§ 127. THE NICKNE DOCTKINE OF CONSUBSTANTIALITY. GCl
Starting from the idea of God, Athanasius argues : Tiie relation of Father is not accidental, arising in time ; else God would be changeable; ' it belongs as necessarily to the essence and character of God as the attributes of eternity, wisdom, goodness, and holiness ; consequently he must have been Father from eternity, and this gives the eternal generation of the Son.' The divine fatherhood and sonship is the prototype of all analagous relations on earth. As there is no Son without Father, no more is there Father without Son. An unfruitful Father were like a dark light, or a dry fountain, a selfcontradiction. The non-existence of creatures, on the contrary, detracts nothing from the perfection of the Creator, since he always has the power to create when he will.* The Son is of the Father's own interior essence, while the creature is exterior to God and dependent on the act of his will.* God. furthermore, cannot be conceived without reason {aXoyoi), wisdom, power, and according to the Scriptures (as the Ariana themselves concede) tlie Son is the Logos, the wisdom, the power, the Word of God, by which all things were made. Ab
' Orat. i. contra Arianos, c. 28 (p. 438) : Am tovto deJ ttott/p koI ovk iirtyeyof* (accidit) tc5 ©eoJ i-h naryp, 'Iva fxr] Kal TpfWThs flfat vofitad^. El yap KaXhv rh flvai avrhu vaTipa, ouk del 5e ^i/ 7raT-);p, ovk del apa to Ka\hv ^i/ iv avrw. Though to this it might be objected that by the incarnation of the Logos and the permanent reception of human nature into fellowship with the divine, a certain change has passed, after all, upon the deity.
" Orat. ii. c. Arianos, c. 1 sqq. (p. 469 sqq.); Orat. iiL c. 66 (p. 615), and elso where.
^ This last argument, in the formally logical point of view, may not be perfectly valid ; for there may as well be a distinction between an ideal and real fatherhood, as between an ideal and real creatorship ; and, on the other hand, one might reason with as good right backwards from the notion of essential omnipotence to an eternal creation, and say with Hegel : Without the world God is not God. But from the speculative and ethical point of view a difference must unquestionably be admitted, and an element of truth be acknowledged in the argument of Athanasius. The Father needed the Son for his own self-consciousness, which is inconceivable without an object. God is essentially love, and this realizes itself in the relation of Father and Son, and in the fellowship of the Spirit : Ubi amor ibi trinitaa.
* Orat. i. C 29 (p. 4S3): T^ iroiTj/ua eltoSet' rov TtotovfTns iariv ... 6 Se vlhs ISjoi/ t7)s olialas yivvrjfxa. iart • Stb Kai rh ix\v irolTjfxa ovk avayKT] a.i\ elvat, ore ykp SouAerai 6 Srjixiovpyhs fpydC^Tat, rh Se yevvTi/xa oi/ /SovA^trei vn6KUTiu, d\A^ t-^j Bu<rias eoTiv iSkJttjj.
0'62 THIRD PEKIOD. A.D. 311 590.
iiglit rises from fire, and is inseparable from it, so the Word from God, the AVisdom from the Wise, and the Son from the Father.' The Sou, therefore, was in the beginning, that is, in the beginning of the eternal divine being, in the original beginning, or from eternity. He himself calls himself one with the Father, and Paul praises liim as God blessed forever.'
Finally Christ cannot be a proper object of worship, as he is represented in Scripture and has always been regarded in the Church, without being strictly divine. To worship a 3reature is idolatry.
When we attentively peruse the warm, vigorous, eloquent, and discriminating controversial writings of Athanasius and his co-laborers, and compare with them the vague, barren, almost entirely negative assertions and superficial arguments of their opponents, we cannot escape the impression that, with all their exegetical and dialectical defects in particulars, they have on their side an overwhelming preponderance of positive truth, the authority of holy Scripture, the profounder speculations of reason, and the prevailing traditional faith of the early church.*
' Comp. the 4th Oration against the Arians, cap. 1 sqq. (p. 617 sqq.) ' The Qeos in the well-known passage, Horn. ix. 5, is thus repeatedly by Athti nasius, e. ^r., Orat. i. contra Arianos, c. 11; Orat. iv. c. 1, and by other fathers (Irenseus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Origen, Chrysostom), as well as by the Reformers and most of the orthodox expositors, referred to Christ. This interpretation, too, is most suitable to the connection, and in perfect harmony with the Christology of Paul, who sets forth Christ as the image of God, the possessor of tlie fulness of the divine life and glory, the object of worship (Phil. ii. 6 ; Col. i. 15 ff. ; ii. 9 ; 2 Cor. iv. 4; Eph. v. 5 ; 1 Tim. iii. 16; Tit. ii. 13); and who therefore, as well as John, i. 1, could call him in the predicative sense Oedy, i. e., of divine essence, in distinction from 0 ©eds with the article.
' We say the prevailing faith; not denying that the theological knowledge and utaiemenf, of the doctrine of the trinity had hitherto been in many respects indefinite and wavering. The learned bishop Bull, indeed, endeavored to prove, in opposition to the Jesuit Petavius, that the antc-Nicene fathers taught concerning the deity of the Son the very same things as the Niccne. Comp. the Preface to his Defensio fidci Nicaenae, ed. Burton. Osf 1827, vol. v. Pars. 1, p. ix. : " De sutuma rci, quain aliis pcrsuadere volo, plane ipse, ncque id tcmere, persuasus sum, nempe, quod de Filii divinitate coutia Arium, idem re ipsa (quauquam aliis fortasse nonnunquam verbis, aliociue lo(iucndi modo) docuisse Patrcs ac doctores ecclesiao probatos &i unum omnes, qui ante tempora synodi Nicajna;, ab ipsa usque apostolorum JBtate^ floruerunt." But this assertion can be maintainel oidy by an artificial and forced