Given the “canon” that Scripture speaks “doubly” of Christ (sometimes divinely, sometimes humanly), it would seem easy for Athanasius to shuffle passages about the Father giving and the Son receiving to the “humanity” side of things. He doesn’t, and He’s right. The Son has all that the Father has, and has always had it; but the Son has it from the Father. Within God, there is both giving and receiving, acting and being acted upon.
And this, Athanasius sees, is the root of God’s providential oversight of all things. He reasons: “the Father, having given all thing to the Son, in the Son still has all things; and the Son having, still the Father has them; for the Son’s Godhead is the Father’s Godhead, and thus the Father in the Son exercises His Providence over all things.”
The Father gives over all to the Son, but doesn’t lose all, because He still has the Son. Even though all is given over, and the Son has all, there is no leakage or loss from the Father. The reference to Providence at the end appears sudden, but it’s the direction of the whole argument: The Father maintains his Providence over all things in that He gives all things to the Son. If the Father lost all things when He gave them to the Son, He would no longer be the providential Father; but the Word is the agent of that Providence, so He must have all things given to Him. If the Son has only some of what the Father has to give, some things are going to escape the oversight of the Word – some things will be alogos . It is just because the Father gives all to the Son, but still possesses all in the Son, that God orchestrates all in perfect harmony.
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…
