Creating and begetting

Athanasius that the God of the Arians cannot create. If God is a maker, then “his creative Word” must be “proper to him” and not outside Him: “If, on the one hand, the willing [to create] belongs to him, and his will is productive and sufficient for constituting the things which come to be, and, on the other hand, his Word is producer and creator, then it is beyond doubt that this Word is the living will of the Father, the Essential Energy, and True Word, in whom also He constitutes and governs all things excellently.” In short, creation is secondary to, and assumes, the begetting of the Word who is agent of creation.

It won’t do, of course, for the Arians to say that the Father created the Word in order to create other things. If all things are created through the Word (John 1), the Word must be prior to created things; and besides, if the Father creates through His Word, by what could He possibly have created the Word before the Word was?