9.
If then the Father be called the only true God, this is said not to the denial of Him who said, ‘I am the Truth 1,’ but of those on the other hand who by nature are not true, as the Father and His Word are. And hence the Lord Himself added at once, ‘And Jesus Christ whom Thou didst send 2.’ Now had He been a creature, He would not have added this, and ranked Himself with His Creator (for what fellowship is there between the True and the not true?); but as it is, by adding Himself to the Father, He has shewn that He is of the Father’s nature; and He has given us to know that of the True Father He is True Offspring. And John too, as he had learned 3, so he teaches this, writing in his Epistle, ‘And we are in the True, even in His Son Jesus Christ; This is the True God and eternal life 4.’ And when the Prophet says concerning the creation, ‘That stretcheth forth the heavens alone 5,’ and when God says, ‘I only stretch out the heavens,’ it is made plain to every one, that in the Only is signified also the Word of the Only, in whom ‘all things were made,’ and without whom ‘was made not one thing.’ Therefore, if they were made through the Word, and yet He says, ‘I Only,’ and together with that Only is understood the Son, through whom the heavens were made, so also then, if it be said, ‘One God,’ and ‘I Only,’ and ‘I the First,’ in that One and Only and First is understood the Word coexisting, as in the Light the Radiance. And this can be understood of no other than the Word alone. For all other things subsisted out of nothing through the Son, and are greatly different in nature; but the Son Himself is natural and true Offspring from the Father; and thus the very passage which these insensates have thought fit to adduce, ‘I the First,’ in defence of their heresy, doth rather expose their perverse spirit. For God says, ‘I the First and I the Last;’ if then, as though ranked with the things after Him, He is said to be first of them, so that they come next to Him, then certainly you will have shewn that He Himself precedes the works in time only 6; which, to go no further, is extreme irreligion; but if it is in order to prove that He is not from any, nor any before Him, but that He is Origin and Cause of all things, and to destroy the Gentile fables, that He has said ‘I the First,’ it is plain also, that when the Son is called First-born, this is done not for the sake of ranking Him with the creation, but to prove the framing and adoption of all things 7 through the Son. For as the Father is First, so also is He both First 8, as P. 399 Image of the First, and because the First is in Him, and also Offspring from the Father, in whom the whole creation is created and adopted into sonship.
John xiv. 6 . ↩
Ib. xvii. 3 . ↩
μαθὼν ἐδίδαξε ,de Decr.7, n. 8;Or.ii. 1, note 6 a . ↩
1 John v. 20 . ↩
Isai. xliv. 24 . ↩
He says that in ‘I the first’ the question of time does not come in, else creatures would come ‘second’ to the Creator, as if His and their duration admitted of a common measure. ‘First’ then does not imply succession, but is equivalent to ἀρχή ; a word which, as ‘Father,’ does not imply that the Son is not from eternity. ↩
ii. 62, n. 2. ↩
It is no inconsistency to say that the Father is first, and the Son first also, for comparison or number does not enter into mystery. Since Each is ὅλος θεὸς , Each, as contemplated by our finite reason, at the moment of contemplation excludes the Other. Though we ‘say’ Three Persons, Person hardly denotes one abstract ‘idea,’ certainly not as containing under it three individual subjects, but it is a ‘term’ applied to the One God in three ways. It is the doctrine of the Fathers, that, though we use words expressive of a Trinity, yet that God is beyond number, and that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, though eternally distinct from each other, can scarcely be viewed together in common, except as ‘One’ substance, as if they could not be generalized into Three Any whatever; and as if it were, strictly speaking, incorrect to speak of ‘a’ Person, or otherwise than of ‘the’ Person, whether of Father, or of Son, or of Spirit. The question has almost been admitted by S. Austin, whether it is not possible to say that God is ‘One’ Person (Trin.vii. 8), for He is wholly and entirely Father, and at the same time wholly and entirely Son, and wholly and entirely Holy Ghost. Some references to the Fathers shall be given on that subject,infr.36 fin. vid. alsosupr.§6, n. 11. Meanwhile the doctrine here stated will account for such expressions as ‘God from God,’ i.e. the One God (who is the Son) from the One God (who is the Father); vid.supr. de Syn.52, note 8. Again, ἡ οὐσία αὕτη τῆς οὐσίας τῆς πατρικῆς ἐστὶ γέννημα .de Syn.48, b. Vid. alsoinfr. Orat.iv. 1 and 2. ↩
