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be wisdom itself, who increased in wisdom, and was unacquainted with so many facts? Or how can he be the Logos of the Father, who exclaimed on the cross: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" and did not know the time of the judgment, whereas the Father is never without the Logos, and accomplishes nothing without his Logos? Because he was a creature he used such language and had various wants, such being the condition of creatures (c. Ar. 3. 26).

The Arians, Athanasius replies, in consequence of their unbelief and wickedness, are to be classed with the Jews. The latter ask: How can he who is a man be God? The former ask: How can he who was God become a man? The latter continue: If he were the Son of God he would not have suffered on the cross; while the former demand: How can ye call him the Son and Logos of God who suffered on the cross? The latter exclaim: Is he not Joseph's son? Do we not know his father and his mother? How can he, then, say: "Before Abraham was, I am." "I came down from heaven"? The former exclaim: How can he be the Logos and God, who sleeps as a man, weeps and laments as a man? Both the Jews and the Arians, in consequence of the sufferings which the Saviour endured in the flesh, deny the deity of the Logos (c. Ar. 3. 27). We, on the contrary, are Christians, and we understand the gospel narratives respecting the Lord in their proper sense. We do not stone him like the Jews, when we hear him speak of his eternal deity, neither are we offended, like the Arians, when he, as a man, employs for our sakes the language of human feebleness. It is, indeed, a peculiarity of the scriptures that they speak of the Saviour in a twofold manner, when they, on the one hand, set forth that he, as the Logos and brightness of the Father, always was God, and, on the other, explain that he afterwards became man for our sakes; this twofold view pervades the whole body of the sacred writings (1. c. 28, 29). He did not simply visit a man, as in the days of the prophets, for the purpose of sanctifying him,

and revealing himself, but he became also the Son of man. Hence all that is peculiar to human nature, such as hunger, thirst, and weariness, is ascribed to him, while at the same time he performs the works of the Logos, such as giving sight to the blind, or raising the dead. On the one hand, the Logos bore the infirmities of the flesh as his own, for it was his flesh; on the other, the flesh served the works of the deity, for it was the body of God. Hence the prophet truly says: "He bare (Baorάew, Matt. viii. 17) our sicknesses," and not merely, he healed them, so that it might not seem as if he had been out of the body and healed it only externally (c. Ar. 3. 30, 31).

While the Arians, like the Jews, proceeded on the principle that a fully divine nature was not capable of being united with a complete human nature, Athanasius firmly adhered, in accordance with the scriptures, to the doctrine of the union of the two natures. All the expressions occurring in the scriptures respecting the Lord, he referred to one of the two natures, without excluding the other from its due. participation. He accordingly adopted this course also in reference to the most grave objection which the Arians advanced, namely, that there were many things which the Lord did not know. It was not, he says, as the Logos, but as a man, that he was unacquainted with some things, for instance, the day of judgment (Mark xiii. 32). How should the Lord of heaven and earth, who appointed days and hours, not know them? That he did know them he indi .cated when he foretold (Matt. xxiv.) all that should precede the day and hour of the judgment. The want of a knowl edge of all things is a characteristic feature of human nature. As the Logos, the Lord knows; as a man, he does not know. As a man, he was not ashamed to confess the igno rance of the flesh (c. Ar. 3. 42, 43). As the Father does all things through the Son, and through him, too, appoints the day and hour of the judgment, the Son must necessarily have known the latter. The Son is in the Father, and the Father in him, so that he knows all that the Father knows

(1.c.44). When he came to Cesarea, and asked his disciples: "Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am?" he previously knew the reply which Peter then made. For if the Father revealed it to Peter, he revealed it through the Son, since "no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him" (l. c. 3, 46). Hence, as the Son of God, he well knew the time of the judg ment; if he nevertheless said that he knew it not, he may have possibly been influenced by the consideration that if he revealed it, man would in the intermediate time become negligent, and forbear to watch, to pray, and to prepare for the hour (Matt. xxiv. 42). At the same time he by no means uttered that which was untrue, for, as a man, he could truly say, I know not. But after his resurrection, when his flesh was changed, glorified, and freed from death, he no longer said that he knew not, but only: "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons" (Acts i. 7); for at the period of his ascension it was no longer fitting (ovkéti ëπtρεπε) that he should speak σαρκικῶς, but rather θεϊκῶς (l. c. 47-49). If the enemies of Christ are not satisfied with this explanation, we would be justified in addressing another interrogation to them: In Paradise God called unto Adam and said: Where art thou? And to Cain he said: Where is Abel thy brother? Did God, perhaps, not know, when he asked these questions? The answer must be: He well knew. Is it then unreasonable and inconsistent that the same Son, in whom God then asked those questions, should afterwards, as man, propose questions to his disciples?

