On the Christian Faith 1.17–2.4

Hence he is not only God but true God, true from true, and so true that he is himself the truth. So if we seek his name, he is the truth; if we seek his natural majesty, the Son of God is true to such a degree that he is also the Father’s own. For it is written: “He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us,” delivered him up, of course, according to the flesh. “Own” speaks of the property of divinity; “Son,” of the truth of that property; “did not spare,” of the mercy of love; “delivered up,” of the offering made for our safety. But lest they raise a false charge because it is written that the Father delivered him up, the Apostle himself said elsewhere: “Peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins”; and elsewhere: “As Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.” If, then, he was both delivered up by the Father and delivered himself up, it is plain that there is one operation, one will of Father and Son. If, then, we seek his natural majesty, he is begotten. He who denies that he is begotten denies that he is the Father’s own; he who refuses him that, thinks him one in common with the rest. But if we seek the property of the generation itself, he came forth from God. For since in our usage “to come forth” is said of what already is, and what is said to come forth seems to proceed from inner hidden places, we perceive the property of the divine generation, though in narrow words: that he should not seem to have come forth from some place, but as God from God, Son from Father; nor should he seem to have begun in time, who came forth by being born of the Father, as he who was born said himself: “I came forth from the mouth of the Most High.” But if they do not acknowledge his nature, if they do not believe the Scriptures, let them at least believe the works. To whom does the Father say, “Let us make man,” except to him whom he knew to be his true Son? In whom would he recognize his image, except in the true one? The adoptive and the true are not one; nor would the Son say, “We are one,” if he compared himself with the true while not being true himself. “Let us make,” then, says the Father. He who said it is true; can he who made, then, not be true? Is what is granted to the speaker denied to the maker? And how, unless he knew him to be his true Son, would he entrust to him the unity of his will and the reality of his work? For since the Son does the same works as the Father does, and the Son gives life to whom he will, as it is written, he is not different in power and is free in will; thus unity is preserved, for the power of God lies in the property of divinity, and freedom lies not in any difference but in the unity of will. The apostles, troubled on the sea, though they did not yet believe in their hearts, when they first saw the waters play beneath the Lord’s feet and the fearless footsteps of the Lord walking on the waters amid the restless surge of the sea, and then, when Christ boarded the ship that was being tossed by the waves, beheld the waters calmed and the elements obedient, believed him to be the true Son of God, saying: “Truly you are the Son of God.” The centurion, with the others who were with him, confesses the same when the hinges of the world trembled at the Lord’s passion; and you, heretic, deny it! The centurion says: “Truly this was the Son of God.” “Was,” says the centurion; and the Arian says, “He was not.” The centurion, then, bloodstained in hand but devout in mind, asserts both the truth and the eternity of the generation; you, heretic, deny the truth of the generation and ascribe time to it. Would that you had stained your hand rather than your soul! But you, not innocent even of hand and savage in mind, inflict death as far as in you lies, you who think him weak; indeed, what is graver, although the divinity cannot feel a wound, yet as far as in you lies you try to slay in Christ not his body but his majesty. We cannot doubt, then, that he is true God, whom both his executioners believed and the demons confessed to be the true Son of God; their testimonies are not needed now, yet they are to be preferred to your sacrileges. We have named them so that you might blush; we have also brought forward divine answers so that you might believe. The Lord cries out through Isaiah: “Those who serve me will be called by a new name, which will be blessed on the earth, and they will bless the true God; and those who swear on the earth will swear by the true God.” This, I say, Isaiah said when he saw his majesty; the Gospel indicates that he saw the majesty of Christ and spoke of him. But take also what John the Evangelist wrote in his epistle, saying: “We know that the Son of God has appeared and has given us understanding, that we may know the Father and may be in his true Son Jesus Christ our Lord. This is the true God and eternal life.” John calls the Son of God both true and true God; if, then, he is true God, he is certainly not created, having nothing deceptive or counterfeit, nothing confused or unlike.

God, then, from God, light from light, true God from true God, born of the Father, not made, of one substance with the Father. So indeed our Fathers spoke according to the Scriptures; and they thought that the sacrilegious doctrines should be inserted in their decrees precisely so that the faithlessness of Arius might betray itself and not be veiled, as though smeared with paints and colors. For those make a pretense who do not dare to set out what they think. And so, in the manner of the censor, the Arian impiety is not opened up by exposition but uncovered by condemnation, so that whoever is curious and eager to hear it may first know that it is condemned, and so not slip, before he hears it expounded so as to believe it. “Those,” it says, “who say, ‘There was when he was not,’ and ‘Before he was born he was not,’ and who say that the Son of God was made from nothing, or is of another substance or ousia, or is mutable or changeable, the catholic and apostolic Church anathematizes.” You have accepted, holy Emperor, that those who assert such things are justly condemned. It was not by human contrivance, not by any arrangement, that three hundred and eighteen bishops came together to the council, as I said above more briefly; but so that in their number the Lord Jesus might prove by the sign of his passion and of his name that he was present at his own council: the cross is in the three hundred, the name of Jesus in the eighteen priests. This was also held in the first confession at the Council of Ariminum, and in the second correction after the Council of Ariminum. The letter sent to the Emperor Constantius testifies to the confession; the councils that followed confess the correction.

