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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 51
48. What advancement then was it to the Immortal to have assumed the mortal? or what promotion is it to the Everlasting to have put on the temporal? what reward can be great to the Everlasting God and King in the bosom of the Father? See ye not, that this too was done and written because of us and for us, that us who are mortal and temporal, the Lord, become man, might make immortal, and bring into the everlasting kingdom of heaven? Blush ye not, speaking lies against the divine oracles? For when our Lord Jesus Christ had been among us, we indeed were promoted, as rescued from sin; but He is the same [2093] ; nor did He alter, when He became man (to repeat what I have said), but, as has been written, 'The Word of God abideth for ever [2094] .' Surely as, before His becoming man, He, the Word, dispensed to the saints the Spirit as His own [2095] , so also when made man, He sanctifies all by the Spirit and says to His Disciples, 'Receive ye the Holy Ghost.' And He gave to Moses and the other seventy; and through Him David prayed to the Father, saying, 'Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me [2096] .' On the other hand, when made man, He said, 'I will send to you the Paraclete, the Spirit of truth [2097] ;' and He sent Him, He, the Word of God, as being faithful. Therefore 'Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever [2098] ,' remaining unalterable, and at once gives and receives, giving as God's Word, receiving as man. It is not the Word then, viewed as the Word, that is promoted; for He had all things and has them always; but men, who have in Him and through Him their origin [2099] of receiving them. For, when He is now said to be anointed in a human respect, we it is who in Him are anointed; since also when He is baptized, we it is who in Him are baptized. But on all these things the Saviour throws much light, when He says to the Father, 'And the glory which Thou gavest Me, I have given to them, that they may be one, even as We are one [2100] .' Because of us then He asked for glory, and the words occur, 'took' and 'gave' and 'highly exalted,' that we might take, and to us might be given, and we might be exalted in Him; as also for us He sanctifies Himself, that we might be sanctified in Him [2101] .
[2093] p. 159, note 8.
[2094] Isai. xl. 8. logos but rhema. LXX.
[2095] S:39, note 4.
[2096] Ps. li. 11.
[2097] John xv. 26.
[2098] Heb. xiii. 8.
[2099] The word origin, arche, implies the doctrine, more fully brought out in other passages of the Fathers, that our Lord has deigned to become an instrumental cause, as it may be called, of the life of each individual Christian. For at first sight it may be objected to the whole course of Athan.'s argument thus;--What connection is there between the sanctification of Christ's manhood and ours? how does it prove that human nature is sanctified because a particular specimen of it was sanctified in Him? S. Chrysostom explains, Hom. in Matt. lxxxii. 5. And just before, 'It sufficed not for Him to be made man, to be scourged, to be sacrificed; but He assimilates us to Him (anaphurei heauton hemin), nor merely by faith, but really, has He made us His body.' Again, 'That we are commingled (anakerasthomen) into that flesh, not merely through love, but really, is brought about by means of that food which He has bestowed upon us.' Hom. in Joann. 46. 3. And so S. Cyril writes against Nestorius: 'Since we have proved that Christ is the Vine, and we branches as adhering to a communion with Him, not spiritual merely but bodily, why clamours he against us thus bootlessly, saying that, since we adhere to Him, not in a bodily way, but rather by faith and the affection of love according to the Law, therefore He has called, not His own flesh the vine, but rather the Godhead?' in Joann. lib. 10. Cap. 2. pp. 863, 4. And Nyssen, Orat. Catech. 37. Decocta quasi per ollam carnis nostrae cruditate, sanctificavit in aeternum nobis cibum carnem suam. Paulin. Ep. 23. Of course in such statements nothing material is implied; Hooker says, 'The mixture of His bodily substance with ours is a thing which the ancient Fathers disclaim. Yet the mixture of His flesh with ours they speak of, to signify what our very bodies through mystical conjunction receive from that vital efficacy which we know to be in His, and from bodily mixtures they borrow divers similitudes rather to declare the truth than the manner of coherence between His sacred and the sanctified bodies of saints.' Eccl. Pol. v. 56. S:10. But without some explanation of this nature, language such as S. Athanasius's in the text seems a mere matter of words. vid. infr. S:50 fin.
[2100] John xvii. 22.
[2101] Cyril, Thesaur. 20. p. 197.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athanasius/discourses-against-arians.asp?pg=51
