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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 55
52. Vainly then, here again, O Arians, have ye made this conjecture, and vainly alleged the words of Scripture; for God's Word is unalterable, and is ever in one state, not as it may happen [2123] , but as the Father is; since how is He like the Father, unless He be thus? or how is all that is the Father's the Son's also, if He has not the unalterableness and unchangeableness of the Father [2124] ? Not as being subject to laws [2125] , and biassed to one side, does He love the one and hate the other, lest, if from fear of falling away He chooses the one, we admit that He is alterable otherwise also; but, as being God and the Father's Word, He is a just judge and lover of virtue, or rather its dispenser. Therefore being just and holy by nature, on this account He is said to love righteousness and to hate iniquity; as much as to say, that He loves and chooses the virtuous, and rejects and hates the unrighteous. And divine Scripture says the same of the Father; 'The Righteous Lord loveth righteousness; Thou hatest all them that work iniquity [2126] ,' and 'The Lord loveth the gates of Sion, more than all the dwellings of Jacob [2127] ;' and, 'Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated [2128] ;' and in Isaiah there is the voice of God again saying, 'I the Lord love righteousness, and hate robbery of unrighteousness [2129] .' Let them then expound those former words as these latter; for the former also are written of the Image of God: else, misinterpreting these as those, they will conceive that the Father too is alterable. But since the very hearing others say this is not without peril, we do well to think that God is said to love righteousness and to hate robbery of unrighteousness, not as if biassed to one side, and capable of the contrary, so as to select the latter and not choose the former, for this belongs to things originated, but that, as a judge, He loves and takes to Him the righteous and withdraws from the bad. It follows then to think the same concerning the Image of God also, that He loves and hates no otherwise than thus. For such must be the nature of the Image as is Its Father, though the Arians in their blindness fail to see either that image or any other truth of the divine oracles. For being forced from the conceptions or rather misconceptions [2130] of their own hearts, they fall back upon passages of divine Scripture, and here too from want of understanding, according to their wont, they discern not their meaning; but laying down their own irreligion as a sort of canon of interpretation [2131] , they wrest the whole of the divine oracles into accordance with it. And so on the bare mention of such doctrine, they deserve nothing but the reply, 'Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God [2132] ;' and if they persist in it, they must be put to silence, by the words, 'Render to' man 'the things that are' man's, 'and to God the things that are' God's [2133] .
[2123] haplos, ouk haplos horisthe, all' akribos exetasthe. Socr. i. 9. p. 31.
[2124] John xvii. 10, S:35, note 2.
[2125] Eunomius said that our Lord was utterly separate from the Father, 'by natural law,' nomo phuseos; S. Basil observes, 'as if the God of all had not power over Himself, heautou kurios, but were in bondage under the decrees of necessity.' contr. Eunom. ii. 30.
[2126] Ps. xi. 7; v. 5.
[2127] Ib. lxxxvii. 2.
[2128] Mal. i. 2, 3.
[2129] Is. lxi. 8.
[2130] ennoion mallon de paranoion, vid. S:40, note 1.
[2131] Instead of professing to examine Scripture or to acquiesce in what they had been taught, the Arians were remarkable for insisting on certain abstract positions or inferences on which they make the whole controversy turn. Vid. Socrates' account of Arius's commencement, 'If God has a Son, he must have a beginning of existence,' &c. &c., and so the word ageneton.
[2132] Matt. xxii. 29.
[2133] Ib. xxii. 21.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athanasius/discourses-against-arians.asp?pg=55