Arius, then, says, “There was when he was not”; but Scripture says “was”; it does not say “was not.” Indeed John wrote: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; he was in the beginning with God.” See how many times “was,” and nowhere did he say that he “was not.” Whom, then, do we believe? John, reclining on Christ’s breast, or Arius, wallowing among his own poured-out bowels, so that we might recognize that the faithlessness of Arius too was like that of Judas the traitor, since a like punishment condemned him? For Arius’s bowels too gushed out (I am ashamed to say where), and so he burst asunder in the middle, fallen on his face, defiling the foul mouth with which he had denied Christ. For he burst, just as the apostle Peter said of Judas, that “he acquired a field with the reward of iniquity, and falling on his face he burst asunder in the middle, and all his bowels gushed out.” It is no chance death when, in equal sacrilege, an equal punishment follows as an example, so that those who denied the same Lord, and betrayed the same Lord, underwent the same penalty. Let us come to the other points. Arius says, “Before he was born he was not”; but Scripture says that all things exist through the Son. How then did he who was not give being to others? And when the impious man says “when” and “before,” these two words certainly point to time. How, then, do they deny that there was time before the Son, and yet want things belonging to time to have been before him, since this very “when” and “before” and “at some time not to have been” belongs to time? Arius says that the Son of God is from nothing. How, then, is he the Son of God? How was he begotten from the Father’s womb? How do we read that the Word was uttered from the heart, unless it is understood that, as it is written, he came forth from the inmost and inestimable secret of the Father? For a son is so either by adoption or by nature: by adoption we are called sons; he is Son by the truth of nature. How, then, is he from nothing who made all things from nothing? He does not have the Son who does not know whence he is. Indeed the Jews did not have the Son, because they did not know whence he was. And so the Lord said to them: “You do not know whence I come”; and further on: “You know neither me nor my Father.” For he who denies that the Son is from the Father does not know the Father from whom the Son is; nor does he know the Son, since he does not know the Father. Arius says: “From another substance.” What other substance, then, is equal to the Son of God, that the Son of God should be from it? Or how do they find fault with us for speaking of ousia in God in Greek, or substance in Latin, when by saying that the Son of God is from another substance they themselves confirm that God has a substance? But if they want to speak of the name of the divine substance or nature, they will easily be refuted; for Scripture has often mentioned ousia in Greek and substance in Latin. And Peter, as we read, wants us to become partakers of the divine nature. But if they say that the Son is from another substance, they refute themselves, both by confessing the word “substance,” which they fear, and by comparing the Son with the creatures above whom they pretend to place him. Arius says that the Son of God is a creature, but not like the other creatures. But what creature is not unlike another creature? Man is not like an angel, earth not like heaven, the sun not like water, light not like darkness. So by this preference he gave him nothing, but to deceive the simple he covered the fraud of his impiety with a wretched color. Arius says that the Son of God is mutable and changeable. How, then, is he God, if he is mutable, since he himself said: “I am, I am, and I have not been changed”?

But now I must make my own that prophetic confession which Isaiah puts first when he is about to prophesy of the Lord, saying: “O wretched am I, and pierced at heart, for though I have unclean lips, and dwell in the midst of a people that has unclean lips, I have seen the Lord of hosts.” If, then, Isaiah calls himself wretched, who saw the Lord of hosts, what shall I say of myself, who, though I have unclean lips, am compelled to treat of the generation of God? How then shall I burst out to speak of things I fear, when David asks for a guard on his mouth concerning things he knows? O that for me too one of the Seraphim would bring that glowing coal which he took from the divine altar with the tongs of the two Testaments, and burn my unclean lips! But since then a Seraph came down to the prophet in a figure, while you, Lord, having revealed the mystery, came to us in the flesh, not by an envoy nor by a messenger but yourself in person, cleanse my conscience from my hidden faults, so that I too, long unclean but now by your mercy made clean through faith, may sing that song of David, saying: “I will sing to you on the harp, God of Israel; my lips will rejoice when I sing to you, and my soul, which you have redeemed.” So, Lord, leave your slanderers and enemies and betake yourself to us; sanctify the ears of the prince Gratian, and of all besides into whose hands this little book may come; and give me ears that are empty, so that no filth of faithlessness once heard may linger anywhere. Cleanse, then, cleanse the ear, not with draughts from springs, nor with drinks from rivers, nor with the murmur of a passing stream, but with words that act in place of water, clearer than the brightness of waters and purer than any snow; with those words, certainly, with which you said: “If your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow.” There is also a cup with which you are accustomed to cleanse the secret places of the mind: a cup not of the old nature, nor from the customary vine, but a new cup brought down from heaven to earth, pressed from that foreign cluster which hung in the flesh from the wood of the cross as a grape hangs from the vine. From this cluster, then, comes the wine that gladdens the heart of man, that makes sobriety drunk, that breathes out the intoxication of faith and true religion, that pours in the intoxication of chastity. With this wine, my Lord, cleanse the ears of the mind of my lord Augustus, so that, as men drunk with natural wine love quiet, drive out the fear of death, do not feel injuries, do not seek what belongs to others, and forget their own, so he too, drunk with your wine, may love peace, and, secure in the exultation of faith, may know nothing of the death of unbelief, may show the patience of love, may not hold on to the sacrileges of others, and may prefer faith even to his own dear ones, according to what is written: “Leave all that is yours, and come, follow me.” With this wine, Lord Jesus, wash our senses also, that we may adore you, that we may worship you, the Creator of things visible and invisible. You cannot, then, fail to be invisible and good, since you have bestowed this even on your works.

