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Chapter XXIII .— Texts Explained; Seventhly, John xiv. 10 Introduction. The doctrine of the coinherence. The Father and the Son Each whole and perfect God. They are in Each Other, because their Essence is One and the Same. They are Each Perfect and have One Essence, because the Second Person is the Son of the First. Asterius’s evasive explanation of the text under review; refuted. Since the Son has all that the Father has, He is His Image; and the Father is the One God, because the Son is in the Father.
The Ario-maniacs, as it appears, having once made up their minds to transgress and revolt from the Truth, are strenuous in appropriating the words of Scripture, ‘When the impious cometh into a depth of evils, he despiseth 1;’ for refutation does not stop them, nor perplexity abash them; but, as having ‘a whore’s forehead,’ they ‘refuse to be ashamed 2’ before all men in their irreligion. For whereas the passages which they alleged, ‘The Lord created me 3,’ and ‘Made better than the Angels 4,’ and ‘First-born 5,’ and ‘Faithful to Him that made Him 6’ have a right sense 7, and inculcate religiousness towards Christ, so it is that these men still, as if bedewed with the serpent’s poison, not seeing what they ought to see, nor understanding what they read, as if in vomit from the depth of their irreligious heart, have next proceeded to disparage our Lord’s words, ‘I in the Father and the Father in Me 8;’ saying, ‘How can the One be contained in the Other and the Other in the One?’ or ‘How at all can the Father who is the greater be contained in the Son who is the less?’ or ‘What wonder, if the Son is in the Father,’ considering it is written even of us, ‘In Him we live and move and have our being 9?’ And this state of mind is consistent with their perverseness, who think God to be material, and understand not what P. 394 is ‘True Father’ and ‘True Son,’ nor ‘Light Invisible’ and ‘Eternal,’ and Its ‘Radiance Invisible,’ nor ‘Invisible Subsistence,’ and ‘Immaterial Expression’ and ‘Immaterial Image.’ For did they know, they would not dishonour and ridicule the Lord of glory, nor interpreting things immaterial after a material manner, pervert good words. It were sufficient indeed, on hearing only words which are the Lord’s, at once to believe, since the faith of simplicity is better than an elaborate process of persuasion; but since they have endeavoured to profane even this passage to their own heresy, it becomes necessary to expose their perverseness and to shew the mind of the truth, at least for the security of the faithful. For when it is said, ‘I in the Father and the Father in Me,’ They are not therefore, as these suppose, discharged into Each Other, filling the One the Other, as in the case of empty vessels, so that the Son fills the emptiness of the Father and the Father that of the Son 10, and Each of Them by Himself is not complete and perfect (for this is proper to bodies, and therefore the mere assertion of it is full of irreligion) , for the Father is full and perfect, and the Son is the Fulness of Godhead. Nor again, as God, by coming into the Saints, strengthens them, thus is He also in the Son. For He is Himself the Father’s Power and Wisdom, and by partaking of Him things originate are sanctified in the Spirit; but the Son Himself is not Son by participation, but is the Father’s own Offspring 11. Nor again is the Son in the Father, in the sense of the passage, ‘In Him we live and move and have our being;’ for, He as being from the Fount 12 of the Father is the Life, in which all things are both quickened and consist; for the Life does not live in life 13, else it would not be Life, but rather He gives life to all things.
Prov. xviii. 3 , LXX. ↩
Jer. iii. 3 . ↩
Supr.ch. xix. ↩
Ch. xiii. ↩
Ch. xxi. ↩
Ch. xiv. ↩
ii. 44, n. 1. ↩
John xiv. 10 . ↩
Acts xvii. 28 . Vid.supr.ii. 41, note 11. The doctrine of the περιχώρησις , which this objection introduces, is the test of orthodoxy opposed to Arianism. Cf.de Syn.15, n. 4. This is seen clearly in the case of Eusebius, whose language approaches to Catholic more nearly than Arians in general. After all his strong assertions, the question recurs, is our Lord a distinct being from God, as we are, or not? he answers in the affirmative, vid.supr.p. 75, n. 7, whereas we believe that He is literally and numerically one with the Father, and therefore His Person dwells in the Father’s Person by an ineffable union. And hence the language of Dionysius [of Rome]*supr. de Decr.26. ‘the Holy Ghost must repose and habitate in God,’ ἐμφιλοχωρεῖν τῷ θεῷ καὶ ἐνδιαιτᾶσθαι . And hence the strong figure of S. Jerome (in which he is followed by S. Cyril,Thesaur.p. 51), ‘Filius locus est Patris, sicut et Pater locus est Filii.’ in Ezek. iii. 12 . So Athan. contrasts the creatures who are ἐν μεμερισμένοις τόποις and the Son.Serap.iii. 4. Cf. even in the Macrostich Creed, language of this character, viz. ‘All the Father embosoming the Son, and all the Son hanging and adhering to the Father, and alone resting on the Father’s breast continually.’De Syn.26 (7), where vid. note 3. ↩
This is not inconsistent with S. Jerome as quoted in the foregoing note. Athan. merely means that such illustrations cannot be taken literally, as if spoken of natural subjects. The Father is the τόπος or locus of the Son, because when we contemplate the Son in His fulness as ὅλος θεός , we merely view the Father as that Person in whom God the Son is; our mind abstracts His Essence which is the Son for the moment from Him, and regards Him merely as Father. Thusin*Illud. Omn.4,supr.p. 89. It is, however, but an operation of the mind, and not a real emptying of Godhead from the Father, if such words may be used. Father and Son are both the same God, though really and eternally distinct from each other; and Each is full of the Other, that is, their Essence is one and the same. This is insisted on by S. Cyril,in Joan.p. 28. And by S. Hilary,Trin.vii. fin. vid. also iii. 23. Cf. the quotation from S. Anselm made by Petavius,de Trin.iv. 16 fin. [Cf. D.C.B.s.v.Metangismonitae. ] ↩
Vid.de Decr.10, n. 4, 19, n. 3;Or.i. 15, n. 6. On the other hand Eusebius considers the Son, like a creature, ἐξ αὐτῆς τῆς πατρικῆς [not οὐσίας , but]μετουσίας, ὥσπερ ἀπὸ πηγῆς, ἐπ᾽ αὐτὸν προχεομένης πληρούμενον .Eccl. Theol.i. 2. words which are the more observable, the nearer they approach to the language of Athan. in the text and elsewhere. Vid.infr.by way of contrast, οὐδὲ κατὰ μετουσίαν αὐτοῦ, ἀλλ᾽ ὅλον ἴδιον αὐτοῦ γέννημα . 4. ↩
De Decr.15, n. 9. ↩
i.e. Son does not live by thegiftof life, for Heislife, and does but give it, not receive. S. Hilary uses different language with the same meaning,de Trin.ii. 11. Other modes of expression for the same mystery are foundinfr.3. also 6 fin. Vid.de Syn.45, n. 1. and Didymus ἡ πατρικὴ θεότης . p. 82. and S. Basil, ἐξ οὗ ἔχει τὸ εἶναι .contr.*Eunom.ii. 12 fin. Just above Athan. says that ‘the Son is the fulness of the Godhead.’ Thus the Father is the Son’s life because the Son is from Him, and the Son the Father’s because the Son is in Him. All these are but different ways of signifying the περιχώρησις ↩
