On the Christian Faith 1.10–1.16

Take another argument to make it clear that the Son is everlasting. The Apostle says that God’s power and divinity are everlasting; and Christ is the power of God, for it is written that Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. If, then, Christ is the power of God, since the power of God is everlasting, Christ too is therefore everlasting. Do not, then, heretic, build a false charge on the custom of human generation, nor make one up out of our way of speaking. For we cannot shut up in our narrow words the greatness of the immeasurable divinity, “of whose greatness there is no end.” For if you set out to define the generation of a man, you point to a time; but the divine generation is above all things; it extends far and wide; it rises above all thoughts and senses. For it is written: “No one comes to the Father except through me.” Whatever, then, you think of the Father, however great you think his eternity, do not suppose that you think anything of him except through the Son; nor can any understanding pass to the Father except through the Son. “This is,” he says, “my most beloved Son.” “Is,” he says: he who is what he is always is. Hence David also says: “For ever, O Lord, your Word abides in heaven.” For what abides fails neither in substance nor in eternity. Do you ask me how he is Son, if he does not have a Father prior to him? I in turn ask you when, or how, you think the Son was begotten. For to me it is impossible to know the secret of his generation: the mind fails, the voice is silent, not only mine but the angels’ too. It is above the Powers, above the Angels, above the Cherubim, above the Seraphim, above all understanding; for it is written: “And the peace of Christ, which is above all understanding.” If the peace of Christ is above all understanding, how is so great a generation not above all understanding? You too, lay your hand on your mouth; it is not lawful to pry into the mysteries above. It is lawful to know that he was born; it is not lawful to examine how he was born. The one I may not deny; the other I am afraid to inquire into. For if Paul says that what he heard when he was caught up into the third heaven cannot be uttered, how can we express the secret of the Father’s generation, which we could neither perceive nor hear? But if you drag me to the custom of human generation, so as to say that the Father is prior, see whether examples from earthly generation suit the generation of God. If we speak in human terms, you cannot deny that in human beings the father’s experiences come before the son’s. He grew first, he grew old first, he grieved first, he wept first. If, then, the son is younger in time, the father is older in suffering. If the son has incurred the stage of life that comes with being born, neither has the father escaped the shame of begetting. Why do these racks of questions delight you? You hear “Son of God”: either erase the name or acknowledge the nature. You hear “womb”: acknowledge the truth of a manifest generation. You hear “heart”: understand the Word. You hear “right hand”: acknowledge the power. You hear “mouth”: acknowledge the wisdom. These things are not to be reckoned in God in a bodily way. The Son is begotten incomprehensibly; the Father begets impassibly; and yet he begot from himself, and before all understanding true God begot true God. The Father loves, and you examine; the Father is well pleased, and you with the Jews look on with envy; the Father honors, and you with the pagans revile.

You ask me whether he who is Father can fail to be prior. I ask you to show me when the Father was prior: gather the truth from testimonies or from arguments. If from testimonies, you have certainly received that God’s power is everlasting. You have also read the one who says: “Israel, if you hear me, there shall be no new God in you, nor shall you worship a strange God.” The one of these signifies eternity, the other the property of a substance without difference, so that we may believe the Son neither later than the Father nor of another divinity. For if he is later than the Father, he is new; and if he is not of one divinity, he is strange. But he is not later, for he is not new; nor is he strange, for he was born of the Father, and because, as it is written, he is “God over all, blessed for ever.” But if they think him strange, why do they worship him, when it is written: “Nor shall you worship a strange God”? Or, if they do not worship him, let them say so, and there is an end of it, so that they deceive no one under the profession of a religious name. These, then, are the testimonies of the Scriptures. Or if you have another, you must bring it forward. It remains for the truth to be gathered from arguments as well. Although arguments usually give way even to human testimonies, still, argue as you will, heretic. “We learn from experience,” you say, “that he who begets is prior to him who is born.” Follow out, then, all the traces of custom; and if the rest agree, I do not object to your requiring this too; but if none agrees, how can you demand this alone when all the rest are lacking? So, since you require custom: when he was begotten of the Father, he was a little child. You have seen a little infant wailing in the cradle; he received certain advances of age; for if he had the infirmity of generation, he must have incurred the infirmity not only of being born but also of living. But perhaps you slip into such madness as not to refuse to say this of the Son of God, measuring him as you do by human infirmity. What if, though you cannot deny him the name of God, you want to prove him a man by his infirmity? What if, while you examine the Son, you accuse the Father, and while you prejudge Christ, you condemn the Father along with him? For if the divine generation was subject to time, and this is claimed from the custom of human generation, then the Father too carried the Son in a bodily womb and bore the burden through the course of ten months. But how is there the custom of generation without the other sex? You see that the customary order of generation did not apply at the beginning, and yet you think that the births bound to a certain bodily necessity were the custom. You look for custom, I for sex; you demand time, I order; you examine the end, I seek the beginning. Surely the end depends on the beginning, not the beginning on the end. “Everything,” you say, “that is born has a beginning; and so, because he is Son, he has a beginning and began to exist in time.” Let that be said by their own mouth. I, for my part, profess that the Son was born; at the rest of it, which is impiety, I shudder. Man, you confess God, and do you hem him in with such a slander? May God avert this madness!

