Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume IV/Defence of the Nicene Definition/De Decretis/Chapter 3

.&#8212;''Two senses of the word Son, 1. adoptive; 2. essential; attempts of Arians to find a third meaning between these; e.g. that our Lord only was created immediately by God (Asterius&#8217;s view), or that our Lord alone partakes the Father. The second and true sense; God begets as He makes, really; though His creation and generation are not like man&#8217;s; His generation independent of time; generation implies an internal, and therefore an eternal, act in God; explanation of Prov. viii. 22''.

6. say then what the others held and dared to maintain before them; &#8220;Not always Father, not always Son; for the Son was not before His generation, but, as others, came to be from nothing; and in consequence God was not always Father of the Son; but, when the Son came to be and was created, then was God called His Father. For the Word is a creature and a work, and foreign and unlike the Father in essence; and the Son is neither by nature the Father&#8217;s true Word, nor His only and true Wisdom; but being a creature and one of the works, He is improperly called Word and Wisdom; for by the Word which is in God was He made, as were all things. Wherefore the Son is not true God .&#8221;

Now it may serve to make them understand what they are saying, to ask them first this, what in fact a son is, and of what is that name significant Vid. Orat. i. &#167;38. The controversy turned on the question what was meant by the word &#8216;Son.&#8217; 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, &#8216;but not as one of the creatures.&#8217; Orat. ii. &#167;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 &#8216;whether He was a Son.&#8217; de Trin. viii. 3. Athanasius remarks upon this reluctance to speak out, challenging them to present &#8216;the heresy naked,&#8217; ''de Sent. Dionys.'' 2. init. &#8216;No one,&#8217; he says elsewhere, &#8216;puts a light under a bushel; let them shew the world their heresy naked.&#8217; ''Ep. &#198;g.'' 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 (&#966;&#945;&#957;&#949;&#961;&#8182;&#962;), that the Father&#8217;s substance was unlike, &#7936;&#957;&#8057;&#956;&#959;&#953;&#959;&#962;, the Son&#8217;s. ibid. i. 1. Epiphanius H&#230;r. 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. . In truth, Divine Scripture acquaints us with a double sense of this word:&#8212;one which Moses sets before us in the Law, &#8216;When ye shall hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, to keep all His commandments which I command thee this day, to do that which is right in the eyes of the Lord thy God, ye are children of the Lord your God ;&#8217; as also in the Gospel, John says, &#8216;But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God :&#8217;&#8212;and the other sense, that in which Isaac is son of Abraham, and Jacob of Isaac, and the Patriarchs of Jacob. Now in which of these two senses do they understand the Son of God that they relate such fables as the foregoing? for I feel sure they will issue in the same irreligion with Eusebius and his fellows.

If in the first, which belongs to those who gain the name by grace from moral improvement, and receive power to become sons of God (for this is what their predecessors said), then He would seem to differ from us in nothing; no, nor would He be Only-begotten, as having obtained the title of Son as others from His virtue. For granting what they say, that, whereas His qualifications were fore-known, He therefore received grace from the first, the name, and the glory of the name, from His very first beginning, still there will be no difference between Him and those who receive the name after their actions, so long as this is the ground on which He as others has the character of son. For Adam too, though he received grace from the first, and upon his creation was at once placed in paradise, differed in no respect either from Enoch, who was translated thither after some time from his birth on his pleasing God, or from the Apostle, who likewise was caught up to Paradise after his actions; nay, not from him who once was a thief, who on the ground of his confession, received a promise that he should be forthwith in paradise.

