2 To understand this passage, the Greek idiom must be kept in view. Cf. Milton’s imitation ‘the fairest of her daughters Eve.’ Vid. as regards the very word mp@tos, Johni. 15; and sufr. § 30, note 3, also rActoryny H EuTpocbev eLovoiav 3 Maccab. 7,21. Accordingly as in the comparative to obviate this exclusion, we put in the word ‘other’ (ante ‘alios’ immanior omnes), so too in the Greek superlative, ‘Socrates is wisest of “‘ other”? heathen.’ Athanasius then says in this passage, that ‘first-born of creatures’ implies that our Lord was not a creature; whereas it is not said of Him ‘first-born of brethren,’ lest He should be excluded from men, but first-born “among” brethren,’ where ‘among’ is equivalent to ‘ other,’: 3 Gen. xlix. 3, LXX. Vid. also contr. Gent. 41, sq, where the text Col. i. r5 is quoted.
DISCOURSES II: all,’ lest He be thought to bear a body other than ours, but ‘among many brethren ¢,’ because of the likeness of the flesh. Ifthen the Word also were one of the creatures, Scripture would have said of Him also that He was First-born of other creatures; but in fact, the saints saying that He is ‘ First-born of the whole creation,’ the Son of God is plainly shewn to be other than the whole | creation and not a creature. For if He is a creature, He will be First-born of Himself. How then is it possible, O Arians, for Him to be before and after Himself? next, if He is a creature, and the whole creation through Him came to be, and in Him consists, how can He both create the creation and be one of the things which consist in Him? Since then such a notion is in itself unseemly, it is proved against them by the truth, that He is called ‘First-born among many brethren’ because of the relationship of the flesh, and ‘ First-born from the dead,’ because the resurrection of the dead is from Him and after Him; and ‘First-born of the whole creation,’ because of the Father’s love to man, which brought it to pass that in His Word not only ‘all things consist °,’ but the creation itself, of which the Apostle speaks, ‘waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God, shall be delivered’ one time ‘from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God7.’ Of this creation thus delivered, the Lord will be First-born, both of it and of all those who are made children, that by His being called first, those that come after Him may abide 8, as depending on the Word as a beginning.
64. And I think that the irreligious men themselves will be shamed from such a thought; for if the case stands not as we have said, but they will rule it that He is ‘First-born of the whole creation’ as in essence—a creature among creatures, let them reflect that they will be conceiving Him as brother and fellow of the things without reason and life. For of the whole creation these also are parts; and the ‘ First-born’ must be first indeed in point of time but only thus, and in kind and similitude: must be the same with all. How then can they say this without exceeding all measures of irreligion? or who will endure them, if this is their language? or who can but hate them even imagining such things? For it is evident to all, that neither for Himself, as being a creature, nor as having any connection according to essence with the whole creation, has He been called ‘First- 7 Rom. viii. 19, 2x. Thus there are two senses In which our Lord is ‘first-born to the creation;’ viz. in its first origin, and in its restoration after man’s fall; as he says more clearly in the next section. 8 De Decr. 19, 0. 3. 9 i. 48, n. 7. T§$20. | 4 Rom. viii. 29.
born’ of it: but because the Word, when at the beginning He framed the creatures, condescended to things originate, that it might be possible for them to come to be. For they could not have endured His nature, which was untempered splendour, even that of the Father, unless condescending by the Father’s love for man He had supported them and taken hold of them and brought them into existence?; and next, because, by this condescension of the Word, the creation too is made a son3 through Him, that He might be in all respects ‘ Firstborn’ of it, as has been said, both in creating, and also in being brought for the sake of all into this very world. For so it is written, ‘When He bringeth the First-born into the world, He saith, Let all the Angels of God worship Him#.’ Let Christ’s enemies hear and tear themselves to pieces, because His coming into the world is what makes Him called ‘First-born’ of all; and thus the Son is the Father’s ‘ Only-begotten,’ because He alone is © from Him, and He is the ‘ First-born of creation,’ because of this adoption of all as sons 5. And as He is First-born among brethren and rose from the dead ‘the first fruits of them that slept®;’ so, since it became Him ‘in all things to have the preeminence 7,’ therefore He is created ‘a beginning of ways,’ that we, walking along it and entering through Him who says, ‘IT am the Way’ and ‘the Door,’ and partaking of the knowledge of the Father, may also hear the words, ‘Blessed are the undefiled in the Way,’ and ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God ®.’