Again they object: “Then he is not Son, if he does not have what sons have.” May the Father pardon me, may the Son pardon me, may the Holy Spirit pardon me, as I wish to report the question for the sake of piety. Certainly the Father is, and abides always; there are also creatures, by the divine disposition. Is there, then, any of them that is not subject to places, or to times, or to creation, or to some cause or author? Surely none. What then do you say? Is there any of these things that the Father needs? It is impious to say so. Either, then, stop applying to the divinity what belongs to creatures, or, if you insist on comparing, consider where your impiety is heading; may it never so much as enter our thoughts! For we hold to a devout answer. God is almighty, and so the Father needs none of these things, for he undergoes no change of himself and no advance such as we need, whose infirmity gains advancement from such things. But he who is almighty is certainly not created; he is without place and above time. For there is nothing before God; indeed it is a grievous thing even to say this very word, that something is before God. If, then, this is so, that there is nothing in God the Father of the things that signify advancement, because he is God, then none of these things can be applied to the Son of God either, so that he should receive either a beginning or an advance, because he is true God from true God. So, since we do not find the customary order, accept, Arian, that the generation of the Son was unique. Accept it, I say; and if you do not believe me, blush at least at the voice of God, who says: “To whom have you likened me?” And again: “For God is not as man is.” For if the working of God is unique, because he does not work anything with hands, does not complete it by labor, does not finish it in days (“for he spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created”), why should we not believe that his generation in the Son is unique, when we recognize that his creation in his works is unique? It is certainly fitting that he should be seen to have begotten the Son in a special and unique way. Let him who has the grace of an unusual power have the glory of an unusual generation. Not only is Christ’s generation from the Father wonderful; his very generation from the Virgin is wonderful too. You say that the former is like our conception; I prove that even the latter is unlike ours; indeed, I will make you yourself confess it. Tell me how he was born of Mary, by what custom a virgin womb held him, how there was a birth without a man’s seed, how a virgin was pregnant, how a girl became a mother before she knew union as a wife. The cause was lacking, and yet a son was begotten. Whence, then, the birth by a renewed law? If, then, in the Virgin the custom of human generation was lacking, how can you require in God the Father the custom of ordinary generation? Certainly custom belongs to sex, because sex belongs to the flesh; where, then, there is no flesh, how can you demand the infirmity of the flesh? No one sits in judgment on his superior: you have been commanded to believe, not permitted to examine. For it is written: “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Speech fails not only in the generation of the Son but also in the works of God. For it is written: “All his works are in faith.” Are his works, then, in faith, and his generation without faith? And do we examine what we do not see, we who are commanded to believe rather than to examine even the things we do see?

Someone will say: “How was the Son begotten?” As one everlasting, as the Word, as the radiance of eternal light; for radiance is active at the very moment it is born. This example is the Apostle’s, not mine. Do not, then, believe that there was even a single moment in which God was without wisdom, or light without radiance. Do not, Arian, judge divine things from ours; but believe divine things where you do not find human ones. A pagan king saw in the fire with the three Hebrew youths the form of a fourth, as of an angel; and because he thought him superior to angels, he judged him to be the Son of God, of whom he had not read but whom he believed. Abraham too saw three and worshiped one. Peter on the mountain saw Moses and Elijah with the Son of God, and he made no mistake about the nature, nor about the glory. Indeed, he asked not them but Christ what he ought to do; for although he was preparing a service for three, he awaited the command of one. But because in his simplicity he thought that the tabernacles should be offered to three, he is corrected by the authority of God the Father, who says: “This is my most beloved Son; listen to him”; that is: why do you rank your fellow servants with your Lord? “This is my Son”: not Moses a son, not Elijah a son, but this one is the Son. The apostle perceived the correction; he fell on his face, overwhelmed by the Father’s voice and the Son’s brightness; but he is raised up by the Son, who is accustomed to lift up those who lie fallen. He saw one; he saw the Son of God alone. For the little servants withdrew, so that the Lord alone, who alone was designated Son, might be seen. What, then, did that vision mean, signifying not the equality of Christ and his servants but a mystery, except that it might be made plain to us that the Law and the Prophets, in agreement with the Gospel, revealed the everlasting Son of God whom they had announced? So when we too hear of the Son from the womb and the Word from the heart, let us believe that he was not formed by hands but born of the Father, not the work of a craftsman but the offspring of a parent. And so he who says, “This is my Son,” did not say, “This one is temporal”; he did not say, “This is my creature, this my making, this my servant”; but “This is my Son, whom you see in glory.” This is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, who appeared to Moses in the bush, of whom Moses says: “He who is has sent me.” It was not the Father in the bush, not the Father in the desert, but the Son who spoke to Moses. Indeed Stephen said of him: “This is he who was in the assembly in the wilderness with the angel.” This, then, is he who gave the Law, he who spoke to Moses, saying: “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.” This, then, is the God of the patriarchs; this is the God of the prophets. We read, then, of the Son: let your mind take in what is read; let your tongue give forth the confession. Away with arguments here, where faith is sought; let dialectic now keep silent even in its own schools. I do not ask what the philosophers say; I inquire what they do. They have been left alone in their schools. See how faith outweighs arguments. Those who dispute copiously are deserted daily by their companions; those who believe simply grow daily. Philosophers are not believed; fishermen are believed. Dialecticians are not believed; tax collectors are believed. The former bound the world with pleasures and delights; the latter stripped it of them by fasting and sufferings. And so suffering has now begun to attract more people than pleasure. Now let us see how far the Arians differ from the pagans. The pagans call their gods unequal in sex and unlike in power; the Arians assert a Trinity of differing divinity and unlike power. The pagans assert that their gods had a temporal beginning; the Arians falsely say that Christ began in time. Did they not draw the whole color of their impiety from philosophy? Yet the pagans magnify what they worship; the Arians assert that the Son of God, who is God, is a creature.

