{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/208/2080036.htm","path":"chr/ecf/208/2080036.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/208/2080036.htm","text":"Issue joined with those who assert that the Son is not with the Father, but after the Father. Also concerning the equal glory.\n13. Our opponents, while they thus artfully and perversely encounter our argument, cannot even have recourse to the plea of ignorance. It is obvious that they are annoyed with us for completing the doxology to the Only Begotten together with the Father, and for not separating the Holy Spirit from the Son. On this account they style us innovators, revolutionizers, phrase-coiners, and every other possible name of insult. But so far am I from being irritated at their abuse, that, were it not for the fact that their loss causes me \u201cheaviness and continual sorrow,\u201d 786 I could almost have said that I was grateful to them for the blasphemy, as though they were agents for providing me with blessing. For \u201cblessed are ye,\u201d it is said, \u201cwhen men shall revile you for my sake.\u201d 787 The grounds of their indignation are these: The Son, according to them, is not together with the Father, but after the Father. Hence it follows that glory should be ascribed to the Father \u201cthrough him,\u201d but not \u201cwith him;\u201d inasmuch as \u201cwith him\u201d expresses equality of dignity, while \u201cthrough him\u201d denotes subordination. They further assert that the Spirit is not to be ranked along with the Father and the Son, but under the Son and the Father; not coordinated, but subordinated; not connumerated, but subnumerated. 788\nWith technical terminology of this kind they pervert the simplicity and artlessness of the faith, and thus by their ingenuity, suffering no one else to remain in ignorance, they cut off from themselves the plea that ignorance might demand.\n14. Let us first ask them this question: In what sense do they say that the Son is \u201cafter the Father;\u201d later in time, or in order, or in dignity? But in time no one is so devoid of sense as to assert that the Maker of the ages 789 holds a second place, when no interval intervenes in the natural conjunction of the Father with the Son. 790 And indeed so far as our conception of human relations goes, 791 it is impossible to think of the Son as being later than the Father, not only from the fact that Father and Son are mutually conceived of in accordance with the relationship subsisting between them, but because posteriority in time is predicated of subjects separated by a less interval from the present, and priority of subjects farther off. For instance, what happened in Noah\u2019s time is prior to what happened to the men of Sodom, inasmuch as Noah is more remote from our own day; and, again, the events of the history of the men of Sodom are posterior, because they seem in a sense to approach nearer to our own day. But, in addition to its being a breach of true religion, is it not really the extremest folly to measure the existence of the life which transcends all time and all the ages by its distance from the present? Is it not as though God the Father could be compared with, and be made superior to, God the Son, who exists before the ages, precisely in the same way in which things liable to beginning and corruption are described as prior to one another?\nThe superior remoteness of the Father is really inconceivable, in that thought and intelligence are wholly impotent to go beyond the generation of the Lord; and St. John has admirably confined the conception within circumscribed boundaries by two words, \u201cIn the beginning was the Word.\u201d For thought cannot travel outside \u201cwas,\u201d nor imagination 792 beyond \u201cbeginning.\u201d Let p. 9 your thought travel ever so far backward you cannot get beyond the \u201cwas,\u201d and however you may strain and strive to see what is beyond the Son, you will find it impossible to get further than the \u201cbeginning.\u201d True religion, therefore, thus teaches us to think of the Son together with the Father.\n15. If they really conceive of a kind of degradation of the Son in relation to the Father, as though He were in a lower place, so that the Father sits above, and the Son is thrust off to the next seat below, let them confess what they mean. We shall have no more to say. A plain statement of the view will at once expose its absurdity. They who refuse to allow that the Father pervades all things do not so much as maintain the logical sequence of thought in their argument. The faith of the sound is that God fills all things; 793 but they who divide their up and down between the Father and the Son do not remember even the word of the Prophet: \u201cIf I climb up into heaven thou art there; if I go down to hell thou art there also.