7. When thus pressed, they will perhaps make an answer which has brought them into trouble many times already; &#8220;We consider that the Son has this prerogative over others, and therefore is called Only-begotten, because He alone was brought to be by God alone, and all other things were created by God through the Son .&#8221; Now I wonder who it was that suggested to you so futile and novel an idea as that the Father alone wrought with His own hand the Son alone, and that all other things were brought to be by the Son as by an under-worker. If for the toil&#8217;s sake God was content with making the Son only, instead of making all things at once, this is an irreligious thought, especially in those who know the words of Esaias, &#8216;The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, hungereth not, neither is weary; there is no searching of His understanding .&#8217; Rather it is He who gives strength to the hungry, and through His Word refreshes the labouring. Again, it is irreligious to suppose that He disdained, as if a humble task, to form the creatures Himself which came after the Son; for there is no pride in that God, who goes down with Jacob into Egypt, and for Abraham&#8217;s sake corrects Abimelek because of Sara, and speaks face to face with Moses, himself a man, and descends upon Mount Sinai, and by His secret grace fights for the people against Amalek. However, you are false even in this assertion, for &#8216;He made us, and not we ourselves .&#8217; He it is who through His Word made all things small and great, and we may not divide the creation, and says this is the Father&#8217;s, and this the Son&#8217;s, but they are of one God, who uses His proper Word as a Hand , and in Him does all things. This God Himself shews us, when He says, &#8216;All these things hath My Hand made ;&#8217; while Paul taught us as he had learned, that &#8216;There is one God, from whom all things; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things .&#8217; Thus He, always as now, speaks to the sun and it rises, and commands the clouds and it rains upon one place; and where it does not rain, it is dried up. And He bids the earth yield her fruits, and fashions Jeremias in the womb. But if He now does all this, assuredly at the beginning also He did not disdain to make all things Himself through the Word; for these are but parts of the whole.

8. But let us suppose that the other creatures could not endure to be wrought by the absolute Hand of the Unoriginate and therefore the Son alone was brought into being by the Father alone, and other things by the Son as an underworker and assistant, for this is what Asterius the sacrificer has written, and Arius has transcribed and bequeathed to his own friends, and from that time they use this form of words, broken reed as it is, being ignorant, the bewildered men, how brittle it is. For if it was impossible for things originate to bear the hand of God, and you hold the Son to be one of their number, how was He too equal to this formation by God alone? and if a Mediator became necessary that things originate might come to be, and you hold the Son to be originated, then must there have been some medium before Him, for His creation; and that Mediator himself again being a creature, it follows that he too needed another Mediator for his own constitution. And though we were to devise another, we must first devise his Mediator, so that we shall never come to an end. And thus a Mediator being ever in request, never will the creation be constituted, because nothing originate, as you say, can bear the absolute hand of the Unoriginate. And if, on your perceiving the extravagance of this, you begin to say that the Son, though a creature, was made capable of being made by the Unoriginate, then it follows that other things also, though originated, are capable of being wrought immediately by the Unoriginate; for the Son too is but a creature in your judgment, as all of them. And accordingly the origination of the Word is superfluous, according to your irreligious and futile imagination, God being sufficient for the immediate formation of all things, and all things originate being capable of sustaining His absolute hand.

These irreligious men then having so little mind amid their madness, let us see whether this particular sophism be not even more irrational than the others. Adam was created alone by God alone through the Word; yet no one would say that Adam had any prerogative over other men, or was different from those who came after him, granting that he alone was made and fashioned by God alone, and we all spring from Adam, and consist according to succession of the race, so long as he was fashioned from the earth as others, and at first not being, afterwards came to be.

9. But though we were to allow some prerogative to the Protoplast as having been deemed worthy of the hand of God, still it must be one of honour not of nature. For he came of the earth, as other men; and the hand which then fashioned Adam, is also both now and ever fashioning and giving entire consistence to those who come after him. And God Himself declares this to Jeremiah, as I said before; &#8216;Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee ;&#8217; and so He says of all, &#8216;All those things hath My hand made ;&#8217; and again by Isaiah, &#8216;Thus saith the Lord, thy redeemer, and He that formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by Myself .&#8217; And David, knowing this, says in the Psalm, &#8216;Thy hands have made me and fashioned me ;&#8217; and he who says in Isaiah, &#8216;Thus saith the Lord who formed me from the womb to be His servant ,&#8217; signifies the same. Therefore, in respect of nature, he differs nothing from us though he precede us in time, so long as we all consist and are created by the same hand. If then these be your thoughts, O Arians, about the Son of God too, that thus He subsists and came to be, then in your judgment He will differ nothing on the score of nature from others, so long as He too was not, and came to be, and the name was by grace united to Him in His creation for His virtue&#8217;s sake. For He Himself is one of those, from what you say, of whom the Spirit says in the Psalms, &#8216;He spake the word, and they were made; He commanded, and they were created .&#8217; If so, who was it by whom God gave command for the Son&#8217;s creation? for a Word there must be by whom God gave command, and in whom the works are created; but you have no other to shew than the Word you deny, unless indeed you should devise again some new notion.

