In the last issue I began sharing with my readers Athanasius’ response to the contentions of Arius whose beliefs, eventually, were branded as a heretical. I also started sharing Athanasius’ idea about the relationship between the Father and the son and answering the question of what the Son partakes in his relationship with the Father. Athanasius professes that since this partaking or sharing takes place only between the Father and the Son, it must be a sharing of “the substance of the Father,” as difficult as this may be to conceive or understand. Any other kind of sharing or partaking would be external and also, by definition outside of the filial relationship of the Son to the Father. The Son, Athanasius argues, needs no other intermediary to communicate the Father to Him. The unique status he possesses as Son in itself entails an immediate, timeless, eternal sharing, partaking and communion of identical substance.

Indeed, Athanasius believes, the eternal reality of God as Father demands that his Son also be eternally in relationship with him, a relationship predicated on the common substance and relationship shared. If this were not eternal and substantial, the reality of God as Father would be an imperfect one, one requiring further addition, that of the Son in time. As Athanasius puts it, “To beget in time is characteristic of man: for man’s nature is incomplete; God’s offspring is eternal, for his nature is always perfect.”

While I know that this is a difficult idea to understand, hopefully my readers are following the arguments of Athanasius against Arius to understand our Christian idea about God and about Jesus. An eternal Father, in short, demands an eternal Son. Was, Athanasius asks, God ever without his Word? How could he be? “Was he, who is light, without radiance?…God is, eternally; then since the Father always is, his brightness exists eternally.”

As I read the arguments of the Fathers about Jesus, I realize that the belief in Jesus as God Incarnate demands, requires that God be Three-In-One and not just one Person. What an amazing truth!