20. When then was God without that which is proper to Him? or how can a man consider that which is proper, as foreign and alien in essence? for other things, according to the nature of things originate, are without likeness in essence with the Maker; but are external to Him, made by the Word at His grace and will, and thus admit of ceasing to be, if it so pleases Him who made them [1955] ; for such is the nature of things originate [1956] . But as to what is proper to the Father's essence (for this we have already found to be the Son), what daring is it in irreligion to say that This comes from nothing,' and that It was not before generation,' but was adventitious [1957] , and can at some time cease to be again? Let a person only dwell upon this thought, and he will discern how the perfection and the plenitude of the Father's essence is impaired by this heresy; however, he will see its unseemliness still more clearly, if he considers that the Son is the Image and Radiance of the Father, and Expression, and Truth. For if, when Light exists, there be withal its Image, viz. Radiance, and, a Subsistence existing, there be of it the entire Expression, and, a Father existing, there be His Truth (viz. the Son); let them consider what depths of irreligion they fall into, who make time the measure of the Image and Form of the Godhead. For if the Son was not before His generation, Truth was not always in God, which it were a sin to say; for, since the Father was, there was ever in Him the Truth, which is the Son, who says, I am the Truth [1958] .' And the Subsistence existing, of course there was forthwith its Expression and Image; for God's Image is not delineated from without [1959] , but God Himself hath begotten it; in which seeing Himself, He has delight, as the Son Himself says, I was His delight [1960] .' When then did the Father not see Himself in His own Image? or when had He not delight, that a man should dare to say, the Image is out of nothing,' and The Father had not delight before the Image was originated?' and how should the Maker and Creator see Himself in a created and originated essence? for such as is the Father, such must be the Image.
21. Proceed we then to consider the attributes of the Father, and we shall come to know whether this Image is really His. The Father is eternal, immortal, powerful, light, King, Sovereign, God, Lord, Creator, and Maker. These attributes must be in the Image, to make it true that he that hath seen' the Son hath seen the Father [1961] .' If the Son be not all this, but, as the Arians consider, originate, and not eternal, this is not a true Image of the Father, unless indeed they give up shame, and go on to say, that the title of Image, given to the Son, is not a token of a similar essence [1962] , but His name [1963] only. But this, on the other hand, O ye enemies of Christ, is not an Image, nor is it an Expression. For what is the likeness of what is out of nothing to Him who brought what was nothing into being? or how can that which is not, be like Him that is, being short of Him in once not being, and in its having its place among things originate? However, such the Arians wishing Him to be, devised for themselves arguments such as this;--If the Son is the Father's offspring and Image, and is like in all things [1964] to the Father, then it necessarily holds that as He is begotten, so He begets, and He too becomes father of a son. And again, he who is begotten from Him, begets in his turn, and so on without limit; for this is to make the Begotten like Him that begat Him.' Authors of blasphemy, verily, are these foes of God! who, sooner than confess that the Son is the Father's Image [1965] , conceive material and earthly ideas concerning the Father Himself, ascribing to Him severings and [1966] effluences and influences. If then God be as man, let Him become also a parent as man, so that His Son should be father of another, and so in succession one from another, till the series they imagine grows into a multitude of gods. But if God be not as man, as He is not, we must not impute to Him the attributes of man. For brutes and men, after a Creator has begun them, are begotten by succession; and the son, having been begotten of a father who was a son, becomes accordingly in his turn a father to a son, in inheriting from his father that by which he himself has come to be. Hence in such instances there is not, properly speaking, either father or son, nor do the father and the son stay in their respective characters, for the son himself becomes a father, being son of his father, but father of his son. But it is not so in the Godhead; for not as man is God; for the Father is not from a father; therefore doth He not beget one who shall become a father; nor is the Son from effluence of the Father, nor is He begotten from a father that was begotten; therefore neither is He begotten so as to beget. Thus it belongs to the Godhead alone, that the Father is properly [1967] father, and the Son properly son, and in Them, and Them only, does it hold that the Father is ever Father and the Son ever Son.
