Athenagoras
(133-190) was a second century early Church Father. His A Plea for the
Christians is an important text, being a strong witness against the veneration
of images/icons and the apologetic that the veneration is given to the
"heavenly prototype" they represent was rubbished by him (see Athenagoras
vs. Second Nicea and Trent on the Veneration of Images and the Persons they
Represent). Additionally, for Athenagoras, "the one God" was
numerically identical to the singular person of the Father, not the Trinity
(cf. A
Triad of Early Christians Against the Trinity Being an Apostolic Belief).
Commenting on his theology, Alvan Lamson wrote:
ATHENAGORAS
Athenagoras, a
learned Athenian, also flourished during the latter part of the second century.
That he was ever, as has been asserted, connected with the celebrated
Catechetical School of Alexandria, is not probable. He was an Athenian by birth,
but of his personal history nothing is known. Neither Eusebius nor Jerome
mentions his name. He wrote an Apology for Christians in the time of Marcus
Aurelius and his son Commodus, and was also the author of a treatise on the
Resurrection, both of which are preserved. He was equally careful, with the
writers above quoted, to preserve the supremacy of the Father, and seems to
have entertained similar views of the nature and rank of the Son.
“The Son of God,” he
says, “is the Logos (Reason) of the Father in idea and operation.” “Through it
all things were made.” “The Son of God is the understanding and reason of the
Father.” “God from the beginning being eternal reason, and in himself the Logos
(Reason), being always rational” (Legat.,
c. 10. See also c. 16). The attribute reason, or wisdom, was eternal, but not
the Son as a personal being. Of him it could be said, “The Lord created me the
beginning of his ways to his works.” Athenagoras, with the other Fathers, made
a distinction. The supremacy of the Father, who was invisible, impassible, and
who, himself “unbegotten and eternal,” created all things by his Logos, or
Reason (it has been made a question, indeed, whether Athenagoras believed that
the Divine Logos or Reason, became permanently hypostazied in the Son; or in speaking
of the creation used the word in the older platonic sense as meaning the
reason, power, or wisdom of God in action. He says in one place, “God is in
himself all things,--light unapproachable, the perfect world, spirit, power,
logos.” Justin Martyr, however, could have used the same language, and we
think, some obscure expressions which look the other way notwithstanding, that
Athenagoras agreed with him and with the early Fathers generally, in assigning
separate personality, or self-subsistence to the Son as the begotten Logos,
Reason, of the Father. See Martini, Versuch,
etc., p. 55), who was not infringed.
The Holy Spirit
Athenagoras describes as something flowing out from God, as rays flow from the
sun, and are re-absorbed, that is, not a person, but an influence (Το ενεργουν
τοις εκφωνουσι προφητικως αγιον πνευμα απορροιαν ειναι φαμεν του θεου, απορρεον
και επαωοφερομενον ως ακτινα ηλιου.—Legat., c. 10; comp.
c. 24). (Alvan Lamson, The Church of the
First Three Centuries: Or, Notices of the Lives and Opinions of the Early
Fathers, with Special reference to The Doctrine of the Trinity; Illustrating
Its Late Origin and Gradual Formation [rev ed.; Boston: Horace B. Fuller,
1873], 100-1)
Here are chapters 10, 16, and 24 of his Plea that Lamson referenced:
Chapter X.--The Christians Worship the
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
That we are not
atheists, therefore, seeing that we acknowledge one God, uncreated, eternal,
invisible, impassible, incomprehensible, illimitable, who is apprehended by the
understanding only and the reason, who is encompassed by light, and beauty, and
spirit, and power ineffable, by whom the universe has been created through His
Logos, and set in order, and is kept in being--I have sufficiently demonstrated.
[I say "His Logos"], for we acknowledge also a Son of God. Nor let
any one think it ridiculous that God should have a Son. For though the poets,
in their fictions, represent the gods as no better than men, our mode of
thinking is not the same as theirs, concerning either God the Father or the
Son. But the Son of God is the Logos of the Father, in idea and in operation;
for after the pattern of Him and by Him were all things made, the Father and
the Son being one. And, the Son being in the Father and the Father in the Son,
in oneness and power of spirit, the understanding and reason (νοῦς καὶ λόγος)
of the Father is the Son of God. But if, in your surpassing intelligence, it
occurs to you to inquire what is meant by the Son, I will state briefly that He
is the first product of the Father, not as having been brought into existence
(for from the beginning, God, who is the eternal mind [νοῦς], had the Logos in
Himself, being from eternity instinct with Logos [λογικός]); but inasmuch as He
came forth to be the idea and energizing power of all material things, which
lay like a nature without attributes, and an inactive earth, the grosser
particles being mixed up with the lighter. The prophetic Spirit also agrees
with our statements. "The Lord," it says, "made me, the
beginning of His ways to His works." The Holy Spirit Himself also, which
operates in the prophets, we assert to be an effluence of God, flowing from
Him, and returning back again like a beam of the sun. Who, then, would not be
astonished to hear men who speak of God the Father, and of God the Son, and of
the Holy Spirit, and who declare both their power in union and their
distinction in order, called atheists? Nor is our teaching in what relates to
the divine nature confined to these points; but we recognise also a multitude
of angels and ministers, whom God the Maker and Framer of the world distributed
and appointed to their several posts by His Logos, to occupy themselves about
the elements, and the heavens, and the world, and the things in it, and the
goodly ordering of them all. (A Plea for the Christians [ANF: 2:133-34])
Chapter XVI.--The Christians Do Not Worship the Universe.