65. And thus since the truth declares that the Word is not by nature a creature, it is fitting now to say, in what sense He is ‘ beginning of 2 He does not here say with Asterius that God could not create man immediately, for the Word is God, but that He did not create him without at the same time infusing a grace or presence from Himself into his created nature to enable it to endure His external plastic hand; in other words, that he was created zx Himz, not as something external to Him,(in spite of the da svfv. 63, n. 1. vid. supr. de Decr. 19. 3. and Gent. 47. where the ovyxaréBaots is spoken of. 3 3 As God created Him, in that He created human nature in Him, so is He first-born, in that human nature is adopted in Him.
5 Thus he considers that ‘first-born’ is mainly a title, connected with the Incarnation, and also connected with our Lord’s office at the creation (vid. parallel of Priesthood, § 8, n. 4). In each economy it has the same meaning; it belongs to Him as the type, idea, or rule on which the creature was made or new-made, and the life by which it is sustained. Both economies are mentioned Zncarn. 13, 14. Orat. i. 51. ili. 20. infr. 76. mit. He came Thy Tov apxeTUmov TAdoLY avarrTi cacOaL éavt@ contr. Apoll. ii. 5. And so again, 7 iéa rep AGYoV ELpyKATL. Clem. Stvom. v. 3. Wéav isedy Kai apxnv AekTEov TOV MpwWTOTOKOY TAINS KTLTEWS Origen. contr. Cels. vi. 64. fin. ‘Whatever God was about to make in the creature, was already in the Word, nor would be in the things, were it not in the Word.’ August. in Psalm xliv. 5. He elsewhere calls the Son, ‘ars quadam omnipotentis atque sapientis Dei, plena omnium rationum viventium incommutabilium.’ de Tyin. vi. 11. And so Athan. zw. iii. 9. fin, Eusebius, in commenting on the very passage which Athan. is discussing (Prov. viii. 22), presents a remarkable contrast to these passages, as making the Son, not the idéz, but the external minister of the Father’s idea. de Eccl. Theol. pp. 164, 5. vid. supr. § 31, 0. 7 ways. For when the first way, which was through Adam, was lost, and in place of paradise we deviated unto death, and heard the words, ‘Dust thou art, and unto dust * shalt thou return,’ therefore the Word of God, who loves man, puts on Him created flesh at the Father’s will2, that whereas the first man had made it dead through the transgression, He Himself might quicken it in the blood of His own body3, and might open ‘for us a way new and living,’ as the Apostle says, ‘through the veil, that is to say, His flesh+;’ which he signifies elsewhere thus, ‘ Wherefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation; old things are passed away, behold all things are become news.’ But if a newcreation has come to pass, some one must be first of this creation; now a man, made of earth only, such as we are become from the transgression, he could not be. For in the first creation, men had become unfaithful, and through them that first creation had been lost; and there was need of some one else to renew the first creation, and preserve the new which had come to be. Therefore from love to man none other than the Lord, the ‘beginning’ of the new creation, is created as ‘the Way,’ and consistently says, ‘The Lord created me a beginning of ways for His works;’ that man might walk no longer according to that first creation, but there being as it were a beginning of a new creation, and with the Christ ‘a beginning of its ways,’ we might follow Him henceforth, who says to us, ‘fam the Way:’—as the blessed Apostle teaches in Colossians, saying, ‘He is the Head of the body, the Church, who is the Beginning, the First-born from the dead, that in all things He might have the preeminence.’
66. For if, as has been said, because of the resurrection from the dead He is called a beginning, and then a resurrection took place when He, bearing our flesh, had given Himself to death for us, it is evident that His words, ‘ He created me a beginning of ways,’ is indicative not of His essence®, but of His bodily presence. For to the body death was proper?; and in like manner to the bodily presence are the words proper, ‘The Lord created me a 3 Vid. Or. 1. § 48, 7, i. 51, 5, sudr. 56, 5. Irenzeus, Her. ili. 19, n. 1. Cyril. i Joan. lib. ix. cir. fin, This is the doctrine of S. Athanasius and S. Cyril, one may say, Zassim.
