THE

PRESBYTERIAN

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

MARCH, 1857.

No. XX.

ARTICLE I.

ATHANASIUS, THE DEFENDER OF HOMOUSIANISM, IN CONTEST WITH THE ARIANS.

HAVING presented in the last Number the evidence, from Athanasius, that Arianism is in conflict with the direct declarations of Scripture, we proceed to the second point in our exhibition of his views.

ARIANISM IS IN CONFLICT,

II. WITH THE NECESSARY INFERENCES FROM CHRISTIAN
TRUTH.

The passage in the first Discourse of Athanasius (16) may be here put at the basis, as bringing together the doctrinal arguments on which he relies: "The Son and the Father are one; Christ is the Wisdom and the Word of God, in whom and through whom He has created all things; his Brightness, in whom He enlightens all, and reveals himself to whom He will; his Mirror and Image, in whom He is seen and known; He it is who has redeemed all, and effected a new creation." Here are com

VOL. V.-34

prised all the principal doctrines, upon which this truth has an influence: 1. The Doctrine respecting God, in the strictest sense; 2. The Doctrine about the World and Creation; 3. The Doctrine of the Son as Redeemer; 4. The Doctrine of Redemption.

1. Arianism alters essentially the Christian Idea of God. (a.) It does this, by denying the eternity of the Son. For, since the Son is indeed the Word or the Wisdom of God, the Arians, by maintaining that God was for a time without his Son, are truly robbers of God (aŋoraí i. 14): they make him out to be a light, which was for a long time without its brightness, or like a spring dried up. And in this they show that they are godless. How, then, can God be called the source of life, (Is. lviii. 11,) if this source has been ever sealed up, if He was ever without Wisdom and the Logos? Wisdom and Life are not of a different nature from the source itself, i. e., Eternal, (i. 19.) But not less is a defect put into God, if he needed the Son in order to create; then were something wanting to him before; the Son makes up his defects, and is thus, in fact, put above God himself, unless they will say that the two have mutually made up their respective deficiencies. Indeed, if God needed an instrument in the creation of the world, he is like a carpenter, who can do nothing without axe and saw, (i. 26.) But the chief argument of Athanasius on this point is that which Origen had already made use of for the eternal generation; that is, by denying the eternity of the Son, a change is brought into God himself-God is made out to be corporeal. This is seen, too, in another aspect; if the Son had not existed from eternity, the Trinity was for a long time incomplete, and thus were the Godhead essentially like the creature that is changeable, and not eternally unchangeable. Then must the Trinity, in its very essence, have had an origin and gradual growth; then, too, might it possibly decrease-it is thus liable to flow and change. But this is not Christian doctrine; it is really the heathen error, which makes Divinity participant of the essence of the finite. If the Trinity have not been complete from the beginning, then it is not so now; and since “ Theology is perfect in the triad,” (ἐν τριάδι ἡ θεολογία τελεία ἐστι —i. e., the object of theology, the Divine nature itself, has its

conclusion in the Trinity,) then the Christian religion is not the absolute truth, but only gradually filled out and completed, (i. 19.)*

(b.) By this Arian degradation of the Son into a creature, by this denial of his oneness of essence with the Father, not merely the Christian, but the general idea (consciousness) of God is changed. No Greek, no barbarian, will be understood to say, that the God whom he confesses, is a created being (i. 10.) This were but to renew the worship of creatures, after it had been long abolished, (i. 8.) Even the designation of God as

unbegotten," (àyévvηtos,) which the Arians have brought forward, is an essentially heathen notion, measuring God by the creature, (i. 34.) If the Son had his divinity, which the Arians nominally, of grace, ascribe to him, from any other source than from the Father, then were there several gods, if, indeed, we can conceive of a deity independent of the Father, not identical with his divinity, (iii. 14.) Thus the Arians bring in different gods, since they hold to a difference of the natures (tò itɛpoɛidés) of the persons in the Trinity; they have "a divinity of many parts and many species." We, however, confess one single, equal and undivided Godhead; otherwise we should have two gods, a creating and a created, an unbegotten and a begotten; and consequently there must be "two faiths," one faith in the true God, another in a god imagined by men, falsely so called, (iii. 16.) The Arians, too, represent the Logos as "connected with God only in an external way," (i. 25,) although they give themselves the air as if they did not mean so, and as if they alone were the guardians of God's honor. To their abstract monotheism is to be ascribed the objections they bring against the eternal generation of the Son from the Father. These rest, almost all, upon one fundamental error-making the essence and the will of God, generation and creation, to be alike, thus confounding the two. But, says Athanasius, (iii. 62,) as God without a foregoing act of the will is God, that is, good and holy,

The same objection is brought in a similar way, (iv. 14,) against the harvoμoi of the Monas in the яpówna of Sabellius, where Athanasius cites and criticises the notion, that the completion of the Trinity in this way is one of the possible grounds of such an enlargement and extension of the One primitive substance.

so is it, too, with his Logos; the Logos is not the result of his will, or of any specific determination (as when one reflects and counsels in building a house,) but is by nature immanent as his Son (pou yérqua.) Since the Son himself is the eternal Logos, there could not have been before him an act of the Logos (no speech or word) in God; as he is the immanent Reason and Wisdom of God, so, too, he is his living and creative Will. It is, of course, something quite different to ascribe a will to him, who is by nature the Son of God. But when it is said, "the Father wills the Son, and the Son wills the Father," this does not imply such an act of the will as might not have been put forth, that is, contingent, but it implies only "a native generation and sameness of essence," (Cf. iii. 63, 66.) The Arians make that which proceeds from the essence of God, to be dependent on his will, and hence contingent. But that which springs from the essence of God precedes by far any creation through the will of God; because, on the one hand, the Son (as we have seen,) as he is Reason in God, so is he, too, the living and creative will of God; and, also, because he does not stand in an external relation to God, as does the creature, but is immanent in him, (ii. 3.) Thus, too, is given the reply to the other objection of the Arians: Whether, since God always had the power of creating, the world must not be equally eternal for God with the Son? No! says Athanasius, and proves this from the idea. of freedom, as contrasted with that higher necessity of the divine nature (i. 29.) Since creatures spring from the creative will of God, and this is dependent upon his good pleasure, we cannot ask why God did now, or then, first create the world? It was his good will so to do; who has known his understanding, or been his counsellor? How can the work say to its maker, "Why makest thou me thus?" Besides, not to rest in so light and common a solution, it may be said (i. 30;) even if God from eternity might have created the world, it could yet never have been co-existent with him, the eternal God; he perceived, as it were, the time when it was best for it to be created, because he saw that then "it was possible for that which was brought into being to abide." Thus was it with his other revelation in Adam, Moses, Noah; here, too, he perceived the right time, for he does all "combining the ages into one plan," and "the Father in the Son is the providence of all."