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Translated by Cardinal Newman.
St Athanasius the Great Resources Online and in Print
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This Part: 130 Pages
Page 117
23. For if simply, when made Man, He has become Son, the becoming Man is the cause. And if the Man is cause of His being Son, or both together, then the same absurdities result. Next, if He is first Word and then Son, it will appear that He knew the Father afterwards, not before; for not as being Word does He know Him, but as Son. For 'No one knoweth the Father but the Son.' And this too will result, that He has come afterwards to be 'in the bosom of the Father [3368] ,' and afterwards He and the Father have become One; and afterwards is, 'He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father [3369] .' For all these things are said of the Son. Hence they will be forced to say, The Word was nothing but a name. For neither is it He who is in us with the Father, nor whoso has seen the Word, hath seen the Father, nor was the Father known to any one at all, for through the Son is the Father known (for so it is written, 'And he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him'), and, the Word not being yet Son, not yet did any know the Father. How then was He seen by Moses, how by the fathers? for He says Himself in the Kingdoms, 'Was I not plainly revealed to the house of thy father [3370] ?' But if God was revealed, there must have been a Son to reveal, as He says Himself, 'And he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him.' It is irreligious then and foolish to say that the Word is one and the Son another, and whence they gained such an idea it were well to ask them. They answer, Because no mention is made in the Old Testament of the Son, but of the Word; and for this reason they are positive in their opinion that the Son came later than the Word, because not in the Old, but in the New only, is He spoken of. This is what they irreligiously say; for first to separate between the Testaments, so that the one does not hold with the other, is the device of Manichees and Jews, the one of whom oppose the Old, and the other the New [3371] . Next, on their shewing, if what is contained in the Old is of older date, and what in the New of later, and times depend upon the writing, it follows that 'I and the Father are One,' and 'Only-begotten,' and 'He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father [3372] ,' are later, for these testimonies are adduced not from the Old but from the New.
[3368] Matt. xi. 27; John i. 18.
[3369] John xiv. 9.
[3370] 1 Sam. ii. 27, LXX.
[3371] Cf. i. 53, n. 7; iii. 35, n. 5.
[3372] John x. 30; i. 18; xiv. 9.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athanasius/discourses-against-arians-2.asp?pg=117
