Section xxi.ii.i.vi: Subject Continued
CCEL ThML source edition
Philip Schaff
22. Therefore he who asks why the Son is not to beget a son, must inquire why the Father had not a father. But both suppositions are unseemly and full of impiety. For as the Father is ever Father and never could become Son, so the Son is ever Son and never could become Father. For in this rather is He shewn to be the Father’s Expression and Image, remaining what He is and not changing, but thus receiving from the Father to be one and the same. If then the Father change, let the Image change; for so is the Image and Radiance in its relation towards Him who begat It. But if the Father is unalterable, and what He is that He continues, necessarily does the Image also continue what He is, and will not alter. Now He is Son from the Father; therefore He will not become other than is proper to the Father’s essence. Idly then have the foolish ones devised this objection also, wishing to separate the Image from the Father, that they might level the Son with things originated.
Source notes
De Decr. §16.
De Syn. 27 (5) note 1, and infr. §40.
The objection is this, that, if our Lord be the Father’s Image, He ought to resemble Him in being a Father. S. Athanasius answers that God is not as man; with us a son becomes a father because our nature is ῥευστὴ, transitive and without stay, ever shifting and passing on into new forms and relations; but that God is perfect and ever the same, what He is once that He continues to be; God the Father remains Father, and God the Son remains Son. Moreover men become fathers by detachment and transmission, and what is received is handed on in a succession; whereas the Father, by imparting Himself wholly, begets the Son: and a perfect nativity finds its termination in itself. The Son has not a Son, because the Father has not a Father. Thus the Father is the only true Father, and the Son alone true Son; the Father only a Father, the Son only a Son; being really in their Persons what human fathers are but by office, character, accident, and name; vid. De Decr. 11, note 6. And since the Father is unchangeable as Father, in nothing does the Son more fulfil the idea of a perfect Image than in being unchangeable too. Thus S. Cyril also, Thesaur. 10. p. 124. And this perhaps may illustrate a strong and almost startling implication of some of the Greek Fathers, that the First Person in the Holy Trinity, is not God [in virtue of His Fatherhood]. E.g. εἰ δὲ θεὸς ὁ υἱ& 232·ς, οὐκ ἐπεὶ υἱ& 231·ς· ὁμοίως καὶ ὁ πατὴρ, οὐκ ἐπεὶ πατὴρ, θεός· ἀλλ᾽ ἐπεὶ οὐσία τοιάδε, εἷς ἐστὶ πατὴρ καὶ ὁ υἱ& 232·ς θεός. Nyssen. t. i. p. 915. vid. Petav. de Deo i. 9. §13.
Should it be asked, ‘What is the Father if not God?’ it is enough to answer, ‘the Father.’ Men differ from each other as being individuals, but the characteristic difference between Father and Son is, not that they are individuals, but that they are Father and Son. In these extreme statements it must be ever borne in mind that we are contemplating divine things according to our notions. not in fact: i.e. speaking of the Almighty Father, as such; there being no real separation between His Person and His Substance. It may be added, that, though theologians differ in their decisions, it would appear that our Lord is not the Image of the Father’s person, but of the Father’s substance; in other words, not of the Father considered as Father, but considered as God. That is, God the Son is like and equal to God the Father, because they are both the same God. De Syn. 49. note 4, also next note.
Ep. Eus. 7, de Decr. 11, note 8.
κυρίως, de Decr. 11, note 6. Elsewhere Athan. says, ‘The Father being one and only is Father of a Son one and only; and in the instance of Godhead only have the names Father and Son stay, and are ever; for of men if any one be called father, yet he has been son of another; and if he be called son, yet is he called father of another; so that in the case of men the names father and son do not properly, κυρίως, hold.’ ad Serap. i. 16. also ibid. iv. 4 fin. and 6. vid. also κυρίως, Greg. Naz. Orat. 29. 5. ἀληθῶς, Orat. 25, 16. ὄντως, Basil. contr. Eunom. i. 5. p. 215.