Chapter 7.
Chapter 7.
40. At Nicæa then, many years since, their heretical phrases were exposed and anathematised; this has led to their looking for new arguments, and it has issued in their borrowing from the Greeks a weapon for their need, namely, the term “Ingenerate,” that by means of it, they may reckon among the things which were made that Word of God, by whom those very things came into being. However it would seem as if they really did not know what the Greeks meant by the term, for the Greek doctrine concerning it in fact tells pointedly against the use to which they put it. The Greeks, let it be observed, after deriving Mind from Good, and the universal Soul from Mind, have no difficulty in calling all three Ingenerate; Mind and Soul as well as Good, from which Mind and Soul proceed. If then these men must have recourse to heathen writers, let them be quite sure that the said writers make for them; but well I know, they never would have appealed to the Greeks in defence of their heresy, if they had any sanction of it in Scripture; and, as I on my part, have been stating the reason and the meaning with which the Council, and the Fathers earlier than it, defined and committed to writing “Of the substance” and “Consubstantial” agreeably to what Scripture says, so I think I may fairly call upon these Arians to tell us now, if indeed they can, what has led them to this unscriptural term, “Ingenerate,” what is the sense in which they consider it to belong to God, and why not to His Son and Word.
41. In truth, I am told that the term has various senses: philosophers say that it means, first, “what has not yet come, but may come, into being; next, what neither has come into being, nor can come; and thirdly, what exists without any birth or becoming, but is everlasting and indestructible.” The first sense is nothing to the purpose, nor is the second; it is the third which they endeavour to make available to their purpose, arguing thus: that to be ingenerate is an attribute of God, that to be ingenerate is to be without birth or becoming, but that a Son is born into being. But who does not comprehend the craft of these foes of God? here is a manifest equivocation. It is possible to be ingenerate, that is from eternity, and yet to have an origin, that is, a Father; in other words, to have a birth and not a becoming, a derivation and yet not a beginning. Even the Greeks, as I have said, hold an eternal derivation. Our Lord is ingenerate as being eternally one with God, generate as being His Son. He has a birth without a becoming.
42. However, the mania of these men is such that they say that a son is generate, and generate means made, and what is made comes “out of nothing;” and what has an origin “is not before its generation,” and what is not eternal “once was not.” Next, when detected in their sophisms they begin again, after this fashion, that to be ingenerate is to have no author of being, and an author is a maker, and therefore the Son is made, and is one of the creatures. Unthankful, and in truth deaf to the Scriptures, who do everything, and say everything, not to honour God, but to dishonour the Son, ignorant that he who dishonours the Son, dishonours the Father! If He be viewed as Offspring of the substance of the Father, He is of consequence with Him eternally. For this name of Offspring does not detract from the nature of the Word, nor does Ingenerate imply a contrast with the Son, but with the things which come into being through the Son; and as those who address an architect, and call him framer of house or city, do not under this designation include the son who is begotten from him, but on account of the art and science which he displays in his work, call him artificer, signifying thereby that he is not such as the things made by him, and while they know the nature of the builder, know also that he whom he begets is in nature other than his works; and in regard to his son call him father, but in regard to his works, creator and maker; in like manner he who says that God is ingenerate, invents a name for Him when compared with his works, signifying, not only that He is not brought into being but that He is maker of things which are so brought; yet is aware withal that the Word is other than the things that are made, and alone is a proper Offspring of the Father, through whom all things came to be and consist.
