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| But that God, the Son of God, Born of God the Father from Everlasting, Who Was Always in the Father, is the Second Person to the Father, Who Does Nothing Without His Father's Decree; And that He is Lord, and the Angel of God's Great Counsel, to Whom the Father's Godhead is Given by Community of Substance.
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Chapter XXXI. Argument.—But that God, the Son
of God, Born of God the Father from Everlasting, Who Was Always in the
Father, is the Second Person to the Father, Who Does Nothing Without
His Father’s Decree; And that He is Lord, and the Angel of
God’s Great Counsel, to Whom the Father’s Godhead is Given
by Community of Substance.
Thus God the Father, the Founder and Creator of
all things, who only knows no beginning, invisible, infinite, immortal,
eternal, is one God; to whose greatness, or majesty, or power, I would
not say nothing can be preferred, but nothing can be compared; of whom,
when He willed it, the Son, the Word, was born, who is not
received5297
in the sound
of the stricken air, or in the tone of voice forced from the lungs, but
is acknowledged in the substance of the power put forth by God, the
mysteries of whose sacred and divine nativity neither an apostle has
learnt, nor prophet has discovered, nor angel has known, nor creature
has apprehended. To the Son alone they are known, who has known
the secrets of the Father. He then, since He was begotten of the
Father, is always in the Father. And I thus say always, that I
may show Him not to be unborn, but born. But He who is before all
time must be said to have been always in the Father; for no time can be
assigned to Him who is before all time. And He is always in the
Father, unless the Father be not always Father, only that the Father
also precedes Him,—in a certain sense,—since it is
necessary—in some degree—that He should be before He
is Father. Because it is essential that He who knows no beginning
must go before Him who has a beginning;5298
| 5298
[“In a sense;” i.e., in logic, not time.] | even as He is the less as knowing
that He is in Him, having an origin because He is born, and of like
nature with the Father in some measure by His nativity, although He has
a beginning in that He is born, inasmuch as He is born of that Father
who alone has no beginning. He, then, when the Father willed it,
proceeded from the Father, and He who was in the Father came forth from
the Father; and He who was in the Father because He was of the Father,
was subsequently with the Father, because He came forth from the
Father,—that is to say, that divine substance whose name is the
Word, whereby all things were made, and without whom nothing was
made. For all things are after Him, because they are by
Him. And reasonably, He is before all things, but after the
Father, since all things were made by Him, and He proceeded from Him of
whose will all things were made. Assuredly God proceeding from
God, causing a person second to the Father as being the Son, but not
taking from the Father that characteristic that He is one God.
For if He had not been born—compared with Him who was unborn, an
equality being manifested in both—He would make two unborn
beings, and thus would make two Gods. If He had not been
begotten—compared with Him who was not begotten, and as being
found equal—they not being begotten, would have reasonably given
two Gods, and thus Christ would have been the cause of two Gods.
Had He been formed without beginning as the Father, and He Himself the
beginning of all things as is the Father, this would have made two
beginnings, and consequently would have shown to us two Gods
also. Or if He also were not the Son, but the Father begetting
from Himself another Son, reasonably, as compared with the Father, and
designated as great as He, He would have caused two Fathers, and thus
also He would have proved the existence of two Gods. Had He been
invisible, as compared with the Invisible, and declared equal, He would
have shown forth two Invisibles, and thus also He would have proved
them to be two Gods. If incomprehensible,5299
| 5299
[Compare the Athanasian Confession.] | if also whatever other attributes
belong to the Father, reasonably we say, He would have given rise to
the allegation of two Gods, as these people feign. But now,
whatever He is, He is not of Himself, because He is not unborn; but He
is of the Father, because He is begotten, whether as being the Word,
whether as being the Power, or as being the Wisdom, or as being the
Light, or as being the Son; and whatever of these He is, in that He is
not from any other source, as we have already said before, than from the
Father, owing His origin to His Father, He could not make a
disagreement in the divinity by the number of two Gods, since He
gathered His beginning by being born of Him who is one God. In
which kind, being both as well only-begotten as first-begotten of Him
who has no beginning, He is the only one, of all things both Source and
Head. And therefore He declared that God is one, in that He
proved Him to be from no source nor beginning, but rather the beginning
and source of all things. Moreover, the Son does nothing of His
own will, nor does anything of His own determination; nor does He come
from Himself, but obeys all His Father’s commands and precepts;
so that, although birth proves Him to be a Son, yet obedience even to
death declares Him the minister of the will of His Father, of whom He
is. Thus making Himself obedient to His Father in all things,
although He also is God, yet He shows the one God the Father by His
obedience, from whom also He drew His beginning. And thus He
could not make two Gods, because He did not make two beginnings, seeing
that from Him who has no beginning He received the source of His
nativity before all time.5300
| 5300
[As in the Athanasian Confession.] | For since that is the beginning
to other creatures which is unborn,—which God the Father only is,
being beyond a beginning of whom He is who was born,—while He who
is born of Him reasonably comes from Him who has no beginning, proving
that to be the beginning from which He Himself is, even although He is
God who is born, yet He shows Him to be one God whom He who was born
proved to be without a beginning. He therefore is God, but
begotten for this special result, that He should be God. He is
also the Lord, but born for this very purpose of the Father, that He
might be Lord. He is also an Angel, but He was destined of the
Father as an Angel to announce the Great Counsel of God. And His
divinity is thus declared, that it may not appear by any dissonance or
inequality of divinity to have caused two Gods. For all things
being subjected to Him as the Son by the Father, while He Himself, with
those things which are subjected to Him, is subjected to His Father, He
is indeed proved to be Son of His Father; but He is found to be both
Lord and God of all else. Whence, while all things put under Him
are delivered to Him who is God, and all things are subjected to Him,
the Son refers all that He has received to the Father, remits again to
the Father the whole authority of His divinity. The true and
eternal Father is manifested as the one God, from whom alone this power
of divinity is sent forth, and also given and directed upon the Son,
and is again returned by the communion of substance to the
Father. God indeed is shown as the Son, to whom the divinity is
beheld to be given and extended. And still, nevertheless, the
Father is proved to be one God; while by degrees in reciprocal transfer
that majesty and divinity are again returned and reflected as sent by
the Son Himself to the Father, who had given them; so that reasonably
God the Father is God of all, and the source also of His Son Himself
whom He begot as Lord. Moreover, the Son is God of all else,
because God the Father put before all Him whom He begot. Thus the
Mediator of God and men, Christ Jesus, having the power of every
creature subjected to Him by His own Father, inasmuch as He is God;
with every creature subdued to Him, found at one with His Father God,
has, by abiding in that condition that He moreover “was
heard,”5301
| 5301
There is apparently some indistinct reference here to the passage in
Heb. v. 7, “and was heard in that He
feared”—ἀπὸ
τῆς
εὐλυβείας.
[For the Angel of Great Counsel, see p. 629, supra.] | briefly proved
God His Father to be one and only and true God.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
