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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 47
19. Again, taking patterns for man from divine subjects, the Saviour says; 'Be ye merciful, as your Father which is in heaven is merciful [2935] ;' and, 'Be ye perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect [2936] .' And He said this too, not that we might become such as the Father; for to become as the Father, is impossible for us creatures, who have been brought to be out of nothing; but as He charged us, 'Be ye not like to horse,' not lest we should become as draught animals, but that we should not imitate their want of reason, so, not that we might become as God, did He say, 'Be ye merciful as your Father,' but that looking at His beneficent acts, what we do well, we might do, not for men's sake, but for His sake, so that from Him and not from men we may have the reward. For as, although there be one Son by nature, True and Only-begotten, we too become sons, not as He in nature and truth, but according to the grace of Him that calleth, and though we are men from the earth, are yet called gods [2937] , not as the True God or His Word, but as has pleased God who has given us that grace; so also, as God do we become merciful, not by being made equal to God, nor becoming in nature and truth benefactors (for it is not our gift to benefit but belongs to God), but in order that what has accrued to us from God Himself by grace, these things we may impart to others, without making distinctions, but largely towards all extending our kind service. For only in this way can we anyhow become imitators, and in no other, when we minister to others what comes from Him. And as we put a fair and right [2938] sense upon these texts, such again is the sense of the lection in John. For he does not say, that, as the Son is in the Father, such we must become:--whence could it be? when He is God's Word and Wisdom, and we were fashioned out of the earth, and He is by nature and essence Word and true God (for thus speaks John, 'We know that the Son of God is come, and He hath given us an understanding to know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ; this is the true God and eternal life [2939] ') and we are made sons through Him by adoption and grace, as partaking of His Spirit (for 'as many as received Him,' he says, 'to them gave He power to become children of God, even to them that believe on His Name [2940] '), and therefore also He is the Truth (saying, 'I am the Truth,' and in His address to His Father, He said, 'Sanctify them through Thy Truth, Thy Word is Truth [2941] '); but we by imitation [2942] become virtuous [2943] and sons:--therefore not that we might become such as He, did He say 'that they may be one as We are;' but that as He, being the Word, is in His own Father, so that we too, taking an examplar and looking at Him, might become one towards each other in concord and oneness of spirit, nor be at variance as the Corinthians, but mind the same thing, as those five thousand in the Acts [2944] , who were as one.
[2935] Luke vi. 36.
[2936] Matt. v. 48.
[2937] theoi, S:S:23 end, 25, and ii. 70, n. 1.
[2938] ii. 44, n. 1.
[2939] 1 John v. 20.
[2940] John i. 12.
[2941] Ib. xiv. 6; xvii. 17.
[2942] kata mimesin. Clem. Alex. Paedag. i. 3. p. 102. ed. Pott. Naz. Ep. 102. p. 95. (Ed. Ben.) Leo in various places, supr. ii. 55, n. 1. Iren. Haer. v. 1. August. Serm. 101, 6. August. Trin. iv. 17. also ix. 21. and Eusebius, kata ten autou mimesin. Eccl. Theol. iii. 19, a. For inward grace as opposed to teaching, vid. supr. Orat. ii. 56, n. 5, and 79, n. 10.
[2943] enaretoi so panaretos Clem. Rom. Ep. i.
[2944] Acts iv. 4, 32.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athanasius/discourses-against-arians-2.asp?pg=47
