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Translated by Cardinal Newman.
St Athanasius the Great Resources Online and in Print
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5 Pages
Page 5
4. Each text then which refers to the creature is written with reference to Jesus in a bodily sense. For the Lord's Humanity [437] was created as 'a beginning of ways,' and He manifested it to us for our salvation. For by it we have our access to the Father. For He is the way (Joh. xiv. 6) which leads us back to the Father. And a way is a corporeal visible thing, such as is the Lord's humanity. Well, then, the Word of God created all things, not being a creature, but an offspring. For He created none of the created things equal or like unto Himself. But it is the part of a Father to beget, while it is a workman's part to create. Accordingly, that body is a thing made and created, which the Lord bore for us, which was begotten for us [438] , as Paul says, 'wisdom from God, and sanctification and righteousness, and redemption;' while yet the Word was before us and before all Creation, and is, the Wisdom of the Father. But the Holy Spirit, being that which proceeds from the Father, is ever in the hands [439] of the Father Who sends and of the Son Who conveys Him, by Whose means He filled all things. The Father, possessing His existence from Himself, begat the Son, as we said, and did not create Him, as a river from a well and as a branch from a root, and as brightness from a light, things which nature knows to be indivisible; through whom to the Father be glory and power and greatness before all ages, and unto all the ages of the ages. Amen.
[437] kuriakos anthropos, see above.
[438] egennethe (1 Cor. i. 30, egenethe). The two words are constantly confused in mss., and I suspect that egenethe, which (pace Swainson p. 78, note) the context really requires, was what Ath. wrote.
[439] See also de Sent. Dionys. 17.
The End
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/athanasius/statement-faith.asp?pg=5
