Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Series 2 - The Still Small ...

of subjects separated by a less interval from the present, and priority of subjects farther off.
For instance, what happened in Noah’s time is prior to what happened to the men of Sodom,
inasmuch as Noah is more remote from our own day; and, again, the events of the history
of the men of Sodom are posterior, because they seem in a sense to approach nearer to our
own day. But, in addition to its being a breach of true religion, is it not really the extremest
folly to measure the existence of the life which transcends all time and all the ages by its
distance from the present? Is it not as though God the Father could be compared with, and
be made superior to, God the Son, who exists before the ages, precisely in the same way in
which things liable to beginning and corruption are described as prior to one another?
The superior remoteness of the Father is really inconceivable, in that thought and intelligence
are wholly impotent to go beyond the generation of the Lord; and St. John has admirably
confined the conception within circumscribed boundaries by two words, “In the
beginning was the Word.” For thought cannot travel outside “was,” nor imagination 792
beyond “beginning.” Let your thought travel ever so far backward you cannot get beyond
the “was,” and however you may strain and strive to see what is beyond the Son, you will
find it impossible to get further than the “beginning.” True religion, therefore, thus teaches
us to think of the Son together with the Father.
15. If they really conceive of a kind of degradation of the Son in relation to the Father,
as though He were in a lower place, so that the Father sits above, and the Son is thrust off
to the next seat below, let them confess what they mean. We shall have no more to say. A
plain statement of the view will at once expose its absurdity. They who refuse to allow that
the Father pervades all things do not so much as maintain the logical sequence of thought
in their argument. The faith of the sound is that God fills all things; 793 but they who divide
their up and down between the Father and the Son do not remember even the word of the
Prophet: “If I climb up into heaven thou art there; if I go down to hell thou art there also.” 794
Now, to omit all proof of the ignorance of those who predicate place of incorporeal things,
what excuse can be found for their attack upon Scripture, shameless as their antagonism is,
in the passages “Sit thou on my right hand” 795 and “Sat down on the right hand of the
majesty of God”? 796 The expression “right hand” does not, as they contend, indicate the
792 Φαντασία is the philosophic term for imagination or presentation, the mental faculty by which the object
made apparent, φάντασμα, becomes apparent, φαίνεται. Aristotle, de An. III. iii. 20 defines it as “a movement
of the mind generated by sensation.” Fancy, which is derived from φαντασία (φαίνω, ÖBHA=shine) has
acquired a slightly different meaning in some usages of modern speech.
793 Eph. iv. 10.
794 Ps. cxxxix. 7, P.B.
795 Ps. cx. 1.
Issue joined with those who assert that the Son is not with the Father,…
796 Heb. i. 3, with the variation of “of God” for “on high.”
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