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

lower place, but equality of relation; it is not understood physically, in which case there
might be something sinister about God, 797 but Scripture puts before us the magnificence
of the dignity of the Son by the use of dignified language indicating the seat of honour. It
is left then for our opponents to allege that this expression signifies inferiority of rank. Let
them learn that “Christ is the power of God and wisdom of God,” 798 and that “He is the
image of the invisible God” 799 and “brightness of his glory,” 800 and that “Him hath God
the Father sealed,” 801 by engraving Himself on Him. 802
Now are we to call these passages, and others like them, throughout the whole of Holy
Scripture, proofs of humiliation, or rather public proclamations of the majesty of the Only
Begotten, and of the equality of His glory with the Father? We ask them to listen to the
Lord Himself, distinctly setting forth the equal dignity of His glory with the Father, in His
words, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father;” 803 and again, “When the Son cometh
in the glory of his Father;” 804 that they “should honour the Son even as they honour the
Father;” 805 and, “We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father;” 806
and “the only begotten God which is in the bosom of the Father.” 807 Of all these passages
797 I know of no better way of conveying the sense of the original σκαῖος than by thus introducing the Latin
sinister, which has the double meaning of left and ill-omened. It is to the credit of the unsuperstitious character
of English speaking people that while the Greek σκαῖος and ἀριστερός, the Latin sinister and lævus, the French
gauche, and the German link, all have the meaning of awkward and unlucky as well as simply on the left hand,
the English left (though probably derived from lift=weak) has lost all connotation but the local one.
798 1 Cor. i. 24.
799 Col. i. 15.
800 Heb. i. 3.
801 John vi. 27.
802 The more obvious interpretation of ἐσφράγισεν in John vi. 27, would be sealed with a mark of approval,
as in the miracle just performed. cf. Bengel, “sigillo id quod genuinum est commendatur, et omne quod non
genuinum est excluditur.” But St. Basil explains “sealed” by “stamped with the image of His Person,” an inter-
pretation which Alfred rejects. St. Basil at the end of Chapter xxvi. of this work, calls our Lord the χαρακτὴρ
καὶ ἰσότυπος σφραγίς, i.e., “express image and seal graven to the like” of the Father. St. Athanasius (Ep. i. ad
Serap. xxiii.) writes, “The seal has the form of Christ the sealer, and in this the sealed participate, being formed
according to it.” cf. Gal. iv. 19, and 2 Pet. i. 4.
803 John xiv. 9.
804 Mark viii. 38.
805 John v. 23.
806 John i. 14.
Issue joined with those who assert that the Son is not with the Father,…
807 John i. 18. “Only begotten God” is here the reading of five mss. of Basil. The words are wanting in one
codex. In Chapter viii. of this work St. Basil distinctly quotes Scripture as calling the Son “only begotten God.”
(Chapter viii. Section 17.) But in Chapter xi. Section 27, where he has been alleged to quote John i. 18, with the
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