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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 22
19. If God be, and be called, the Fountain of wisdom and life--as He says by Jeremiah, 'They have forsaken Me the Fountain of living waters [1940] ;' and again, 'A glorious high throne from the beginning, is the place of our sanctuary; O Lord, the Hope of Israel, all that forsake Thee shall be ashamed, and they that depart from Me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the Lord, the Fountain of living waters [1941] ;' and in the book of Baruch it is written, 'Thou hast forsaken the Fountain of wisdom [1942] ,'--this implies that life and wisdom are not foreign to the Essence of the Fountain, but are proper to It, nor were at any time without existence, but were always. Now the Son is all this, who says, 'I am the Life [1943] ,' and, 'I Wisdom dwell with prudence [1944] .' Is it not then irreligious to say, 'Once the Son was not?' for it is all one with saying, 'Once the Fountain was dry, destitute of Life and Wisdom.' But a fountain it would then cease to be; for what begetteth not from itself, is not a fountain [1945] . What a load of extravagance! for God promises that those who do His will shall be as a fountain which the water fails not, saying by Isaiah the prophet, 'And the Lord shall satisfy thy soul in drought, and make thy bones fat; and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not [1946] .' And yet these, whereas God is called and is a Fountain of wisdom, dare to insult Him as barren and void of His proper Wisdom. But their doctrine is false; truth witnessing that God is the eternal Fountain of His proper Wisdom; and, if the Fountain be eternal, the Wisdom also must needs be eternal. For in It were all things made, as David says in the Psalm, 'In Wisdom hast Thou made them all [1947] ;' and Solomon says, 'The Lord by Wisdom hath formed the earth, by understanding hath He established the heavens [1948] .' And this Wisdom is the Word, and by Him, as John says, 'all things were made,' and 'without Him was made not one thing [1949] .' And this Word is Christ; for 'there is One God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we for Him; and One Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through Him [1950] .' And if all things are through Him, He Himself is not to be reckoned with that 'all.' For he who dares [1951] to call Him, through whom are things, one of that 'all,' surely will have like speculations concerning God, from whom are all. But if he shrinks from this as unseemly, and excludes God from that all, it is but consistent that he should also exclude from that all the Only-Begotten Son, as being proper to the Father's essence. And, if He be not one of the all [1952] , it is sin to say concerning Him, 'He was not,' and 'He was not before His generation.' Such words may be used of the creatures; but as to the Son, He is such as the Father is, of whose essence He is proper Offspring, Word, and Wisdom [1953] . For this is proper to the Son, as regards the Father, and this shews that the Father is proper to the Son; that we may neither say that God was ever without Word [1954] , nor that the Son was non-existent. For wherefore a Son, if not from Him? or wherefore Word and Wisdom, if not ever proper to Him?
[1940] Jer. ii. 13.
[1941] Ib. xvii. 12, 13.
[1942] Bar. iii. 12.
[1943] John xiv. 6.
[1944] Prov. viii. 12.
[1945] Supr. S:15.
[1946] Isa. lviii. 11.
[1947] Ps. civ. 24.
[1948] Prov. iii. 19.
[1949] John i. 3. See Westcott's additional note on the passage.]
[1950] 1 Cor. viii. 6.
[1951] Vid. Petav. de Trin. ii. 12, S:4.
[1952] De Decr. S:30.
[1953] De Decr. S:17.
[1954] alogon. Vid. note on de Decr. S:S:1, 15, where other instances are given from Athan. and Dionysius of Rome; vid. also Orat. iv. 2, 4. Sent. D. 23. Origen, supr. p. 48. Athenag. Leg. 10. Tat. contr. Graec. 5. Theoph. ad. Autol. ii. 10. Hipp. contr. Noet. 10. Nyssen. contr. Eunom. vii. p. 215. viii. pp. 230, 240. Orat, Catech. 1. Naz. Orat. 29. 17 fin. Cyril. Thesaur. xiv. p. 145 (vid. Petav. de Trin. vi. 9). It must not be supposed from these instances that the Fathers meant that our Lord was literally what is called the attribute of reason or wisdom in the Divine Essence, or in other words, that He was God merely viewed as He is wise; which would be a kind of Sabellianism. But, whereas their opponents said that He was but called Word and Wisdom after the attribute (vid. de Syn. 15, note), they said that such titles marked, not only a typical resemblance to the attribute, but so full a correspondence and (as it were) coincidence in nature with it, that whatever relation that attribute had to God, such in kind had the Son;--that the attribute was His symbol, and not His mere archetype; that our Lord was eternal and proper to God, because that attribute was, which was His title, vid. Ep. Aeg. 14, that our Lord was that Essential Reason and Wisdom,--not by which the Father is wise, but without which the Father was not wise;--not, that is, in the way of a formal cause, but in fact. Or, whereas the Father Himself is Reason and Wisdom, the Son is the necessary result of that Reason and Wisdom, so that, to say that there was no Word, would imply there was no Divine Reason; just as a radiance implies a light; or, as Petavius remarks, l.c. quoting the words which follow shortly after in the text, the eternity of the Original implies the eternity of the Image; tes hupostaseos huparchouses, pantos euthus einai dei ton charaktera kai ten eikona tautes, S:20. vid. also infr. S:31, de Decr. S:13, p. 21, S:S:20, 23, pp. 35, 40. Theod. H. E. i. 3. p. 737.
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