22. Therefore he who asks why the Son is not to beget a son, must inquire why the Father had not a father. But both suppositions are unseemly and full of impiety. For as the Father is ever Father and never could become Son, so the Son is ever Son and never could become Father. For in this rather is He shewn to be the Father's Expression and Image, remaining what He is and not changing, but thus receiving from the Father to be one and the same. If then the Father change, let the Image change; for so is the Image and Radiance in its relation towards Him who begat It. But if the Father is unalterable, and what He is that He continues, necessarily does the Image also continue what He is, and will not alter. Now He is Son from the Father; therefore He will not become other than is proper to the Father's essence. Idly then have the foolish ones devised this objection also, wishing to separate the Image from the Father, that they might level the Son with things originated.
[1936] de Decr. 25, note 2.
[1937] Vid. Orat. iv. §13.
[1938] §8, note 8.
[1939] De Decr. §31.
[1940] Jer. ii. 13.
[1941] Ib. xvii. 12, 13.
[1942] Bar. iii. 12.
[1943] John xiv. 6.
[1944] Prov. viii. 12.
[1945] Supr. §15.
[1946] Isa. lviii. 11.
[1947] Ps. civ. 24.
[1948] Prov. iii. 19.
[1949] John i. 3. See Westcott's additional note on the passage.]
[1950] 1 Cor. viii. 6.
[1951] Vid. Petav. de Trin. ii. 12, §4.
[1952] De Decr. §30.
[1953] De Decr. §17.
[1954] alogon. Vid. note on de Decr. §§1, 15, where other instances are given from Athan. and Dionysius of Rome; vid. also Orat. iv. 2, 4. Sent. D. 23. Origen, supr. p. 48. Athenag. Leg. 10. Tat. contr. Græc. 5. Theoph. ad. Autol. ii. 10. Hipp. contr. Noet. 10. Nyssen. contr. Eunom. vii. p. 215. viii. pp. 230, 240. Orat, Catech. 1. Naz. Orat. 29. 17 fin. Cyril. Thesaur. xiv. p. 145 (vid. Petav. de Trin. vi. 9). It must not be supposed from these instances that the Fathers meant that our Lord was literally what is called the attribute of reason or wisdom in the Divine Essence, or in other words, that He was God merely viewed as He is wise; which would be a kind of Sabellianism. But, whereas their opponents said that He was but called Word and Wisdom after the attribute (vid. de Syn. 15, note), they said that such titles marked, not only a typical resemblance to the attribute, but so full a correspondence and (as it were) coincidence in nature with it, that whatever relation that attribute had to God, such in kind had the Son;--that the attribute was His symbol, and not His mere archetype; that our Lord was eternal and proper to God, because that attribute was, which was His title, vid. Ep. Æg. 14, that our Lord was that Essential Reason and Wisdom,--not by which the Father is wise, but without which the Father was not wise;--not, that is, in the way of a formal cause, but in fact. Or, whereas the Father Himself is Reason and Wisdom, the Son is the necessary result of that Reason and Wisdom, so that, to say that there was no Word, would imply there was no Divine Reason; just as a radiance implies a light; or, as Petavius remarks, l.c. quoting the words which follow shortly after in the text, the eternity of the Original implies the eternity of the Image; tes hupostaseos huparchouses, pantos euthus einai dei ton charaktera kai ten eikona tautes, §20. vid. also infr. §31, de Decr. §13, p. 21, §§20, 23, pp. 35, 40. Theod. H. E. i. 3. p. 737.
[1955] This was but the opposite aspect of the tenet of our Lord's consubstantiality or eternal generation. For if He came into being at the will of God, by the same will He might cease to be; but if His existence is unconditional and necessary, as God's attributes might be, then as He had no beginning, so can He have no end; for He is in, and one with, the Father, who has neither beginning nor end. On the question of the will of God' as it affects the doctrine, vid. Orat. iii. §59, &c.