It has been made clear, I think, holy Emperor, that the Lord Jesus is neither unlike the Father nor from time. It remains to refute that other sacrilege too, and to prove that the Son of God is not a creature; and in this the oracle of today’s reading breathes help upon us, for we heard it read, with the Lord saying: “Go into the whole world and preach the Gospel to every creature.” He who says “every creature” excepts none. Where, then, are those who call Christ a creature? For if he were a creature, would he command the Gospel to be preached to himself? He is not, then, a creature, but the Creator, who entrusts to his disciples the duty of teaching the creature. Christ is not a creature: for “the creature was subjected to futility,” as the Apostle said. Was Christ, then, subjected to futility? Again, according to the same Apostle: “The creation groans and is in labor together until now.” Does Christ, then, groan and labor, he who freed our groanings from death? “The creation,” he says, “will be set free from the slavery of corruption.” We see, then, that there is a great distance between the creature and the Lord; for the creature belongs to slavery, but “the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” Who brought in this error, so that someone should call him a creature who created all things, who rules all things? Did the Lord create himself? For if it is read that all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made, did he make himself? If it is read, as cannot be denied, that God made all things in wisdom, can it seem likely that wisdom was made in itself? We read that he was begotten, for the Father said: “From the womb, before the morning star, I begot you.” We read that the Son is firstborn; we read that he is only-begotten: firstborn, because no one is before him; only-begotten, because no one is after him. We read also: “Who will declare his generation?” “Generation,” it says, not creation. What can be set against such great testimonies? The Son of God also showed the difference between generation and grace, saying: “I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” He did not say, “I ascend to our Father,” but, “I ascend to my Father and your Father.” This separation shows a difference: that he is his begetter, our creator. And he added: “my God and your God”; for although he and the Father are one, and the Father is his Father by the property of nature, while God began to be our Father through the Son, not by right of nature but of grace, yet here he seems to signify both natures in Christ, of divinity and of flesh: of divinity from the Father, of flesh from the mother; the one before all things, the other from the Virgin. Indeed he first named the Father as Son, and afterwards called him God as man. And everywhere the testimonies teach that he says “my God” in the person of a man: “O God, my God, look upon me; why have you forsaken me?” And elsewhere: “From my mother’s womb you are my God.” Above, he suffers as man; below, it is as man that he is cast forth from his mother’s womb. So when he says, “From my mother’s womb you are my God,” he signifies that he who was always Father is his God from the time when he was cast forth from his mother’s womb. Since, then, we have read of the generation of Christ in the Gospel, in the Apostle, in the prophets, how do they dare to say that he was created or made? And indeed they ought to consider in what respect they have read that he was created, in what respect made. For it is taught that the Son of God was begotten of God, born of God; but in what respect I read that he was made, let them carefully observe; for God was not made, but God the Son of God was born; afterwards, however, according to the flesh, he was made man from Mary. If they do not believe me, let them believe the Apostle, who says: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, made from a woman, made under the Law.” “His Son,” he says: not one of many, not common, but his own. When he says “his own,” he marked the property of eternal generation. He asserted that this Son was afterwards made from a woman, so that his being made might be ascribed not to the divinity but to the assumption of a body: made from a woman by taking on flesh; made under the Law by the observance of the Law. But that heavenly generation was before the Law; this one after the Law.