&#8220;Yes,&#8221; they will say, &#8220;we have another;&#8221; (which indeed I formerly heard Eusebius and his fellows use), &#8220;on this score do we consider that the Son of God has a prerogative over others, and is called Only-begotten, because He alone partakes the Father, and all other things partake the Son.&#8221; Thus they weary themselves in changing and in varying their phrases like colours ; however, this shall not save them from an exposure, as men that are of the earth, speaking vainly, and wallowing in their own conceits as in mire.

10. For if He were called God&#8217;s Son, and we the Son&#8217;s sons, their fiction were plausible; but if we too are said to be sons of that God, of whom He is Son, then we too partake the Father, who says, &#8216;I have begotten and exalted children .&#8217; For if we did not partake Him, He had not said, &#8216;I have begotten;&#8217; but if He Himself begat us, no other than He is our Father. And, as before, it matters not, whether the Son has something more and was made first, but we something less, and were made afterwards, as long as we all partake, and are called sons, of the same Father. For the more or less does not indicate a different nature; but attaches to each according to the practice of virtue; and one is placed over ten cities, another over five; and some sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel; and others hear the words, &#8216;Come, ye blessed of My Father,&#8217; and, &#8216;Well done, good and faithful servant .&#8217; With such ideas, however, no wonder they imagine that of such a Son God was not always Father, and such a Son was not always in being, but was generated from nothing as a creature, and was not before His generation; for such an one is other than the True Son of God.

But to persist in such teaching does not consist with piety, for it is rather the tone of thought of Sadducees and the Samosatene ; it remains then to say that the Son of God is so called according to the other sense, in which Isaac was son of Abraham; for what is naturally begotten from any one and does not accrue to him from without, that in the nature of things is a son, and that is what the name implies. Is then the Son&#8217;s generation one of human affection? (for this perhaps, as their predecessors, they too will be ready to object in their ignorance;)&#8212;in no wise; for God is not as man, nor men as God. Men were created of matter, and that passible; but God is immaterial and incorporeal. And if so be the same terms are used of God and man in divine Scripture, yet the clear-sighted, as Paul enjoins, will study it, and thereby discriminate, and dispose of what is written according to the nature of each subject, and avoid any confusion of sense, so as neither to conceive of the things of God in a human way, nor to ascribe the things of man to God. For this were to mix wine with water, and to place upon the altar strange fire with that which is divine.

11. For God creates, and to create is also ascribed to men; and God has being, and men are said to be, having received from God this gift also. Yet does God create as men do? or is His being as man&#8217;s being? Perish the thought; we understand the terms in one sense of God, and in another of men. For God creates, in that He calls what is not into being, needing nothing thereunto; but men work some existing material, first praying, and so gaining the wit to make, from that God who has framed all things by His proper Word. And again men, being incapable of self-existence, are enclosed in place, and consist in the Word of God; but God is self-existent, enclosing all things, and enclosed by none; within all according to His own goodness and power, yet without all in His proper nature. As then men create not as God creates, as their being is not such as God&#8217;s being, so men&#8217;s generation is in one way, and the Son is from the Father in another. For the offspring of men are portions of their fathers, since the very nature of bodies is not uncompounded, but in a state of flux, and composed of parts; and men lose their substance in begetting, and again they gain substance from the accession of food. And on this account men in their time become fathers of many children; but God, being without parts, is Father of the Son without partition or passion; for there is neither effluence of the Immaterial, nor influx from without, as among men; and being uncompounded in nature, He is Father of One Only Son. This is why He is Only-begotten, and alone in the Father&#8217;s bosom, and alone is acknowledged by the Father to be from Him, saying, &#8216;This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased .&#8217; And He too is the Father&#8217;s Word, from which may be understood the impassible and impartitive nature of the Father, in that not even a human word is begotten with passion or partition, much less the Word of God. Wherefore also He sits, as Word, at the Father&#8217;s right hand; for where the Father is, there also is His Word; but we, as His works, stand in judgment before Him; and, while He is adored, because He is Son of the adorable Father, we adore, confessing Him Lord and God, because we are creatures and other than He.