[1956] §29, note.
[1957] De Decr. 22, note 9.
[1958] John xiv. 6.
[1959] Athan. argues from the very name Image for our Lord's eternity. An Image, to be really such, must be an expression from the Original, not an external and detached imitation. vid. supr. note 10, infr. §26. Hence S. Basil, He is an Image not made with the hand, or a work of art, but a living Image,' &c. vid. also contr. Eunom. ii. 16, 17. Epiph. Hær. 76. 3. Hilar. Trin. vii. 41 fin. Origen observes that man, on the contrary, is an example of an external or improper image of God. Periarch. i. 2. §6. It might have been more direct to have argued from the name of Image to our Lord's consubstantiality rather than eternity, as, e.g. S. Gregory Naz. He is Image as one in essence, homoousion,...for this is the nature of an image, to be a copy of the archetype.' Orat. 30. 20. vid. also de Decr. §§20, 23, but for whatever reason Athan. avoids the word homoousion in these Discourses. S. Chrys. on Col. i. 15.
[1960] Prov. viii. 30.
[1961] John xiv. 9.
[1962] homoias ousias. And so §20 init. homoion kat' ousian, and homoios tes ousias, §26. homoios kat' ousian, iii. 26. and homoios kata ten ousian tou patros. Ep. Æg. 17. Also Alex. Ep. Encycl. 2. Considering what he says in the de Syn. §38, &c., in controversy with the semi-Arians a year or two later, this use of their formula, in preference to the homoousion (vid. foregoing note), deserves our attention.
[1963] De Decr. §16.
[1964] De Syn. 27 (5) note 1, and infr. §40.
[1965] The objection is this, that, if our Lord be the Father's Image, He ought to resemble Him in being a Father. S. Athanasius answers that God is not as man; with us a son becomes a father because our nature is rheuste, transitive and without stay, ever shifting and passing on into new forms and relations; but that God is perfect and ever the same, what He is once that He continues to be; God the Father remains Father, and God the Son remains Son. Moreover men become fathers by detachment and transmission, and what is received is handed on in a succession; whereas the Father, by imparting Himself wholly, begets the Son: and a perfect nativity finds its termination in itself. The Son has not a Son, because the Father has not a Father. Thus the Father is the only true Father, and the Son alone true Son; the Father only a Father, the Son only a Son; being really in their Persons what human fathers are but by office, character, accident, and name; vid. De Decr. 11, note 6. And since the Father is unchangeable as Father, in nothing does the Son more fulfil the idea of a perfect Image than in being unchangeable too. Thus S. Cyril also, Thesaur. 10. p. 124. And this perhaps may illustrate a strong and almost startling implication of some of the Greek Fathers, that the First Person in the Holy Trinity, is not God [in virtue of His Fatherhood]. E.g. ei de theos ho hui& 232;s, ouk epei hui& 231;s; homoios kai ho pater, ouk epei pater, theos; all' epei ousia toiade, heis esti pater kai ho hui& 232;s theos. Nyssen. t. i. p. 915. vid. Petav. de Deo i. 9. §13. Should it be asked, What is the Father if not God?' it is enough to answer, the Father.' Men differ from each other as being individuals, but the characteristic difference between Father and Son is, not that they are individuals, but that they are Father and Son. In these extreme statements it must be ever borne in mind that we are contemplating divine things according to our notions. not in fact: i.e. speaking of the Almighty Father, as such; there being no real separation between His Person and His Substance. It may be added, that, though theologians differ in their decisions, it would appear that our Lord is not the Image of the Father's person, but of the Father's substance; in other words, not of the Father considered as Father, but considered as God. That is, God the Son is like and equal to God the Father, because they are both the same God. De Syn. 49. note 4, also next note.