begets also not as men beget, but begets as God. For God does not make man 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 fatherhood in heaven and earth named?.’ And their positions, while unscrutinized, have a shew of sense; but if any one scrutinize them by reason, they will be found to incur much derision and mockery.: 24. For first of all, as to their first question, which is such as this, how dull and vague it is! they do not explain who it is they ask about, so as to allow of an answer, but they say abstractedly, ‘He who is,’ ‘him who is not.’ Who then ‘is,’ and what ‘are not,’ O Arians? or who ‘is,’ and who ‘is not?’ what are said ‘to be,’ what ‘not to be?’ for He that is, can make things which are not, and which are, and which were before. For instance, carpenter, and goldsmith, and potter, each, according to his own art, works upon materials previously existing, making what vessels he pleases; and the God of all Himself, having taken the dust of the earth existing and already brought to be, fashions man; that very earth, however, whereas it was not once, He has at one time made by His own Word. If then this is the meaning of their question, the creature on the one hand plainly was not before its origination, and men, on the other, work the existing material; and thus their reasoning is inconsequent, since both ‘what is’ becomes, and ‘what is not’ becomes, as these instances shew. But if they speak concerning God and His Word, let them complete their question and then ask, Was the God, ‘who is,’ ever without Reason? and, whereas He is Light, was He ray-less? or was He always Father of the Word? Or again in this manner, Has the Father ‘who is’ made the Word ‘who is not,’ or has He ever with Him His Word, as the proper offspring of His substance? This will shew them that they do but presume and venture on sophisms about God and Him who is from Him. Who indeed can bear to hear them say that God was ever without Reason? this is what they fall into a second time, though endeavouring in vain to escape it and to hide it with their sophisms. Nay, one would fain not hear them disputing at all, that God was not always 6 De Decr. 3x, note 5. 7 Eph. iii. rs.
me Se Father, but became so afterwards (which is necessary for their fantasy, that His Word once was not), considering the number of the proofs already adduced against them; while John besides says, ‘The Word was 78,’ and Paul again writes, ‘Who being the brightness of His glory 8,’ and, ‘ Who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen9.’
_ 25. They had best have been silent; but since it is otherwise, it remains to meet their shameless question with a bold retort*. Perhaps on seeing the counter absurdities which beset themselves, they may cease to fight against the truth. After many prayers? then that God would be gracious to us, thus we might ask them in turn; God who is, has He so become, whereas He was not? or is He also before His coming into being? whereas He is, did He make Himself, or is He of nothing, and being nothing before, did He suddenly appear Himself? Unseemly is such an enquiry, both unseemly and very blasphemous, yet parallel with theirs; for the answer they make abounds in irreligion. But if it be blasphemous and utterly irreligious thus to inquire about God, it will be blasphemous too to make the like inquiries about His Word. However, by way of exposing a question so senseless and so dull, it is necessary to answer thus:—whereas God is, He was eternally; since then the Father is ever, His Radiance ever is, which is His Word. And again, God who is, hath from Himself His Word who also is; and neither hath the Word been added, whereas He was not before, nor was the Father once without Reason. For this assault upon the Son makes the blasphemy recoil upon the Father; as if He devised for Himself a Wisdom, and Word, and Son from without3; for whichever of these titles you use, you denote the offspring from the Father, as has been said. So that this their objection does not hold; and naturally; for denying the Logos they in consequence ask questions which are iilogical. As then if a person saw the sun, and then inquired concerning its radiance, and said, ‘Did that which is make that which was, or that which was not,’ he would be held not to reason sensibly, but to be utterly mazed, because he fancied what is from the Light to be external to it, and was raising questions, when and where and whether it were made; in like manner, thus to speculate concerning the Son and the Father and thus to inquire, is far X Vid. Basil, contr. Eunom. ii. 17. Fie iz 2 This cautious and reverent way of speaking is a characteristic of S. Athanasius, ad Sera. i. 1. vid. ii. init. ad Efict. 13 fin. ad Max. init. contr. Apoll. i. init. ‘I must ask another question, bolder, yet with a religious intention; be propitious, O Lord, &c. Orat. iii. 63, cf. de Decr. 12, note 8, 15, note 6, de Sym. 51, note 4.
2 De Decr. 25, note 2.
VO ashy.
greater madness, for it is to conceive of the Word of the Father as external to Him, and to idly call the natural offspring a work, with the avowal, ‘He was not before His generation.’ Nay, let them over and above take this answer to their question;--The Father who was, made the Son who was, for ‘the Word was made flesh ¢;’ and, whereas He was Son of God, He made Him in consummation of the ages also Son of Man, unless forsooth, after the Samosatene, they affirm that He did not even exist at all, till He became man.
26. This is sufficient from us in answer to their first question. And now on your part, O Arians, remembering your own words, tell us whether He who was needed one who was not for the framing of the universe, or one who was? You said that He made for Himself His Son out of nothing, as an instrument whereby to make the universe. Which then is superior, that which needs or that which supplies the need? or does not each supply the deficiency of the other? You rather prove the weakness of the Maker, if He had not power of Himself to make the universe, but provided for Himself an instrument from without 5, as carpenter might do or shipwright, unable to work anything without adze and saw! Can anything be more irreligious? yet why should one dwell on its heinousness, when enough has gone before to shew that their doctrine is a mere fantasy?
CHAPTER VIII.
OBJECTIONS CONTINUED.
Whether we may decide the question by the parallel of human sons, which are born later than their parents. No, for the force of the analogy lies in the idea of connaturality. Time is not involved in the idea of Son, but is adventitious to it, and does not attach to God, because He is without parts and passions. The titles Word and Wisdom guard our thoughts of Him and His Son from this misconception. God not a Father, as a Creator, 2 fosse from eternity, because creation does not relate to the essence of God, as generation does.