12. The case being thus, let who will among them consider the matter, so that one may abash them by the following question; Is it right to say that what is God&#8217;s offspring and proper to Him is out of nothing? or is it reasonable in the very idea, that what is from God has accrued to Him, that a man should dare to say that the Son is not always? For in this again the generation of the Son exceeds and transcends the thoughts of man, that we become fathers of our own children in time, since we ourselves first were not and then came into being; but God, in that He ever is, is ever Father of the Son. And the origination of mankind is brought home to us from things that are parallel; but, since &#8216;no one knoweth the Son but the Father, and no one knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him ,&#8217; therefore the sacred writers to whom the Son has revealed Him, have given us a certain image from things visible, saying, &#8216;Who is the brightness of His glory, and the Expression of His Person ;&#8217; and again, &#8216;For with Thee is the well of life, and in Thy light shall we see light ;&#8217; and when the Word chides Israel, He says, &#8216;Thou hast forsaken the Fountain of wisdom ;&#8217; and this Fountain it is which says, &#8216;They have forsaken Me the Fountain of living waters .&#8217; And mean indeed and very dim is the illustration compared with what we desiderate; but yet it is possible from it to understand something above man&#8217;s nature, instead of thinking the Son&#8217;s generation to be on a level with ours. For who can even imagine that the radiance of light ever was not, so that he should dare to say that the Son was not always, or that the Son was not before His generation? or who is capable of separating the radiance from the sun, or to conceive of the fountain as ever void of life, that he should madly say, &#8216;The Son is from nothing,&#8217; who says, &#8216;I am the life ,&#8217; or &#8216;alien to the Father&#8217;s essence,&#8217; who, says, &#8216;He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father ?&#8217; for the sacred writers wishing us thus to understand, have given these illustrations; and it is unseemly and most irreligious, when Scripture contains such images, to form ideas concerning our Lord from others which are neither in Scripture, nor have any religious bearing.

13. Therefore let them tell us, from what teacher or by what tradition they derived these notions concerning the Saviour? &#8220;We have read,&#8221; they will say, &#8220;in the Proverbs, &#8216;The Lord created me a beginning of His ways unto His works ;&#8217;&#8221; this Eusebius and his fellows used to insist on, 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. 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, 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, &#8216;In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth ;&#8217; but of the Son it introduces not another, but the Father Himself saying, &#8216;I have begotten Thee from the womb before the morning star ;&#8217; and again, &#8216;Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee .&#8217; And the Lord says of Himself in the Proverbs, &#8216;Before all the hills He begets me ;&#8217; and concerning things originated and created John speaks, &#8216;All things were made by Him ;&#8217; but preaching of the Lord, he says, &#8216;The Only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He declared Him .&#8217; 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. &#8216;Has then the passage no meaning?&#8217; for this, like a swarm of gnats, they are droning about us. 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, 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. And as to the character, it is indeed the Saviour&#8217;s, but is said of Him when He took a body and said, &#8216;The Lord created me a beginning of His ways unto His works .&#8217; For as it properly belongs to God&#8217;s Son to be everlasting. and in the Father&#8217;s bosom, so on His becoming man, the words befitted Him, &#8216;The Lord created me.&#8217; For then it is said of Him, as also that He hungered, and thirsted, and asked where Lazarus lay, and suffered, and rose again. 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, &#8216;The Lord created,&#8217; and &#8216;Servant,&#8217; and &#8216;He suffered,&#8217; 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&#8217;s than the Word&#8217;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 , a gift which we could not otherwise have gained than by His clothing Himself in our created body, for hence we derive our name of &#8220;men of God&#8221; and &#8220;men in Christ.&#8221; 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.