NPNF2-04. Athanasius: Select Works and Letters

Chapter XXIII.—Texts Explained; Seventhly, John xiv. 10 Introduction. The doctrine of the coinherence. The Father and the Son Each whole and perfect God. They are in Each Other, because their Essence is One and the Same. They are Each Perfect and have One Essence, because the Second Person is the Son of the First. Asterius’s evasive explanation of the text under review; refuted. Since the Son has all that the Father has, He is His Image; and the Father is the One God, because the Son is in the Father.

1. The Ario-maniacs, as it appears, having once made up their minds to transgress and revolt from the Truth, are strenuous in appropriating the words of Scripture, ‘When the impious cometh into a depth of evils, he despiseth2786;’ for refutation does not stop them, nor perplexity abash them; but, as having ‘a whore’s forehead,’ they ‘refuse to be ashamed2787’ before all men in their irreligion. For whereas the passages which they alleged, ‘The Lord created me2788,’ and ‘Made better than the Angels2789,’ and ‘First-born2790,’ and ‘Faithful to Him that made Him2791’ have a right sense2792, and inculcate religiousness towards Christ, so it is that these men still, as if bedewed with the serpent’s poison, not seeing what they ought to see, nor understanding what they read, as if in vomit from the depth of their irreligious heart, have next proceeded to disparage our Lord’s words, ‘I in the Father and the Father in Me2793;’ saying, ‘How can the One be contained in the Other and the Other in the One?’ or ‘How at all can the Father who is the greater be contained in the Son who is the less?’ or ‘What wonder, if the Son is in the Father,’ considering it is written even of us, ‘In Him we live and move and have our being2794?’ And this state of mind is consistent with their perverseness, who think God to be material, and understand not what is ‘True Father’ and ‘True Son,’ nor ‘Light Invisible’ and ‘Eternal,’ and Its ‘Radiance Invisible,’ nor ‘Invisible Subsistence,’ and ‘Immaterial Expression’ and ‘Immaterial Image.’

For did they know, they would not dishonour and ridicule the Lord of glory, nor interpreting things immaterial after a material manner, pervert good words. It were sufficient indeed, on hearing only words which are the Lord’s, at once to believe, since the faith of simplicity is better than an elaborate process of persuasion; but since they have endeavoured to profane even this passage to their own heresy, it becomes necessary to expose their perverseness and to shew the mind of the truth, at least for the security of the faithful. For when it is said, ‘I in the Father and the Father in Me,’ They are not therefore, as these suppose, discharged into Each Other, filling the One the Other, as in the case of empty vessels, so that the Son fills the emptiness of the Father and the Father that of the Son2795, and Each of Them by Himself is not complete and perfect (for this is proper to bodies, and therefore the mere assertion of it is full of irreligion), for the Father is full and perfect, and the Son is the Fulness of Godhead. Nor again, as God, by coming into the Saints, strengthens them, thus is He also in the Son. For He is Himself the Father’s Power and Wisdom, and by partaking of Him things originate are sanctified in the Spirit; but the Son Himself is not Son by participation, but is the Father’s own Offspring2796.

Nor again is the Son in the Father, in the sense of the passage, ‘In Him we live and move and have our being;’ for, He as being from the Fount2797 of the Father is the Life, in which all things are both quickened and consist; for the Life does not live in life2798, else it would not be Life, but rather He gives life to all things.

2. But now let us see what Asterius the Sophist says, the retained pleader2799 for the heresy. In imitation then of the Jews so far, he writes as follows; ‘It is very plain that He has said, that He is in the Father and the Father again in Him, for this reason, that neither the word on which He was discoursing is, as He says, His own, but the Father’s, nor the works belong to Him, but to the Father who gave Him the power.’ Now this, if uttered at random by a little child, had been excused from his age; but when one who bears the title of Sophist, and professes universal knowledge2800, is the writer, what a serious condemnation does he deserve! And does he not shew himself a stranger to the Apostle2801, as being puffed up with persuasive words of wisdom, and thinking thereby to succeed in deceiving, not understanding himself what he says nor whereof he affirms2802? For what the Son has said as proper and suitable to a Son only, who is Word and Wisdom and Image of the Father’s Essence, that he levels to all the creatures, and makes common to the Son and to them; and he says, lawless2803 man, that the Power of the Father receives power, that from this his irreligion it may follow to say that in a son2804 the Son was made a son, and the Word received a word’s authority; and, far from granting that He spoke this as a Son, He ranks Him with all things made as having learned it as they have.

