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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 111
37. Wherefore I am in wonder how, whereas God is One, these men introduce, after their private notions, many images and wisdoms and words [2449] , and say that the Father's proper and natural Word is other than the Son, by whom He even made the Son [2450] and that He who is really Son is but notionally [2451] called Word, as vine, and way, and door, and tree of life; and that He is called Wisdom also in name, the proper and true Wisdom of the Father, which coexist ingenerately [2452] with Him, being other than the Son, by which He even made the Son, and named Him Wisdom as partaking of it. This they have not confined to words, but Arius composed in his Thalia, and the Sophist Asterius wrote, what we have stated above, as follows: 'Blessed Paul said not that he preached Christ, the Power of God or the Wisdom of God,' but without the addition of the article, 'God's power' and 'God's wisdom [2453] ,' thus preaching that the proper Power of God Himself which is natural to Him, and co-existent in Him ingenerately, is something besides, generative indeed of Christ, and creative of the whole world, concerning which he teaches in his Epistle to the Romans thus,--'The invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal Power and Godhead [2454] .' For as no one would say that the Godhead there mentioned was Christ, but the Father Himself, so, as I think, 'His eternal Power and Godhead also is not the Only Begotten Son, but the Father who begat Him [2455] .' And he teaches that there is another power and wisdom of God, manifested through Christ. And shortly after the same Asterius says, 'However His eternal power and wisdom, which truth argues to be without beginning and ingenerate, the same must surely be one. For there are many wisdoms which are one by one created by Him, of whom Christ is the first-born and only-begotten; all however equally depend on their Possessor. And all the powers are rightly called His who created and uses them:--as the Prophet says that the locust, which came to be a divine punishment of human sins, was called by God Himself not only a power, but a great power; and blessed David in most of the Psalms invites, not the Angels alone, but the Powers to praise God.'
[2449] polloi logoi, vid. de Decr. 16, n. 4. infr. 39 init. and oud' ek pollon heis, Sent. D. 25. a. also Ep. Aeg. 14. c. Origen in Joan. tom. ii. 3. Euseb. Demonstr. v. 5. p. 229 fin. contr. Marc. p. 4 fin. contr. Sabell. init. August. in Joan. Tract. i. 8. also vid. Philo's use of logoi for Angels as commented on by Burton, Bampt. Lect. p. 556. The heathens called Mercury by the name of logos. vid. Benedictine note f. in Justin, Ap. i. 21.
[2450] This was the point in which Arians and [Marcellus] agreed, vid infr. Orat. iv. init. also S:S:22, 40, and de Decr. 24, n. 9, also Sent D. 25. Ep. Aeg. 14 fin. Epiph. Haer. 72. p. 835. b.
[2451] That is, they allowed Him to be 'really Son,' and argued that He was but 'notionally Word.' vid. S:19, n. 3.
[2452] agennetos, vid. Euseb. Eccl. Theol. p. 106. d.
[2453] 1 Cor. i. 24.
[2454] Rom. i. 20.
[2455] Or. i. 11, n. 7.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athanasius/discourses-against-arians.asp?pg=111
