§ 127. THE NICENE DOCTRINE OF CONSUBSTANTIALlXr. 659
commuuication of essence ar self to the Son , creation, on the contrary, is an outwardly directed, free, single act of the will of God, bringing forth a difi'erent and temporal substance out of nothing. The eternal fatherhood and sonship in God is the perfect prototype of all similar relations on earth. Bnt the divine generation differs from all human generation, not only in its absolute spirituality, but also in the fact that it does not produce a new essence of the same kind, but that the begotten is identical in essence with tlie begetter ; for the divine essence is by reason of its simplicity, incapable of division, and by reason of its infinity, incapable of increase.' The generation, properly speaking, has no reference at all to the essence, but only to the hypostatical distinction. The Sou is begotten not as God, but as Son, not as to his natura, but as to his IStoTT)';, his peculiar property and his relation to the Father. The divine essence neither begets, nor is begotten. The same is true of the jprocessio of the Holy Ghost, which has reference not to the essence, but oidy to the person, of the Spirit. In human generation, moreover, the father is older than the son ; but in the divine generation, which takes place not in time, but is eternal, there can be no such thing as priority or posteriority of one or the other hypostasis. To the question whether the Son existed Ijefore his generation, Cyril of Alexandria answered : " The generation of the Son did not precede his existence, but he existed eternally, and eternally existed by generation." The Son is as necessary to the
' Bishop John Pearson, in his well-known work : An Exposition of the Creed (Art. ii. p. 209, ed. W, S. Dobson, New York, 1851), thus clearly and rightly exhibits the Nicene doctrine in this point : " In human generations the son is of the same nature with the father, and yet is not the same man ; because though he baa an essence of the same kind, yet he has not the same essence ; the power of generation depending on the first prolifical benediction, uicrease and multiply^ it must be made by way of multiplication, and thus every son becomes another man. But the divine essence, being by reason of its simplicity not subject to division, and in respect of its infinity incapable of multiplication, is so communicated as not to be multiplied ; insomuch that he who proceeds by that comm\mication, has not only the same nature, but is also the same God. The Father God, and the Word God ; Abraham man and Isaac man : but Abraham one man, Isaac another man ; not so the Father one God and the Word another, but the Father and the Word both t^< eame God "
(>60 THIBI) PERIOD. A.D. 311- 590.
being of the Father, as the Father to the beiDg oi tb« Son.
The necessity thus asserted of the eternal generation doea not, however, impair its freedom, but is intended only to deny its being arbitrary and accidental, and to secure its foundation in the essence of God himself. God, to be Father, must from eternity beget the Son, and so reproduce himself; yet he doea this in obedience not to a foreign law, but to his own law and tlie impulse of his will. Athanasius, it is true, asserts on the one hand that God begets the Son not of his will,' but by hife nature,* yet on the other hand he does not admit that God begets the Son without will,' or of force or unconscious necessity. The generation, therefore, rightly understood, is an act at once of essence and of will. Augustine calls the Son " will of will." * In God freedom and necessity coincide.
The mode of the divine generation is and must be a mystery. Of course all human representations of it must be avoided, and the matter be conceived in a purely moral and spiritual way. The eternal generation, conceived as an intellectual process, is the eternal self-knowledge of God ; reduced to ethical terms, it is his eternal and absolute love in its motion and working within himself.
In his argument for the consubstantiality of the Son, Athanasius, in his four orations against the Arians, besides adducing the proof from Scripture, which presides over and permeates all other arguments, sets out now in a practical method from the idea of redemption, now in a speculative, from the idea of God.
Christ has delivered us from the curse and powder of sin, reconciled us with God, and made us partakers of the eternal, divine life ; therefore he must himself be God. Oi^ negatively : If Christ were a creature, he could not redeem other creatures from sin and death. It is assumed that redemption is ae much and as strictly a divine work, as creation.*
' Mrj iK /3oi/X7)(r6cuT.
* 'Aj3oi)Ai7Ta)S and oSeX-^Ta-i.
* Voluntas de voluntate. De trimt. xv. 20.
' Comi). particularly the second oration contra Arianoo o. 69 sqq.