(NOTE: The electronic text obtained from The Electronic Bible Society was
not completely corrected. EWTN has corrected all discovered errors.)


ATHANASIUS, spurious

possibly by EUSTATHIUS OF ANTIOCH or MARCELLUS OF ANCYRA

STATEMENT OF FAITH

[Translated by Rev. Archibald Robertson, Principal of Bishop Hatfield's
Hall, Durham, late fellow of Trinity College, Oxford.]


   1. We believe in one Unbegotten[9] God, Father Almighty, maker of all
things both visible and invisible, that hath His being from Himself. And in
one Only-begotten Word, Wisdom, Son, begotten of the Father without
beginning and eternally; word not pronounced[1] nor mental, nor an
effluence[2] of the Perfect, nor a dividing of the impassible Essence, nor
an issue[3]; but absolutely perfect Son, living and powerful (Heb. iv. 12),
the true Image of the Father, equal in honour and glory. For this, he says,
'is the will of the Father, that as they honour the Father, so they may
honour the Son also' (Joh. v. 23): very God of very God, as John says in
his general Epistles, 'And we are in Him that is true, even in His Son
Jesus Christ: this is the true God and everlasting life' (1 Joh. v. 20):
Almighty of Almighty. For all things which the Father rules and sways, the
son rules and sways likewise: wholly from the Whole, being like[4] the
Father as the Lord says, 'he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father' (Joh.
xiv. 9). But He was begotten ineffably and incomprehensibly, for 'who shall
declare his generation?' (Isa. liii. 8), in other words, no one can. Who,
when at the consummation of the ages (Heb. ix. 26), He had descended from
the bosom of the Father, took from the undefiled Virgin Mary our humanity
(a'nthropon), Christ Jesus, whom He delivered of His own will to suffer for
us, as the Lord saith: 'No  man taketh My life from Me. I have power to lay
it down, and have power to take it up again' (Joh. x. 18). In which
humanity He was crucified and died for us, and rose from the dead, and was
taken up into the heavens, having been created as the beginning of ways for
us (Prov. viii. 22), when on earth He shewed us light from out of darkness,
salvation from error, life from the dead, an entrance to paradise, from
which Adam was cast out, and into which he again entered by means of the
thief, as the Lord said, 'This day thou shalt be with Me in paradise' (Luke
xxiii. 43), into which Paul also once entered. [He shewed us] also a way up
to the heavens, whither the humanity of the Lord[5], in which He will judge
the quick and the dead, entered as precursor for us. We believe, likewise,
also in the Holy Spirit that searcheth all things, even the deep things of
God (1 Cor. ii. 10), and we anathematise doctrines contrary to this.

   2. For neither do we hold a Son-Father, as do the Sabellians, calling
Him of one but not of the same[6] essence, and thus destroying the
existence of the Son. Neither do we ascribe the passible body which He bore
for the salvation of the whole world to the Father. Neither can we imagine
three Subsistences separated from each other, as results from their bodily
nature in the case of men, lest we hold a plurality of gods like the
heathen. But just as a river, produced from a well, is not separate, and
yet there are in fact two visible objects and two names. For neither is the
Father the Son, nor the Son the Father. For  the Father is Father of the
Son, and the Son, Son of the Father. For like as the well is not a river,
nor the river a well, but both are one and the same water which is conveyed
in a channel from the well to the river, so the Father's deity passes into
the Son without flows and without division. For the Lord says, 'I came out
from the Father and am come' (Joh. xvi. 28) But He is ever with the Father,
for He is in the bosom of the Father, nor was ever the bosom of the Father
void of the deity of the Son. For He says, 'I was by Him as one setting in
order' (Prov. viii. 30). But we do not regard God the Creator of all, the
Son of God, as a creature or thing made, or as made out of nothing, for He
is truly existent from Him who exists, alone existing from Him who alone
exists, in as much as the like glory and power was eternally and conjointly
begotten of the Father.  For 'He that hath seen' the Son 'hath seen the
Father' (Joh. xiv. 9). All things to wit were made through the Son; but He
Himself is not a creature, as Paul says of the Lord: 'In Him were all
things created, and He is before all' (Col. i. 16). Now He says not, 'was
created' before all things, but 'is' before all things. To be created,
namely, is applicable to all things, but 'is before all' applies to the Son
only.

