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| Chapter IX. St. Ambrose questions the heretics and exhibits their answer, which is, that the Son existed, indeed, before all time, yet was not co-eternal with the Father, whereat the Saint shows that they represent the Godhead as changeable, and further, that each Person must be believed to be eternal.
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Chapter IX.
St. Ambrose questions the heretics and exhibits their
answer, which is, that the Son existed, indeed, before all time, yet
was not co-eternal with the Father, whereat the Saint shows that they
represent the Godhead as changeable, and further, that each Person must
be believed to be eternal.
58. Tell me, thou
heretic,—for the surpassing clemency of the Emperor grants me
this indulgence of addressing thee for a short space, not that I desire
to confer with thee, or am greedy to hear thy arguments, but because I
am willing to exhibit them,—tell me, I say, whether there was
ever a time when God Almighty was not the Father, and yet was
God. “I say nothing about time,” is thy answer.
Well and subtly objected! For if thou bringest time into the
dispute, thou wilt condemn thyself, seeing that thou must acknowledge
that there was a time when the Son was not, whereas the Son is the
ruler and creator of time.1784
| 1784
Time. We should take this term in its fullest meaning, as
signifying all that exists in time—the created universe, and all
that therein has been, and is, and is to come. | He
cannot have begun to exist after His own work. Thou, therefore,
must needs allow Him to be the ruler and maker of His work.
59. “I do not say,” answerest thou,
“that the Son existed
not before time; but when I call Him “Son,” I declare that
His Father existed before Him, for, as you say, father exists before
son.”1785
| 1785 The Arians fell into the popular
error of supposing that a father, as a father, existed before
his son. They also required men to apply to Divine Persons, what
only holds good of human beings—to impose on the Being of God
those limits to which human existences (as objective facts) are
subjected. The existence of the Divine Father and the Divine Son
is without, beyond, above time—with the Godhead there is neither
past nor future, but an everlasting present. But with man,
time-categories are necessary forms of thought—everything is seen
as past, present, or to come—and to the human consciousness all
objects are presented in time, though the spiritual principle in man
which perceives objects as related in succession, is itself
supra-temporal, beholding succession, but not itself in
succession.
Now it can hardly be denied with any show of
reason that a man is not a father until his son begins to exist,
is born, though the father, as a person distinct from his son, is in
existence before the latter. Again, father and son must be of the
same nature—they must both possess the elementary, essential
attributes of humanity. Otherwise there is no fatherhood, no
sonship, properly speaking.
God has revealed Himself as a
Father—even in the pagan mythologies we see the idea of
Fatherhood implicit in Godhead. If the gods of the heathen did
not beget after their kind, they begat heroes and demigods. But
created existences cannot claim to be the first and proper object of
the Divine Father’s love. They are for a time only, and
with them Eternal Love could not be satisfied. If God be a true
Father, then, He must beget His Like—His Son must be equal to Him
in nature, that is, what is true of the Father, what is essential in
the Father, as God, must be true or essential in the Son also.
Therefore the son must be divine, eternal. But the generation
(γέννησις)
of the Son is not an event in time. It is a fact, a truth, out
of, beyond time, belonging to the divine and eternal and spiritual, not
to the temporal and created, order. “To whom amongst the
angels does He ever say, Thou art My Son; this day have I
begotten Thee? and again, I will be a Father to Him, and He shall be a
Son to Me? when, again, He brings His first-begotten into the
world” (i.e., reveals Him to the created universe as its
King), He says: “And let all God’s angels worship
Him” (Heb. i.
5–6). Since
the Divine Son, then, is eternal, even as the Divine Father, the one
cannot be before or after the other; the two Persons are co-existent,
co-eternal, co-equal. And the mysterious genesis, also, is not an
event that happened once, taking place in a series of events, it is
ever happening, it is always and for ever. | But what
means this? Thou deniest that time was before the Son, and yet
thou wilt have it that something preceded the existence of the
Son—some creature of time,—and thou showest certain stages
of generation intervening, whereby thou dost give us to understand that
the generation from the Father was a process in time. For if He
began to be a Father, then, in the first instance, He was God, and
afterwards He became a Father. How, then, is God
unchangeable?1786
| 1786 i.e., how
do you deal with such Scriptures as “Thou art the same, and thy
years shall not fail.”—“I am the Lord: I change
not, therefore ye sons of Jacob are not
consumed.”—“The Father of lights, with Whom is no
variableness, neither shadow of turning.” | For if
He was first God, and then the Father, surely He has undergone change
by reason of the added and later act of generation.
60. But may God preserve us from this madness; for
it was but to confute the impiety of the heretics that we brought in
this question. The devout spirit affirms a generation that is not
in time, and so declares Father and Son to be co-eternal, and does not
maintain that God has ever suffered change.
61. Let Father and Son, therefore, be
associated in worship, even as They are associated in Godhead; let not
blasphemy put asunder those whom the close bond of generation hath
joined together. Let us honour the Son, that we may honour the
Father also, as it is written in the Gospel.1787
The Son’s eternity is the
adornment of the Father’s majesty. If the Son hath not been
from everlasting, then the Father hath suffered change; but the Son is
from all eternity, therefore hath the Father never changed, for He is
always unchangeable. And thus we see that they who would deny the
Son’s eternity would teach that the Father is
mutable.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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