The Father Almighty

 1. THE idea of an Almighty, All-perfect Being, in its fulness involves the belief of His being the Father of a co-equal Son, and this is the first advance which a habit of devout meditation makes towards the intellectual apprehension of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, as soon as that doctrine has been received with the claim and the sanction of its having been revealed.

 The Fathers speak as if it were nothing short of a necessary truth, involved in the nature of things, that One who is infinite in His attributes should subsist over again in an infinite perfect Image, Impress, Likeness, Word, or Son, for these names denote the same sacred truth. A redundatio in imaginem or in Verbum is synonymous with a generatio Filii. "Naturam et essentiale Deitatis," says Thomassin, "in suo Fonte assentiuntur omnes esse plenitudinem totius Esse. At hæc necesse est ut statim exundet nativâ fScunditate suâ. Infinitum enim illud Esse non Esse tantum est sed Esse totum est; vivere id ipsum est intelligere, sapere; opulentiæ suæ, bonitatis, et sapientiæ rivulos undique spargere; nec rivulos tantum, sed et fontem et plenitudinem ipsam suam diffundere. Hæc enim demum fScunditas Deo digna, Deo par est, ut a Fonte bonitatis non rivulus sed flumen effluat, nec extra effluat, sed in ipsomet, cùm extra nihil sit, quo illa plenitudo capi possit." de Trin. 19, 1.

 Thus Athan. says, "Let them dare to say openly and that the Fountain failed to beget Wisdom, whence it would follow that there is no longer a Fountain, but a sort of pool, as if receiving water from without, yet usurping the name of Fountain." Decr. § 15; vid. also Orat. i. § 14 and 19. And so [ pege xera ], Serap. ii. 2; Orat. i. § 14 fin.; also [ karpogonos he ousia ], ii. § 2, where Athanasius speaks as if those who deny that Almighty God is Father cannot really believe in Him as a Creator. "If our Lord be not a Son, let Him be called a work and and let God be called, not Father, but Framer only and Creator, and and not of a generative nature. But if the Divine substance be not fruitful ([ karpogonos ]), but barren, as they say, as a light which enlightens not, and a dry fountain, are they not ashamed to maintain that He possesses the creative energy?" Vid. also [ pege theotetos ], Pseudo-Dion. Div. Nom. ii. 4; [ pege ek peges ], of the Son, Epiphan. Ancor. 19. And Cyril, "If thou take from God His being Father, thou wilt deny the generative power [ karpogonon ] of the divine nature, so that It no longer is perfect . This then is a token of its perfection, and the Son who went forth from Him apart from time, is a pledge ([ sphragis ]) to the Father that He is perfect." Thesaur. p. 37. Vid. also [ gennetikos ], Orat. ii. § 2, iii. § 66, iv. § 4 fin.; [ agonos ], i. 14, 19, and Sent. Dion. 15 and 19; [ he physike gonimotes ], Damasc. F.O. i. 8; [ akarpos ], Cyr. Thes. p. 45; Epiph. Hær. 65, p. 609; also the [ gennesis ] and the [ ktisis ] connected together, Orat. i. 29. This doctrine is briefly expressed in Orat. iv. 4, [ ei agonos, kai anenergetos ]. So much at least is plain at first sight, that a divine gennesis is not more difficult to our imagination than a creation out of nothing.

 This is the first conclusion which we are in a position to draw under the sanction given to our reasonings by the revelation of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity in Unity.

 2. A second conclusion is suggested by Thomassin's words towards the end of the above quotation, "ut effluat nec extra effluat." It is the first of truths that there is but one only Supreme Almighty Being. The Arians and others accused Catholics, in their maintenance of our Lord's Divinity, of virtually contravening this initial doctrine of all faith; as Euseb. Eccl. Theol. i. 10, p. 69; and accordingly they insisted on His being external, and thereby subordinate and inferior to God. But this was in fact to admit that He was not born from God at all, but [ kekollesthai toi patri logon ], Orat. iv. § 3; and Marcellus, according to Eusebius, spoke of Him as [ henomenon toi theoi logon ] (vid. [ sumbebekos ]), Athan. protesting on the other hand against the notion "that the Fountain begat not wisdom from Itself, but acquired it from without," vid. supr. Decr. § 15, and Orat. iv. § 4, and laying down the principle [ ouden hen pros ton patera, ei me to ex autou ]. Orat. iv. 17.

