Athanasius: Against the Arians II

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Jesus became Lord of All by Grace

For God is always, and one and the same; but men have come to be afterwards through the Word, when the Father Himself willed it; and God is invisible and inaccessible to originated things, and especially to men upon earth. When then men in infirmity invoke Him, when in persecution they ask help, when under injuries they pray, then the Invisible, being a lover of man, shines forth upon them with His beneficence, which He exercises through and in His proper Word. And forthwith the divine manifestation is made to every one according to his need, and is made to the weak health, and to the persecuted a ‘refuge’ and ‘house of defence;’ and to the injured He says, ‘While thou speakest I will say, Here I am.’ … When the saints say concerning God, “He became’ and ‘become Thou,’ they do not denote any original becoming, for God is without beginning and unoriginate, but the salvation which is made to be unto men from Him.

This being so understood, it is parallel also respecting the Son, … When we hear the words in question, ‘become better than the Angels’ and ‘He became,’ we should not conceive any original becoming of the Word.. but should understand Paul’s words of His ministry and Economy when He became man. For when ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt among us’ and came to minister and to grant salvation to all, then He became to us salvation, and became life, and became propitiation; then His economy in our behalf became much better than the Angels, and He became the Way and became the Resurrection.[1]
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This it is that Peter means by, ‘He hath made Him Lord,’ and ‘hath sent Christ;’ as much as to say, that the Father … did not simply make Him man, but has made Him in order to His being Lord of all men, and to His hallowing all through the Anointing [by the Spirit]…

And as God, when ‘becoming a God and defence,’ and saying, ‘I will be a God to them,’ does not… [begin] to become God, but, what He ever is, that He then becomes to those who need Him, when it pleaseth Him, so Christ also being by nature Lord and King everlasting, does not .. [begin] to be Lord and King, but what He is ever, that He then is made according to the flesh; and, having redeemed all, He becomes thereby again Lord of quick and dead.[2]

Firstborn of Creation and Resurrection

He is called ‘First-born among many brethren’ because of the relationship of the flesh, and ‘First-born from the dead,’ because the resurrection of the dead is from Him and after Him; and ‘First-born of the whole creation,’ because of the Father’s love to man, which brought it to pass that in His Word not only ‘all things consist,’ but the creation itself, of which the Apostle speaks, ‘waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God, shall be delivered’ one time ‘from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.’ Of this creation thus delivered, the Lord will be First-born, both of it and of all those who are made children, that by His being called first, those that come after Him may abide, as depending on the Word as a beginning.
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Because the Word, when at the beginning He framed the creatures, condescended to things originate, that it might be possible for them to come to be. For they could not have endured His nature, which was untempered splendour, even that of the Father, unless condescending by the Father’s love for man He had supported them and taken hold of them and brought them into existence; and next, because, by this condescension of the Word, the creation too is made a son through Him, that He might be in all respects ‘First-born’ of it, as has been said, both in creating, and also in being brought for the sake of all into this very world. For so it is written, ‘When He bringeth the First-born into the world, He saith, Let all the Angels of God worship Him.’
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Thus the Son is the Father’s ‘Only-begotten,’ because He alone is from Him, and He is the ‘First-born of creation,’ because of this adoption of all as sons. And as He is First-born among brethren and rose from the dead ‘the first fruits of them that slept;’ so, since it became Him ‘in all things to have the preeminence,’ therefore He is created ‘a beginning of ways,’ that we, walking along it and entering through Him who says, ‘I am the Way’ and ‘the Door,’ and partaking of the knowledge of the Father, may also hear the words, ‘Blessed are the undefiled in the Way,’ and ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’[3]

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