Annotations on Theological Subjects in the foregoing Treatises, alphabetically arranged.
Ignorance Assumed Economically by Our Lord
Personal Acts and Offices of Our Lord
Private Judgment on Scripture (Vid. art. Rule of Faith .)
The [ Agenneton ], or Ingenerate
[ Logos, endiathetos kai prophorikos ]
[ Mia physis ] ( of our Lord's Godhead and of His Manhood ).
[ Prototokos ] Primogenitus, First-born
Catholicism and Religious Thought Fairbairn
Development of Religious Error
On the Inspiration of Scripture
Library of Fathers Preface, St. Cyril
Library of Fathers Preface, St. Cyprian
Library of Fathers Preface, St. Chrysostom
ARIANS considered our Lord a creature, with a beginning of existence, with a probation, and during it a liability to fall. Yet it was one of their fundamental tenets that He was Creator of the universe, and created in order to create. Accordingly Athan. and the other Fathers rightly charge them with idol worship.
"We must take reverent heed," says Athanasius, "lest transferring what is proper to the Father to what is unlike Him, and expressing the Father's godhead by what is unlike in kind and alien, we introduce another being foreign to Him, as if capable of the properties of the first, and lest we be silenced by God Himself, saying, My glory I will not give to another, and be discovered worshipping this alien God." Syn. 50. "Who told them, after abandoning the worship of creatures, after all to draw near and to worship a creature and a work?" Orat. i. § 8. vid. also Orat. ii. § 14. Ep. Ægypt. 4 and 13. Adelph. 3. Serap. i. 29.
This point, as might be expected, is insisted on by other Fathers, vid. Cyril. Dial. iv. p. 511, etc. v. p. 566. Greg. Naz. Orat. 40. 42. Hil. Trin. viii. 28. Ambros. de Fid. i. n. 69 and 104. Theod. in Rom. i. 25.
The Arians were in the dilemma of holding two Gods, or worshipping the creature, unless they denied to the Lord both divinity and worship. Hence Athan. says, [ phaskontes, ou legomen duo ageneta, legousi duo theous ], Orat. iii. 16. But "every substance," says S. Austin, "which is not God, is a creature, and which is not a creature, is God," de Trin. i. 6. And so S. Cyril, "We see God and creation and besides nothing; for whatever falls external to God's nature has certainly a maker; and whatever is clear of the definition of creation, is certainly within the definition of the Godhead." In Joan. p. 52. vid. also Naz. Orat. 31. 6. Basil. contr. Eunom. ii. 31.
Petavius gives a large collection of passages, de Trin. ii. 12, § 5, from other Fathers in proof of the worship of Our Lord evidencing His Godhead.