{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/210/2100206.htm","path":"chr/ecf/210/2100206.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/210/2100206.htm","text":"The Arian argument from S. Mark x. 18, \u201cThere is none good but one, that is, God,\u201d refuted by explanation of these words of Christ.\n15. The objection I have now to face, your sacred Majesty, fills me with bewilderment, my soul and body faint at the thought that there should be men, or rather not men, but beings with the outward appearance of men, but inwardly full of brutish folly\u2014who can, after receiving at the hands of the Lord benefits so many and so great, say that the Author of all good things is Himself not good.\n16. It is written, say they, that \u201cThere is none good but God alone.\u201d I acknowledge the Scripture\u2014but there is no falsehood in the letter; would that there were none in the Arians\u2019 exposition thereof. The written signs are guiltless, it is the meaning in which they are taken 1921 that is to blame. I p. 226 acknowledge the words as the words of our Lord and Saviour\u2014but let us bethink ourselves when, to whom, and with what comprehension He speaks.\n17. The Son of God is certainly speaking as man, and speaking to a scribe,\u2014to him, that is, who called the Son of God \u201cGood Master,\u201d but would not acknowledge Him as God. What he believes not, Christ further gives him to understand, to the end that he may believe in God\u2019s Son not as a good master, but as the good God, for if, wheresoever the \u201cOne God\u201d is named, the Son of God is never sundered from the fulness of that unity, how, when God alone is said to be good, can the Only-begotten be excluded from the fulness of Divine Goodness? The Arians must therefore either deny that the Son of God is God, or confess that God is good.\n18. With divinely inspired comprehension, then, our Lord said, not \u201cThere is none good but the Father alone,\u201d but \u201cThere is none good but God alone,\u201d and \u201cFather\u201d is the proper name of Him Who begets. But the unity of God by no means excludes the Godhead of the Three Persons, and therefore it is His Nature that is extolled. Goodness, therefore, is of the nature of God, and in the nature of God, again, exists the Son of God\u2014wherefore that which the predicate expresses belongs not to one single Person, but to the [complete] unity [of the Godhead]. 1922\n19. The Lord, then, doth not deny His goodness\u2014He rebukes this sort of disciple. For when the scribe said, \u201cGood Master,\u201d the Lord answered, \u201cWhy callest thou Me good?\u201d\u2014which is to say, \u201cIt is not enough to call Him good, Whom thou believest not to be God.\u201d Not such do I seek to be My disciples\u2014men who rather consider My manhood and reckon Me a good master, than look to My Godhead and believe Me to be the good God.\n\u201cSensus in crimine.\u201d The \u201csense of a passage\u201d is not something in the passage itself so much as our understanding of it. In other words, the genitive after \u201csense\u201d is objective, not possessive.\n226:1922\nLat.\u2014\u201cnon quod singularitatis, sed quod unitatis est, pr\u00e6dicatur.\u201d The Son is \u201cin the nature of God\u201d inasmuch as the eternal Fatherhood of God implies an Eternal Son\u2014His eternal Love an eternal object of that Love.","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. II, Vol. X: Dogmatic Treatises, Ethical Works, and Sermons.: Chapter I. The Arian argument from S. Mark x. 18, \u201cThere is none good but one, that is, God,\u201d refuted by explanation of these words of Christ.","type":"page"}