\u201d 794 Now, to omit all proof of the ignorance of those who predicate place of incorporeal things, what excuse can be found for their attack upon Scripture, shameless as their antagonism is, in the passages \u201cSit thou on my right hand\u201d 795 and \u201cSat down on the right hand of the majesty of God\u201d? 796 The expression \u201cright hand\u201d does not, as they contend, indicate the lower place, but equality of relation; it is not understood physically, in which case there might be something sinister about God, 797 but Scripture puts before us the magnificence of the dignity of the Son by the use of dignified language indicating the seat of honour. It is left then for our opponents to allege that this expression signifies inferiority of rank. Let them learn that \u201cChrist is the power of God and wisdom of God,\u201d 798 and that \u201cHe is the image of the invisible God\u201d 799 and \u201cbrightness of his glory,\u201d 800 and that \u201cHim hath God the Father sealed,\u201d 801 by engraving Himself on Him. 802\nNow are we to call these passages, and others like them, throughout the whole of Holy Scripture, proofs of humiliation, or rather public proclamations of the majesty of the Only Begotten, and of the equality of His glory with the Father? We ask them to listen to the Lord Himself, distinctly setting forth the equal dignity of His glory with the Father, in His words, \u201cHe that hath seen me hath seen the Father;\u201d 803 and again, \u201cWhen the Son cometh in the glory of his Father;\u201d 804 that they \u201cshould honour the Son even as they honour the Father;\u201d 805 and, \u201cWe beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father;\u201d 806 and \u201cthe only begotten God which is in the bosom of the Father.\u201d 807 Of all these passages they take no account, and then assign to the Son the place set apart for His foes. A father\u2019s bosom is a fit and becoming seat for a son, but the place of the footstool is for them that have to be forced to fall. 808\nWe have only touched cursorily on these proofs, because our object is to pass on to other points. You at your leisure can put together the items of the evidence, and then contemplate the height of the glory and the preeminence of the power of the Only Begotten. However, to the well-disposed hearer, even these are not insignificant, unless the terms \u201cright hand\u201d and \u201cbosom\u201d be accepted in a physical and derogatory sense, so as at once to circumscribe God in local limits, and invent form, mould, and bodily position, all of which are totally distinct from the idea of the absolute, the infinite, and the incorporeal. There is moreover the fact that what is derogatory in the idea of it is the same in the case both of the Father and the Son; so that whoever repeats these arguments does not take away the dignity of the Son, but does incur the charge of blaspheming the Father; for whatever audacity a man be guilty of against the Son he cannot but transfer to the Father. If he assigns to the Father the upper place p. 10 by way of precedence, and asserts that the only begotten Son sits below, he will find that to the creature of his imagination attach all the consequent conditions of body. And if these are the imaginations of drunken delusion and phrensied insanity, can it be consistent with true religion for men taught by the Lord himself that \u201cHe that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father\u201d 809 to refuse to worship and glorify with the Father him who in nature, in glory, and in dignity is conjoined with him? What shall we say? What just defence shall we have in the day of the awful universal judgment of all-creation, if, when the Lord clearly announces that He will come \u201cin the glory of his Father;\u201d 810 when Stephen beheld Jesus standing at the right hand of God; 811 when Paul testified in the spirit concerning Christ \u201cthat he is at the right hand of God;\u201d 812 when the Father says, \u201cSit thou on my right hand;\u201d 813 when the Holy Spirit bears witness that he has sat down on \u201cthe right hand of the majesty\u201d 814 of God; we attempt to degrade him who shares the honour and the throne, from his condition of equality, to a lower state? 815 Standing and sitting, I apprehend, indicate the fixity and entire stability of the nature, as Baruch, when he wishes to exhibit the immutability and immobility of the Divine mode of existence, says, \u201cFor thou sittest for ever and we perish utterly.