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Theology - Trinity: “Dependent” God

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Athanasius appeals to the baptismal formula to show that the Son must be Creator: If he re-creates in baptism along with the Father, He must have created from the beginning. But this raises the question, Is the Father insufficient in Himself? Athanasius, strikingly, does not answer by appealing to the Father as autotheos but by highlighting the fact that the Father-Sun is never without His Radiance-Word. Thus, “it is impossible, if the Father bestows grace, that He should not give it in the Son, for the Son is in the Father as the radiance in the light. For, not as if in need, but as a Father in His own Wisdom has God founded the earth, and made all things in the Word which is from Him, and in the Son confirms the HolyLaver. For where the Father is, there is the Son, and where the light, there the radiance.”

In short, the Father cannot bestow grace “by Himself” since He never is by Himself. Rather, the Father is “dependent” on the Son. This is not a weakness in the Father because the Father is never alone, without the radiance that is the Son. But it is dependence, Father dependent on Son as Son is dependent on Father, God dependent upon God.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, November 13, 2009 at 4:28 am

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Theology - Trinity: “Dependent” God

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