§ 4. THE INFERENCES DEDUCED BY ARIUS FROM HIS FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINE, AND THEIR REFUTATION BY ATHA

NASIUS.

The foregoing statement describes the controversy as far as the fundamental principle of Arianism, that the Son of God is a creature, was concerned. Arius now proceeded to set forth a series of propositions containing inferences from

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that principle, or presenting arguments in confirmation of it. These propositions, which assigned the attributes of a creature to the Son, and the mode in which they are assailed, present a striking analogy to the discussion of the main principle, as exhibited above. Arius derived his arguments in each case almost exclusively from reason, and in each, too, Athanasius repelled them by means of exegetical

weapons.

God was not always,

1. "The Son of God is not from eternity, but has a begin ning of his existence (ἦν ποτε, ὅτε οὐκ ἦν), even as everything except God has had a beginning." Such was the original and oft-repeated assertion of Arius. he added, the Father, but ἦν ὅτε ὁ Θεὸς μόνος ἦν καὶ οὔπω πατὴρ ἦν, ὕστερον δὲ ἐπιγέγονε πατήρ. For as all things were made of nothing, so, too, the Logos of God came into being out of non-existence, καὶ ἦν ποτε ὅτε οὐκ ἦν και οὐκ ἦν πρὶν γένηται, ἀλλ ̓ ἀρχὴν τοῦ κτίζεσθαι ἔσχε καὶ αὐτός (c. Ar. 1. 5 ; de Decr. 6). "It was," says Dorner (Lehre von d. Person Christi I. 814) "the main purpose of Arius to show that our conception of the Father and of his existence by no means necessarily implied the Son and his existence, but that his existence in his relation to the Father was contingent or incidental [and not an absolute necessity]." Hence Arius did not yet employ the formula ἦν ποτε κ. τ. λ. in his letter to Alexander, which is given at the commencement of this Article. As Arius, who asserted the priority of the Father, was anxious to avoid the appearance of connecting the conception of time with the existence of the Father, he carefully avoided the use of the word xpóvos in his favorite formula; this subterfuge, however, availed but little, for, as Athanasius correctly remarks, the conception of time unquestionably lies in the phrase ἦν ποτε. It may yet be added that the formula itself was not an original production of Arius, as both Origen and Dionysius of Rome had already assailed it (de Decr. 26, 27). The refutation of the Arian theory (represented by the rallying-cry of the party: v ποτε, ὅτε οὐκ ἦν) is found chiefly in the first discourse of

Athanasius against the Arians. He proceeds thus: Let us subject this phrase to an equitable test. What is, strictly speaking, the subject [or nominative of the verb] in v πOTE? Is it God the Father? But this would be unblushing blasphemy. For the term once (TOтé) cannot be used predicatively of him who is absolutely the self-existent One, whose existence is an unchangeable and eternal now (ảeì kaì vûv). Or is the Son the subject in the phrase πOTE? That

would be a palpable contradiction in itself, since he cannot possibly both be and not be at the same time. We can then only assume that time (xpóvos) is the subject, and complete the sentence thus : ἦν ποτε χρόνος, ὅτε οὐκ ἦν ὁ λόγος, as the word TоTé authorizes us to do. The formula is then simply equivalent to another favorite Arian phrase: où vo υἱὸς πρὶν γεννηθῇ, and both imply that time preceded the existence of the Logos. Now such language is diametrically opposed to that of the scriptures, which both maintain that the existence of the Son is eternal, without beginning as well as without end (aei, aidtov), and also represent the Son as eternally co-existing with the Father (John i. 1; Rev. i.4; Rom. ix. 5) as his eternal power and Godhead (Rom. i. 20, comp. with 1 Cor. i. 24), c. Ar. 1. 11. We further find in the scriptures that when the Son speaks of his own nature, he always speaks in the present tense (ciui), and by it ascribes to himself an existence without beginning. He says: I am the truth (John xiv. 6), not I became the truth; I am your Master and Lord (John xiii. 13); I am the Shepherd (John x. 14); I am the Light (John viii, 12); Before Abraham was, I am (John viii. 58). Times and periods of time, like all things else, were first created through the Son, and when all things had not yet been created through him, time itself did not yet exist. How can we then conceive of time antecedently to the Logos? (c. Ar. 1. 12, 13). But the Arians allege: "If the Son is eternal as the Father, he is not his Son, but his Brother." How foolish and contentious they are! Their objection would be plausible if we simply held that Christ is eternal, and did not also teach that he is

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