{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/210/2100197.htm","path":"chr/ecf/210/2100197.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/210/2100197.htm","text":"That the Son of God is not a created being is proved by the following arguments: (1) That He commanded not that the Gospel should be preached to Himself; (2) that a created being is given over unto vanity; (3) that the Son has created all things; (4) that we read of Him as begotten; and (5) that the difference of generation and adoption has always been understood in those places where both natures\u2014the divine and the human\u2014are declared to co-exist in Him. All of which testimony is confirmed by the Apostle\u2019s interpretation.\n86. It is now made plain, as I believe, your sacred Majesty, that the Lord Jesus is neither unlike the Father, nor one that began to exist in course of time. We have yet to confute another blasphemy, and to show that the Son of God is not a created being. Herein is the quickening 1828 word that we read as our help, for we have heard the p. 216 passage read where the Lord saith: \u201cGo ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to all creation.\u201d 1829 He Who saith \u201call creation\u201d excepts nothing. How, then, do they stand who call Christ a \u201ccreature\u201d? If He were a creature, could He have commanded that the Gospel should be preached to Himself? It is not, therefore, a creature, but the Creator, Who commits to His disciples the work of teaching created beings.\n87. Christ, then, is no created being; for \u201ccreated beings are,\u201d as the Apostle hath said, \u201cgiven over to vanity.\u201d 1830 Is Christ given over unto vanity? Again, \u201ccreation\u201d\u2014according to the same Apostle\u2014\u201cgroans and travails together even until now.\u201d What, then? Doth Christ take any part in this groaning and travailing\u2014He Who hath set us miserable mourners free from death? \u201cCreation,\u201d saith the Apostle, \u201cshall be set free from the slavery of corruption.\u201d 1831 We see, then, that between creation and its Lord there is a vast difference, for creation is enslaved, but \u201cthe Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.\u201d 1832\n88. Who was it that led first into this error, of declaring Him Who created and made all things to be a creature? Did the Lord, I would ask, create Himself? We read that \u201call things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made.\u201d 1833 This being so, did He make Himself? We read\u2014and who shall deny?\u2014that in wisdom hath God made all things. 1834 If so, how can we suppose that wisdom was made in itself?\n89. We read that the Son is begotten, inasmuch as the Father saith: \u201cI brought thee forth from the womb before the morning star.\u201d 1835 We read of the \u201cfirst-born\u201d Son, 1836 of the \u201conly-begotten\u201d 1837 \u2014first-born, because there is none before Him; only-begotten, because there is none after Him. Again, we read: \u201cWho shall declare His generation?\u201d 1838 \u201cGeneration,\u201d mark you, not \u201ccreation.\u201d What argument can be brought to meet testimonies so great and mighty as these?\n90. Moreover, God\u2019s Son discovers the difference between generation and grace when He says: \u201cI go up to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God.\u201d 1839 He did not say, \u201cI go up to our Father,\u201d but \u201cI go up to My Father and your Father.\u201d This distinction is the sign of a difference, inasmuch as He Who is Christ\u2019s Father is our Creator.\n91. Furthermore He said, \u201cto My God and your God,\u201d because although He and the Father are One, and the Father is His Father by possession of the same nature, whilst God began to be our Father through the office of the Son, not by virtue of nature, but of grace\u2014still He seems to point us here to the existence in Christ of both natures, Godhead and Manhood,\u2014Godhead of His Father, Manhood of His Mother, the former being before all things, the latter derived from the Virgin. For the first, speaking as the Son, He called God His Father, and afterward, speaking as man, named Him as God.\n92. Everywhere, indeed, we have witness in the Scriptures to show that Christ, in naming God as His God, does so as man. \u201cMy God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?\u201d 1840 And again: \u201cFrom My mother\u2019s womb Thou art My God.\u201d 1841 In the former place He suffers as a man; in the latter it is a man who is brought forth from his mother\u2019s womb. And so when He says, \u201cFrom My mother\u2019s womb Thou art My God,\u201d He means that He Who was always His Father is His God from the moment when He was brought forth from His Mother\u2019s womb.