26. (continued). NOR is answer needfulto their other very simple and foolish inquiry, which they put to silly women; or none besides that which has been already given, namely, that it is not suitable to measure divine generation by the nature of men. However, that as before they may pass judgment on themselves, it is well to meet them on the same ground, thus:—Plainly, if they inquire of parents concerning their son, let them consider whence is the child which is begotten. For, granting 5 épyavov, de Decr. 7, n. 6, de Syn. 27, note 11. This was alleged by Arius, Socy. i. 6. and by Eusebius, Eccces. Theol. i. 8. supr. A. Lus., and by the Anomeans, supr. de Decr. 7, note 1.
Y the parent had not a son before his begetting, still, after having him, he had him, not as external or as foreign, but as from him. self, and proper to his essence and his exact image, so that the former is beheld in the latter, and the latter is contemplated in the former. If then they assume from human examples that generation implies time, why not from the same infer that it implies the Natural and the Proper', instead of extracting serpent-like from the earth only what turns to poison? ‘Those who ask of parents, and say, ‘Had you a son before you begot him?’ should add, ‘And if you had a son, did you purchase him from without as a house or any other possession?’ And then you would be answered, ‘He is not from without, but from myself. For things which are from without are possessions, and pass from one to another; but my son is from me, proper and similar to my essence, not become mine from another, but begotten of me; wherefore I too am wholly in him, while I remain myself what I am.’ For so it is; though the parent be distinct in time, as being man, who himself has come to be in time, yet he too would have had his child ever coexistent with him, but that his nature was a restraint and made it impossible. For Levi too was already in the loins of his great-grandfather, before his own actual generation, or that of his grandfather. When then the man comes to that age at which nature supplies the power, immediately, with nature unrestrained, he becomes father of the son from himself.
27. Therefore, if on asking parents about children, they get for answer, that children which are by nature are not from without, but from their parents, let them confess in like 1 Supr. de Decry. 6. The question was, What was that sense of Son which would apply to the Divine Nature? The Catholics said that its essential meaning cow/d apply, viz. consubstantiality, whereas the point of posteriority to the ’ather depended on a condition, ¢27e, which could not exist in the instance of God. ib. ro. The Arians on the other hand said, that to suppose a true Son, was to think of God irreverently, as implying division, change, &c. The Catholics replied that the notion of materiality was quite as foreign from the Divine Essence as time, and as the Divine Sonship was eternal, so was it also clear both of imperfection or extension.
2 It is from expressions such as this that the Greek Fathers have been accused of tritheism. The truth is, every illustration, as being incomplete on one or other side of it, taken by itself, tends to heresy. The title Son by itself suggests a second God, as the title Word a mere attribute, and the title Instrument a creature. All heresies are partial views of the truth, and are wrong, not so much in what they say, as in what they deny. The truth, on the other hand, is a positive and comprehensive doctrine, and in consequence necessarily mysterious and open to misconception. vid. de Syz. 41, note x When Athan. implies that the Eternal Father is in the Son, though remaining what He is, as a man in his child, he is intent only upon the point of the Son’s connaturality and equality, which the Arians denied. Cf. Orad. iii, § 5; Ps.-Ath. Drad. i. (Migne xxviii. 1144 C.). S, Cyril even seems to deny that each individual man may be considered a separate substance except as the Three Persons are such (Diad, i. p. 409); and S. Gregory Nyssen is led to say that, strictly speaking, the abstract az, which is predicated of separate individuals, is still one, and this with a view of illustrating the Divine Unity. ad Ad/ad. t. 2. p. 449. vid. Petav. de Trin. iv. 9.
manner concerning the Word of God, that He is simply from the Father. And if they make a question of the time, let them say what is to restrain God—for it is necessary to prove their irreligion on the very ground on which their scoff is made—let them tell us, what is there to restrain God from being always Father of the Son; for that what is begotten must be from its father is undeniable. Moreover, they will pass judgment on themselves in attributing3 such things to God, if, as they questioned women on the subject of time, so they inquire of the sun concerning its radiance, and of the fountain concerning its issue. They will find that these, though an offspring, always exist with those things from which they are. And if parents, such as these, have in common with their children nature and duration, why, if they suppose God inferior to things that come to be+, do they not openly say out their own irreligion? But if they do not dare to say this openly, and the Son is confessed to be, not from without, but a natural offspring from the Father, and that there is nothing which is a restraint to God (for not as man is He, but more than the sun, or rather the God of the sun), it follows that the Word is from Him and is ever coexistent with Him, through whom also the Father caused that all things which were not should be. That then the Son comes not of nothing but is eternal and from the Father, is certain even from the nature of the case; and the question of the heretics to parents exposes their perverseness; for they confess the point of nature, and now have been put to shame on the point of time.
28. As we said above, so now we repeat, that the divine generation must not be compared to the nature of men, nor the Son considered to be part of God, nor the generation to imply any passion whatever; God is not as man; for men beget passibly, having a transitive nature, which waits for periods by reason of its weakness. But with God this cannot be; for He is not composed of parts, but being impassible and simple, He is impassibly and indivisibly Father of the Son. This again is strongly evidenced and proved by divine Scripture. For the Word of God is His Son, and the Son is the Father’s Word and Wisdom; and Word and Wisdom is neither creature nor part of Him whose Word He is, nor an offspring passibly begotten. Uniting then the two titles, Scripture speaks 3 [But see O~. ili. 65, note 2.]
4S. Athanasius's doctrine is, that, God containing in Himself all perfection, whatever is excellent in one created thing above another, is found in its perfection in Him. Ifthen such generation as radiance from light is more perfect than that of children from ‘ parents, that belongs, and transcendently, to the All-perfect God.