 But the Son still was in as well as from the Father, and this union of distinct characteristics in the Son was signified by S. John by the word [ pros ], i. 1, whereas the Sabellians preferred to say [ en toi theoi ]. Hence Basil, [ ho en anthropoi logos ou pros auton einai legetai all  ' en autoi ], c. Sabell. 1, fin., but the Divine Son was [ pros ton theon ], not [ en toi theoi ]. It was in this sense and with this explanation that Catholics held and insisted on the Divine Unity; or, as they then called it, the Monarchia : and thence they went on to the second great doctrine associated in theology with the Eternal Father, and signified by Thomassin in the above extract in the words, "ut effluat flumen Deitatis nec extra effluat." The Infinite Father of an Infinite Son must necessarily be conterminus (so to speak) with Him. A second self (still to use inaccurate language) cannot be a second God. The Monarchia of the Father is not only the symbol of the Divine Unity, but of the Trinity in that Unity, for it implies the presence of Those who, though supreme, are not [ archai ]. This was especially its purpose in the first centuries, when polytheistic errors prevailed. The Son and Spirit were then viewed relatively to the Father, and the Father as the absolute God. Even now statements remain in the Ritual of the old usage, as in the termination of Collects, and as in the Sunday Preface in the Mass: "Pater Omnipotens, qui cum Unigenito Filio tuo et Spiritu Sancto, Unus es Deus" instead of the "Pater, Filius, Spiritus Sanctus, Unus Deus" of the Psalmus Quicunque .

 And so, "The Word," says Athan., "being the Son of the One God, is referred to Him of whom also He is." Orat. iv. § 1. [ eis auton anapheretai ]. vid. also Nazianz. Orat. 20. 7; Damasc. F.O. i. 8, p. 140; Theod. Abuc. Opusc. 42, p. 542. And so [ anagetai ], Naz. Orat. 42. 15; and [ hina hemas anapempsei epi ten tou patros authentian ], Euseb. Eccl. Theol. i. 20, p. 84, though in an heretical sense. (Vid. a remarkable illustration of this, under Ignorance in Basil on Mark xiii. 32.) This, then, is the Catholic doctrine of the Monarchia, in opposition to the Three Archical Hypostases of Plato and others. The Son and the Spirit were viewed as the Father's possession, as one with Him yet as really distinct from Him as a man's hands are one and not one with himself; but still, in spite of this, as being under the conditions of a nature at once spiritual and infinite, therefore, in spite of this analogy, not inferior, even if subordinate to the Father. The word "parts" belongs to bodies, and implies magnitude; but as the soul has powers and properties, conscience, reason, imagination, and the like, but no parts, so each Person of the Holy Trinity must either be altogether and fully God, or not God at all.

 By the Monarchy is meant the doctrine that the Second and Third Persons in the Ever-blessed Trinity are ever to be referred in our thoughts to the First as the Fountain of Godhead. It is one of the especial senses in which God is said to be one. "We are not introducing three origins or three Fathers, as the Marcionites and Manichees, just as our illustration is not of three suns, but of sun and its radiance." Orat. iii. § 15; vid. also iv. § 1. Serap. i. 28 fin. Naz. Orat. 23. 8. Bas. Hom. 24, init. Nyssen. Orat. Cat. 3, p. 481. "The Father is unition, [ henosis ]," says S. Greg. Naz., "from whom and unto whom are the other Two." Orat. 42. 15; also Orat. 20. 7, and Epiph. Hær. 57, 5. Tertullian, and Dionysius of Alexandria after him (Athan. Decr. § 26), uses the word Monarchia, which Praxeas had perverted into a kind of Unitarianism or Sabellianism, in Prax. 3. Irenæus too wrote on the Monarchy, i.e. against the doctrine that God is the author of evil. Eus. Hist. v. 20. And before him was Justin's work "de Monarchiâ," where the word is used in opposition to Polytheism. The Marcionites, whom Dionysius also mentions, are referred to by Athan. de Syn. § 52; vid. also Cyril. Hier. Cat. xvi. 4. Epiphanius says that their three origins were God, the Creator, and the evil spirit, Haer. 42, 3, or as Augustine says, the good, the just, and the wicked, which may be taken to mean nearly the same thing. Hær. 22. The Apostolical Canons denounce those who baptise into Three Unoriginate; vid. also Athan. Tom. ad Antioch. 5; Naz. Orat. 20. 6. Basil denies [ treis archikai hypostaseis ], de Sp. S. § 38.

 When characteristic attributes and prerogatives are ascribed to God, or to the Father, this is done only to the exclusion of creatures, or of false Gods, not to the exclusion of His Son who is implied in the mention of Himself. Thus when God is called only wise, or the Father the only God, or God is said to be ingenerate, [ agenetos ], this is not in contrast to the Son, but to all things which are distinct from God, vid. Athan. Orat. iii. 8; Naz. Orat. 30. 13; Cyril. Thesaur. p. 142. "The words 'one' and 'only' ascribed to God in Scripture," says S. Basil, "are not used in contrast to the Son or the Holy Spirit, but with reference to those who are not God, and falsely called so." Ep. 8, n. 3. On the other hand, when the Father is mentioned, the other Divine Persons are implied in Him. "The Blessed and Holy Trinity," says S. Athan., "is indivisible and one with Itself; and when the Father is mentioned, His Word is present too ([ prosesti ]), and the Spirit in the Son; and if the Son is named, in the Son is the Father, and the Spirit is not external to the Word." ad Serap. i. 14. "I have named the Father," says S. Dionysius, "and before I mention the Son, I have already signified Him in the Father; I have mentioned the Son, and though I had not yet named the Father, He had been fully comprehended in the Son," etc. Sent. D. 17, vid. art. Coinherence .