\u201d 816 Moreover, the place on the right hand indicates in my judgment equality of honour. Rash, then, is the attempt to deprive the Son of participation in the doxology, as though worthy only to be ranked in a lower place of honour.\ncf. Rom. ix. 2.\n8:787 8:788\n\u1f51\u03c0\u03bf\u03c4\u03ac\u03c3\u03c3\u03c9. cf. 1 Cor. xv. 27, and inf. cf. chapter xvii. \u1f51\u03c0\u03bf\u03c4\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03b3\u03bc\u03ad\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2 is applied to the Son in the Macrostich or Lengthy Creed, brought by Eudoxius of Germanicia to Milan in 344. Vide Soc. ii. 19.\n8:789 8:790\nYet the great watchword of the Arians was \u1f26\u03bd \u03c0\u03bf\u03c4\u03b5 \u1f45\u03c4\u03b5 \u03bf\u1f50\u03ba \u1f26\u03bd.\n8:791\n\u03c4\u1fc6 \u1f10\u03bd\u03bd\u03bf\u03af& 139\u00b7 \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u1f00\u03bd\u03b8\u03c1\u03c9\u03c0\u03af\u03bd\u03c9\u03bd is here the reading of five MSS. The Benedictines prefer \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u1f00\u03bd\u03b8\u03c1\u03ce\u03c0\u03c9\u03bd, with the sense of \u201cin human thought.\u201d\n8:792\n\u03a6\u03b1\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1\u03c3\u03af\u03b1 is the philosophic term for imagination or presentation, the mental faculty by which the object made apparent, \u03c6\u03ac\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1\u03c3\u03bc\u03b1, becomes apparent, \u03c6\u03b1\u03af\u03bd\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9. Aristotle, de An. III. iii. 20 defines it as \u201ca movement of the mind generated by sensation.\u201d Fancy, which is derived from \u03c6\u03b1\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1\u03c3\u03af\u03b1 (\u03c6\u03b1\u03af\u03bd\u03c9, \u00d6BHA=shine) has acquired a slightly different meaning in some usages of modern speech.\n9:793 9:794\nPs. cxxxix. 7, P.B.\n9:795 9:796\nHeb. i. 3, with the variation of \u201cof God\u201d for \u201con high.\u201d\n9:797\nI know of no better way of conveying the sense of the original \u03c3\u03ba\u03b1\u1fd6\u03bf\u03c2 than by thus introducing the Latin sinister, which has the double meaning of left and ill-omened. It is to the credit of the unsuperstitious character of English speaking people that while the Greek \u03c3\u03ba\u03b1\u1fd6\u03bf\u03c2 and \u1f00\u03c1\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03b5\u03c1\u03cc\u03c2, the Latin sinister and l\u00e6vus, the French gauche, and the German link, all have the meaning of awkward and unlucky as well as simply on the left hand, the English left (though probably derived from lift=weak) has lost all connotation but the local one.\n9:798 9:799 9:800 9:801 9:802\nThe more obvious interpretation of \u1f10\u03c3\u03c6\u03c1\u03ac\u03b3\u03b9\u03c3\u03b5\u03bd in John vi. 27, would be sealed with a mark of approval, as in the miracle just performed. cf. Bengel, \u201csigillo id quod genuinum est commendatur, et omne quod non genuinum est excluditur.\u201d But St. Basil explains \u201csealed\u201d by \u201cstamped with the image of His Person,\u201d an interpretation which Alfred rejects. St. Basil at the end of Chapter xxvi. of this work, calls our Lord the \u03c7\u03b1\u03c1\u03b1\u03ba\u03c4\u1f74\u03c1 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f30\u03c3\u03cc\u03c4\u03c5\u03c0\u03bf\u03c2 \u03c3\u03c6\u03c1\u03b1\u03b3\u03af\u03c2, i.e., \u201cexpress image and seal graven to the like\u201d of the Father. St. Athanasius (Ep. i. ad Serap. xxiii.) writes, \u201cThe seal has the form of Christ the sealer, and in this the sealed participate, being formed according to it.\u201d cf. Gal. 4:19, 2 Pet. 1:4.\n9:803 9:804 9:805 9:806 9:807\nJohn i. 18. \u201cOnly begotten God\u201d is here the reading of five mss. of Basil. The words are wanting in one codex. In Chapter viii. of this work St. Basil distinctly quotes Scripture as calling the Son \u201conly begotten God.\u201d (Chapter viii. Section 17.) But in Chapter xi. Section 27, where he has been alleged to quote John i. 18, with the reading \u201cOnly begotten Son\u201d (e.g., Alford), the ms. authority for his text is in favour of \u201cOnly begotten God.\u201d OC is the reading of \u05d0.B.C. TC of A. On the comparative weight of the textual and patristic evidence vide Bp. Westcott in loc.\n9:808\ncf. Ps. cx. 1.\n10:809 10:810 10:811 10:812 10:813 10:814 10:815\nMr. Johnston well points out that these five testimonies are not cited fortuitously, but \u201cin an order which carries the reader from the future second coming, through the present session at the right hand, back to the ascension in the past.\u201d\n10:816\nBaruch iii. 3, lxx.","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. II, Vol. VIII: De Sp...","type":"page"}