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Translated by Cardinal Newman.
St Athanasius the Great Resources Online and in Print
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This Part: 128 Pages
Page 106
32. It is plain from this that the Arians are not fighting with us about their heresy; but while they pretend us, their real fight is against the Godhead Itself. For if the voice were ours which says, 'This it My Son [2410] ,' small were our complaint of them; but if it is the Father's voice, and the disciples heard it, and the Son too says of Himself, 'Before all the mountains He begat me [2411] ,' are they not fighting against God, as the giants [2412] in story, having their tongue, as the Psalmist says, a sharp sword [2413] for irreligion? For they neither feared the voice of the Father, nor reverenced the Saviour's words, nor trusted the Saints, one of whom writes, 'Who being the Brightness of His glory and the Expression of His subsistence,' and 'Christ the power of God and the Wisdom of God [2414] ;' and another says in the Psalm, 'With Thee is the well of life, and in Thy Light shall we see light,' and 'Thou madest all things in Wisdom [2415] ;' and the Prophets say, 'And the Word of the Lord came to me [2416] ;' and John, 'In the beginning was the Word;' and Luke, 'As they delivered them unto us which from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word [2417] ;' and as David again says, 'He sent His Word and healed them [2418] .' All these passages proscribe in every light the Arian heresy, and signify the eternity of the Word, and that He is not foreign but proper to the Father's Essence. For when saw any one light without radiance? or who dares to say that the expression can be different from the subsistence? or has not a man himself lost his mind [2419] who even entertains the thought that God was ever without Reason and without Wisdom? For such illustrations and such images has Scripture proposed, that, considering the inability of human nature to comprehend God, we might be able to form ideas even from these however poorly and dimly, and as far as is attainable [2420] . And as the creation contains abundant matter for the knowledge of the being of a God and a Providence ('for by the greatness and beauty of the creatures proportionably the Maker of them is seen [2421] '), and we learn from them without asking for voices, but hearing the Scriptures we believe, and surveying the very order and the harmony of all things, we acknowledge that He is Maker and Lord and God of all, and apprehend His marvellous Providence and governance over all things; so in like manner about the Son's Godhead, what has been above said is sufficient, and it becomes superfluous, or rather it is very mad to dispute about it, or to ask in an heretical way, How can the Son be from eternity? or how can He be from the Father's Essence, yet not a part? since what is said to be of another, is a part of him; and what is divided, is not whole.
[2410] Vid. Matt. xvii. 5.
[2411] Prov. viii. 25, LXX.
[2412] tous mutheuomenous gigantas, vid. supr. de Decr. fin. Also hos tous gigantas Orat.iii. 42. In Hist. Arian. 74. he calls Constantius a gigas. The same idea is implied in the word theomachos so frequently applied to Arianism, as in this sentence.
[2413] Ps. lvii. 4.
[2414] Heb. i. 3; 1 Cor. i. 24.
[2415] Ps. xxxvi. 9; civ. 24.
[2416] Jer. ii. 1.
[2417] John i. 1; Luke i. 2.
[2418] Ps. cvii. 20.
[2419] Vid. p. 150, n. 6, also Gent. 40 fin. where what is here, as commonly, applied to the Arians, is, before the rise of Arianism, applied to unbelievers.
[2420] Vid. de Decr. 12, 16, notes i. 26, n. 2, ii. 36, n. 1. de Syn. 41, n. 1. In illud Omnia 3 fin. vid. also 6. Aug. Confess. xiii. 11. And again, Trin. xv. 39. And S. Basil contr. Eunom. ii. 17.
[2421] Wisd. xiii. 5.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athanasius/discourses-against-arians.asp?pg=106