Hence they are also accustomed to boast idly of what is written: “And God made him both Lord and Christ.” Let the unlearned read the whole and understand; for thus it is written: “And God made him Lord, and made him Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” It was not the divinity that was crucified but the flesh. That, certainly, could be made which could be crucified. The Son of God, then, is not a thing made. Let that text also be dismissed on which they are accustomed to build their false charge, and let them learn in what sense it was said: “The Lord created me.” He did not say, “The Father created,” but, “The Lord created me.” The flesh acknowledges a Lord; glory signifies a Father; our created nature confesses a Lord; love knows a Father. Who, then, does not know that this is said on account of the incarnation? He says, then, that he was created in that respect in which he also testifies that he is a man, saying: “Why do you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth?” He says “man” in that respect in which he was crucified, died, and was buried. Nor should one doubt that he put in the past tense what was still to come; for this is the custom of prophecy, that things to come are spoken of as present or as done. For instance, you have read in the twenty-first Psalm: “Fat bulls besieged me”; you have also read: “They divided my garments among them,” which the evangelist shows was prophesied of the time of the passion; for to God things to come are present, and to him to whom all things are foreknown, things to come are as things done, as it is written: “Who has made the things that are to come.” Nor is it surprising if he says that he was established before the ages, since you have read that he was predestined before eternal times. How truly this appears to be said of the incarnation, what follows makes plain: “Wisdom,” it says, “has built herself a house and set up seven pillars, and has slain her victims; she has mixed her wine in the bowl and prepared her table; and she has sent out her servants, calling with the loftiest proclamation and saying: Whoever is foolish, let him turn aside to me.” Do we not see in the Gospel, after the incarnation, all these things fulfilled: that he celebrated the mysteries of the sacred banquet, that he sent out the apostles, that he cried with a loud voice, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink”? So what follows corresponds to what goes before, and we see the whole course of the incarnation laid out in the exposition of the prophecy. Many other proofs could be at hand that sayings of this kind are spoken of the incarnation; but I do not entangle myself in books, lest the treatise seem too long.

Now I ask the Arians themselves whether they think that “begotten” is the same as “created.” For if they say it is the same, there is certainly no difference between begetting and creating. Then, since we too were created, there is no difference between us, Christ, and the elements. But however mad they are, they will not dare to say this. Finally, to indulge their folly in what is not true: if, as they think, there is no difference in the word, why do they not call him whom they worship by the better name? Why do they not use the Father’s word? Why do they reject what conveys honor and take up what conveys insult? But if there is a difference between created and begotten, as I think there is, then when we read “begotten” we certainly do not understand begotten and created to be the same. Let them say, then, that he was begotten of the Father and brought forth of the Virgin; or let them say how the Son of God is both begotten and created. One nature, and above all God, does not admit of diversity. But let our own opinion be set aside: let us question Paul, who, full of the Spirit of God and foreseeing these questions, speaking generally against the pagans and specially against the Arians, says that by divine judgment those are condemned who serve the creature rather than the Creator. For you have it thus: “God gave them up to the desires of their hearts, so that they dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is God blessed for ever.” So Paul forbids me to serve the creature, and admonishes me that Christ is to be served. Christ, then, is not a creature. “Paul,” he says, “a servant of Jesus Christ.” And this good servant, who acknowledges his Lord, himself forbids us to serve the creature: how, then, would he himself serve Christ if he thought Christ a creature? Either, then, let them stop worshiping him whom they call a creature, or let them stop calling a creature him whom they pretend to worship, lest under the name of worshipers they commit graver sacrileges. For an enemy in the household is more detestable than one from outside, and it is a heavier crime to abuse the name of Christ against Christ. What better interpreter of the Scriptures, then, do we seek than that teacher of the nations, the chosen vessel, chosen from among the persecutors? He who had persecuted Jesus confesses him. He had certainly read Solomon more than Arius had, and he was learned in the Law; and so, because he had read, he says that Christ was not created but begotten. For he had read: “He spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created.” Was Christ made by a word? Was Christ created by a command? And how can there be a creature in God? For God is of a simple nature, not conjoined and composite; nothing is added to him, but he has in his nature only what is divine; he fills all things and is nowhere himself confused; he penetrates all things and is nowhere himself to be penetrated; he is everywhere whole, and at the same moment present in heaven, on earth, and in the farthest part of the sea; incomprehensible to sight, inexpressible in speech, beyond the estimate of sense; to be followed by faith, to be venerated with reverence; so that you may understand that whatever can be thought more reverently, whatever is more excellent in beauty, whatever more sublime in power, this befits God. So, since the Father is well pleased in the Son, believe that the Son is worthy of the Father; believe that the Son came forth from God, as he himself testifies, saying: “I proceeded from God and have come”; and elsewhere: “I came forth from God.” He who proceeded from God and came forth from God can have nothing but what is God’s.