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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 3
57. For had He been a creature, He had not said, 'He begets me,' for the creatures are from without, and are works of the Maker; but the Offspring is not from without nor a work, but from the Father, and proper to His Essence. Wherefore they are creatures; this God's Word and Only-begotten Son. For instance, Moses did not say of the creation, 'In the beginning He begat,' nor 'In the beginning was,' but 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth [2581] .' Nor did David say in the Psalm, 'Thy hands have "begotten me,"' but 'made me and fashioned me [2582] ,' everywhere applying the word 'made' to the creatures. But to the Son contrariwise; for he has not said 'I made,' but 'I begat [2583] ,' and 'He begets me,' and 'My heart uttered a good Word [2584] .' And in the instance of the creation, 'In the beginning He made;' but in the instance of the Son, 'In the beginning was the Word [2585] .' And there is this difference, that the creatures are made upon the beginning, and have a beginning of existence connected with an interval; wherefore also what is said of them, 'In the beginning He made,' is as much as saying of them, 'From the beginning He made:'--as the Lord, knowing that which He had made, taught, when He silenced the Pharisees, with the words, 'He which made them from the beginning, made them male and female [2586] ;' for from some beginning, when they were not yet, were originate things brought into being and created. This too the Holy Spirit has signified in the Psalms, saying, 'Thou, Lord, at the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth [2587] ;' and again, 'O think upon Thy congregation which Thou hast purchased from the beginning [2588] ;' now it is plain that what takes place at the beginning, has a beginning of creation, and that from some beginning God purchased His congregation. And that 'In the beginning He made,' from his saying 'made,' means 'began to make,' Moses himself shews by saying, after the completion of all things, 'And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it He had rested from all His work which God began to make [2589] .' Therefore the creatures began to be made; but the Word of God, not having beginning of being, certainly did not begin to be, nor begin to come to be, but was ever. And the works have their beginning in their making, and their beginning precedes their coming to be; but the Word, not being of things which come to be, rather comes to be Himself the Framer of those which have a beginning. And the being of things originate is measured by their becoming [2590] , and from some beginning does God begin to make them through the Word, that it may be known that they were not before their origination; but the Word has His being, in no other beginning [2591] than the Father, whom [2592] they allow to be without beginning, so that He too exists without beginning in the Father, being His Offspring, not His creature.
[2581] Gen. i. 1.
[2582] Ps. cxix. 73.
[2583] Ps. ii. 7.
[2584] Ps. xlv. 1.
[2585] John i. 1.
[2586] Matt. xix. 4.
[2587] Ps. cii. 25.
[2588] Ps. lxxiv. 2.
[2589] Gen. ii. 3.
[2590] Supr. i. 29, n. 10.
[2591] arche, vid. Orat. iv. 1.
[2592] In this passage 'was from the beginning' is made equivalent with 'was not before generation,' and both are contrasted with 'without beginning' or 'eternal;' vid. the bearing of this on Bishop Bull's explanation of the Nicene Anathema, supr. Exc. B, where this passage is quoted.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athanasius/discourses-against-arians-2.asp?pg=3
