[ Akratos ]

 SIMPLE, absolute, untempered, direct; an epithet applied both by Catholics and Arians to the creative Hand of God, as if the very contact of the Infinite with the finite, which creation involves, would extinguish the nascent creature which it was bringing into being. The Arians attempted to find in this doctrine an argument in favour of their own account of our Lord's nature. They said that our Lord was created to be the instrument whereby the world could be created without that perilous intervention of the Almighty Hand, which made creation almost impossible. Decr. § 8, Orat. ii. § 25, 30. Epiph. Hær. 76, p. 951. Cyril. Thes. pp. 150, 241. de Trin. iv. p. 523. Basil. contr. Eunom. ii. 21, Orat. ii. 29. But how was it, asked Catholics, that creation was possible at all, that is, in the case of our Lord Himself, on supposing Him a creature? vid. Decr. § 8. Catholics on their side had no difficulty to overcome: they considered that the Creator, by a special and extraordinary grace, supplied whatever was necessary for bearing the mighty Hand of God, as also a parallel grace is supplied for receiving safely the great privileges of the Gospel, especially the Holy Eucharist.

 "Not as if He were a creature, nor as having any relation in substance with the universe, is He called Firstborn of it; but because, when at the beginning He framed the creatures, He condescended to them that it might be possible for them to come into being. For they could not have endured His untempered nature and His splendour from the Father, unless, condescending by the Father's love for man, He had supported them and taken hold of them and brought them into substance." Orat. ii. § 64.

 He does not here say with Asterius that God could not create man immediately, ... but that He did not create him without at the same time infusing a grace or presence from Himself into his created nature, to enable it to endure His external plastic hand; in other words, that man was created in Him, not as something external to Him (in spite of the [ dia ] and [ en ] in reference to the first and second creation, In Illud omn. 2). Vid. art. Arian Tenets, etc., and Gent. 47, where the [ sunkatabasis ] is spoken of.