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14). The word of God recognizes no other wisdom save the Son, and none of the Fathers had knowledge of any other. That wisdom which Arius describes as ἀγενήτως συνυπάρ χουσα τῷ πατρί and as δημιουργός is solely the Son (c. Ar. 2. 39, 40). It is in vain that Arius appeals to Dionysius of Alexandria, whose views he does not understand, since that writer had distinguished the Logos of God only from the voûs of God, as the stream is distinguished from its source; he did not, however, separate them, but taught that the Logos and the Son were alike in essence, being born of the essence of the Father, and also eternal and inseparable (de Sent. Dion. 23. 24). It hence appears that Arius made so wide a distinction between the person of the Father and that of the Son, that, as a result of his theory, each was a complete being, an ego, in itself, whose self-consciousness and self-determination were independent of the other. Consequently, as Arius was unwilling to expose himself to the charge of Dyotheism, his theory compelled him to assert the complete subordination of the Son to the Father, and assign to the former the rank of a creature.

The controversy, however, on the subject whether the Son was or was not a creature, was not conducted with arguments furnished exclusively by philosophy: both parties sought for all accessible exegetical aids; and here the churchly character of Athanasius gave him greatly the advantage. When the Arians attempted to demonstrate that the origin of the Lord was that of a creature, they appealed to passages in which he seemed to be described as one that had been created or came into existence in time (Prov. viii. 22; Heb. iii. 2; Acts ii. 36; Heb. i. 4; Phil. ii. 7; John i. 14). The nature and character of his being and his life as a creature, they endeavored to prove by passages which refer to his bodily growth, trouble of soul, defective knowledge, weariness and sleep, etc. (Luke ii, 52; John xii. 27, 28; Matt. xxvi. 39; Mark xiii. 32, etc.). Athanasius repelled such arguments by showing that all these passages referred to the human nature in the person of Christ; and he characterized the VOL. XXI. No. 81.

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Arian mode of interpreting them as a revival of the old Jewish delusion, that the divine and the human were incapable of being united (c. Ar. 3. 27).

He discusses the passages of the former class in his second discourse against the Arians. "If the Arians," he says (c. Ar. 2. 1) "had understood the character of Christianity, they would not have been taken captive by the unbelief of the Jews; they would have learned that the Logos was in the beginning, that the Logos was with God, and that God was the Logos; they would, further, have understood that when it pleased God that the Logos should become man, it was rightly said of him: ὁ λόγος σάρξ ἐγένετο, and κύριον καὶ Χριστὸν αὐτὸν ἐποίησε (Acts ii. 36); and κύριος ἔκτισέ με ἀρχὴν ὁδῶν αὐτοῦ (Prov. viii. 22); and τοσούτῳ κρείττων γενόμενος τῶν ἀγγέλων (Heb. i. 4); and ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσε μορφὴν δούλου λαβών (Phil. ii. 7) ; and κατανοήσατε τὸν ἀπόστολον καὶ ἀρχιέρεα . . . . Ἰησοῦν πιστὸν ὄντα τῷ ποιή. σаνтi ȧντóν (Heb. iii. 2); for all these expressions have the same sense; they refer to the deity of the Logos, and, because he also became the Son of man, to the predicates of his human nature (τὴν θεότητα τοῦ λόγου καὶ τὰ ἀνθρωπίνως λεγόμενα περὶ αὐτοῦ).”

According to this general principle Athanasius then proceeds to examine each of the passages in detail, after premising the following general proposition: It is an erroneous procedure to form a conclusion respecting the nature * or being of the Son from expressions like ἐποίησεν, ἐγένετο, ĚKTIσEV, K. T. X., as the latter are obviously to be explained in accordance with the true nature of the Son, and are not themselves the authoritative guide in defining that nature, since the characterization of any object is not anterior in time, but posterior, to the object itself. If the Son were really a creature, then expressions like éπoinoev, etc., should be literally understood; but if he is yévvmua and viós as to his essence, then èπoiŋoe is not to be literally understood, but is used instead of eyevvnoe. The scriptures, Athanasius continues, often term sons Soto, and servants Téva; Sarah

called Abraham lord (1 Pet. iii. 6; Gen. xviii. 12), although she was not his bondmaid, and Paul terms Onesimus a brother, although the latter was a slave (c. Ar. 2, 3). Now if we, nevertheless, do not call servants sons, nor sons servants, nor employ the other terms just mentioned as they are employed in these exceptional eases, neither ought we to deny the true nature of the Son and Logos of God, when the scriptures employ the language respecting him which has been adduced. And yet, when the scriptures apply to Christ the terms yévvηua and Logos of God, the latter are misinterpreted and denied; while, on the other hand, when the scriptures speak of Christ as Toinua, the Arians disingenuously at once declare that the Son is by nature a creature (1. c. 4).