 Passages like these are distinct from that in which Athan. says that "Father implies Son," Orat. iii. § 6, for there the question is of words, but here of fact. That the words are correlative, even Eusebius does not scruple to admit in Sabell. i. (ap. Sirm. t. i. p. 8.) "Pater statim, ut dictus fuit pater, requirit ista vox filium," etc.; but in that passage no [ perichoresis ] is implied, which is the orthodox doctrine. Yet Petavius observes as to the very word [ perichoresis ] that one of its first senses in ecclesiastical writers was this which Arians would not disclaim; its use to express the Catholic doctrine here spoken of was later. Vid. de Trin. iv. 16.

 3. Thirdly, from what has been said, since God, although He is One and Only, nevertheless is Father because He is God, we are led to understand that He is Father in a sense of His own, not in a mere human sense; for a Father, who was like other fathers, would of course impart to a Son that which he was himself, and thus God would have a Son who could be a father, and, as God, would in His Son commence a [ theogonia ]; this was the objection of the Arians; but His Son is His Image, not as Father, but as God; and to be Father is not the accident of His Person, as in the case of men, but belongs necessarily to it; and His personality in the Godhead consists, as far as we know it, in His being Father and in nothing else, and can only so be defined or described; and so in a parallel way as regards the Son. The words "Father" and "Son" have a high archetypical sense, and human fathers and sons have but the shadow of it.

 With us a son becomes a father because our nature is [ rheuste ], transitory and without stay, ever shifting and passing on into new forms and relations: but God is perfect and ever the same; what He is once, that He continues to be; God the Father remains Father, and God the Son remains Son. Moreover, men become fathers by detachment and transmission, and what is received is handed on in a succession; thus Levi before his birth was in the loins of Abraham; whereas it is by imparting Himself wholly that the Father begets the Son; and a perfect gennesis finds its termination in itself. The Son has not a Son, because the Father has not a Father. Thus the Father is the only true Father, and the Son the only true Son; the Father only a Father, the Son only a Son; being really in Their Persons what human fathers are but by function, circumstance, accident, and name. And since the Father is unchangeable as Father, in nothing does the Son more fulfil the idea of a perfect Image than in being unchangeable too. Thus S. Cyril. also, Thesaur. 4, pp. 22, 23; 13, p. 124, etc.

 Men differ from each other as being individuals, but the characteristic difference between Father and Son is, not that they are separate individuals, but that they are Father and Son. In these extreme statements it must be ever borne in mind that we are contemplating divine things according to our  notions, not in re : i.e. we are speaking of the Almighty Father, as such ; there being no real separation between His Person and His Substance.

 Thus Athanasius: "'If the Son is the Father's offspring and image, and is like in all things to the Father,' say the Arians, 'then it necessarily holds that as He is begotten, so He begets, and He too becomes father of a son. And again, he who is begotten from Him, begets in his turn, and so on without limit; for this is to make the Begotten like Him that begat Him.' Authors of blasphemy! and if God be as man, let Him be also a parent as man, so that His Son should be father of another, and so in succession one from another, till the series they imagine grows into a multitude of gods. But if God be not as man, as He is not, we must not impute to Him the attributes of man. For brutes and men after that a Creator has begun their line, are begotten by succession; and the son, having been begotten of a father who was a son, becomes accordingly in his turn a father to a son, in inheriting from his father that by which he himself has come into being. Hence in such instances there is not, properly speaking, either father or son, nor do the father and the son stay in their respective characters, for the son himself becomes a father, being son of his father, and father of his son. But it is not so in the Godhead; for not as man is God; for the Father is not from father; therefore doth He not beget one who shall beget; nor is the Son from effluence of the Father, nor is He begotten from a father that was begotten; therefore neither is He begotten so as to beget. Thus it belongs to the Godhead alone, that the Father is properly ([ kurios ]) father, and the Son properly son, and in Them, and Them only, does it hold that the Father is ever Father and the Son ever Son. Therefore he who asks why the Son has not a son, must inquire why the Father had not a father. But both suppositions are indecent and impious exceedingly. For as the Father is ever Father and never could be Son, so the Son is ever Son and never could be Father. For in this rather is He shown to be the Father's Impress and Image, remaining what He is and not changing, but thus receiving from the Father to be one and the same." Orat. i. § 21, 22. Presently he says, "For God does not make men His pattern, but rather, because God is  properly and alone truly Father of His Son, we men also are called fathers of our own children, for 'of Him is every fatherhood in heaven and on earth named.'" § 23. The Semi-Arians at Ancyra quote the same text for the same doctrine. Epiphan. Hær. 73, 5. As do Cyril. in Joan. iii. p. 24; Thesaur. 32, p. 281; and Damascene de Fid. Orth. i. 8.

