Therefore, I will be
bold, and I shall ask a thing to be sought in the Apostle, presented as an
inquiry for those able to hear Scripture. The Apostle says concerning God: “the
only one having immortality, dwelling in light unapproachable” (1 Tm 6:16).
Paul, does the Father alone actually have immortality, but no one else? He
would say, “No, since that one’s immortality is not something acquired, but it
belongs to his nature.” Nothing can possibly come about, in God’s case, so that
he might not be immortal, but the Savior is immortal, because immortality is
supplied to him. (Psalm 15 Homily 1 in Homilies on the Psalms: Codex Monacensis
Graecus 314 [The Fathers of the Church; trans. Joseph W. Trigg; Washington,
D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2020], 55)
In a footnote to the above, we read the
following from Joseph W. Trigg:
Only God the Father “has”
(echei) immortality by nature, although the Savior, the Son, is
immortal. In Princ. 1.2, Origen explains that the Son shares the power
and eternity of God the Father and exercises authority over all things because
the Son eternally derives his being from the Father. (Ibid., 55 n. 126)