For if the Son said, ‘I am in the Father and the Father in Me,’ because His discourses were not His own words but the Father’s, and so of His works, then,—since David says, ‘I will hear what the Lord God shall say in me2805,’ and again Solomon2806, ‘My words are spoken by God,’ and since Moses was minister of words which were from God, and each of the Prophets spoke not what was his own but what was from God, ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ and since the works of the Saints, as they professed, were not their own but God’s who gave the power, Elijah for instance and Elisha invoking God that He Himself would raise the dead, and Elisha saying to Naaman, on cleansing him from the leprosy, ‘that thou mayest know that there is a God in Israel2807,’ and Samuel too in the days of the harvest praying to God to grant rain, and the Apostles saying that not in their own power they did miracles but in the Lord’s grace—it is plain that, according to Asterius such a statement must be common to all, so that each of them is able to say, ‘I in the Father and the Father in me;’ and as a consequence that He is no longer one Son of God and Word and Wisdom, but, as others, is only one out of many.

3. But if the Lord said this, His words would not rightly have been, ‘I in the Father and the Father in Me,’ but rather, ‘I too am in the Father, and the Father is in Me too,’ that He may have nothing of His own and by prerogative2808, relatively to the Father, as a Son, but the same grace in common with all. But it is not so, as they think; for not understanding that He is genuine Son from the Father, they belie Him who is such, whom alone it befits to say, ‘I in the Father and the Father in Me.’ For the Son is in the Father, as it is allowed us to know, because the whole Being of the Son is proper to the Father’s essence2809, as radiance from light, and stream from fountain; so that whoso sees the Son, sees what is proper to the Father, and knows that the Son’s Being, because from the Father, is therefore in the Father. For the Father is in the Son, since the Son is what is from the Father and proper to Him, as in the radiance the sun, and in the word the thought, and in the stream the fountain: for whoso thus contemplates the Son, contemplates what is proper to the Father’s Essence, and knows that the Father is in the Son. For whereas the Form2810 and Godhead of the Father is the Being of the Son, it follows that the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son2811.

4. On this account and reasonably, having said before, ‘I and the Father are One,’ He added, ‘I in the Father and the Father in Me,2812’ by way of shewing the identity2813 of Godhead and the unity of Essence. For they are one, not2814 as one thing divided into two parts, and these nothing but one, nor as one thing twice named, so that the Same becomes at one time Father, at another His own Son, for this Sabellius holding was judged an heretic. But They are two, because the Father is Father and is not also Son, and the Son is Son and not also Father2815; but the nature is one; (for the offspring is not unlike2816 its parent, for it is his image), and all that is the Father’s, is the Son’s2817. Wherefore neither is the Son another God, for He was not procured from without, else were there many, if a godhead be procured foreign from the Father’s2818; for if the Son be other, as an Offspring, still He is the Same as God; and He and the Father are one in propriety and peculiarity of nature, and in the identity of the one Godhead, as has been said. For the radiance also is light, not second to the sun, nor a different light, nor from participation of it, but a whole and proper offspring of it. And such an offspring is necessarily one light; and no one would say that they are two lights2819, but sun and radiance two, yet one the light from the sun enlightening in its radiance all things. So also the Godhead of the Son is the Father’s; whence also it is indivisible; and thus there is one God and none other but He.

And so, since they are one, and the Godhead itself one, the same things are said of the Son, which are said of the Father, except His being said to be Father2820:—for instance2821, that He is God, ‘And the Word was God2822;’ Almighty, ‘Thus saith He which was and is and is to come, the Almighty2823;’ Lord, ‘One Lord Jesus Christ2824;’ that He is Light, ‘I am the Light2825;’ that He wipes out sins, ‘that ye may know,’ He says, ‘that the Son of man hath power upon earth to forgive sins2826;’ and so with other attributes. For ‘all things,’ says the Son Himself, ‘whatsoever the Father hath, are Mine2827;’ and again, ‘And Mine are Thine.’