   3. He then by nature an Offspring, perfect from the Perfect, begotten
before all the hills (Prov. viii. 25), that is before every rational and
intelligent essence, as Paul also in another place calls Him 'first-born of
all creation' (Col. i. 15). But by calling him First-born, He shews that He
is not a Creature, but Offspring of the Father. For it would be
inconsistent with His deity for Him to be called a creature. For all things
were created by the Father through the son, but the Son alone was eternally
begotten from the Father, whence God the Word is 'first-born of all
creation,' unchangeable from unchangeable. However, the body which He wore
for our sakes is a creature: concerning which Jeremiah says, according to
the edition of the seventy translators[7] (Jer. xxxi. 22): 'The Lord
created for us a planting a new salvation, in which salvation men shall go
about:' but according to Aquila the same text runs: 'The Lord created a new
thing in woman.' Now the salvation created for us for a planting, which is
new, not old, and for us, not before us, is Jesus, Who in respect of the
Saviour[8] was made man, and whose name is translated in one place
Salvation, in another Saviour. But salvation proceeds from the Saviour,
just as illumination does from the light. The salvation, then, which was
from the Saviour, being created new, did, as Jeremiah says, 'create for us
a new salvation,' and as Aquila renders; 'The Lord created a new thing in
woman,' that is in Mary. For nothing new was created in woman, save the
Lord's body, born of the Virgin Mary without intercourse, as also it says
in the Proverbs in the person of Jesus: 'The Lord created me before His
works,' lest any should take the text about the deity of the Word.

   4. Each text then which refers to the creature is written with
reference to Jesus in a bodily sense. For the Lord's Humanity[9] was
created as 'a beginning of ways,' and He manifested it to us for our
salvation. For by it we have our access to the Father. And a way is a
corporeal visible thing, such as is the Lord's humanity. Well, then, the
Word of God created all things, not being a creature, but an offspring. For
He created none of the created things equal or like unto Himself. But it is
the part of a Father to beget, while it is a workman's part to create.
Accordingly, the body is a thing made and created, which the Lord bore for
us[1], as Paul says, 'wisdom from God, and sanctification and
righteousness, and redemption;' while yet the Word was before us and before
all Creation, and is, the Wisdom of the Father. But the Holy Spirit, being
that which proceeds from the Father Who sends and of the Son Who conveys
Him, by Whose means He filled all things. The Father, possessing His
existence from Himself, begat the son, as we said, and did not create Him,
as a river from a well and as a branch from a root, and as brightness from
a light, things which natures knows to be indivisible; through whom to the
Father be glory and power and greatness before all ages and unto all the
ages of ages. Amen.


Taken from "The Early Church Fathers and Other Works" originally published
by Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. in English in Edinburgh, Scotland, beginning in
1867. (LNPF II/IV, Schaff and Wace). The digital version is by The
Electronic Bible Society, P.O. Box 701356, Dallas, TX 75370, 214-407-WORD.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
  The electronic form of this document is copyrighted.
  Copyright (c) Eternal Word Television Network 1996.
  Provided courtesy of:

       EWTN On-Line Services
       PO Box 3610
       Manassas, VA 22110
       Voice: 703-791-2576
       Fax: 703-791-4250
       Data: 703-791-4336
       FTP: ftp.ewtn.com
       Telnet: ewtn.com
       WWW: http://www.ewtn.com.
       Email address: [email protected]

-------------------------------------------------------------------

You are viewing proxied material from gopher.ratthing.com. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.