We have seen how emphatically the Alexandrians, from first to last, are witnesses of the co-eternity of the Son, as Son, with the Father. This being their unanimous profession or understanding, it is, at first sight, natural to expect that writers in the other parts of Christendom will be found to profess the same doctrine, and to profess it as unequivocally. It is a reasonable expectation; because, as we have seen above, the writers in question are in such full agreement with the Alexandrians in the substance and in the details of their teaching on the subject of the Holy Trinity. Their silence on a twentieth point, it may be urged in their favour, after agreement with the School of Alexandria upon nineteen, may equitably, or even must reasonably, be supplied from the view which the Alexandrians actually take of the sacred dogma. Again, their own teaching on those nineteen points obliges us, it may be said, to think that in mere logical consistency with themselves, they really did hold that twentieth point, on which they happen to be silent. If they hold that our Lord is consubstantial with the Father, in accordance with the subsequent Nicene formula, if they hold our Lord to be an hypostasis, or to have a personality, whether they consider Him Word or Son, if they believe that distinct hypostasis to have existed from eternity in the unity of the Father, what room is there for difference between them and the Alexandrians? What is the subtlety, which modern criticism can hit upon, to throw doubt upon what is so clear?
Such anticipations, I grant, are reasonable;—however, there is a silence which speaks; and there are subtleties which belong, not to the critic, but to the subject-matter of his criticism. Whether the silence, and whether the language, of the writers in question be such as to bear out what I have said of them, we have now to inquire.
I have adduced nine Alexandrians stating in one way or another, that the Divine gennesis is from eternity. No other Alexandrian can be found to speak otherwise. I am going to adduce as many writers from other parts of Christendom, and in like manner shall suppress none. Is it unreasonable to expect that all of them, or that some of them, will in one way or other say what the Alexandrians say? Will it not be a strange accident if a first eight all speak in behalf of a certain truth, and a second eight are all silent, or at least not distinct upon it, if the second eight held it as well as the first eight? That truth is, that the Word was the Son of God from eternity; does not the unanimity in speech and in silence on one side and on the other, go for something in proof, not only that those who all speak, held it, but also that those who are all silent, did not hold it?
What I want is that any one of those Asiatics and Westerns to whom I am now betaking myself, should say, in behalf of the eternal gennesis, what all, or almost all, the Alexandrians say. I want them to say with Gregory, “True Son of True Father, Eternal of Eternal;” or with Origen, in St. Augustine’s language, “Semper gignit Pater, semper gignitur Filius;” or with Dionysius, “The Son is [aeigennes];” or with Clement, “He is [anarchos arche];” or with Alexander, “Ever Father, ever Son;” nay, even with Athenagoras, that the Son at and after the era of creation was in the Father as well as from Him, and was its [idea] as well as its [energeia]. Nay, it would be something if I found them concordant in professing that the gennesis was [pro aionon] as well as [pro ktismaton]. How is it that, even before the Arian controversy, the Alexandrians abound in such statements, and the writers, to whom I am proceeding, during the same period, are so wanting in them?
This surely is a strong negative argument against their really holding what, as I have shown, they even do not profess to hold; but there is a positive argument against them also. They have a doctrine of their own; I do not mean that every one of them brings it out in fulness, but that it is one to which all of them contribute, and to which they one and all converge; for, as I thought it reasonable, when collecting testimonies on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, to interpret one writer by another, when they evidently all belonged to one family of thought, so here too I consider I shall be able to show such an intrinsic and substantial agreement between these writers on the point in question, as to allow me fairly to take the incomplete and indirect statements upon it, one by one, to which they commit themselves, as complements and elucidations of each other.
Their doctrine then, which was consistent with their holding firmly the consubstantial and co-eternal unity of the Persons of the Blessed Trinity, was this:—that the Word was with God from eternity; One with Him, yet distinct from Him, and not merely an attribute or power;—that He was in “corde” or “in utero Patris,” till the universe was to be created, and then He was born in order to be its Creator; the external act by which God surrounded Himself with beings animate and inanimate, spiritual and material, being accompanied by a corresponding internal act in the Divine Essence. Thus the Alexandrian teaching was symbolized by the text, “Ego hodie genui te,” “hodie” meaning eternity; and the opinion, which I am now inquiring into, is symbolized by the text, “Ex utero ante luciferum genui te;” the doctrine of the Syncatabasis and the Primogenitus, as I have described it, being held by all alike, whether at Alexandria or elsewhere.