7 Athanasius here says that our Lord’s body was subject to death; and so Jxcarn. 20, e. also 8, b. 18, init. Oraz. iii. 56. And so Tov avOpwmroyv calpwOévra. Orat. iv. 33. And so S. Leo in his Tome lays down that in the Incarnation, suscepta est ab eternitate mortalitas. ZZ. 28. 3. And S. Austin, Utique vulnerabile atque mortale corpus habuit [Christus] cozty. Faust. xiv. 2. A Eutychian sect denied this doctrine (the Aphthartodocetz), and held that our Lord’s manhood was naturally indeed corrupt, but became from its union with the Word incorrupt from the moment of conception; and in consequence it held that our Lord did not suffer and die, except by miracle. vid. Leont. c. West. ii. (Canis. t. i. pp. 563, 4, 8.) vid. supr. i. 43 and 44, notes; also iz/7. 76, note. And further, note on iil. 57.
beginning of His ways.’ For since the Saviour was thus created according to the flesh, and had become a beginning of things new created, and had our first fruits, viz. that human flesh which He took to Himself, therefore after Him, as 1s fit, is created also the people to come, David saying, ‘ Let this be written for another generation, and the people that shall be created shall praise the Lord?’ And again In the twenty-first Psalm, ‘The generation to come shall declare unto the Lord, and they shall declare His righteousness, unto a people that shall be born whom the Lord made3.’ For we shall no more hear, ‘In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die¢;’ but ‘Where I am, there ye’ shall ‘be also;’ so that we may say, ‘We are His workmanship, created unto good works >.’ And again, since God’s work, that is, man, though created perfect, has become wanting through the transgression, and dead by sin, and it was unbecoming that the work of God should remain imperfect (wherefore all the saints were praying concerning this, for instance in the hundred and thirty-seventh Psalm, saying, ‘Lord, Thou shalt requite for me; despise not then the works of Thine hands °®’); therefore the perfect? Word of God puts around Him an imperfect body, and is said to be created ‘for the works;’ that, paying the debt® in our stead, He might, by Himself, perfect what was wanting to man. Now immortality was wanting to him, and the way to paradise. This then is what the Saviour says, ‘I glorified Thee on the earth, I perfected the work which Thou hast given Me to do9;’ and again, ‘ The works which the Father hath given Me to perfect, the same works that I do, bear witness of Me;’ but ‘the works'°’ He here says that the Father had given Him to perfect, are those for which He is created, saying in the Proverbs, ‘The Lord created me a beginning of His ways, for His works;’ for it is all one to say, ‘The Father hath given me the works,’ and ‘The Lord created me for the works.’
67. When then received He the works to perfect, O God’s enemies? for from this also ‘He created’ will be understood. If ye say, ‘At the beginning when He brought them into being out of what was not,’ it is an untruth; for they were not yet made; whereas He appears to speak as taking what was already in being. Nor is it pious to refer to the time 5 John xiv. 3; Eph. ii. ro.
7 Cf. Orat. iv. 11.
; 8 ave Huav THY opernv amodi8evs, and so the Lord’s death AUTpov TavTwv. Incarn. V.D, 25. dJtpov kabdporoy. Naz. Ovat.
6 Ps. cxxxvili. 8.
DISCOURSE; ee eee which preceded the Word’s becoming flesh, lest His coming should thereupon seem superfluous, since for the sake of these works that coming took place. Therefore it remains for us to say that when He has become man, then He took the works. For then He perfected them, by healing our wounds and vouchsafing to us the resurrection from the dead. But if, when the Word became flesh, then were given to Him the works, plainly when He became man, then also is He created for the works. Not of His essence then is ‘ He created’ indicative, as has many times been said, but of His bodily generation. For then, because the’ works were become imperfect and mutilated from the transgression, He is said in respect to the body to be created; that by perfecting them and making them whole, He might present the Church unto the Father, as the Apostle says, ‘not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but holy and without blemish?.’ Mankind then is perfected in Him and restored, as it was made at the beginning, nay, with greater grace. For, on rising from the dead, we shall no longer fear death, but shall ever reign in Christ in the heavens. And this has been done, since the own Word of God Himself, who is from the Father, has put on the flesh, and become man. For if, being a creature, He had become man, man had remained just what he was, not joined to God; for how had a work been joined to the Creator by a work?? or what succour had come from like to like, when one as well as other needed it3? And how, were the Word a creature, had He power to undo God’s sentence, and to remit sin, whereas it is written in the Prophets, that this is God’s doing? For ‘ who is a God like unto Thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by transgression+?’ For whereas God has said, ‘ Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return 5,’ men have become mortal; how then could things originate undo sin? but the Lord is He who has undone it, as He says Himself, ‘Unless the Son shall make you free®;’ and the Son, who made free, has shewn in truth that He is no creature, nor one of things originate, but the proper Word and Image of the Father’s Essence, who at the beginning sentenced, and alone remitteth sins. For since it is said in the Word, ‘ Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return,’ suitably through the Word Himself and in Him the 2 Vid. de Decr. 10, 2. 43 Or. i. 49, § 16, n. 7iii. 28 eee eee,. eae 3 Cf. infr. Orat. iv. 6. vid. also iii. 33 init. August. 777. xiii. 18. Id. zz Psalm 129, n. 12, Leon. Serm. 28, n. 3- Basil. zx Psaim 48,n. 4. Cyril. de rect. fid, p. 132. vid. also Procl. Orat. i. p. 63. (ed. 1630.) Veil. contr. pick Vv. p. 529, €. Greg. Moral. iv. init. Job. af, Phot. 222. p. 583. - aa Mic. 3 18. 5 Cae So 6 Vid. John viii. 36.
