The [ Teleion ]

 "PERFECT from Perfect" is often found in Catholic Creeds, and also (with an evasion) in Arian. "The Word who is perfect from the perfect Father." Orat. iii. § 52. "As radiance from light, so is He perfect Offspring from perfect." ii. § 35, also iii. § 1 circ. fin. "One from One, Perfect from Perfect," etc. Hil. Trin. ii. 8. [ teleios teleion gegenneken ], Epiph. Hær. 76, p. 945.

 Not only the Son but the Father was [ ateles ], says Athan., if the Son were not eternal. "He is rightly called the eternal Offspring of the Father, for never was the substance of the Father imperfect, that what belongs to it should be added afterwards ... God's Offspring is eternal, because His nature is ever perfect." Orat. i. 14. A similar passage is found in Cyril. Thesaur. v. p. 42. Dial. ii. fin. This was retorting the objection: the Arians said, "How can God be ever perfect, who added to Himself a Son?" Athan. answers, "How can the Son be a later addition, since God is ever perfect?" vid. Greg. Nyssen. contr. Eunom. Append. p. 142. Cyril. Thesaur. x. p. 78. Also Origen, as quoted by Marcellus in Euseb. c. Marc. p. 22, [ ei gar aei teleios ho theos ... ti anaballetai ]; etc. As to the Son's perfection, Aetius objects, ap. Epiph. Hær. 76, p. 925, 6, that growth and consequent accession from without are essentially involved in the idea of Sonship; whereas S. Greg. Naz. speaks of the Son as not [ atele proteron, eita teleion, hosper nomos tes hemeteras geneseos ]. Orat. 20. 9 fin. In like manner, S. Basil argues against Eunomius, that the Son is [ teleios ], because He is the Image, not as if copied, which is a gradual work, but as a [ charakter ], or impression of a seal, or as the knowledge communicated from master to scholar, which comes to the latter and exists in him perfect, without being lost to the former. contr. Eunom. ii. 16. fin.

 It need scarcely be said, that "perfect from perfect" is a symbol on which the Catholics laid stress, Athan. Orat. ii. 35; Epiph. Hær. 76, p. 945; but it admitted of an evasion. An especial reason for insisting on it in the previous centuries had been the Sabellian doctrine, which considered the title "Word," when applied to our Lord, to be adequately explained by the ordinary sense of the term, as a word spoken by us. Vid. on the [ logos prophorikos ], art. Word, a doctrine which led to the dangerous, often heretical, hypothesis that our Lord was first Word, and then Son. In consequence they insisted on His [ to teleion ], perfection, which became almost synonymous with His personality. Thus the Apollinarians e.g. denied that our Lord was perfect man, because his personality was not human. Athan. contr. Apoll. i. 2. Hence Justin, and Tatian, are earnest in denying that our Lord was a portion divided from the Divine substance, [ ou kat' apotomen ], etc. etc. Just. Tryph. 128. Tatian. contr. Græc. 5. And Athan. condemns the notion of the [ logos en toi theoi ateles, gennetheis teleios ]. Orat. iv. 11. The Arians then, as being the especial opponents of the Sabellians, insisted on nothing so much as our Lord's being a real, living, substantial, Word, (vid. Eusebius passim,) and they explained [ teleion ] as they explained away "real," art. supr. Arian tenets . "The Father," says Acacius against Marcellus, "begat the Only-begotten, alone alone, and perfect perfect; for there is nothing imperfect in the Father, wherefore neither is there in the Son, but the Son's perfection is the genuine offspring of His perfection, and superperfection." ap. Epiph. Hær. 72, 7. [ Teleios ] then was a relative word, varying with the subject-matter, vid. Damasc. F. O. i. 8, p. 138.

 The Arians considered Father and Son to be two [ ousiai, homoiai ], but not [ homoousiai ]. Their characteristic explanation of the word [ teleios ] was, "distinct," and "independent." When they said that our Lord was perfect God, they meant, "perfect, in that sense in which He is God" i.e. as a secondary divinity. Nay, in one point of view they would use the term of His Divine Nature more freely than the Catholics sometimes used it. Thus Hippolytus e.g. though really holding His perfection from eternity as the Son, yet speaks of His condescension in coming upon earth as if a kind of complement of His Sonship, He becoming thus a Son a second time; whereas the Arians holding no real condescension or assumption of a really new state, could not hold that our Lord was in any respect essentially other than He had been before the Incarnation. "Nor was the Word," says Hippolytus, "before the flesh and by Himself, perfect Son, though being perfect Word [as] being Only-begotten; nor could the flesh subsist by itself without the Word, because that in the Word it has its consistence: thus then He was manifested One perfect Son of God." contr. Noet. 15.