Beautiful without
doubt is the world, excelling, as well in its magnitude as in the arrangement
of its parts, both those in the oblique circle and those about the north, and also
in its spherical form. Yet it is not this, but its Artificer, that we must
worship. For when any of your subjects come to you, they do not neglect to pay their
homage to you, their rulers and lords, from whom they will obtain whatever they
need, and address themselves to the magnificence of your palace; but, if they
chance to come upon the royal residence, they bestow a passing glance of
admiration on its beautiful structure: but it is to you yourselves that they
show honour, as being "all in all." You sovereigns, indeed, rear and
adorn your palaces for yourselves; but the world was not created because God
needed it; for God is Himself everything to Himself,--light unapproachable, a
perfect world, spirit, power, reason. If, therefore, the world is an instrument
in tune, and moving in well-measured time, I adore the Being who gave its
harmony, and strikes its notes, and sings the accordant strain, and not the instrument.
For at the musical contests the adjudicators do not pass by the lute-players
and crown the lutes. Whether, then, as Plato says, the world be a product of
divine art, I admire its beauty, and adore the Artificer; or whether it be His
essence and body, as the Peripatetics affirm, we do not neglect to adore God,
who is the cause of the motion of the body, and descend "to the poor and
weak elements," adoring in the impassible air (as they term it), passible
matter; or, if any one apprehends the several parts of the world to be powers
of God, we do not approach and do homage to the powers, but their Maker and
Lord. I do not ask of matter what it has not to give, nor passing God by do I
pay homage to the elements, which can do nothing more than what they were
bidden; for, although they are beautiful to look upon, by reason of the art of
their Framer, yet they still have the nature of matter. And to this view Plato
also bears testimony; "for," says he, "that which is called
heaven and earth has received many blessings from the Father, but yet partakes
of body; hence it cannot possibly be free from change." If, therefore,
while I admire the heavens and the elements in respect of their art, I do not
worship them as gods, knowing that the law of dissolution is upon them, how can
I call those objects gods of which I know the makers to be men? Attend, I beg,
to a few words on this subject. (ANF 2:136)
Chapter XXIV.--Concerning the Angels and Giants.
What need is there, in speaking to you who
have searched into every department of knowledge, to mention the poets, or to
examine opinions of another kind? Let it suffice to say thus much. If the poets
and philosophers did not acknowledge that there is one God, and concerning
these gods were not of opinion, some that they are demons, others that they are
matter, and others that they once were men,--there might be some show of reason
for our being harassed as we are, since we employ language which makes a
distinction between God and matter, and the natures of the two. For, as we
acknowledge a God, and a Son his Logos, and a Holy Spirit, united in
essence,--the Father, the Son, the Spirit, because the Son is the Intelligence,
Reason, Wisdom of the Father, and the Spirit an effluence, as light from fire;
so also do we apprehend the existence of other powers, which exercise dominion
about matter, and by means of it, and one in particular, which is hostile to
God: not that anything is really opposed to God, like strife to friendship,
according to Empedocles, and night to day, according to the appearing and
disappearing of the stars (for even if anything had placed itself in opposition
to God, it would have ceased to exist, its structure being destroyed by the
power and might of God), but that to the good that is in God, which belongs of
necessity to Him, and co-exists with Him, as colour with body, without which it
has no existence (not as being part of it, but as an attendant property
co-existing with it, united and blended, just as it is natural for fire to be
yellow and the ether dark blue),--to the good that is in God, I say, the spirit
which is about matter, who was created by God, just as the other angels were
created by Him, and entrusted with the control of matter and the forms of
matter, is opposed. For this is the office of the angels,--to exercise
providence for God over the things created and ordered by Him; so that God may
have the universal and general providence of the whole, while the particular
parts are provided for by the angels appointed over them. Just as with men, who
have freedom of choice as to both virtue and vice (for you would not either
honour the good or punish the bad, unless vice and virtue were in their own
power; and some are diligent in the matters entrusted to them by you, and
others faithless), so is it among the angels. Some, free agents, you will
observe, such as they were created by God, continued in those things for which
God had made and over which He had ordained them; but some outraged both the
constitution of their nature and the government entrusted to them: namely, this
ruler of matter and its various forms, and others of those who were placed
about this first firmament (you know that we say nothing without witnesses, but
state the things which have been declared by the prophets); these fell into
impure love of virgins, and were subjugated by the flesh, and he became
negligent and wicked in the management of the things entrusted to him. Of these
lovers of virgins, therefore, were begotten those who are called giants. And if
something has been said by the poets, too, about the giants, be not surprised
at this: worldly wisdom and divine differ as much from each other as truth and
plausibility: the one is of heaven and the other of earth; and indeed,
according to the prince of matter,--
"We know we oft speak lies that look
like truths." (ANF 2:141-42)
