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| Chapter XIV. That the Son of God is not a created being is proved by the following arguments: (1) That He commanded not that the Gospel should be preached to Himself; (2) that a created being is given over unto vanity; (3) that the Son has created all things; (4) that we read of Him as begotten; and (5) that the difference of generation and adoption has always been understood in those places where both natures--the divine and the human--are declared to co-exist in Him. All of which testimony is confirmed by the Apostle's interpretation. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter XIV.
That the Son of God is not a created being is proved by
the following arguments: (1) That He commanded not that the
Gospel should be preached to Himself; (2) that a created being is given
over unto vanity; (3) that the Son has created all things; (4) that we
read of Him as begotten; and (5) that the difference of generation and
adoption has always been understood in those places where both
natures—the divine and the human—are declared to co-exist
in Him. All of which testimony is confirmed by the
Apostle’s interpretation.
86. It is now made
plain, as I believe, your sacred Majesty, that the Lord Jesus is
neither unlike the Father, nor one that began to exist in course of
time. We have yet to confute another blasphemy, and to show that
the Son of God is not a created being. Herein is the
quickening1828 word that we
read as our help, for we have heard the
passage read where the Lord saith:
“Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to all
creation.”1829 He Who
saith “all creation” excepts nothing. How, then, do
they stand who call Christ a “creature”? If He were a
creature, could He have commanded that the Gospel should be preached to
Himself? It is not, therefore, a creature, but the Creator, Who
commits to His disciples the work of teaching created
beings.
87. Christ, then, is no created being; for
“created beings are,” as the Apostle hath said,
“given over to vanity.”1830 Is
Christ given over unto vanity? Again,
“creation”—according to the same
Apostle—“groans and travails together even until
now.” What, then? Doth Christ take any part in this
groaning and travailing—He Who hath set us miserable mourners
free from death? “Creation,” saith the Apostle,
“shall be set free from the slavery of
corruption.”1831 We see,
then, that between creation and its Lord there is a vast difference,
for creation is enslaved, but “the Lord is the Spirit, and where
the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”1832
88. Who was it that led first into this
error, of declaring Him Who created and made all things to be a
creature? Did the Lord, I would ask, create Himself? We
read that “all things were made by Him, and without Him was
nothing made.”1833 This
being so, did He make Himself? We read—and who shall
deny?—that in wisdom hath God made all things.1834 If so, how can we suppose that
wisdom was made in itself?
89. We read that the Son is begotten,
inasmuch as the Father saith: “I brought thee forth from
the womb before the morning star.”1835 We read of the
“first-born” Son,1836 of the
“only-begotten”1837 —first-born, because there is
none before Him; only-begotten, because there is none after Him.
Again, we read: “Who shall declare His
generation?”1838
“Generation,” mark you, not “creation.”
What argument can be brought to meet testimonies so great and mighty as
these?
90. Moreover, God’s Son discovers the
difference between generation and grace when He says: “I go
up to My Father and your Father, to My God and your
God.”1839 He did
not say, “I go up to our Father,” but “I go up to My
Father and your Father.” This distinction is the sign of a
difference, inasmuch as He Who is Christ’s Father is our
Creator.
91. Furthermore He said, “to My God and your
God,” because although He and the Father are One, and the Father
is His Father by possession of the same nature, whilst God began to be
our Father through the office of the Son, not by virtue of nature, but
of grace—still He seems to point us here to the existence in
Christ of both natures, Godhead and Manhood,—Godhead of His
Father, Manhood of His Mother, the former being before all things, the
latter derived from the Virgin. For the first, speaking as the
Son, He called God His Father, and afterward, speaking as man, named
Him as God.
92. Everywhere, indeed, we have witness in
the Scriptures to show that Christ, in naming God as His God, does so
as man. “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken
Me?”1840 And
again: “From My mother’s womb Thou art My
God.”1841 In the
former place He suffers as a man; in the latter it is a man who is
brought forth from his mother’s womb. And so when He says,
“From My mother’s womb Thou art My God,” He means
that He Who was always His Father is His God from the moment when He
was brought forth from His Mother’s womb.
93. Seeing, then, that we read in the Gospel, in
the Apostle, in the Prophets, of Christ as begotten, how dare the
Arians to say that He was created or made? But, indeed, they
ought to have bethought them, where they have read of Him as created,
where as made. For it has been plainly shown that the Son of God
is begotten of God, born of God—let them, then, consider with
care where they have read that He was made, seeing that He was not made
God, but born as God, the Son of God; afterward, however, He was,
according to the flesh, made man of Mary.
94. “But when the fulness of time was
come, God sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the
Law.”1842
1842 Gal. iv. 4.
Note on Gal. iv. 4, cited in § 94.—St.
Ambrose has factum where St. Paul originally wrote
γενόμενον,
rendered “born” in the A.V. St. Paul designedly,
perhaps, wrote γενόμενον,
not γεννηθέντα,
the more usual word for “born.” For γίγνεσθαι
is used to denote other modes of beginning to exist, besides that
in which animals are brought into life; it is used of inanimate, as
well as animate existence—e.g., Mark iv. 37: “There ariseth (γίνεται)
a great storm of wind;” and thus we get the impersonal
εγένετο,
“it came to pass,” simply signifying an order of
events. The import, then, of the words factum ex
muliere, γενόμενον
ἐκ γνναικός,
is that Christ, in being born in human form, “in the likeness of
men,” subjected Himself to the limits of human existence,
“came into being,” that is, in the sensual world.
This was his self-emptying (Phil. ii. 7). Jesus, the man, the human person
was made—“made man” (Nicene Creed)—was made
“man of the substance of His mother” (Athanas. Creed); but
by this “making,” St. Ambrose points out, we must
understand no more than the taking on of fleshly form. The Son,
on the other hand, Who is God, never began to exist, as He will never
cease; and even if He had not existed from eternity, He must have been
pre-existent, in order to assume a fleshly form so that, in any case,
birth of the Virgin does not affect His pre-existence as Son of God,
whilst to say that He was ever “made” is to confound that
birth with the Son’s generation of the Father, eternity with
time, the divine with the human order, the self-existent with the
created. |
“His Son,” observe, not as one of many, not as His
in common with another, but His own, and in saying “His
Son,” the Apostle showed that it is of the Son’s nature
that His generation is eternal. Him the Apostle has affirmed to
have been afterwards “made” of a woman, in order that the
making might be understood not of the Godhead, but of the
putting
on of a
body—“made of a woman,” then, by taking on of flesh;
“made under the Law” through observance of the Law.
Howbeit, the former, the spiritual generation is before the Law was,
the latter is after the Law.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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