VOL, IV.
Iren. Her.
freedom and the undoing of the condemnation has come to pass.
68. ‘Yet,’ they say, ‘though the Saviour were a creature, God was able to speak the word only and undo the curse.’ And so another will tell them in like manner, ‘ Without His coming among us at all, God was able just to speak and undo the curse;’ but we must consider what was expedient for mankind, and not what simply is possible with God. He could have destroyed, before the ark of Noah, the then transgressors; but He did it after the ark. He could too, without Moses, have spoken the word only and have brought the people out of Egypt; but it profited to do it through Moses. And God was able without the judges to save His people; but it was profitable for the people that for a season judges should be raised up to them. The Saviour too might have come among us from the beginning, or on His coming might not have been delivered to Pilate; but He came ‘at the fulness of the ages?,’ and when sought for said, ‘I am He3.’ For what He does, that is profitable for men, and was not fitting in any other way; and what is profitable and fitting, for that He provides+. Accordingly He came, not ‘that He might be ministered unto, but that He might minister 5,’ and might work our salvation. Certainly He was able to speak the Law from heaven, but He saw that it was expedient to men for Him to speak from Sinai; and that He has done, that it might be possible for Moses to go up, and for them hearing the word near them the rather to believe. Moreover, the good reason of what He did may be seen thus; if God had but spoken, because it was in His power, and so the curse had been undone, the power had been shewn of Him who gave the word, but man had become such as Adam was before the transgression, having received grace from without ®, and not having it united to the body; (for he was such when he was placed in Paradise) nay, perhaps had become worse, t Vid. also Zxcarn. 44. In this statement Athan. is supported by Naz. Orat. 19, 13.. Theodor, adv. Gent. vi. p. 876, 7. August. de Trin. xiii. 13. It is denied in a later age by S. Anselm, but S. Thomas and the schoolmen side with the Fathers, vid. Petav. Incarn. ii. 13. However, it will be observed from what follows that Athan. thought the Incarnation still absolutely essentzal for the renewal of human nature in holiness. Cf. de Iucarn. 7. That is, we might have been pardoned, we could not have been newmade, without the Incarnation; and so supr. 67.
2 Gal. iv. 4. 3 John xviii. 5., 4 ‘Was it not in His power, had He wished it, even in a day to bring on the whole rain [of the deluge]? in a day, nay in a moment?’ Chrysost, 2 Gen. Hoi. 24,7. He proceeds to apply this principle to the pardon of sin. On the subject of God’s power as contrasted with His acts, Petavius brings together the statements of the Fathers, de Deo, v. 6. 5 Vid. Matt. xx. 28.
6 Athan. here seems to say that Adam in a state of innocence had but an external divine assistance, not an habitual grace; this, however, is contrary to his own statements already referred to, and the general doctrine of the fathers. vid. e.g. Cyril. 7 Joan v. 2. August. de Corr. et Grat. 31. vid also 7n/r, § 76, note Cc ae ee a ee ee ne a ee because he had learned to transgress. Such then being his condition, had he been seduced by the serpent, there had been fresh need for God to give command and undo the curse; and thus the need had become interminable7, and men had remained under guilt not less than before, as being enslaved to sin; and, ever sinning, would have ever needed one to pardon them, and had never become free, being in themselves flesh, and_ ever worsted by the Law because of the infirmity of the flesh.
69. Again, if the Son were a creature, man had remained mortal as before, not being joined to God; for a creature had not joined creatures to God, as seeking itself one to join itt; nor would a portion of the creation have been the creation’s salvation, as needing salvation itself. To provide against this also, He sends His own Son, and He becomes Son of Man, by taking created flesh; that, since all were under sentence of death, He, being other than them all, might Himself for all offer to death His own body; and that henceforth, as if all had died through Him, the word of that sentence might be accomplished (for ‘all died?’ in Christ), and all through Him might thereupon become free from sin and from the curse which came upon it, and might truly abide 3 for ever, risen from the dead and clothed in immortality and incorruption. For, the Word being clothed in the flesh, as has many times been explained, every bite of the serpent began to be utterly staunched from out it; and whatever evil sprung from the motions of the flesh, to be cut away, and with these death also was abolished, the companion of sin, as the Lord Himself says 4, ‘The prince of this world cometh, and findeth nothing in Me; and ‘For this end was He manifested,’ as John has written, ‘that He might destroy the works of the devil5.’ And these being destroyed from the flesh, we all were thus liberated by the kinship of the flesh, and for the future were joined, even we, to the Word. And being joined to God, no longer do we abide upon earth; but, as He Himself has said, where He is, there shall we be also; and henceforward we shall fear no longer the serpent, for he was brought to nought when he was assailed by the Saviour in the flesh, and heard Him say, ‘Get thee behind Me, Satan °,’ and thus he is cast out of paradise into the eternal fire. Nor shall we have to watch against woman beguiling us, for ‘in the resurrection they neither marry nor 7 eis dretpov, de Decr. 8, Sern. Maz. de fid. 5. Ath, e¢ ad.
