Desiring to be teachers of the law; understanding neither what they say, nor the things they affirm.
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Athanasius the Apostolic
AD 373
It is encouraging to the faithful but distressing to the heretical to see these heresies overthrown. Moreover, their further question, “whether the Unoriginated be one or two,” shows how false are their views, how treacherous and full of guile. It is not for the Father’s honor that they say this but for the dishonor of the Word. Accordingly, if any one should answer, unaware of their craft, that “the Unoriginated is one,” they immediately spurt out their own venom, saying, “ ‘Therefore the Son is among things originated,’ and well have we said, ‘He was not before his generation.’ ” This in turn elicits all sorts of disturbances and confusions, separating the Son from the Father and reckoning the Framer of all among his works. Now first they may be convicted on this score, that, while blaming the Nicene bishops for their use of phrases not in Scripture, though these are not injurious but subversive of their irreligion, they themselves went off upon the same fault, that is, using words n...
Therefore, let us not love ourselves but him, and in feeding his sheep let us seek those things that are his, not those things that are ours. For in some inexplicable way whoever loves himself, not God, does not love himself; and whoever loves God, not himself, does himself love himself. For he who cannot live of himself dies, of course, by loving himself. Then he who loves himself so that he may not live does not love himself. But when he from whom comes life is loved, by not loving himself, he who does not love himself—precisely that he may love him from whom he has life—loves himself all the more. Therefore, let those who feed Christ’s sheep not be “lovers of themselves,” that they may not feed them as their own but as his. Let them not wish to acquire their own gains from them, as “lovers of money,” or to be their lords, as “haughty,” or to glory over honors which they take from them, as “proud,” or to go so far as even to create heresies, as “blasphemous,” or to not yield to the h...
What, therefore, if the soul and spirit of a human being is given by God himself, whenever it is given; and given, too, by propagation from its own kind? Now this is a position which I neither maintain nor refute. Nevertheless, if it must be defended or confuted, I certainly recommend its being done by clear and certain proofs. Nor do I deserve to be compared with senseless cattle because I avow myself to be as yet incapable of determining the question, but rather with cautious persons, because I do not recklessly teach what I know nothing about. But I am not disposed on my own part to return railing for railing and compare this man with brutes. Rather, I warn him as a son to acknowledge that he is really ignorant of that which he knows nothing about. I warn him not to attempt to teach that which he has not yet learned, lest he should deserve to be compared with those persons whom the apostle mentions as “desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor the t...
Two walls must adhere to the cornerstone in order to preserve “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace”—one from the Jews and the other from the Gentiles. We mustn’t let our minds be put off by the great number of reprobate Jews, among whom were the builders; those, that is, who “wished to be teachers of the law,” but as the apostle says about them, “do not understand either what they are saying or the things about which they are making their assertions.” It was as a result of this mental blindness, after all, that they rejected the stone which was put at the head of the corner. But it wouldn’t be put at the head of the corner unless it offered to the two peoples coming from different points a peaceful joining, a coupling of grace.
This, therefore, is the upright and most exact faith of the holy Fathers, that is, the confession of faith. But as Paul says, “the god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers that they should not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.” Accordingly some, after having ceased to go along the straight road of truth, dash themselves against the rocks, “when they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertions.” For after attributing the glory of the sonship only to the Word begotten of God the Father, they say that another son of the seed of David and Jesse has been conjoined to him and has a share in the filiation and of the glory proper to God and of the very indwelling of the Word and has had almost everything from him but has nothing at all of his own.
Desiring to be teachers of the law.
Here we see another cause of evil, the love of power. Wherefore Christ said, Be not called Rabbi Matthew 23:8; and the Apostle again, For neither do they keep the law, but that they may glory in your flesh. Galatians 6:13 They desire preëminence, he means, and on that account disregard truth.
Understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm.
Here he censures them, because they know not the end and aim of the Law, nor the period for which it was to have authority. But if it was from ignorance, why is it called a sin? Because it was incurred not only from their desiring to be teachers of the law, but from their not retaining love. Nay, and their very ignorance arose from these causes. For when the soul abandons itself to carnal things, the clearness of its vision is dimmed, and falling from love it drops into contentiousness, and the eye of the mind is blinded. For he that is possessed by any desire for these temporal things, intoxicat...