Athanasius then explains the words in Heb. iii. 2 as teaching that the Father had made his Son a human being, and sent him to be our high-priest; this was the result when the Logos, although he was the creator of the world, assumed a body that was created and that had a beginning of its being. Hence, in the beginning the Lord was the Logos, was with God, and was God; and then, when it pleased God that he should become a sacrifice for us, he was made flesh. Now, even as it could be said of Aaron on a certain day: "To-day Aaron is made [has become] a high-priest," without thereby conveying the sense: "To-day Aaron has become a human being," so, too, the language: "The Father has made him, the Son, a high-priest," cannot be interpreted to mean that then the Logos had been first created, and, as the Logos, had had a beginning (c. Ar. 2. 7, 8).

While Athanasius referred Heb. iii. 2 to the sacerdotal office of Christ, he explained Acts ii. 36 as an indication of his kingly office, which the Lord also acquired through his incarnation. He appeals to the Greek version of Gen. xxvii. 29, 37, where, as he maintains, the phrase xúpiov moieîv refers, not to the ovcía, but to the éžovoía of Jacob and Esau; so, too, the words in Acts ii. 36 specially refer to the Lord's

authority over us, and his royal rank, which he gained through his incarnation. "He was previously already both Lord and King (Ps. cx.); but after the law, with its curse, and death, had acquired dominion over us, he was made flesh, completed his redeeming work for our benefit on the cross, and communicated its blessings through the mission of the Holy Spirit; in this manner he became our Lord, and we became his subjects in a special sense. His eternal dominion over us, which he possessed as the image and Logos of the Father, and as the creator of the world, was manifested anew through his incarnation and redeeming work ” (τὸ ἐποίησεν ἶσον τῷ ἀπέδειξεν, c. Ar. 2. 12 – 18).

No scriptural passage, however, occupied so prominent a position as Prov. viii. 22 – 25, and specially vs. 22: kúpιos ἔκτισέ με ἀρχὴν ὁδῶν αὐτοῦ εἰς ἔργα αὐτοῦ. The Arians appealed to this passage, not only for the purpose of substantiating their general doctrine that the Son is a creature, but also for that of proving that God had created the Son for the work of completing the creation of the world. As the Arians regarded the passage as their stronghold, Athanasius devotes almost the whole of the succeeding portions of his second discourse against the Arians, or eighty-two chapters, to the work of exposing the errors of the Arian interpretation. Voigt, who has hitherto been our guide, occupies more than eight pages with a statement of this particular controversy. As neither party, however, appealed to the original Hebrew text, and as the Septuagint, on which both depended, does not here reproduce the original with entire accuracy, we omit this portion of the controversy in its exegetical form.

The Arians had also appealed to Col. i. 15: ős éotiv eikòv τοῦ Θεοῦ τοῦ ἀοράτου, προτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως ; they maintained that, while the Son was here termed the first-born of the whole creation, he was still regarded as belonging to that creation, as a part of it, and was classed with other creatures in respect to his nature. "But if this were really the case," Athanasius replies, "he would, with respect to

his nature, be a brother of irrational creatures also, and could be classed even with inanimate objects (avvxa), being in that case distinguished from all these only by the difference in the time of his origin. The passage obviously calls for a different interpretation. The Son is both povoyevýs and also πрWтÓтокоs; now he could not receive both predicates, unless the reference in each case were peculiar and respectively different. The term μovoyevýs, namely, refers to his generation by the Father, while #pwтóтокоs is to be understood as indicating εἰς τὴν κτίσιν συγκατάβασιν καὶ τὴν τῶν πολλῶν ἀδελφοποίησιν (creation and redemption). As the onlybegotten he has no brethren, but as the first-born he has many. He receives the former appellation from his relation to God (John i. 14; 1 John iv. 9), the latter, from his relation to the world. The latter relation he assumed in consequence of the love of the Father to men, since God desired not only that all things should "consist" (Col. i. 17) by his Logos (creation), but also that through him "the creature should be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Rom. viii. 21). By such a process he becomes the first-born, not only of those who are the children of God, but also of the whole creation" (c. Ar. 2, 62–64).

The words in Heb. i. 4 (τοσούτῳ κρείττων γενόμενος τῶν ἀγγέλων, ὅσῳ διαφορώτερον παρ ̓ αὐτοὺς κεκληρονόμηκεν ὄνομα) were also involved in the controversy. The Arians laid an emphasis on the word yevóμevos, which, as they alleged, implied that the Son began to be in time, like the angels, although he is of higher rank than they are. Athanasius replies that yevóμevos is to be interpreted, not as an independent phrase, but in its intimate connection with peíTTwv, which latter term marks a difference, not in degree but in kinda difference in the nature or being of the Son. Thus, in Prov. viii. 11, where wisdom is compared with precious stones, the language [of the Septuagint] is: xpeίTτων σοφία λίθων πολυτελῶν, while there is confessedly an essential difference in the nature of wisdom and of precious

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