‘ t De Decr. to, are given in marriage, but are as the Angels” rf and in Christ Jesus it shall be ‘a new creation,’ and ‘neither male nor female, but all and in all Christ ®;’ and where Christ is, what fear, what danger can still happen?
70. But this would not have come to pass, had the Word been a creature; for with a creature, the devil, himself a creature, would have ever continued the battle, and man, being between the two, had been ever in peril of death, having none in whom and through whom he might be joined to God and delivered from all fear, Whence the truth shews us that the Word is not of things originate, but rather Himself their Framer. For therefore did He assume the body originate and human, that having renewed it as its Framer, He might deify it’ in Himself, and thus might introduce us all into the kingdom of heaven after His likeness. For man had not been deified if joined to a creature, or unless the Son were very God; nor had man been brought into the Father’s presence, unless He had been His natural and true Word who had put on the body. And as we had not been delivered from sin and the curse, unless it had been by nature human flesh, which the Word put on (for we should have had nothing common with what was foreign), so also the man had not been deified, unless the Word who became flesh had been by nature from the Father and true and proper to Him. For therefore the union was of this. kind, that He might unite what is man by nature to Him who is in the nature of the Godhead, and his salvation and deification might be sure. Therefore let those who deny that the Son is from the Father by nature and proper to His Essence, deny also that He took true human flesh? of Mary Ever-Virgin3; for in neither case had it been of profit to us men, whether the Word were not true and naturally Son I €v éavT@ Oeoroijon. supr. p. 65, note 5. vid. also ad Adelph. 4. a. Sevap. i. 24, e. and § 56, note 5. and iii. 33. De Decr. 14. Orat. i. 42. vid. also Ovat. ili. 23. fin. 33. init. 34. fin. 38, b. 39, d. 48. fin. 53. For our becoming @col vid. Orat. ill. 25. @cot Kara xapuv. Cyr. iz Joan. p. 74. Oeopopovmcba. Orat. iil. 23, C. 41, a. 45 init. xproTopopor. ibid. Geovmeda. iil. 48 fin. 53. Theodor. @.Z. i.
3 Vid. also Athan. zz Luc. (Migne xxvii. 1393 c). This title, which is commonly applied to S. Mary by later writers, is found Epiph. Her. 78, 5. Didym. Trim. i. 27. p. 84. Rufin, 2d. i. 43. Lepor. ap Cassian. Incarn. i. 5. Leon. £f. 28, 2. Czesarius has aeurats. Oz. 20. On the doctrine itself vid. a letter of S. Ambrose and his brethren to Siricius, and the Pope’s letter in response, (Coust. Zp. Pont. p. 669—682.) Also Pearson On the Creed, Art. 3. [$$ 9, 10, p. 267 in Bohn’s ed.] He replies to the argument from ‘until’ in Matt. i. 25, by referring to Gen. xxviii 1s. Deut. xxxiv. 6. 1 Sam. xv. 35. 2 Sam. vi. 23. Matt. xxviii 20. He might also have referred to Psalm cx. x. 1 Cor. xv. 25. which are the more remarkable, because they were urged by the school of Marcellus as a proof that our Lord’s kingdom would have an end, and are explained by Euseb. Zecl. Theol. iii. 13, 14. Vid. also Cyr. Cat. 15, 29; where the true meaning of ‘until’ (which may be transferred to Matt. i. 25), is well brought out. “He who is King de/ore He subdued His enemies, how shall He not the vathzr be King, after He has got the mastery over them?
DISCOURSE Il of God, or the flesh not true which He as-| sumed. But surely He took true flesh, though Valentinus rave; yea the Word was by nature Very God, though Ariomaniacs rave4; and in that flesh has come to pass the beginning 5 of our new creation, He being created man for our sake, and having made for us that new way, as has been said.