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13. Our opponents, while they thus artfully and perversely
encounter our argument, cannot even have recourse to the plea of
ignorance. It is obvious that they are annoyed with us for completing
the doxology to the Only Begotten together with the Father, and for
not separating the Holy Spirit from the Son. On this account they
style us innovators, revolutionizers, phrase-coiners, and every
other possible name of insult. But so far am I from being irritated
at their abuse, that, were it not for the fact that their loss causes
me "heaviness and continual sorrow," I could almost have said that
I was grateful to them for the blasphemy, as though they were agents
for providing me with blessing. For "blessed are ye," it is said,
"when men shall revile you for my sake." The grounds of their
indignation are these: The Son, according to them, is not together
with the Father, but after the Father. Hence it follows that glory
should be ascribed to the Father "through him," but not "with
him;" inasmuch as "with him" expresses equality of dignity, while
"through him" denotes subordination. They further assert that the
Spirit is not to be ranked along with the Father and the Son, but
under the Son and the Father; not coordinated, but subordinated;
not connumerated, but subnumerated.
With technical terminology of this kind they pervert the simplicity and
artlessness of the faith, and thus by their ingenuity, suffering no
one else to remain in ignorance, they cut off from themselves the plea
that ignorance might demand.
14. Let us first ask them this question: In what sense do they say
that the Son is "after the Father;" later in time, or in order,
or in dignity? But in time no one is so devoid of sense as to assert
that the Maker of the ages holds a second place, when no interval
intervenes in the natural conjunction of the Father with the Son.
And indeed so far as our conception of human relations goes, it is
impossible to think of the Son as being later than the Father, not
only from the fact that Father and Son are mutually conceived of in
accordance with the relationship subsisting between them, but because
posteriority in time is predicated of subjects separated by a less
interval from the present, and priority of subjects farther off. For
instance, what happened in Noah's time is prior to what happened to
the men of Sodom, inasmuch as Noah is more remote from our own day;
and, again, the events of the history of the men of Sodom are
posterior, because they seem in a sense to approach nearer to our own
day. But, in addition to its being a breach of true religion, is it
not really the extremest folly to measure the existence of the life
which transcends all time and all the ages by its distance from the
present? Is it not as though God the Father could be compared with,
and be made superior to, God the Son, who exists before the ages,
precisely in the same way in which things liable to beginning and
corruption are described as prior to one another?
The superior remoteness of the Father is really inconceivable, in
that thought and intelligence are wholly impotent to go beyond the
generation of the Lord; and St. John has admirably confined the
conception within circumscribed boundaries by two words, "In the
beginning was the Word." For thought cannot travel outside "was,"
nor imagination beyond "beginning." Let your thought travel ever so
far backward you cannot get beyond the "was," and however you may
strain and strive to see what is beyond the Son, you will find it
impossible to get further than the "beginning ". True religion,
therefore, thus teaches us to think of the Son together with the
Father.
15. If they really conceive of a kind of degradation of the Son in
relation to the Father, as though He were in a lower place, so that
the Father sits above, and the Son is thrust off to the next seat
below, let them confess what they mean. We shall have no more to
say. A plain statement of the view will at once expose its absurdity.
They who refuse to allow that the Father pervades all things do not so
much as maintain the logical sequence of thought in their argument.
The faith of the sound is that God fills all things; but they who
divide their up and down between the Father and the Son do not
remember even the word of the Prophet: "If I climb up into heaven
thou art there; if I go down to hell thou art there also." Now, to
omit all proof of the ignorance of those who predicate place of
incorporeal things, what excuse can be found for their attack upon
Scripture, shameless as their antagonism is, in the passages "Sit
thou on my right hand " and "Sat down on the right hand of the
majesty of God"? The expression "right hand" does not, as they
contend, indicate the lower place, but equality of relation; it is
not understood physically, in which case there might be something
sinister about God, but Scripture puts before us the magnificence of
the dignity of the Son by the use of dignified language indicating the
seat of honour. It is left then for our opponents to allege that this
expression signifies inferiority of rank. Let them learn that
"Christ is the power of God and wisdom of God," and that "He is
the image of the invisible God" and "brightness of his glory," and
that "Him hath God the Father sealed," by engraving Himself on
Him.
Now are we to call these passages, and others like them, throughout
the whole of Holy Scripture, proofs of humiliation, or rather public
proclamations of the majesty of the Only Begotten, and of the
equality of His glory with the Father? We ask them to listen to the
Lord Himself, distinctly setting forth the equal dignity of His
glory with the Father, in His words, "He that hath seen me hath
seen the Father;" and again, "When the Son cometh in the glory of
his Father;" that they "should honour the Son even as they henour
the Father;" and, "We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only
begotten of the Father;" and "the only begotten God which is in the
bosom of the Father." Of all these passages they take no account,
and then assign to the Son the place set apart for His foes. A
father's bosom is a fit and becoming seat for a son, but the place of
the footstool is for them that have to be forced to fall.
We have only touched cursorily on these proofs, because our object is
to pass on to other points. You at your leisure can put together the
items of the evidence, and then contemplate the height of the glory and
the preeminence of the power of the Only Begotten. However, to the
well-disposed bearer, even these are not insignificant, unless the
terms "right hand" and "bosom" be accepted in a physical and
derogatory sense, so as at once to circumscribe God in local limits,
and invent form, mould, and bodily position, all of which are totally
distinct from the idea of the absolute, the infinite, and the
incorporeal. There is moreover the fact that what is derogatory in the
idea of it is the same in the case both of the Father and the Son; so
that whoever repeats these arguments does not take away the dignity of
the Son, but does incur the charge of blaspheming the Father; for
whatever audacity a man be guilty of against the Son he cannot but
transfer to the Father. If he assigns to the Father the upper place
by way of precedence, and asserts that the only begotten Son sits
below, he will find that to the creature of his imagination attach all
the consequent conditions of body. And if these are the imaginations
of drunken delusion and phrensied insanity, can it be consistent with
true religion for men taught by the Lord himself that "He that
honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father" to refuse to worship
and glorify with the Father him who in nature, in glory, and in
dignity is conjoined with him? What shall we say? What just defence
shall we have in the day of the awful universal judgment of
all-creation, if, when the Lord clearly announces that He will come
"in the glory of his Father;" when Stephen beheld Jesus standing
at the right hand of God; when Paul testified in the spirit
concerning Christ "that he is at the right hand of God;" when the
Father says, "Sit thou on my right hand;" when the Holy Spirit
bears witness that he has sat down on "the right hand of the majesty"
of God; we attempt to degrade him who shares the honour and the
throne, from his condition of equality, to a lower state? Standing
and sitting, I apprehend, indicate the fixity and entire stability of
the nature, as Baruch, when he wishes to exhibit the immutability and
immobility of the Divine mode of existence, says, "For thou sittest
for ever and we perish utterly." Moreover, the place on the right
hand indicates in my judgment equality of honour. Rash, then, is the
attempt to deprive the Son of participation in the doxology, as though
worthy only to be ranked in a lower place of honour.
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