43. In like manner, when the Prophets spoke of God as All-powerful, they did not so name Him, as if the Word were included in that All; (for they knew that the Son was other than things made, and Sovereign over them Himself, by virtue of His likeness to the Father;) but because, while Sovereign over all things which through the Son He has made, God has given the authority of these things to the Son, and having given it, still is Himself as ever, the Lord of all things through Him. Again, when they called God, Lord of hosts, they said not this as if the Word was included in those hosts, but because, while He is Father of the Son, He is Lord of the hosts or powers which through the Son have come to be. And the Word too, as being in the Father, is Himself Lord of them all, and Sovereign over all; for all things, whatsoever the Father hath, are the Son’s. This then being the force of such titles, in like manner let a man call God ingenerate, if it so please him; not however as if the Word were one of things generate or made, but because, as I said before, God not only is not made, but through His proper Word is He the maker of things which are made. For though the Father be specially called Maker, still the Word is the Father’s Image and consubstantial with Him; and being His Image, He must be other than creatures altogether; for of whom He is the Image, to Him doth he belong and is like: so that he who calls the Father ingenerate and almighty, perceives in the Ingenerate and the Almighty, His Word and His Wisdom, which is the Son. But these wondrous men, and prone to impiety, hit upon the term Ingenerate, not as caring for God’s honour, but from malevolence towards the Saviour; for if they had regard to His honour and worship, it rather had been right and good to acknowledge and to call Him Father, than to give Him this name; for in calling Him ingenerate, they are, as I said before, calling Him strictly from His relation to things which came into being, and simply as a Maker, that so they may imply even the Word to be a work after their own desire; but he who calls God Father, thereby in Him signifies His Son also, and will not fail to understand that, whereas there is a Son, through this Son all things that came into existence were created.
44. I repeat, it will be much more accurate to denote God from the Son, and to call Him Father, than to name him and call Him Ingenerate from His works merely; for the latter term refers to the works that have been brought into being at the will of God through the Word, but the name of Father betokens the proper Offspring from his substance. And by how much the Word surpasses things made or generate, by so much and more also doth calling God Father surpass the calling Him Ingenerate; for the latter is unscriptural and suspicious, as it has various senses; but the former is simple and scriptural, and more accurate, and alone implies the Son. And “Ingenerate” is a word of the Greeks who know not the Son: but “Father” has been acknowledged and vouchsafed to us by our Lord; for He, Himself, knowing whose Son He was, said, I in the Father and the Father in Me;[70] and, He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father;[71] and, I and the Father are one;[72] but nowhere is He found to call the Father Ingenerate. Moreover, when He teaches us to pray, He says not, “When ye pray, say, O God Ingenerate,” but rather When ye pray say, Our Father, who art in heaven.[73]
45. Moreover, it was His Will, that the compendium of our faith should look the same way. For He has bid us be baptised, not into the name of the Ingenerate and generate, not into the name of Uncreate and creature, but into the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; for with such an initiation we also are made sons verily, and, while using the name of the Father, we acknowledge from that name, the Word in the Father. But if He wills that we should call His own Father our Father, we must not on that account measure ourselves with the Son according to nature, for it is because of the Son that the Father is so called by us; for since the Word bore our body and in us came to be, therefore, by reason of the Word in us, is God called our Father. For the Spirit of the Word in us, addresses through us His own Father as ours, which is the Apostle’s meaning when he says, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.[74]
46. So much on the term “Ingenerate,” which admits indeed of a pious use, but, in the hands of Christ’s foes, has but covered them with shame, as did their words and deeds at the beginning. How the Council, then assembled at Nicæa, met them, with what prudence and with what fidelity to Holy Scripture and the Fathers, I have related and explained to the best of my powers; but I cannot hope that those restless spirits will give up their opposition now any more than then. They will doubtless run about in search of other pretences, and of others again after those. When, in the Prophet’s words, will the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?[75] Thou, however, Beloved, on receiving this, read it by thyself; and, if thou approvest of it, read it also to the brethren, who are with thee, that they too, on hearing it, may respond to the Council’s zeal for the truth and for doctrinal exactness, and may reprobate the heresy and the controversial devices of the Arian faction; because to God, even the Father, is due the glory, honour, and worship, with His co-unoriginate Son and Word, together with the All-holy and life-giving Spirit, now and unto endless ages of ages. Amen.