LUTHER 1527 Athanasius Argues

LUTHER 1527

How do we become certain, good gentlemen, that a body may not through the power of God be at the same time in heaven and in the Supper, since the power of God has neither measure nor number, and does things which no mind can comprehend but must simply be believed? When he says, “This is my body,” how shall I calm my heart and convince it that God has no means or power to do what his Word says? And perhaps, even if a body is not now visibly present at several places, he may well know of other ways by which he might render a body invisibly present, indeed, even visibly, in many places at the same time. If he could do this, would you not have deceived us woefully by saying No before you knew for sure? Have you also proof from the Scriptures that they do not concede this possibility to the omnipotence of God?


Athanasius Argues

Starting from the idea of God, Athanasius argues: The relation of Father is not accidental, arising in time; else God would be changeable; it belongs as necessarily to the essence and character of God as the attributes of eternity, wisdom, goodness, and holiness; consequently he must have been Father from eternity, and this gives the eternal generation of the Son. The divine fatherhood and sonship is the prototype of all analagous relations on earth. As there is no Son without Father, no more is there Father without Son. An unfruitful Father were like a dark light, or a dry fountain, a self-contradiction. The non-existence of creatures, on the contrary, detracts nothing from the perfection of the Creator, since he always has the power to create when he will. The Son is of the Father’s own interior essence, while the creature is exterior to God and dependent on the act of his will. God, furthermore, cannot be conceived without reason,wisdom, power, and according to the Scriptures (as the Arians themselves concede) the Son is the Logos, the wisdom, the power, the Word of God, by which all things were made. As light rises from fire, and is inseparable from it, so the Word from God, the Wisdom from the Wise, and the Son from the Father. The Son, therefore, was in the beginning, that is, in the beginning of the eternal divine being, in the original beginning, or from eternity. He himself calls himself one with the Father, and Paul praises him as God blessed forever.
HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH Schaff Volume 3 NICENE AND POST-NICENE CHRISTIANTY A.D. 311-600
(Pages 661-662)