Athanasius
Agaist the Arians, I.34.
Ed. W. Bright (Oxford: 1873)

Athanasius is attacking the followers of Arianism, a Christian heresy in the 4th c.

34. Piety and truth are therefore better served by describing God in relation to the Son and calling him `Father' than by naming him in relation to his works alone and calling him `unoriginate'. For, as we have seen, the only reference of this latter term is to all the works, both individually and as a whole, which have come into being by the will of God through the Word. `Father', however, has significance and meaning only in relation to the Son. The difference between the Word and the originated order is the measure, though an inadequate one, of the difference between calling God `Father': and calling him `unoriginate'.

Furthermore, `unoriginate' is not only unscriptural; one must also be careful of its perplexing variety of meaning. ` Father', on the ' other hand, has one plain meaning, it is scriptural, it is more accurate, and it refers only to the Son. `Unoriginate' is an invention of' the Greeks, who have no knowledge of the Son; `Father' was used and given us by our Lord. He himself knew whose Son he was when:. he said, `I am in the Father and the Father is in me' [John 14: 10], and `He who has seen me has seen the Father' (John 14:9] and `I and the Father are one' [John 10:30]. Nowhere do we find him calling the Father `unoriginate'. In teaching us to pray he did not say, `When you pray, say: "God unoriginate" '. What he said was, `When you pray say: "Our Father who art in heaven" '. The summary of our faith used in baptism was also intended to make the same point. For he commanded us to be baptized not into the name of unoriginate and originate, not into the name of creator and creature, but `into the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit'. In this initiation, creatures though we are, we are made adopted sons. We use the word `Father'; and by our use of that word we acknowledge not only the Father, but also him who is in the Father himself - the Word.

This argument from the term `unoriginate' is thus demonstrably worthless and quite without substance.

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