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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 33
Chapter IX.--Objections Continued. Whether is the Unoriginate one or two? Inconsistent in Arians to use an unscriptural word; necessary to define its meaning. Different senses of the word. If it means 'without Father,' there is but One Unoriginate; if 'without beginning or creation,' there are two. Inconsistency of Asterius. 'Unoriginate' a title of God, not in contrast with the Son, but with creatures, as is 'Almighty,' or 'Lord of powers.' 'Father' is the truer title, as not only Scriptural, but implying a Son, and our adoption as sons.
30. These considerations encourage the faithful, and distress the heretical, perceiving, as they do, their heresy overthrown thereby. Moreover, their further question, 'whether the Unoriginate be one or two [1993] ,' shews how false are their views, how treacherous and full of guile. Not for the Father's honour ask they this, but for the dishonour of the Word. Accordingly, should any one, not aware of their craft, answer, 'the Unoriginated is one,' forthwith they spirit out their own venom, saying, 'Therefore the Son is among things originated,' and well have we said, 'He was not before His generation.' Thus they make any kind of disturbance and confusion, provided they can but separate the Son from the Father, and reckon the Framer of all among His works. Now first they may be convicted on this score, that, while blaming the Nicene Bishops for their use of phrases not in Scripture, though these not injurious, but subversive of their irreligion, they themselves went off upon the same fault, that is, using words not in Scripture [1994] , and those in contumely of the Lord, knowing 'neither what they say nor whereof they affirm [1995] .' For instance, let them ask the Greeks, who have been their instructors (for it is a word of their invention, not Scripture), and when they have been instructed in its various significations, then they will discover that they cannot even question properly, on the subject which they have undertaken. For they have led me to ascertain [1996] that by 'unoriginate' is meant what has not yet come to be, but is possible to be, as wood which is not yet become, but is capable of becoming, a vessel; and again what neither has nor ever can come to be, as a triangle quadrangular, and an even number odd. For a triangle neither has nor ever can become quadrangular; nor has even ever, nor can ever, become odd. Moreover, by 'unoriginate' is meant, what exists, but has not come into being from any, nor having a father at all. Further, Asterius, the unprincipled sophist, the patron too of this heresy, has added in his own treatise, that what is not made, but is ever, is 'unoriginate [1997] .' They ought then, when they ask the question, to add in what sense they take the word 'unoriginate,' and then the parties questioned would be able to answer to the point.
[1993] The word angen[n]eton was in the philosophical schools synonymous with 'God;' hence by asking whether there were two Unoriginates, the Arians implied that there were two Gods, if Christ was God in the sense in which the Father was. Hence Athan. retorts, phaskontes, ou legomen duo ageneta, legousi duo theous. Orat. iii. 16, also ii. 38. Plato used agenneton of the Supreme God [not so; he used ageneton, see note 2 on de Decr. 28]; the Valentinians, Tertull. contr. Val. 7; and Basilides, Epiph. Haer. 31. 10. S. Clement uses it, see de Syn. 47, note 7. [The earlier Arians apparently argued mainly, like Asterius, from agenetos (cf. Epiph. 64. 8), the later (kainoi, Epiph. Haer. 73. 19) Anomoeans rather from agennetos]; viz. that he agennesia is the very ousia of God, not an attribute. So Aetius in Epiph. Haer. 76. S. Athanasius does not go into this question, but rather confines himself to the more popular form of it, viz. the Son is by His very name not agenetos, but genetos, but all geneta are creatures; which he answers, as de Decr. S:28, by saying that Christianity had brought in a new idea into theology, viz. the sacred doctrine of a true Son, ek tes ousias. This was what the Arians had originally denied hen to agenneton hen de to hup' autou alethos, kai ouk ek tes ousias autou gegonos. Euseb. Nic. ap. Theod. H. E. i. 6. When they were urged what according to them was the middle idea to which the Son answered, if they would not accept the Catholic, they would not define but merely said, gennema, all' ouk hos hen ton gennematon. [See pp. 149, 169, and the reference there to Lightfoot.]
[1994] De Decr. 18.
[1995] 1 Tim. i. 7.
[1996] De Decr. 28, note 4.
[1997] The two first senses here given answer to the two first mentioned, de Decr. S:28. and, as he there says, are plainly irrelevant. The third in the de Decr. which, as he there observes, is ambiguous and used for a sophistical purpose, is here divided into third and fourth, answering to the two senses which alone are assigned in the de Syn. S:46 [where see note 5], and on them the question turns. This is an instance, of which many occur, how Athan. used his former writings and worked over again his former ground, and simplified or cleared what he had said. In the de Decr. after 350, we have three senses of ageneton, two irrelevant and the third ambiguous; here in Orat. i. (358), he divides the third into two; in the de Syn. (359), he rejects and omits the two first, leaving the two last, which are the critical senses.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athanasius/discourses-against-arians.asp?pg=33
