Is God The Father Fons Deitatis?
This phrase refers to God the Father as the “origin and cause” of the Son’s Being within the Godhead, as God. It represents the “Θεὸν ἐκ Θεοῦ”, of the Nicene Creed of AD 325. Literally it reads, “God out of God”, which makes the Father as the “source” from Who the “essential character” of the Son is derived. The Father alone is seen as “unoriginated”, and the Son as “originated” from the Father.
In His book, The Oecumenical Documents of the Faith, Dr T Herbert Bindley, deals with the language used in the formation of the Nicene Creed, on the phrase, “Θεὸν ἐκ Θεοῦ, these words, as we have seen, were taken from the Creed of Caesarea. The preposition (ἐκ) denotes origin and derivation from the Father as Fons Deitatis. The absolute possession of life from another is the essential character of Sonship; John v.26; comp. viii.42, xvi.28” (page 30)
The Creed of Caesarea was drawn up by the Church historian, Eusebius, who was infulenced by the heretic, Origen (F J Foakes Jackson; The History of the Christian Church, p. 168). Amongst the heresies of Origen, he taught that God the Father “eternally generated” the substance of the Son. Eusebius himself was pro Arius, another heretic, and also infulenced by the theology of Origen, as we can see in another phrase in his “Creed”, “πρὸ πάντων τῶν αἰώνων ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ πατρὸς γεγεννημένον (begotten out of God the Father before all ages)”. “γεγεννημένον”, is from “γεννάω”, which is also used for “generation”. “The eternal generation of the Son from the will of the Father was, with Origen, the communication of a divine but secondary substance” (Schaff's History of the Church). This heresy was also taken up by some of the Orthodox Church fathers, “Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, made earnest of the Origenistic doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son (which was afterwards taught by Athanasius and the Nicene creed, but in a deeper sense, as denoting the generation of a person of the same substance from the substance of the Father, and not of a person of different substance from the will of the Father), and deduced from it the homo-ousia or consubstantiality of the Son with the Father” (Schaff). The Nicene Creed adopted some of the heretical language of the Creed of Caesarea. “γεννηθέντα ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς μονογενῆ. τουτέστιν ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ Πατρος. Θεὸν ἐκ Θεοῦ” (begotten out of the Father, only-begotten, that is, out of the substance of the Father, God out of God)” etc.
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