13. Therefore let them tell us, from what teacher or by what tradition they derived these notions concerning the Saviour? "We have read," they will say, "in the Proverbs, The Lord created me a beginning of His ways unto His works [830] ;'" this Eusebius and his fellows used to insist on [831] , and you write me word, that the present men also, though overthrown and confuted by an abundance of arguments, still were putting about in every quarter this passage, and saying that the Son was one of the creatures, and reckoning Him with things originated. But they seem to me to have a wrong understanding of this passage also; for it has a religious and very orthodox sense, which had they understood, they would not have blasphemed the Lord of glory. For on comparing what has been above stated with this passage, they will find a great difference between them [832] . For what man of right understanding does not perceive, that what are created and made are external to the maker; but the Son, as the foregoing argument has shewn, exists not externally, but from the Father who begat Him? for man too both builds a house and begets a son, and no one would reverse things, and say that the house or the ship were begotten by the builder [833] , but the son was created and made by him; nor again that the house was an image of the maker, but the son unlike him who begat him; but rather he will confess that the son is an image of the father, but the house a work of art, unless his mind be disordered, and he beside himself. Plainly, divine Scripture, which knows better than any the nature of everything, says through Moses, of the creatures, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth [834] ;' but of the Son it introduces not another, but the Father Himself saying, I have begotten Thee from the womb before the morning star [835] ;' and again, Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee [836] .' And the Lord says of Himself in the Proverbs, Before all the hills He begets me [837] ;' and concerning things originated and created John speaks, All things were made by Him [838] ;' but preaching of the Lord, he says, The Only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He declared Him [839] .' If then son, therefore not creature; if creature, not son; for great is the difference between them, and son and creature cannot be the same, unless His essence be considered to be at once from God, and external to God.
14. Has then the passage no meaning?' for this, like a swarm of gnats, they are droning about us [840] . No surely, it is not without meaning, but has a very apposite one; for it is true to say that the Son was created too, but this took place when He became man; for creation belongs to man. And any one may find this sense duly given in the divine oracles, who, instead of accounting their study a secondary matter, investigates the time and characters [841] , and the object, and thus studies and ponders what he reads. Now as to the season spoken of, he will find for certain that, whereas the Lord always is, at length in fulness of the ages He became man; and whereas He is Son of God, He became Son of man also. And as to the object he will understand, that, wishing to annul our death, He took on Himself a body from the Virgin Mary; that by offering this unto the Father a sacrifice for all, He might deliver us all, who by fear of death were all our life through subject to bondage [842] . And as to the character, it is indeed the Saviour's, but is said of Him when He took a body and said, The Lord created me a beginning of His ways unto His works [843] .' For as it properly belongs to God's Son to be everlasting. and in the Father's bosom, so on His becoming man, the words befitted Him, The Lord created me.' For then it is said of Him, as also that He hungered, and thirsted, and asked where Lazarus lay, and suffered, and rose again [844] . And as, when we hear of Him as Lord and God and true Light, we understand Him as being from the Father, so on hearing, The Lord created,' and Servant,' and He suffered,' we shall justly ascribe this, not to the Godhead, for it is irrelevant, but we must interpret it by that flesh which He bore for our sakes: for to it these things are proper, and this flesh was none other's than the Word's. And if we wish to know the object attained by this, we shall find it to be as follows: that the Word was made flesh in order to offer up this body for all, and that we partaking of His Spirit, might be deified [845] , a gift which we could not otherwise have gained than by His clothing Himself in our created body [846] , for hence we derive our name of "men of God" and "men in Christ." But as we, by receiving the Spirit, do not lose our own proper substance, so the Lord, when made man for us, and bearing a body, was no less God; for He was not lessened by the envelopment of the body, but rather deified it and rendered it immortal [847] .
[776] katachrestikos. This word is noticed and protested against by Alexander, Socr. Hist. i. 6. p. 11 a. by the Semiarians at Ancyra, Epiph. Hær. 73. n. 5. by Basil. contr. Eunom. ii. 23. and by Cyril, Dial. ii. t. v. i. pp. 432, 3.
[777] Vid. Ep. Æg. 12. Orat. i. §5. 6. de Synod. 15, 16. Athanas. seems to have had in mind Socr. i. 6. p. 10, 11, or the like.
[778] Vid. Orat. i. §38. The controversy turned on the question what was meant by the word Son.' Though the Arians would not allow with the Catholics that our Lord was Son by nature, and maintained that the word implied a beginning of existence, they did not dare to say that He was Son merely in the sense in which we are sons, though, as Athan. contends, they necessarily tended to this conclusion, directly they receded from the Catholic view. Thus Arius said that He was a creature, but not as one of the creatures.' Orat. ii. §19. Valens at Ariminum said the same, Jerom. adv. Lucifer. 18. Hilary says, that not daring directly to deny that He was God, the Arians merely asked whether He was a Son.' de Trin. viii. 3. Athanasius remarks upon this reluctance to speak out, challenging them to present the heresy naked,' de Sent. Dionys. 2. init. No one,' he says elsewhere, puts a light under a bushel; let them shew the world their heresy naked.' Ep. Æg. 18. vid. ibid. 10. In like manner, Basil says that (though Arius was really like Eunomius, in faith, contr. Eunom. i. 4) Aetius his master was the first to teach openly (phaneros), that the Father's substance was unlike, anomoios, the Son's. ibid. i. 1. Epiphanius Hær. 76 p. 949. seems to say that the elder Arians held the divine generation in a sense in which Aetius did not, that is, they were not so consistent and definite as he. Athan. goes on to mention some of the attempts of the Arians to find some theory short of orthodoxy, yet short of that extreme heresy, on the other hand, which they felt ashamed to avow.