 Again: "As men create not as God creates, as their being is not such as God's being, so men's generation is in one way, and the Son is from the Father in another. For the offspring of men are portions of their fathers, since the very nature of bodies is to be dissoluble, and composed of parts; and men lose their substance in begetting, and again they gain substance from the accession of food. And on this account men in their time become fathers of many children; but God, being without parts, is Father of the Son without partition or passion; for of the Immaterial there is neither effluence nor accession from without, as among men; and being uncompounded in nature, He is Father of One Only Son. This is why the Son is Only-begotten, and alone in the Father's bosom, and alone is acknowledged by the Father to be from Him, saying, This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased ." de Decr. § 11. The parallel, with which this passage begins, as existing between creation and generation, is insisted on by Isidor. Pel. Ep. iii. 355; Basil. contr. Eun. iv. 1, p. 280, A; Cyril. Thesaur. 6, p. 43; Epiph. Hær. 69, 36; and Gregor. Naz. Orat. 20. 9, who observes that God creates with a word, Ps. cxlviii. 5, which evidently transcends human creations. (Vid. also supr. 1st part of this art.) Theodorus Abucara, with the same object, draws out the parallel of life, [ zoe ], as Athan. that of being, [ einai ]. Opusc. iii. p. 420-422.

 The word [ kurios ], used in the first of these passages, also occurs on the same subject in Serap. i. § 16. "The Father, being one and only, is Father of a Son one and only; and in the instance of Godhead only have the names Father and Son a stay and a perpetuity; for of men if any one be called father, yet he has been son of another; and if he be called son, yet is he called father of another; so that in the case of men the names father and son do not properly ([ kurios ]) hold." Vid. the whole passage. Also ibid. iv. 4 fin. and 6; vid. also [ kurios ], Greg. Naz. Orat. 29. 5; [ alethos ], Orat. 25. 16; [ ontos ], Basil. contr. Eunom. i. 5, p. 215.

 [ Ho men pater, pater esti ]. Orat. iii. § 11. And so, "In the Godhead only, [ ho pater kurios esti pater, kai ho huios kurios huios ]." Serap. i. 16. He speaks of "receding from things generate, casting away created images, and ascending to the Father." Again of men "not being in nature and truth benefactors," Almighty God being Himself the type and pattern, etc. Vid. Nic. § xi.; Syn. § 51; Orat. iii. § 19. And so S. Cyril, [ to kurios tikton ex heautou to theion estin, hemeis de kata mimesin ]. Thesaur. 13, p. 133, [ pater kurios, hoti me kai huios; hosper kai huios kurios, hoti me kai pater ]. Naz. Orat. 29. 5; vid. also 23, 6 fin. 25, 16; vid. also the whole of Basil. adv. Eun. ii. 23. "One must not say," he observes, "that these names properly and primarily, [ kurios kai protos ], belong to men, and are given by us but by a figure [ katachrestikos ] (vol. i. p. 19, note 2) to God. For our Lord Jesus Christ, referring us back to the Origin of all and True Cause of beings, says, 'Call no one your father upon earth, for One is your Father, which is in heaven.'" He adds, that if He is properly and not metaphorically the Father even of us, much more is He the [ pater tou kata physin huiou ]. Vid. also Euseb. contr. Marc. i. 4, p. 22. Eccl. Theol. i. 12 fin.; ii. 6. Marcellus, on the other hand, contrasting Son and Word, said that our Lord was [ kurios logos ], not [ kurios huios ]. ibid. ii. 10 fin.

 S. Basil says in like manner that, though God is Father [ kurios ] (properly), yet it comes to the same thing though we were to say that He is [ tropikos ] and [ ek metaphoras ], figuratively, Father; contr. Eun. ii. 24; for in that case we must, as in other metaphors used of Him (anger, sleep, flying), take that part of the human sense which can apply to Him. Now [ gennesis ] implies two things passion, and relationship, [ oikeiosis physeos ]; accordingly we must take the latter as an indication of the divine sense of the term. On the terms Son, Word, etc., being figurative, or illustrative, and how to use them, vid. also de Decr. § 12; Orat. i. § 26, 27, ii. § 32, iii. § 18, 67; Basil. contr. Eunom. ii. 17; Hil. de Trin. iv. 2. Vid. also Athan. ad Serap. i. 20, and Basil. Ep. 38, n. 5, and what is said of the office of faith in each of these.