The [ Agenneton ], or Ingenerate

 IT had been usual in the Schools of Philosophy, as we contrast Creator and creatures, the Infinite and the finite, the Eternal and the temporal, so in like manner to divide all beings into the Unoriginate or Ingenerate, the [ anarcha ] or [ ageneta ], on the one hand, and those on the other which have an origin or beginning. Under the ingenerate, which was a term equivalent to "uncreate," fell according as particular philosophies or heresies determined the universe, matter, the soul of man, as well as the Supreme Being, and the Platonic ideas. Again, the Neoplatonists spoke of Three Principles as beyond time, that is, eternal: the Good, Intellect, and the Soul of the world. (Theod. Affect. Cur. ii. p. 750.) Plotinus, however, in his Enneads, seems to make Good the sole [ arche ]; [ he arche agennetos ], (5. Enn. iv. 1,) while Plato says, [ eite archen eite archas ] (Theod. ibid. p. 749, Tim. p. 48), and in his Phædrus, p. 246, he calls the soul of man ingenerate or [ ageneton ]. The Valentinians (Tertull. contr. Valent. 7, and Epiph. Hær. 31, 10) and Basilides (Epiph. Hær. 24) applied the term to the Supreme God. The word thus selected to denote the First Principle or Cause, seems to have been spelt sometimes with one [ n ], sometimes with two. Vid. art. [ genetos ].

 And so too with Christian writers, and with like variety in the spelling, this was the word expressing the contrast between the First Cause or causes, and all things besides. Ignatius distinctly applies it to our Lord in His Divine Nature, doubling the [ n ] in the Cod. Med . "There is One Physician, generate and ingenerate, ... from Mary and from God." (Ephes. 7.) vid. Athan. Syn. § 47. Theophilus says, [ ho genetos kai prosdees esti; ho de agenetos oudenos prosdeitai ], (ad Autol. ii. 10.) Clement of Alexandria, [ hen to ageneton ], in contrast to our Lord (Strom. vi. 7, p. 769). Dionysius Alex. even entertains the hypothesis that [ agennesia ] is the very [ ousia ] of God (Euseb. Præp. vii. 19), which the Arians took advantage of for the purposes of their heresy, (vid. Epiph. Hær. 76,) laying it down as a fundamental axiom that nothing [ genneton ] could be God. Hence Eusebius of Nicomedia, in the beginning of the controversy, rested his heresy on the dictum [ hen to agenneton ], adding [ hen de to hyp' autou alethos, kai ouk ex' ousias autou ]. Theod. Hist. i. 5. Eusebius of Cæsarea too speaks of the Supreme Being as [ agennetos kai ton holon poietes theos ]. (Ev. Dem. iv. 7, p. 167.)

 The word [ arche ] expressed the same attribute of the Divine Being, and furnished the same handle to the Arian disputant for his denial of our Lord's Divinity. The [ arche ] of all was [ anarchos ]; how then could our Lord be the [ arche ], that is, God, if He was a Son? But the solution of both forms of the question was obvious, being as easy as that of the stock fallacies inserted, half as exercises, half as diversions for the student, to relieve a dry treatise on Logic. It was enough for Catholics to answer that [ arche ] had notoriously two meanings, origin and beginning; that in the philosophical schools these senses were understood to go together, but that Christianity had introduced a separation of them; that our Lord's Sonship involved His having no beginning because He was God, but His having an origin, because He was Son. And in like manner, the Son of God was, as God, ingenerate, that is, without a beginning, and as Son generate, that is, with an origin.

 Thus Clement calls Him [ anarchos arche ], and Arius scoffingly [ agennetogenes ].

 As to the assumption that nothing generate could be God, Athan. maintains on the contrary that our Lord cannot but be God because He is generate. vid. art. Son .