Athanasius ties the Arians up in knots with an order-of-decrees argument. If the Son is created for the sake of creating us, then the Son exists for our need rather than we for His sake. That suggests a particular ordering of God’s will: “It is not that God, having the Word in himself, wills us; but it is as if, having us in himself, God wills his own word.” This almost suggests that the Son is not directly willed at all, but rather “fashioned” in God’s course “of willing us.”

But if this is true, then we are prior to the Son in God’s will, yet the Son is prior to us in the actual working of God’s will: “why does he make him first and yet not will him first? Or why is it that he wills us first and yet does not make us first if indeed his will is sufficient for the constitution of all things?” Why in short does he will “us prior to the Mediator”? Arians sound a bit superlapsarian here (the analogy is not reversible!): God plans the end (us) first, and then plans the means (the Son) by which he reaches that end. Athanasius is infra: The order of God’s will matches the order of His work.

Athanasius concludes that if we are in fact prior to the Mediator in God’s will we “should be called ‘sons,’ since he was made for our sake.” His ultimate refutation of the Arian position is not in terms of the order of decrees but the order of gratitude: If He exists for our sake, “it is he who owes us gratitude, and not we him.” And he refutes the Arian line with direct proof texts, including Colossians 1:16.

Theologically, Athanasius solves the question of relating the Word to God’s will by claiming that the Word “is himself the Will of the Father.”