[ Logos,  endiathetos kai prophorikos ]

 Vid. art. Word . [ Metousia ]

 To all creatures in different ways or degrees is it given to participate in the Divine attributes. In these it is that they are able or wise or great or good; in these they have life, health, strength, well-being, as the case may be. And the All-abounding Son is He through whom this exuberance of blessing comes to them, severally.

 They are partakers, in their measure, of what He possesses in fulness. From the Father's [ ousia ], which is His too, they have through Him a [ metousia ]. Here lies the cardinal difference of doctrine between the Catholic and Arian: Arians maintain that the Son has only that [ metousia ] of God, which we too have. Catholics hold Him to be God, and the Source of all divine gifts. The antagonism between Athanasius and Eusebius is the more pointed, by the very strength of the language of the latter. He considers the Son [ ex autes tes patrikes ] [not [ ousias ], but] [ metousias, hosper apo peges, ep' ] [vid. supr. Eusebius ] [ auton procheomenes, pleroumenon ]. Eccl. Theol. i. 2. But Athanasius, [ oude kata metousian autou, all' holon idion autou gennema ]. Orat. iii. § 4.

 Athanasius considers this attribute of communication to be one of the prerogatives of the Second Person in the Divine Trinity. He enlarges on this doctrine in many places: e.g. "if, as we have said before, the Son is not such by participation, but, while all things generated have, by participation, the grace of God, He is the Father's Wisdom and Word, of which all things partake, if so, it follows that He, as the deifying and enlightening power of the Father, in which all things are deified and quickened, is not alien in substance from the Father, but one in substance. For by partaking of Him, we partake of the Father; inasmuch as the Word is proper to the Father. Whence, if He was Himself too from participation, and not the substantial Godhead and Image of the Father, He would not deify, being deified Himself. For it is not possible that he who but possesses from participation, should impart of that portion to others, since what he has is not his own, but the Giver's; as what he has received is barely the grace sufficient for himself." Syn. § 51.

 "As the Father has life in Himself, so has He also given to the Son to have life in Himself," not by participation, but in Himself. What the Father gives to the Son is a communication of Himself; what He gives to His creatures is a participation. Vid. supr. Orat. i. § 16. "To say that God is wholly partaken is equivalent to saying that He begets ."