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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 89
60. All everywhere tell us of the being of the Word, but none of His being 'by will,' nor at all of His making; but they, where, I ask, did they find will or pleasure 'precedent [3219] ' to the Word of God, unless forsooth, leaving the Scriptures, they simulate the perverseness of Valentinus? For Ptolemy the Valentinian said that the Unoriginate had a pair of attributes, Thought and Will, and first He thought and then He willed; and what He thought, He could not put forth [3220] , unless when the power of the Will was added. Thence the Arians taking a lesson, wish will and pleasure to precede the Word. For them then, let them rival the doctrine of Valentinus; but we, when we read the divine discourses, found 'He was' applied to the Son, but of Him only did we hear as being in the Father and the Father's Image; while in the case of things originate only, since also by nature these things once were not, but afterwards came to be [3221] , did we recognise a precedent will and pleasure, David saying in the hundred and thirteenth Psalm, 'As for our God He is in heaven, He hath done whatsoever pleased Him,' and in the hundred and tenth, 'The works of the Lord are great, sought out unto all His good pleasure;' and again, in the hundred and thirty-fourth, 'Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did He in heaven, and in earth, and in the sea, and in all deep places [3222] .' If then He be work and thing made, and one among others, let Him, as others, be said 'by will' to have come to be, and Scripture shews that these are thus brought into being. And Asterius, the advocate [3223] for the heresy, acquiesces, when he thus writes, 'For if it be unworthy of the Framer of all, to make at pleasure, let His being pleased be removed equally in the case of all, that His Majesty be preserved unimpaired. Or if it be befitting God to will, then let this better way obtain in the case of the first Offspring. For it is not possible that it should be fitting for one and the same God to make things at His pleasure, and not at His will also.' In spite of the Sophist having introduced abundant irreligion in his words, namely, that the Offspring and the thing made are the same, and that the Son is one offspring out of all offsprings that are, He ends with the conclusion that it is fitting to say that the works are by will and pleasure.
[3219] proegoumenen and 61 fin. The antecedens voluntas has been mentioned in Recogn. Clem. supr. note 11. For Ptolemy vid. Epiph. Haer. p. 215. The Catholics, who allowed that our Lord was thelesei, explained it as a sundromos thelesis, and not a proegoumene; as Cyril. Trin. ii. p. 56. And with the same meaning S. Ambrose, nec voluntas ante Filium nec potestas. de Fid. v. 224. And S. Gregory Nyssen, 'His immediate union, amesos sunapheia, does not exclude the Father's will, boulesin, nor does that will separate the Son from the Father.' contr. Eunom. vii. p. 206, 7. vid. the whole passage. The alternative which these words, sundromos and proegoumene, expressed was this; whether an act of Divine Purpose or Will took place before the Generation of the Son, or whether both the Will and the Generation were eternal, as the Divine Nature was eternal. Hence Bull says, with the view of exculpating Novatian, Cum Filius dicitur ex Patre, quando ipse voluit, nasci. Velle illud Patris aeternum fuisse intelligendum. Defens. F. N. iii. 8. S:8.
[3220] proballein, de Syn. 16, n. 8.
[3221] epigegone, Or. i. 25, 28 fin. iii. 6.
[3222] Ps. cxv. 3; cxi. 2. LXX.; cxxxv. 6.
[3223] Cf. ii. n. 1.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athanasius/discourses-against-arians-2.asp?pg=89
