{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/210/2100192.htm","path":"chr/ecf/210/2100192.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/210/2100192.htm","text":"St. Ambrose questions the heretics and exhibits their answer, which is, that the Son existed, indeed, before all time, yet was not co-eternal with the Father, whereat the Saint shows that they represent the Godhead as changeable, and further, that each Person must be believed to be eternal.\n58. Tell me, thou heretic,\u2014for the surpassing clemency of the Emperor grants me this indulgence of addressing thee for a short space, not that I desire to confer with thee, or am greedy to hear thy arguments, but because I am willing to exhibit them,\u2014tell me, I say, whether there was ever a time when God Almighty was not the Father, and yet was God. \u201cI say nothing about time,\u201d is thy answer. Well and subtly objected! For if thou bringest time into the dispute, thou wilt condemn thyself, seeing that thou must acknowledge that there was a time when the Son was not, whereas the Son is the ruler and creator of time. 1784 He cannot have begun to exist after His own work. Thou, therefore, must needs allow Him to be the ruler and maker of His work.\n59. \u201cI do not say,\u201d answerest thou, p. 211 \u201cthat the Son existed not before time; but when I call Him \u201cSon,\u201d I declare that His Father existed before Him, for, as you say, father exists before son.\u201d 1785 But what means this? Thou deniest that time was before the Son, and yet thou wilt have it that something preceded the existence of the Son\u2014some creature of time,\u2014and thou showest certain stages of generation intervening, whereby thou dost give us to understand that the generation from the Father was a process in time. For if He began to be a Father, then, in the first instance, He was God, and afterwards He became a Father. How, then, is God unchangeable? 1786 For if He was first God, and then the Father, surely He has undergone change by reason of the added and later act of generation.\n60. But may God preserve us from this madness; for it was but to confute the impiety of the heretics that we brought in this question. The devout spirit affirms a generation that is not in time, and so declares Father and Son to be co-eternal, and does not maintain that God has ever suffered change.\n61. Let Father and Son, therefore, be associated in worship, even as They are associated in Godhead; let not blasphemy put asunder those whom the close bond of generation hath joined together. Let us honour the Son, that we may honour the Father also, as it is written in the Gospel. 1787 The Son\u2019s eternity is the adornment of the Father\u2019s majesty. If the Son hath not been from everlasting, then the Father hath suffered change; but the Son is from all eternity, therefore hath the Father never changed, for He is always unchangeable. And thus we see that they who would deny the Son\u2019s eternity would teach that the Father is mutable.\nTime. We should take this term in its fullest meaning, as signifying all that exists in time\u2014the created universe, and all that therein has been, and is, and is to come.\n211:1785\nThe Arians fell into the popular error of supposing that a father, as a father, existed before his son. They also required men to apply to Divine Persons, what only holds good of human beings\u2014to impose on the Being of God those limits to which human existences (as objective facts) are subjected. The existence of the Divine Father and the Divine Son is without, beyond, above time\u2014with the Godhead there is neither past nor future, but an everlasting present. But with man, time-categories are necessary forms of thought\u2014everything is seen as past, present, or to come\u2014and to the human consciousness all objects are presented in time, though the spiritual principle in man which perceives objects as related in succession, is itself supra-temporal, beholding succession, but not itself in succession.\nNow it can hardly be denied with any show of reason that a man is not a father until his son begins to exist, is born, though the father, as a person distinct from his son, is in existence before the latter. Again, father and son must be of the same nature\u2014they must both possess the elementary, essential attributes of humanity. Otherwise there is no fatherhood, no sonship, properly speaking.\nGod has revealed Himself as a Father\u2014even in the pagan mythologies we see the idea of Fatherhood implicit in Godhead. If the gods of the heathen did not beget after their kind, they begat heroes and demigods. But created existences cannot claim to be the first and proper object of the Divine Father\u2019s love. They are for a time only, and with them Eternal Love could not be satisfied. If God be a true Father, then, He must beget His Like\u2014His Son must be equal to Him in nature, that is, what is true of the Father, what is essential in the Father, as God, must be true or essential in the Son also. Therefore the son must be divine, eternal. But the generation (\u03b3\u03ad\u03bd\u03bd\u03b7\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2) of the Son is not an event in time. It is a fact, a truth, out of, beyond time, belonging to the divine and eternal and spiritual, not to the temporal and created, order. \u201cTo whom amongst the angels does He ever say, Thou art My Son; this day have I begotten Thee? and again, I will be a Father to Him, and He shall be a Son to Me? when, again, He brings His first-begotten into the world\u201d (i.e., reveals Him to the created universe as its King), He says: \u201cAnd let all God\u2019s angels worship Him\u201d (Heb. i. 5-6). Since the Divine Son, then, is eternal, even as the Divine Father, the one cannot be before or after the other; the two Persons are co-existent, co-eternal, co-equal. And the mysterious genesis, also, is not an event that happened once, taking place in a series of events, it is ever happening, it is always and for ever.\n211:1786\ni.e., how do you deal with such Scriptures as \u201cThou art the same, and thy years shall not fail.\u201d\u2014\u201cI am the Lord: I change not, therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.\u201d\u2014\u201cThe Father of lights, with Whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.\u201d\n211:1787\nS. John v. 23.","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. II, Vol. X: Dogmatic Treatises, Ethical Works, and Sermons.: Chapter IX. St. Ambrose questions the heretics and exhibits their answer, which is, that the Son existed, indeed, before all time, yet was not co-eternal with the Father, whereat the Saint shows that they represent the Godhead as changeable, and further, that each Person must be believed to be eternal.","type":"page"}