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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 42
39. Therefore He was not man, and then became God, but He was God, and then became man, and that to deify us [2035] . Since, if when He became man, only then He was called Son and God, but before He became man, God called the ancient people sons, and made Moses a god of Pharaoh (and Scripture says of many, 'God standeth in the congregation of Gods [2036] '), it is plain that He is called Son and God later than they. How then are all things through Him, and He before all? or how is He 'first-born of the whole creation [2037] ,' if He has others before Him who are called sons and gods? And how is it that those first partakers [2038] do not partake of the Word? This opinion is not true; it is a device of our present Judaizers. For how in that case can any at all know God as their Father? for adoption there could not be apart from the real Son, who says, 'No one knoweth the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him [2039] .' And how can there be deifying apart from the Word and before Him? yet, saith He to their brethren the Jews, 'If He called them gods, unto whom the Word of God came [2040] .' And if all that are called sons and gods, whether in earth or in heaven, were adopted and deified through the Word, and the Son Himself is the Word, it is plain that through Him are they all, and He Himself before all, or rather He Himself only is very Son [2041] , and He alone is very God from the very God, not receiving these prerogatives as a reward for His virtue, nor being another beside them, but being all these by nature and according to essence. For He is Offspring of the Father's essence, so that one cannot doubt that after the resemblance of the unalterable Father, the Word also is unalterable.
[2035] [De Incar. 54, and note.]
[2036] Ps. lxxxii. 1; Heb. LXX.
[2037] Col. i. 15. vid. infr. ii. S:62.
[2038] In this passage Athan. considers that the participation of the Word is deification, as communion with the Son is adoption: also that the old Saints, inasmuch as they are called 'gods' and 'sons,' did partake of the Divine Word and Son, or in other words were gifted with the Spirit. He asserts the same doctrine very strongly in Orat. iv. S:22. On the other hand, infr. 47, he says expressly that Christ received the Spirit in Baptism 'that He might give it to man.' There is no real contradiction in such statements; what was given in one way under the Law, was given in another and fuller under the Gospel.
[2039] Matt. xi. 27.
[2040] John x. 35.
[2041] p. 157, note 6.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athanasius/discourses-against-arians.asp?pg=42
