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

name implies the Father, it is not possible that any one should even name the Son without
apprehending the Father. 2043
8. Since then, as says the Lord in the Gospels, 2044 he that hath seen the Son sees the
Father also; on this account he says that the Only-begotten is the express image of His
Father’s person. That this may be made still plainer I will quote also other passages of the
apostle in which he calls the Son “the image of the invisible God,” 2045 and again “image of
His goodness;” 2046 not because the image differs from the Archetype according to the
definition of indivisibility and goodness, but that it may be shewn that it is the same as the
prototype, even though it be different. For the idea of the image would be lost were it not
to preserve throughout the plain and invariable likeness. He therefore that has perception
of the beauty of the image is made perceptive of the Archetype. So he, who has, as it were
mental apprehension of the form of the Son, prints the express image of the Father’s hypostasis,
beholding the latter in the former, not beholding in the reflection the unbegotten
being of the Father (for thus there would be complete identity and no distinction), but gazing
at the unbegotten beauty in the Begotten. Just as he who in a polished mirror beholds the
reflection of the form as plain knowledge of the represented face, so he, who has knowledge
of the Son, through his knowledge of the Son receives in his heart the express image of the
Father’s Person. For all things that are the Father’s are beheld in the Son, and all things that
are the Son’s are the Father’s; because the whole Son is in the Father and has all the Father
in Himself. 2047 Thus the hypostasis of the Son becomes as it were form and face of the
knowledge of the Father, and the hypostasis of the Father is known in the form of the Son,
while the proper quality which is contemplated therein remains for the plain distinction of
the hypostases.
2043 The simpler explanation of the use of the word hypostasis in the passage under discussion is that it has
the earlier sense, equivalent to οὐσία. cf. Athan., Or. c. Ar. iii. 65, iv. 33, and Ad. Apos. 4.
2044 John xiv. 9.
2045 Col. i. 15.
2046 This phrase is not in the Epistles, nor indeed does the substantive ἀγαθότης occur in the N.T. at all.
“Image of his goodness” is taken from Wisdom vii. 26, and erroneously included among the “words of the
Apostle.”
2047 cf. John xiv. 11.
To his Brother Gregory, concerning the difference between and …
433