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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 17
Chapter V.--Subject Continued. Objection, that the Son's eternity makes Him coordinate with the Father, introduces the subject of His Divine Sonship, as a second proof of His eternity. The word Son is introduced in a secondary, but is to be understood in real sense. Since all things partake of the Father in partaking of the Son, He is the whole participation of the Father, that is, He is the Son by nature; for to be wholly participated is to beget.
14. When these points are thus proved, their profaneness goes further. 'If there never was, when the Son was not,' say they, 'but He is eternal, and coexists with the Father, you call Him no more the Father's Son, but brother [1914] .' O insensate and contentious! For if we said only that He was eternally with the Father, and not His Son, their pretended scruple would have some plausibility; but if, while we say that He is eternal, we also confess Him to be Son from the Father, how can He that is begotten be considered brother of Him who begets? And if our faith is in Father and Son, what brotherhood is there between them? and how can the Word be called brother of Him whose Word He is? This is not an objection of men really ignorant, for they comprehend how the truth lies; but it is a Jewish pretence, and that from those who, in Solomon's words, 'through desire separate themselves [1915] ' from the truth. For the Father and the Son were not generated from some pre-existing origin [1916] , that we may account Them brothers, but the Father is the Origin of the Son and begat Him; and the Father is Father, and not born the Son of any; and the Son is Son, and not brother. Further, if He is called the eternal offspring [1917] of the Father, He is rightly so called. For never was the essence of the Father imperfect, that what is proper to it should be added afterwards [1918] ; nor, as man from man, has the Son been begotten, so as to be later than His Father's existence, but He is God's offspring, and as being proper Son of God, who is ever, He exists eternally. For, whereas it is proper to men to beget in time, from the imperfection of their nature [1919] , God's offspring is eternal, for His nature is ever perfect [1920] . If then He is not a Son, but a work made out of nothing, they have but to prove it; and then they are at liberty, as if imagining about a creature, to cry out, 'There was once when He was not;' for things which are originated were not, and have come to be. But if He is Son, as the Father says, and the Scriptures proclaim, and 'Son' is nothing else than what is generated from the Father; and what is generated from the Father is His Word, and Wisdom, and Radiance; what is to be said but that, in maintaining 'Once the Son was not,' they rob God of His Word, like plunderers, and openly predicate of Him that He was once without His proper Word and Wisdom, and that the Light was once without radiance, and the Fountain was once barren and dry [1921] ? For though they pretend alarm at the name of time, because of those who reproach them with it, and say, that He was before times, yet whereas they assign certain intervals, in which they imagine He was not, they are most irreligious still, as equally suggesting times, and imputing to God an absence of Reason [1922] .
[1914] This was an objection urged by Eunomius, cf. de Syn. 51, note 8. It is implied also in the Apology of the former, S:24, and in Basil. contr. Eunom. ii. 28. Aetius was in Alexandria with George of Cappadocia, a.d. 356-8, and Athan. wrote these Discourses in the latter year, as the de Syn. at the end of the next. It is probable then that he is alluding to the Anomoean arguments as he heard them reported, vid. de Syn. l.c. where he says, 'they say, "as you have written,"' S:51. 'Anomoios kat' ousian is mentioned infr. S:17. As the Arians here object that the First and Second Persons of the Holy Trinity are adelphoi, so did they say the same in the course of the controversy of the Second and Third. vid. Serap. i. 15. iv. 2.
[1915] Prov. xviii. 1.
[1916] Vid. de Syn. S:51.
[1917] In other words, by the Divine gennesis is not meant an act but an eternal and unchangeable fact, in the Divine Essence. Arius. not admitting this, objected at the outset of the controversy to the phrase 'always Father, always Son,' Theod. H. E. i. 4. p. 749, and Eunomius argues that, 'if the Son is co-eternal with the Father, the Father was never such in act, energos, but was argos.' Cyril. Thesaur. v. p. 41. S. Cyril answers that 'works,' erga, are made exothen, 'from without;' but that our Lord, as S. Athanasius here says, is neither a 'work' nor 'from without.' And hence he says elsewhere that, while men are fathers first in posse then in act, God is dunamei te kai energei& 139; pater. Dial. 2. p. 458. (vid. supr. p. 65. note m). Victorinus in like manner, says, that God is potentia et actione Deus sed in aeterna, Adv. Ar. i. p. 202; and he quotes S. Alexander, speaking apparently in answer to Arius, of a semper generans generatio. And Arius scoffs at aeigennes and agennetogenes. Theod. Hist. i. 4. p. 749. And Origen had said, ho soter aei gennatai. ap. Routh. Reliq. t. 4. p. 304 and S. Dionysius calls Him the Radiance, anarchon kai aeigenes. Sent. Dion 15. S. Augustine too says, Semper gignit Pater, et semper nascitur Filius. Ep. 238. n. 4. Petav. de Trin. ii. 5. n. 7, quotes the following passage from Theodorus Abucara, 'Since the Son's generation does but signify His having His existence from the Father, which He has ever, therefore He is ever begotten. For it became Him, who is properly (kurios) the Son, ever to be deriving His existence from the Father, and not as we who derive its commencement only. In us generation is a way to existence; in the Son of God it denotes the existence itself; in Him it has not existence for its end, but it is itself an end, telos, and is perfect, teleion.' Opusc 26.
[1918] de Decr. 22, note 9.
[1919] Infr. S:26 fin., and de Decr. 12, note 2.
[1920] Vid. supr. note 4. A similar passage is found in Cyril. Thesaur. v. p. 42, Dial. ii. fin. This was retorting the objection; the Arians said, 'How can God be ever perfect, who added to Himself a Son?' Athan. answers, 'How can the Son not be eternal, since God is ever perfect?' vid. Greg. Nyssen, contr. Eunom. Append. p. 142. Cyril. Thesaur. x. p. 78. As to the Son's perfection, Aetius objects ap. Epiph. Haer. 76. pp. 925, 6, that growth and consequent accession from without were essentially involved in the idea of Sonship; whereas S. Greg. Naz. speaks of the Son as not atele proteron, eita teleion, hosper nomos tes hemeteras geneseos, Orat. 20. 9 fin. In like manner, S. Basil argues against Eunomius, that the Son is teleios, because He is the Image, not as if copied, which is a gradual work, but as a charakter, or impression of a seal, or as the knowledge communicated from master to scholar, which comes to the latter and exists in him perfect, without being lost to the former. contr. Eunom. ii. 16 fin.
[1921] de Decr. 12, 15.
[1922] Ib. 22, note 1, infr. S:19.
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