[779] Deut. xiii. 18; xiv. 1.
[780] John. i. 12.
[781] Theod. Hist. i. 3.
[782] This is celebrated as an explanation of the Anomoeans. vid. Basil. contr. Eunom. ii. 20, 21. though Athan. speaks of it as belonging to the elder Arians. vid. Socr. Hist. i. 6.
[783] i.e. what is your authority? is it not a novel, and therefore a wrong doctrine? vid. infr. §13. ad Serap. i. 3. Also Orat. i. §8. Who ever heard such doctrine? or whence or from whom did they hear it? who, when they were under catechising, spoke thus to them? If they themselves confess that they now hear it for the first time, they must grant that their heresy is alien, and not from the Fathers.' vid. ii. §34. and Socr. i. 6. p. 11 c.
[784] Is. xl. 28.
[785] Ib. 29
[786] Ps. c. 3.
[787] Vid. infr. §17 Orat. ii. §31. 71. Irenæus calls the Son and Holy Spirit the Hands of God. Hær. iv. præf. vid. also Hilar. de Trin. vii. 22. This image is in contrast to that of instrument, organon, which the Arians would use of the Son. vid. Socr. i. 6. p. 11, as implying He was external to God, whereas the word Hand implies His consubstantiality with the Father.
[788] Is. lxvi. 2.
[789] mathon edidasken, implying the traditional nature of the teaching. And so S. Paul himself, 1 Cor. xv. 3, vid. for an illustration, supr. §5. init. also note 2.
[790] 1 Cor. viii. 6.
[791] Jer. i. 5.
[792] Orat. ii. §24. fin.
[793] Vid. infr. 20. Orat. i. §31. ii. §§24, 28. 37. 40. iii. §§2. 60. de Synod §§18. 19. [Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2) a.]
[794] Vid. also infr. §20. de Synod. §17.
[795] Vid. infr. §24. Orat. i. §15. fin. ii. §29. Epiph. Hær. 76. p. 951.
[796] Jer. i. 5.
[797] Is. lxvi. 2.
[798] Ib. xliv. 24.
[799] Ps. cxix. 73.
[800] Is. xlix. 5.
[801] Ps. cxlviii. 5 (LXX).
[802] In like manner, Men were made through the Word, when the Father Himself willed.' Orat. i. 63. The Word forms matter as injoined by, and ministering to, God.' prostattomenos kai hupourgon. ibid. ii. §22. contr. Gent. 46. vid. note on Orat. ii. 22.
[803] ad Serap. i. 3.
[804] His argument is, that if the Son but partook the Father in the sense in which we partake the Son, then the Son would not impart to us the Father, but Himself, and would be a separating as well as uniting medium between the Father and us; whereas He brings us so near to the Father, that we are the Father's children, not His, and therefore He must be Himself one with the Father, or the Father must be in Him with an incomprehensible completeness. vid. de Synod. §51. contr. Gent. 46. fin. Hence S. Augustin says, As the Father has life in Himself, so hath He given also to the Son to have life in Himself, not by participating, but in Himself. For we have not life in ourselves, but in our God. But that Father, who has life in Himself, begat a Son such, as to have life in Himself, not to become partaker of life, but to be Himself life; and of that life to make us partakers.' Serm. 127. de Verb. Evang. 9.
[805] Is. i. 2.
[806] To say God is wholly partaken, is the same as saying that God begets.' Orat. i. §16. And in like manner, our inferior participation involves such sonship as is vouchsafed to us.
[807] And so in Orat. ii. §19-22. Though the Son surpassed other things on a comparison, yet He were equally a creature with them; for even in those things which are of a created nature, we may find some things surpassing others. Star, for instance, differs from star in glory, yet it does not follow that some are sovereign, and others serve, &c.' ii. §20. And so Gregory Nyssen contr. Eunom. iii. p. 132 D. Epiph. Hær. 76. p. 970.
[808] Matt. xxv. 21, 23, 34.
[809] i.e. since it is impossible they can persist in evasions so manifest as these, nothing is left but to take the other sense of the word.
[810] Paul of Samosata [see Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2)a.]
[811] The force lies in the word phusei, naturally,' which the Council expressed still more definitely by essence.' Thus Cyril says, the term "Son" denotes the essential origin from the Father.' Dial. 5. p. 573. And Gregory Nyssen, the title "Son" does not simply express the being from another' vid. infra. §19.), but relationship according to nature. contr. Eunom. ii. p. 91. Again S. Basil says, that Father is a term of relationship,' oikeioseos. contr. Eunom. ii. 24. init. And hence he remarks, that we too are properly, kurios, sons of God, as becoming related to Him through works of the Spirit. ii. 23. So also Cyril, loc. cit. Elsewhere S. Basil defines father one who gives to another the origin of being according to a nature like his own;' and a son one who possesses the origin of being from another by generation,' contr. Eun. ii. 22. On the other hand, the Arians at the first denied that by nature there was any Son of God.' Theod. H. E. i. 3. p. 732.