Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Objections Continued. How the Word has free will, yet without being alterable. He is unalterable because the Image of the Father, proved from texts.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter X.—Objections Continued. How the Word has free will,
yet without being alterable. He is unalterable because the Image of the
Father, proved from texts.
35. As to their question whether the Word is
alterable2013
| 2013 τρεπτὸς, not ‘changeable’ but of a moral nature capable of
improvement. Arius maintained this in the strongest terms at starting.
‘On being asked whether the Word of God is capable of altering as
the devil altered, they scrupled not to say, “Yea, He is
capable.”’ Alex. ap. Socr. i. 6. p. 11. | , it is superfluous to examine it; it
is enough simply to write down what they say, and so to shew its daring
irreligion. How they trifle, appears from the following
questions:—‘Has He free will, or has He not? is He good
from choice according to free will, and can He, if He will, alter,
being of an alterable nature? or, as wood or stone, has He not His
choice free to be moved and incline hither and thither?’ It is
but agreeable to their heresy thus to speak and think; for, when once
they have framed to themselves a God out of nothing and a created Son,
of course they also adopt such terms, as being suitable to a creature.
However, when in their controversies with Churchmen they hear from them
of the real and only Word of the Father, and yet venture thus to speak
of Him, does not their doctrine then become the most loathsome that can
be found? is it not enough to distract a man on mere hearing, though
unable to reply, and to make him stop his ears, from astonishment at
the novelty of what he hears them say, which even to mention is to
blaspheme? For if the Word be alterable and changing, where will He
stay, and what will be the end of His development? how shall the
alterable possibly be like the Unalterable? How should he who has seen
the alterable, be considered to have seen the Unalterable? At what
state must He arrive, for us to be able to behold in Him the Father?
for it is plain that not at all
times shall we see the Father in the Son, because the Son is ever
altering, and is of changing nature. For the Father is unalterable and
unchangeable, and is always in the same state and the same; but if, as
they hold, the Son is alterable, and not always the same, but of an
ever-changing nature, how can such a one be the Father’s Image,
not having the likeness of His unalterableness2014
?
how can He be really in the Father, if His purpose is indeterminate?
Nay, perhaps, as being alterable, and advancing daily, He is not
perfect yet. But away with such madness of the Arians, and let the
truth shine out, and shew that they are foolish. For must not He be
perfect who is equal to God? and must not He be unalterable, who is one
with the Father, and His Son proper to His essence? and the
Father’s essence being unalterable, unalterable must be also the
proper Offspring from it. And if they slanderously impute alteration to
the Word, let them learn how much their own reason is in peril; for
from the fruit is the tree known. For this is why he who hath seen the
Son hath seen the Father; and why the knowledge of the Son is knowledge
of the Father.
36. Therefore the Image of the unalterable God
must be unchangeable; for ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday,
to-day, and for ever2015
.’ And David
in the Psalm says of Him, ‘Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid
the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Thine
hands. They shall perish, but Thou remainest; and they all shall wax
old as doth a garment. And as a vesture shalt Thou fold them up, and
they shall be changed, but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not
fail2016
.’ And the Lord Himself says of Himself
through the Prophet, ‘See now that I, even I am He,’ and
‘I change not2017
.’ It may be
said indeed that what is here signified relates to the Father; yet it
suits the Son also to say this, specially because, when made man, He
manifests His own identity and unalterableness to such as suppose that
by reason of the flesh He is changed and become other than He was. More
trustworthy are the saints, or rather the Lord, than the perversity of
the irreligious. For Scripture, as in the above-cited passage of the
Psalter, signifying under the name of heaven and earth, that the nature
of all things originate and created is alterable and changeable, yet
excepting the Son from these, shews us thereby that He is no wise a
thing originate; nay teaches that He changes everything else, and is
Himself not changed, in saying, ‘Thou art the same, and Thy years
shall not fail2018
.’ And with
reason; for things originate, being from nothing2019
, and not being before their origination,
because, in truth, they come to be after not being, have a nature which
is changeable; but the Son, being from the Father, and proper to His
essence, is unchangeable and unalterable as the Father Himself. For it
were sin to say that from that essence which is unalterable was
begotten an alterable word and a changeable wisdom. For how is He
longer the Word, if He be alterable? or can that be Wisdom which is
changeable? unless perhaps, as accident in essence2020
| 2020 Nic. Def. 21. note 9. | , so they would have it, viz. as in any
particular essence, a certain grace and habit of virtue exists
accidentally, which is called Word and Son and Wisdom, and admits of
being taken from it and added to it. For they have often expressed this
sentiment, but it is not the faith of Christians; as not declaring that
He is truly Word and Son of God, or that the wisdom intended is true
Wisdom. For what alters and changes, and has no stay in one and the
same condition, how can that be true? whereas the Lord says, ‘I
am the Truth2021
.’ If then the Lord Himself
speaks thus concerning Himself, and declares His unalterableness, and
the Saints have learned and testify this, nay and our notions of God
acknowledge it as religious, whence did these men of irreligion draw
this novelty? From their heart as from a seat of corruption did they
vomit it forth2022
.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
