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Translated by Cardinal Newman.
St Athanasius the Great Resources Online and in Print
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39 Pages
Page 10
Chapter III.--Two senses of the word Son, 1. adoptive; 2. essential; attempts of Arians to find a third meaning between these; e.g. that our Lord only was created immediately by God (Asterius's view), or that our Lord alone partakes the Father. The second and true sense; God begets as He makes, really; though His creation and generation are not like man's; His generation independent of time; generation implies an internal, and therefore an eternal, act in God; explanation of Prov. viii. 22.
6. They say then what the others held and dared to maintain before them; "Not always Father, not always Son; for the Son was not before His generation, but, as others, came to be from nothing; and in consequence God was not always Father of the Son; but, when the Son came to be and was created, then was God called His Father. For the Word is a creature and a work, and foreign and unlike the Father in essence; and the Son is neither by nature the Father's true Word, nor His only and true Wisdom; but being a creature and one of the works, He is improperly [776] called Word and Wisdom; for by the Word which is in God was He made, as were all things. Wherefore the Son is not true God [777] ."
Now it may serve to make them understand what they are saying, to ask them first this, what in fact a son is, and of what is that name significant [778] . In truth, Divine Scripture acquaints us with a double sense of this word:--one which Moses sets before us in the Law, 'When ye shall hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, to keep all His commandments which I command thee this day, to do that which is right in the eyes of the Lord thy God, ye are children of the Lord your God [779] ;' as also in the Gospel, John says, 'But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God [780] :'--and the other sense, that in which Isaac is son of Abraham, and Jacob of Isaac, and the Patriarchs of Jacob. Now in which of these two senses do they understand the Son of God that they relate such fables as the foregoing? for I feel sure they will issue in the same irreligion with Eusebius and his fellows.
[776] katachrestikos. This word is noticed and protested against by Alexander, Socr. Hist. i. 6. p. 11 a. by the Semiarians at Ancyra, Epiph. Haer. 73. n. 5. by Basil. contr. Eunom. ii. 23. and by Cyril, Dial. ii. t. v. i. pp. 432, 3.
[777] Vid. Ep. Aeg. 12. Orat. i. S:5. 6. de Synod. 15, 16. Athanas. seems to have had in mind Socr. i. 6. p. 10, 11, or the like.
[778] Vid. Orat. i. S:38. The controversy turned on the question what was meant by the word 'Son.' Though the Arians would not allow with the Catholics that our Lord was Son by nature, and maintained that the word implied a beginning of existence, they did not dare to say that He was Son merely in the sense in which we are sons, though, as Athan. contends, they necessarily tended to this conclusion, directly they receded from the Catholic view. Thus Arius said that He was a creature, 'but not as one of the creatures.' Orat. ii. S:19. Valens at Ariminum said the same, Jerom. adv. Lucifer. 18. Hilary says, that not daring directly to deny that He was God, the Arians merely asked 'whether He was a Son.' de Trin. viii. 3. Athanasius remarks upon this reluctance to speak out, challenging them to present 'the heresy naked,' de Sent. Dionys. 2. init. 'No one,' he says elsewhere, 'puts a light under a bushel; let them shew the world their heresy naked.' Ep. Aeg. 18. vid. ibid. 10. In like manner, Basil says that (though Arius was really like Eunomius, in faith, contr. Eunom. i. 4) Aetius his master was the first to teach openly (phaneros), that the Father's substance was unlike, anomoios, the Son's. ibid. i. 1. Epiphanius Haer. 76 p. 949. seems to say that the elder Arians held the divine generation in a sense in which Aetius did not, that is, they were not so consistent and definite as he. Athan. goes on to mention some of the attempts of the Arians to find some theory short of orthodoxy, yet short of that extreme heresy, on the other hand, which they felt ashamed to avow.
[779] Deut. xiii. 18; xiv. 1.
[780] John. i. 12.
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/athanasius/defence-nicene-definition.asp?pg=10
