Hitherto I have found scarcely anything in the thought or language of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, which, even though suggestive accidentally of the subsequent Semi-Arianism, does not admit of an orthodox sense, and has not the sanction of the Post-Nicene Fathers. The Principatus is the doctrine of St. Gregory Nazianzen and of St. Augustine; the Syncatabasis is the special teaching of St. Athanasius. Such doctrines are in no respect inconsistent with the consubstantiality, co-eternity, and co-equality of the Son with the Father. So far is clear; but I have something more to say concerning certain early writers, which I wish I could explain as satisfactorily. I do not know how to deny, that, both in the East and in the West, there are writers, otherwise Catholic and orthodox in their theology, who use language concerning the Divine Sonship, which can hardly be distinguished from what in St. Augustine’s day would have been considered heretical, or close upon heresy.
The doctrine, which they favour, is the Temporal Gennesis; viz., that the Eternal Word was not the Son from everlasting, but became the Son before the creation in order to be its Creator; and this doctrine, afterwards repudiated by the Church, is, it is plain, in real connexion historically, and in apparent connexion theologically, with Arianism. I say “in real historical connexion,” because where it had first appeared, there Semi-Arianism was most successful, and where, as in Egypt, it had not been tolerated, Arianism in no shape gained a footing. And I say, “in only apparent theological connexion” with the heresy, because, while the Arians, of all shades of misbelief, repudiated the Nicene Homoüsion, these writers, whose language is so equivocal on the point in question, all taught the cardinal truth, of which the Homoüsion is the symbol, viz., the true divinity, in union with the Father, of the Word and Son. All could have subscribed to the Nicene Creed and to its Anathematisms.
That these writers held both the eternity, and the hypostatic existence of the Word, I think beyond a doubt. I am not for an instant supposing that, with Marcellus of Ancyra in the fourth century, and with the heretics whom Justin speaks of (Tryph. 128) in the second, they considered the Son to be a mere energy or action, or a temporary expansion, of the Divine Essence, and not the Divine Essence Itself; still that they believed in His eternity, viewed as the Son, I cannot persuade myself, if their language is the index of their belief; and this is the point on which I shall insist. Nor will it satisfy me even if some of them assert the existence of the Son, “before all ages;” this indeed would be enough, if it were all they said; in that case I could account the phrase to stand for “eternity.” For what do we know of eternity except that it is the state of things before time? It is a negative idea; it has no epochs; as soon as we let time go, we are forthwith merged in eternity. The phrase then “before all ages,” any how may mean, and often does strictly mean, eternity; and it would have been conclusive that those who used it of the Son were believers in the eternal gennesis but for this,—that, whereas it need not mean eternity, those who use it in fact show us that it need not, by bringing up again the notion of time after they have seemed to drop it, viz. by such propositions as that the gennesis took place “when the Father willed to create the worlds,” that our Lord “was before He was begotten,” and the like. By such expressions they imply that the gennesis after all had a relation to time; and then it is that it occurs to the inquirer that “before all worlds” is also of the nature of a date, and, being a phrase not absolute but relative, is inadmissible as used for a categorical enunciation of the Son’s eternity. Besides, the text in the Septuagint Version, Proverbs viii. 12, which was the stronghold of the Arians, because it spoke of Divine Wisdom being created, also speaks of Him as [pro tou aionos], showing that the pro-aeonian state, contemplated at least by the translator, was not eternity, as containing in it an act of creation, that is, an act which belongs to time. And further still; it was possible to hold the eternal conception of the Son in the Divine Essence, as a distinct Person, without holding His birth to have been from eternity, and to understand gennesis not to mean generation but birth.
Some light will be thrown upon these points as I proceed; meanwhile, fully conscious as I am how comprehensive a view it requires, and how minute and familiar a knowledge, of the literature of the first centuries of Christianity, if one is to have a right to pronounce definitely what is in it and what is not, still, writing under the correction of that consciousness, I will venture to say as much as this;—first, that authors of the East and West, who are distinct in calling the Word “eternal,” as well as “before all ages,” are not distinct in calling the Son “eternal;” and next, that, while they speak of His gennesis taking place in order to creation, and as dated by creation, they add not a word to show that in such statements they meant (as Bull has thought) merely a certain figurative gennesis, and that there had already been another and a true gennesis from all eternity.