[Sunkatabasis]

 "CONDESCENSION" of the Son. Vid. the author's "Tracts, Theological, etc.," to which, on a subject too large for a Note, the reader is referred.

 By this term Athanasius expresses that (so to say) stooping from the height of His Infinite Majesty, which is involved in the act of the Almighty's surrounding Himself with a created universe. This may of course be sometimes spoken of as the act of the Eternal Father, but is commonly and more naturally ascribed to the Only-begotten Son. Creation was the beginning of this condescension; but creation was but an inchoate act if without conservation accompanying it. The universe would have come into being one moment only to have come to nought the next, from its intrinsic impotence, and moreover from the unendurableness on the part of the finite of contact with the Infinite, had not the Creator come to it also as a conservator.

 "The Word," says Athanasius, "when in the beginning He framed the creatures, condescended to them, that it might be possible for them to come into being. For they could not have endured His absolute, unmitigated nature, and His splendour from the Father, unless, condescending with the Father's love for man, He had supported them, and brought them into subsistence." Orat. ii. 64. vid. art. [ akratos ].

 This conservation lay in a gift over and above nature, a gift of grace, a presence of God throughout the vast universe, as a principle of life and strength; and that Presence is in truth the indwelling in it of the Divine Word and Son, who thereby took His place permanently as if in the rank of creatures, and as their First-born and Head, thereby drawing up the whole circle of creatures into a divine adoption, whereby they are mere works no longer, but Sons of God. He has thus, as it were, stamped His Image, His Sonship, upon all things according to their several measures, and became the archetype of creation and its life and goodness.

 As then He is in His nature the Only Son of God, so is He by office Firstborn of all things and Eldest Son in the world of creatures. Vid. [ Prototokos ].