\n93. Seeing, then, that we read in the Gospel, in the Apostle, in the Prophets, of Christ as begotten, how dare the Arians to say that He was created or made? But, indeed, they ought to have bethought them, where they have read of Him as created, where as made. For it has been plainly shown that the Son of God is begotten of God, born of God\u2014let them, then, consider with care where they have read that He was made, seeing that He was not made God, but born as God, the Son of God; afterward, however, He was, according to the flesh, made man of Mary.\n94. \u201cBut when the fulness of time was come, God sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the Law.\u201d 1842 \u201cHis Son,\u201d observe, not as one of many, not as His in common with another, but His own, and in saying \u201cHis Son,\u201d the Apostle showed that it is of the Son\u2019s nature that His generation is eternal. Him the Apostle has affirmed to have been afterwards \u201cmade\u201d of a woman, in order that the making might be understood not of the Godhead, but of the putting p. 217 on of a body\u2014\u201cmade of a woman,\u201d then, by taking on of flesh; \u201cmade under the Law\u201d through observance of the Law. Howbeit, the former, the spiritual generation is before the Law was, the latter is after the Law.\npr\u00e6sens. Cf. Acts vii. 38\u2014\u201clively oracles.\u201d\n216:1829\nS. Mark xvi. 15.\n216:1830 216:1831 216:1832 216:1833\nS. John i. 3.\n216:1834 216:1835 216:1836 216:1837\nS. John i. 14.\n216:1838 216:1839\nS. John xx. 17. The \u201cgrace\u201d of which St. Ambrose speaks is the grace of adoption. Jesus Christ is the Son of God \u03c6\u03cd\u03c3\u03b5\u03b9, we are sons \u03c5\u1f31\u03bf\u03b8\u03b5\u03c3\u03af\u1fb3 \u201cby adoption.\u201d\n216:1840\nPs. xxii. 1. Cf. Matt. 27:46, Mark 15:24.\n216:1841 216:1842\nNote on Gal. iv. 4, cited in \u00a7 94.\u2014St. Ambrose has factum where St. Paul originally wrote \u03b3\u03b5\u03bd\u03cc\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd\u03bf\u03bd, rendered \u201cborn\u201d in the A.V. St. Paul designedly, perhaps, wrote \u03b3\u03b5\u03bd\u03cc\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd\u03bf\u03bd, not \u03b3\u03b5\u03bd\u03bd\u03b7\u03b8\u03ad\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1, the more usual word for \u201cborn.\u201d For \u03b3\u03af\u03b3\u03bd\u03b5\u03c3\u03b8\u03b1\u03b9 is used to denote other modes of beginning to exist, besides that in which animals are brought into life; it is used of inanimate, as well as animate existence\u2014e.g., Mark iv. 37: \u201cThere ariseth (\u03b3\u03af\u03bd\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9) a great storm of wind;\u201d and thus we get the impersonal \u03b5\u03b3\u03ad\u03bd\u03b5\u03c4\u03bf, \u201cit came to pass,\u201d simply signifying an order of events. The import, then, of the words factum ex muliere, \u03b3\u03b5\u03bd\u03cc\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd\u03bf\u03bd \u1f10\u03ba \u03b3\u03bd\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9\u03ba\u03cc\u03c2, is that Christ, in being born in human form, \u201cin the likeness of men,\u201d subjected Himself to the limits of human existence, \u201ccame into being,\u201d that is, in the sensual world. This was his self-emptying (Phil. ii. 7). Jesus, the man, the human person was made\u2014\u201cmade man\u201d (Nicene Creed)\u2014was made \u201cman of the substance of His mother\u201d (Athanas. Creed); but by this \u201cmaking,\u201d St. Ambrose points out, we must understand no more than the taking on of fleshly form. The Son, on the other hand, Who is God, never began to exist, as He will never cease; and even if He had not existed from eternity, He must have been pre-existent, in order to assume a fleshly form so that, in any case, birth of the Virgin does not affect His pre-existence as Son of God, whilst to say that He was ever \u201cmade\u201d is to confound that birth with the Son\u2019s generation of the Father, eternity with time, the divine with the human order, the self-existent with the created.","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. II, Vol. X: Dogmatic Treatises, Ethical Works, and Sermons.: Chapter XIV. That the Son of God is not a created being is proved by the following arguments: (1) That He commanded not that the Gospel should be preached to Himself; (2) that a created being is given over unto vanity; (3) that the Son has created all things; (4) that we read of Him as begotten; and (5) that the difference of generation and adoption has always been understood in those places where both natures--the divine and the human--are declared to co-exist in Him. All of which testimony is confirmed by the Apostle's interpretation.","type":"page"}