Because our Lord is a Son, therefore it is that He could make Himself less than a Son; and, unless He had become less than a Son, we should not have learned that He was a Son, for His economical descent to the creature is the channel of our knowledge. This is what I have been insisting on; also, that, since His original Personality thus led on to His Temporal Procession, therefore it is not easy to determine when He acts as the Son, and when merely as the Minister of the Father, and the Mediating Power of the Universe. For instance, in treating of the doctrine of the Incarnation, we find it a question in controversy to determine, whether our Lord’s ignorance of the Day of Judgment, Mark xiii. 32, is to be predicated of His Divine Person, or of His human nature, or of the Mediator, as such. Again, since He came “in the form of a servant,” was He really made a servant? Again, since He took upon Himself a created nature, can we call Him a creature? He is a Priest, but how? as God or as man? has He, as Emmanuel, one will or two? If, then, these are questions to determine, even when we start from a fact so tangible as His humanity, can we wonder that there should be difficulties, and a danger of mistake, when even the most saintly and most acute minds exercise themselves in treating of what is beyond the phenomena of human experience, viz., His Syncatabasis, or original “Descent to the creature” in order to its existence, life, rule, and conservation? For instance, I should have styled this Condescensio by the name of a “Mission,” from the analogy of the Incarnation, except that I thought it not clear that “Mission” is an allowable term, theologically, to apply to it, and whether it should not rather be called a [proeleusis] or “going forth.” Others have thought (I consider erroneously) that this [proeleusis] can be called, and has in early times been called, a gennesis, or divine generation. It requires experience in the history of theological terms to decide such questions; and we may freely grant that the early writers, who could not have the experience of times to them future, may have varied and erred in their language about our Lord, and that, in the interest of grievous heresies, without imputing to them any departure from orthodoxy themselves.
To show this in detail, I cannot do better than draw out the great Athanasius’s account of our Lord’s Syncatabasis, as involved in the creation and preservation of the universe, and then against his statements, so high in their authority, set some of the mistakes in relation to it which are to be found in the language or the thought of certain Ante-nicene writers, in spite of their general concurrence in his teaching. This I now proceed to do.
That it should have been the will of God to surround Himself with creatures destined to live for ever, after an eternity in which He was the sole Being in existence, is a mystery as great as any in religion, natural or revealed. If it were possible for change to attach to the Unchangeable, creation was the act in which change was involved; and, in fact, in order to be intelligible, we are obliged to speak as if He then did pass from a state of repose to an age of unintermitted, everlasting action. The steps of the process in which this change (so to call it) consisted, as Athanasius and other Fathers describe them, are as follows:—
1. First, “He spoke the word;” to whom did God speak? to His Word and Son. “And it was done.” Who did it? At the Father’s bidding, the Son at once brought the work into effect.
2. But word and deed are consecutive acts, whereas with God they are one act. And to say that the Father addressed the Son is to draw a line, however fine, between the Two, whereas they are transcendently one and the same Being. When, then, it is said, “He spoke the Word,” what is meant, is “He uttered the Logos,” as elsewhere, “By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made.” His Logos is His command, His effectual, self-operating command. Accordingly, it is more consistent with, more conservative of, the co-equality and indivisibility of the Father and His Word, to consider the Word not addressed, but as Himself the Divine Fiat, the Hypostatic Will and Operation, the Counsel, Idea, Design, Purpose, and Effective Force, the Wisdom and Power, which called up the universe out of nothing.
3. This going forth of the Hypostatic Wisdom and Power of God, manifesting Himself externally in creative act, was the commencement of His Temporal Economy, and the immediate introduction of His Syncatabasis.
4. For that first act of creation could not stand alone; other acts necessarily followed. Creation and conservation must go together. The finite could not stand of itself; nay, the finite could not have borne the direct action of the Infinite upon it, as it started into existence under the Divine Hand, unless by the Infinite Itself it had been fortified to bear Its touch; otherwise it would have fallen back into its original nothing, annihilated by the very process of creation. In order, then, to give effect to His work, He who was at the first instant external to it, must, without a moment’s delay, enter into it and give it a supernatural strength by His, as it were, connatural Presence (vid. supr. p. 73).