34. Therefore it is more pious and more accurate to signify God from the Son and call Him Father, than to name Him from His works only and call Him Unoriginate [2008] . For the latter title, as I have said, does nothing more than signify all the works, individually and collectively, which have come to be at the will of God through the Word; but the title Father has its significance and its bearing only from the Son. And, whereas the Word surpasses things originated, by so much and more doth calling God Father surpass the calling Him Unoriginate. For the latter is unscriptural and suspicious, because it has various senses; so that, when a man is asked concerning it, his mind is carried about to many ideas; but the word Father is simple and scriptural, and more accurate, and only implies the Son. And Unoriginate' is a word of the Greeks, who know not the Son; but Father' has been acknowledged and vouchsafed by our Lord. For He, knowing Himself whose Son He was, said, I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me;' and, He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father,' and I and the Father are One [2009] ;' but nowhere is He found to call the Father Unoriginate. Moreover, when He teaches us to pray, He says not, When ye pray, say, O God Unoriginate,' but rather, When ye pray, say, Our Father, which art in heaven [2010] .' And it was His will that the Summary [2011] of our faith should have the same bearing, in bidding us be baptized, not into the name of Unoriginate and originate, nor into the name of Creator and creature, but into the Name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. For with such an initiation we too, being numbered among works, are made sons, and using the name of the Father, acknowledge from that name the Word also in the Father Himself [2012] . A vain thing then is their argument about the term Unoriginate,' as is now proved, and nothing more than a fantasy.
[1993] The word angen[n]eton was in the philosophical schools synonymous with God;' hence by asking whether there were two Unoriginates, the Arians implied that there were two Gods, if Christ was God in the sense in which the Father was. Hence Athan. retorts, phaskontes, ou legomen duo ageneta, legousi duo theous. Orat. iii. 16, also ii. 38. Plato used agenneton of the Supreme God [not so; he used ageneton, see note 2 on de Decr. 28]; the Valentinians, Tertull. contr. Val. 7; and Basilides, Epiph. Hær. 31. 10. S. Clement uses it, see de Syn. 47, note 7. [The earlier Arians apparently argued mainly, like Asterius, from agenetos (cf. Epiph. 64. 8), the later (kainoi, Epiph. Hær. 73. 19) Anomoeans rather from agennetos]; viz. that he agennesia is the very ousia of God, not an attribute. So Aetius in Epiph. Hær. 76. S. Athanasius does not go into this question, but rather confines himself to the more popular form of it, viz. the Son is by His very name not agenetos, but genetos, but all geneta are creatures; which he answers, as de Decr. §28, by saying that Christianity had brought in a new idea into theology, viz. the sacred doctrine of a true Son, ek tes ousias. This was what the Arians had originally denied hen to agenneton hen de to hup' autou alethos, kai ouk ek tes ousias autou gegonos. Euseb. Nic. ap. Theod. H. E. i. 6. When they were urged what according to them was the middle idea to which the Son answered, if they would not accept the Catholic, they would not define but merely said, gennema, all' ouk hos hen ton gennematon. [See pp. 149, 169, and the reference there to Lightfoot.]
[1994] De Decr. 18.
[1995] 1 Tim. i. 7.
[1996] De Decr. 28, note 4.
[1997] The two first senses here given answer to the two first mentioned, de Decr. §28. and, as he there says, are plainly irrelevant. The third in the de Decr. which, as he there observes, is ambiguous and used for a sophistical purpose, is here divided into third and fourth, answering to the two senses which alone are assigned in the de Syn. §46 [where see note 5], and on them the question turns. This is an instance, of which many occur, how Athan. used his former writings and worked over again his former ground, and simplified or cleared what he had said. In the de Decr. after 350, we have three senses of ageneton, two irrelevant and the third ambiguous; here in Orat. i. (358), he divides the third into two; in the de Syn. (359), he rejects and omits the two first, leaving the two last, which are the critical senses.
[1998] These two senses of agenneton unbegotten and unmade were afterwards [but see notes on de Decr. 28] expressed by the distinction of nn and n, agenneton and ageneton. vid. Damasc. F. O. i. 8. p. 135. and Le Quien's note.
[1999] §20, note 5.
[2000] De Syn. §18, infr. ii. 37.
[2001] 1 Cor. i. 24.
[2002] Gal. v. 15.
[2003] De Syn. 9, note 2.
[2004] The passage which follows is written with his de Decr. before him. At first he but uses the same topics, but presently he incorporates into this Discourse an actual portion of his former work, with only such alterations as an author commonly makes in transcribing. This, which is not unfrequent with Athan., shews us the care with which he made his doctrinal statements, though they seem at first sight written off. It also accounts for the diffuseness and repetition which might be imputed to his composition, what seems superfluous being often only the insertion of an extract from a former work.
[2005] De Syn. §47.
[2006] John v. 23.
[2007] Here he begins a close transcript of the de Decr. §30, the last sentence, however, of the paragraph being an addition.
[2008] For analogous arguments against the word agenneton, see Basil, contr. Eunom. i. 5. p. 215. Greg. Naz. Orat. 31. 23. Epiph. Hær. 76. p. 941. Greg. Nyss. contr. Eunom. vi. p. 192, &c. Cyril. Dial. ii. Pseudo-Basil. contr. Eunom. iv. p. 283.
[2009] John xiv. 11; xiv. 9; x. 30. These three texts are found together frequently in Athan. particularly in Orat. iii. where he considers the doctrines of the Image' and the perichoresis. vid. Index of Texts, also Epiph. Hær. 64. 9. Basil. Hexaem. ix. fin. Cyr. Thes. xii. p. 111. [add in S. Joan, 168, 847] Potam. Ep. ap. Dacher. t. 3. p. 299. Hil. Trin. vii. 41. et supr.
[2010] Luke xi. 2.
[2011] De Syn. 28, note 5.
[2012] Here ends the extract from the de Decretis. The sentence following is added as a close.