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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 73
9. It may seem superfluous to proceed, but as Bishop Bull is an authority not lightly to be set aside, a passage from S. Basil shall be added. Eunomius objects, 'God begat the Son either being or not being, &c....to him that is, there needs not generation.' He replies that Eunomius, 'because animals first are not, and then are generated, and he who is born to-day, yesterday did not exist, transfers this conception to the subsistence of the Only-begotten; and says, since He has been generated, He was not before His generation, pro tes genneseos,' contr. Eunom. ii. 14. And he solves the objection as the other Fathers, by saying that our Lord is from everlasting, speaking of S. John, in the first words of his Gospel, as te a& 187;dioteti tou patros tou monogenous sunapton ten gennesin. S:15.
These then being the explanations which the contemporary and next following Fathers give of the Arian formula which was anathematized at Nicaea, it must be observed that the line of argument which Bishop Bull is pursuing, does not lead him to assign any direct reasons for the substitution of a different interpretation in their place. He is engaged, not in commenting on the Nicene Anathema, but in proving that the Post-Nicene Fathers admitted that view or statement of doctrine which he conceives also implied in that anathema; and thus the sense of the anathema, instead of being the subject of proof, is, as he believes, one of the proofs of the point which he is establishing. However, since these other collateral evidences which he adduces, may be taken to be some sort of indirect comment upon the words of the Anathema, the principal of them in point of authority, and that which most concerns us, shall here be noticed: it is a passage from the second Oration of Athanasius.
While commenting on the words, arche hodon eis ta erga in the text, 'The Lord has created me the beginning of His ways unto the works,' S. Athanasius is led to consider the text 'first born of every creature,' prototokos pases ktiseos: and he says that He who was monogenes from eternity, became by a sunkatabasis at the creation of the world prototokos. This doctrine Bp. Bull considers declaratory of a going forth, proeleusis, or figurative birth from the Father, at the beginning of all things.
It will be observed that the very point to be proved is this, viz. not that there was a sunkatabasis merely, but that according to Athanasius there was a gennesis or proceeding from the Father, and that the word prototokos marks it. Bull's words are, that 'Catholici quidam Doctores, qui post exortam controversiam Arianam vixerunt,...illam tou logou....ex Patre progressionem (quod et sunkatabasin, hoc est, condescensionem eorum nonnulli appellarunt), ad condendum haec universa agnovere; atque ejus etiam progressionis respectu ipsum ton logon a Deo Patre quasi natum fuisse et omnis creaturae primogenitum in Scripturis dici confessi sunt.' D. F. N. iii. 9. S:1. Now I consider that S. Athanasius does not, as this sentence says, understand by primogenitus that our Lord was 'progressionis respectu a Deo Patre quasi natus.' He does not seem to me to speak of a generation or birth of the Son at all, though figurative, but of the birth of all things, and that in Him.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athanasius/discourses-against-arians.asp?pg=73
