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Translated by Cardinal Newman.
St Athanasius the Great Resources Online and in Print
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56 Pages
Page 52
50. If then any think of other beginning, and other Father, considering the equality of these attributes, it is a mad thought. But if, since the Son is from the Father, all that is the Father's is the Son's as in an image and Expression, let it be considered dispassionately, whether an essence foreign from the Father's essence admit of such attributes; and whether such a one be other in nature and alien in essence, and not coessential with the Father. For we must take reverent heed, lest transferring what is proper to the Father to what is unlike Him in essence, and expressing the Father's godhead by what is unlike in kind and alien in essence, we introduce another essence foreign to Him, yet capable of the properties of the first essence [3653] , and lest we be silenced by God Himself, saying, 'My glory I will not give to another,' and be discovered worshipping this alien God, and be accounted such as were the Jews of that day, who said, 'Wherefore dost Thou, being a man, make Thyself God?' referring, the while, to another source the things of the Spirit, and blasphemously saying, 'He casteth out devils through Beelzebub' (Isa. xlii. 8; John x. 33; Luke xi. 15). But if this is shocking, plainly the Son is not unlike in essence, but coessential with the Father; for if what the Father has is by nature the Son's, and the Son Himself is from the Father, and because of this oneness of godhead and of nature He and the Father are one, and He that hath seen the Son hath seen the Father, reasonably is He called by the Fathers 'Coessential;' for to what is other in essence, it belongs not to possess such prerogatives.
51. And again, if, as we have said before, the Son is not such by participation, but, while all things originated have by participation the grace of God, He is the Father's Wisdom and Word of which all things partake [3654] , it follows that He, being the deifying and enlightening power of the Father, in which all things are deified and quickened, is not alien in essence from the Father, but coessential. For by partaking of Him, we partake of the Father; because that the Word is the Father's own. Whence, if He was Himself too from participation, and not from the Father His essential Godhead and Image, He would not deify [3655] , being deified Himself. For it is not possible that He, who merely possesses from participation, should impart of that partaking to others, since what He has is not His own, but the Giver's; and what He has received, is barely the grace sufficient for Himself. However, let us fairly examine the reason why some, as is said, decline the 'Coessential,' whether it does not rather shew that the Son is coessential with the Father. They say then, as you have written, that it is not right to say that the Son is coessential with the Father, because he who speaks of 'coessential' speaks of three, one essence pre-existing, and that those who are generated from it are coessential: and they add, 'If then the Son be coessential with the Father, then an essence must be previously supposed, from which they have been generated; and that the One is not Father and the Other Son, but they are brothers together. [3656] '
[3653] Arianism was in the dilemma of denying Christ's divinity, or introducing a second God. The Arians proper went off on the former side of the alternative, the Semi-Arians on the latter; and Athan., as here addressing the Semi Arians, insists on the greatness of the latter error. This of course was the objection which attached to the words homoiousion, aparallaktos eikon, &c., when disjoined from the homoousion; and Eusebius's language, supr. p. 75, note 7, shews us that it is not an imaginary one.
[3654] De Decr. S:10. p. 15, note 4.
[3655] etheopoiese Orat.ii. S:70. de Decr. S:14.
[3656] Cf. supr. p. 314, note 1, Cyr. Thesaur. pp. 22, 23.
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/athanasius/councils.asp?pg=52
