257 We append this fragment to the *Questions to Antiochus* because its former part is excerpted from question 42, not indeed word for word, but according to the sense. The latter part is from the *Oration against the Arians*, shortly after the beginning.
Excerpt from a sermon of Saint Athanasius of Alexandria on holy images
A We the faithful, they say, do not worship images as gods—far be it!—but only to manifest our affection and love. Whence it often happens that, the character or figure having been erased, the wood remains empty. This also takes place with regard to the type of the cross. As long as the two pieces of wood are joined together and preserve the figure of the cross, I rightly and accurately worship the cross; but when they are separated from one another and by that division destroy the figure, I no longer worship the woods that are divided from one another. Thus then, also because of Christ, I worship the image, and through the image of Christ I worship Christ himself. For even if Christ is not present [to me] corporeally with my lips, still, I am present to Christ spiritually in my heart and mind. And that these things are so is evident from the example concerning the cross. And after a few words: For anyone having thus recognized that the Son and the Father are one, knows that he himself is in the Father and the Father is in him. For the divinity of the Son is the Father’s, and it is in the Son. And whoever understands this is persuaded that he who has seen the Son has seen the Father. For in the Son the divinity of the Father is contemplated. This, moreover, anyone will be able to understand more accurately from the example of the king’s image: for in the image of the king the appearance and form exist; and in the king, likewise, the appearance which is in the image is had. The royal similitude in the image B is without any discrepancy, so that he who sees the image sees in it the king and recognizes that he himself is the one who appears in the image. And from the fact that the likeness does not differ, to one desiring to contemplate the king after the image, the image might say: "I and the king are one; I am thus in him, and he is in me; and what you see in me, that you see in him, and what you have seen in him, that you see in me." Whosoever, therefore, worships the image, in it worships the king; for the image is his form and appearance.
NOTICE ON THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS ON SACRED SCRIPTURE
It is fitting here to adduce what Felckmann noted on these *Questions*. He says in his *Various Readings*, p. 90: These are subjoined immediately to the *Questions to Antiochus* in the Palatine codex, which we now call II, without an author’s name. Whence it happened that they were joined by an old translator to the *Questions*. Furthermore, the codex is in some places both lacunose and not sufficiently emended; wherefore, to whomever a better one falls, he will be able to supply or emend what shall seem best. Hence it is clear that these *Questions*, far from being Athanasius’s, do not even bear the name of Athanasius in the codices. And indeed, the thirty-sixth bears the name of Chrysostom, the thirty-seventh Cyril’s, [and] the twenty-eighth is Theodoret’s, though his name is hushed. The *Questions on the Pentateuch* which begin from [a certain point] are for the most part Theodoret’s, as we note in their proper places. Hence it is manifest that these *Questions* are excerpted from many authors and brought into one. And from those things read in question 76 concerning the Franks, they seem to have been redacted into one body after the expeditions of the Franks into the East. Unless, perchance, the name of the Franks is an addition there.