Arius and Athanasius, part 10 – The Father and Son can’t share all their properties (JT)
Last time, I explained that Athanasius has not made it clear how the Son ‘inherits’ divine properties from the Father. Yet even if Athanasius could explain how the Son ‘inherits’ properties from the Father, there’s still another problem. Like Arius, Athanasius believes that the Father is simple, and so anything ‘in’ the Father is, strictly speaking, identical to the Father. If the Son is going to inherit any properties from the Father, then surely he’d have to inherit them all. As Athanasius himself realizes, it’s not a question of the Son inheriting part of the Father. It’s a question of all or none.
However, there are certain properties the Son cannot inherit from the Father, on pain of contradiction. For instance, the Son cannot inherit the Father’s unbegotteness. The Son is begotten, but the Father is not, so the can’t inherit the Father’s unbegotteness without entailing a contradiction.
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