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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 52
24. We then, by way of giving a rude view of the expressions in this passage, have been led into many words, but blessed John will shew from his Epistle the sense of the words, concisely and much more perfectly than we can. And he will both disprove the interpretation of these irreligious men, and will teach how we become in God and God in us; and how again we become One in Him, and how far the Son differs in nature from us, and will stop the Arians from any longer thinking that they shall be as the Son, lest they hear it said to them, 'Thou art a man and not God,' and 'Stretch not thyself, being poor, beside a rich man [2966] .' John then thus writes; 'Hereby know we that we dwell in Him and He in us, because He hath given us of His Spirit [2967] .' Therefore because of the grace of the Spirit which has been given to us, in Him we come to be, and He in us [2968] ; and since it is the Spirit of God, therefore through His becoming in us, reasonably are we, as having the Spirit, considered to be in God, and thus is God in us. Not then as the Son in the Father, so also we become in the Father; for the Son does not merely partake the Spirit, that therefore He too may be in the Father; nor does He receive the Spirit, but rather He supplies It Himself to all; and the Spirit does not unite the Word to the Father [2969] , but rather the Spirit receives from the Word. And the Son is in the Father, as His own Word and Radiance; but we, apart from the Spirit, are strange and distant from God, and by the participation of the Spirit we are knit into the Godhead; so that our being in the Father is not ours, but is the Spirit's which is in us and abides in us, while by the true confession we preserve it in us, John again saying, 'Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him and he in God [2970] .' What then is our likeness and equality to the Son? rather, are not the Arians confuted on every side? and especially by John, that the Son is in the Father in one way, and we become in Him in another, and that neither we shall ever be as He, nor is the Word as we; except they shall dare, as commonly, so now to say, that the Son also by participation of the Spirit and by improvement of conduct [2971] came to be Himself also in the Father. But here again is an excess of irreligion, even in admitting the thought. For He, as has been said, gives to the Spirit, and whatever the Spirit hath, He hath from [2972] the Word.
[2966] Ez. xxviii. 2; Prov. xxiii. 4, LXX.
[2967] 1 John iv. 13.
[2968] Cf. 22, n. 6.
[2969] [i.e. not by grace] Vid. the end of this section and 25 init. supr. Or. i. 15. also Cyril Hier. Cat. xvi. 24. Epiph. Ancor. 67 init. Cyril in Joan. pp. 929, 930.
[2970] 1 John iv. 15.
[2971] beltiosei praxeos, and so ad Afros. tropon beltiosis. 8. Supr. Or. i. 37, 43. it is rather some external advance.
[2972] S:8, note 11.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athanasius/discourses-against-arians-2.asp?pg=52
