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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 24
21. Proceed we then to consider the attributes of the Father, and we shall come to know whether this Image is really His. The Father is eternal, immortal, powerful, light, King, Sovereign, God, Lord, Creator, and Maker. These attributes must be in the Image, to make it true that he 'that hath seen' the Son 'hath seen the Father [1961] .' If the Son be not all this, but, as the Arians consider, originate, and not eternal, this is not a true Image of the Father, unless indeed they give up shame, and go on to say, that the title of Image, given to the Son, is not a token of a similar essence [1962] , but His name [1963] only. But this, on the other hand, O ye enemies of Christ, is not an Image, nor is it an Expression. For what is the likeness of what is out of nothing to Him who brought what was nothing into being? or how can that which is not, be like Him that is, being short of Him in once not being, and in its having its place among things originate? However, such the Arians wishing Him to be, devised for themselves arguments such as this;--'If the Son is the Father's offspring and Image, and is like in all things [1964] to the Father, then it necessarily holds that as He is begotten, so He begets, and He too becomes father of a son. And again, he who is begotten from Him, begets in his turn, and so on without limit; for this is to make the Begotten like Him that begat Him.' Authors of blasphemy, verily, are these foes of God! who, sooner than confess that the Son is the Father's Image [1965] , conceive material and earthly ideas concerning the Father Himself, ascribing to Him severings and [1966] effluences and influences. If then God be as man, let Him become also a parent as man, so that His Son should be father of another, and so in succession one from another, till the series they imagine grows into a multitude of gods. But if God be not as man, as He is not, we must not impute to Him the attributes of man. For brutes and men, after a Creator has begun them, are begotten by succession; and the son, having been begotten of a father who was a son, becomes accordingly in his turn a father to a son, in inheriting from his father that by which he himself has come to be. Hence in such instances there is not, properly speaking, either father or son, nor do the father and the son stay in their respective characters, for the son himself becomes a father, being son of his father, but father of his son. But it is not so in the Godhead; for not as man is God; for the Father is not from a father; therefore doth He not beget one who shall become a father; nor is the Son from effluence of the Father, nor is He begotten from a father that was begotten; therefore neither is He begotten so as to beget. Thus it belongs to the Godhead alone, that the Father is properly [1967] father, and the Son properly son, and in Them, and Them only, does it hold that the Father is ever Father and the Son ever Son.
22. Therefore he who asks why the Son is not to beget a son, must inquire why the Father had not a father. But both suppositions are unseemly and full of impiety. For as the Father is ever Father and never could become Son, so the Son is ever Son and never could become Father. For in this rather is He shewn to be the Father's Expression and Image, remaining what He is and not changing, but thus receiving from the Father to be one and the same. If then the Father change, let the Image change; for so is the Image and Radiance in its relation towards Him who begat It. But if the Father is unalterable, and what He is that He continues, necessarily does the Image also continue what He is, and will not alter. Now He is Son from the Father; therefore He will not become other than is proper to the Father's essence. Idly then have the foolish ones devised this objection also, wishing to separate the Image from the Father, that they might level the Son with things originated.
[1961] John xiv. 9.
[1962] homoias ousias. And so S:20 init. homoion kat' ousian, and homoios tes ousias, S:26. homoios kat' ousian, iii. 26. and homoios kata ten ousian tou patros. Ep. Aeg. 17. Also Alex. Ep. Encycl. 2. Considering what he says in the de Syn. S:38, &c., in controversy with the semi-Arians a year or two later, this use of their formula, in preference to the homoousion (vid. foregoing note), deserves our attention.
[1963] De Decr. S:16.
[1964] De Syn. 27 (5) note 1, and infr. S:40.
[1965] The objection is this, that, if our Lord be the Father's Image, He ought to resemble Him in being a Father. S. Athanasius answers that God is not as man; with us a son becomes a father because our nature is rheuste, transitive and without stay, ever shifting and passing on into new forms and relations; but that God is perfect and ever the same, what He is once that He continues to be; God the Father remains Father, and God the Son remains Son. Moreover men become fathers by detachment and transmission, and what is received is handed on in a succession; whereas the Father, by imparting Himself wholly, begets the Son: and a perfect nativity finds its termination in itself. The Son has not a Son, because the Father has not a Father. Thus the Father is the only true Father, and the Son alone true Son; the Father only a Father, the Son only a Son; being really in their Persons what human fathers are but by office, character, accident, and name; vid. De Decr. 11, note 6. And since the Father is unchangeable as Father, in nothing does the Son more fulfil the idea of a perfect Image than in being unchangeable too. Thus S. Cyril also, Thesaur. 10. p. 124. And this perhaps may illustrate a strong and almost startling implication of some of the Greek Fathers, that the First Person in the Holy Trinity, is not God [in virtue of His Fatherhood]. E.g. ei de theos ho hui& 232;s, ouk epei hui& 231;s; homoios kai ho pater, ouk epei pater, theos; all' epei ousia toiade, heis esti pater kai ho hui& 232;s theos. Nyssen. t. i. p. 915. vid. Petav. de Deo i. 9. S:13. Should it be asked, 'What is the Father if not God?' it is enough to answer, 'the Father.' Men differ from each other as being individuals, but the characteristic difference between Father and Son is, not that they are individuals, but that they are Father and Son. In these extreme statements it must be ever borne in mind that we are contemplating divine things according to our notions. not in fact: i.e. speaking of the Almighty Father, as such; there being no real separation between His Person and His Substance. It may be added, that, though theologians differ in their decisions, it would appear that our Lord is not the Image of the Father's person, but of the Father's substance; in other words, not of the Father considered as Father, but considered as God. That is, God the Son is like and equal to God the Father, because they are both the same God. De Syn. 49. note 4, also next note.
[1966] Ep. Eus. 7, de Decr. 11, note 8.
[1967] kurios, de Decr. 11, note 6. Elsewhere Athan. says, 'The Father being one and only is Father of a Son one and only; and in the instance of Godhead only have the names Father and Son stay, and are ever; for of men if any one be called father, yet he has been son of another; and if he be called son, yet is he called father of another; so that in the case of men the names father and son do not properly, kurios, hold.' ad Serap. i. 16. also ibid. iv. 4 fin. and 6. vid. also kurios, Greg. Naz. Orat. 29. 5. alethos, Orat. 25, 16. ontos, Basil. contr. Eunom. i. 5. p. 215.
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