Enough has been taught, I think, holy Emperor, in the preceding book, that the Son of God is everlasting, not unlike the Father, begotten, not created; we have also proved from the readings of the Scriptures that the Son of God is true God, marked out by the plain signs of his majesty. And so, although these things are richly abundant for faith (since the greatness of a river flowing down is usually estimated from the course of its source), yet, so that our faith may shine more purely, it seems right to draw out a threefold distinction. For there are clear signs that show the property of the deity; there are some that show the likeness of Father and Son; and there are also some that express the manifest unity of the divine majesty. The signs of property, then, are: generation, God, Son, Word; of likeness: radiance, impress, mirror, image; of eternal unity: wisdom, power, truth, life. These signs mark out the Son of God in such a way that from them you may know both that the Father is everlasting and that the Son does not differ from him. For from him who is comes generation; from the Everlasting, God; from the Father, the Son; from God, the Word; the radiance of glory, the impress of substance, the mirror of God, the image of majesty; from the good, goodness; from the wise, wisdom; from the strong, power; from the true, truth; from the living, life. The signs of Father and Son, then, agree, so that no one could doubt that they do not differ from each other but are of one majesty. We would bring forward examples of each of these names, were we not held back by the wish to keep our discourse short. With these twelve, as with precious stones, the pillar of faith rises up. For these are those precious stones, sardius, jasper, emerald, chrysolite, and the rest, with which the vestment of holy Aaron is interwoven, of Aaron, that is, who bears the figure of Christ, the true priest: stones set in gold and engraved with the names of the sons of Israel, twelve stones closely joined to one another. For if anyone separates and divides them, the whole structure of faith is dissolved. So the beginning of our faith is to know that the Son of God is begotten: if he is not begotten, neither is he Son. Nor is it enough to have said “Son” unless you also designate him the only-begotten Son. If he is a creature, he is not God; if he is not God, neither is he life; if he is not life, neither is he truth. So those three, namely generation, Son, only-begotten, principally and properly indicate that the Son is from God. The three that follow, namely God, life, truth, make manifest his power, by which he founded the creation and made it subsist: “For in him we live and move and have our being,” as Paul said. And so in those three the property of the Son is declared, and in these others the unity of the operation of Father and Son. The Son of God is also called image and radiance and impress, because these have revealed in the Son the incomprehensible and unsearchable divinity of the Father’s majesty and its expressed likeness. These three also, we see, belong to likeness. There remain power, wisdom, and justice, so that by each of these operations his eternity might be proved. This, then, is that vestment adorned with precious stones; this is the robe of the true priest; this the wedding garment; this the prophet’s weaver, who knows well how to weave these together. Nor is this weaving cheap, of which the Lord says through the prophet: “Who gave women wisdom in weaving?” Nor are these common stones, but, as we read, “stones of filling,” for all perfection lies in this, that nothing is lacking. The stones are set together and surrounded with gold, that is, with a nature perceived by the mind, if our mind sets them well together and natural sense joins them with sound reason. Indeed the reading teaches how far from ordinary these stones are: while others brought other, cheaper things, these stones the devout leaders carried on their own shoulders, and from them they made the breastpiece, a woven work. For it is a woven work when deeds agree with faith. Let no one think I am mistaken because above I made a threefold distinction of fours, and below a fourfold distinction of threes. The beauty of a good work pleases more for being in different forms. For good too is she whom the weaving of the priestly garment displays, whether the Law or the Church, who made two garments for her husband, as it is written: one of deeds, the other of mind, weaving together the coverings of faith and of deeds. And so in one place, as we read, she weaves gold first, and afterwards adds blue and purple with scarlet and fine linen. Again, elsewhere she first forms little flowers out of blue and the rest, and then attaches gold; and the priest’s attire is one, so that, gleaming with the same colors, the diversity of grace and beauty shines out in the diversity of order. And so, to set out also the sequence of the figurative meaning: there is no doubt that by gold and tested silver are designated the words of the Lord, on which faith rests. For it is written: “The words of the Lord are pure words, silver tried by fire, proved for the earth, purified seven times.” Blue has the likeness of the air, which we breathe and whose breath we draw in; purple expresses the appearance of the waters; by scarlet fire is understood; earth by fine linen, for it is produced from the earth. And from these four elements the human body consists. Whether, then, you attach the deeds of the body in harmony with the faith of the mind that goes before, or the deeds go before and faith attends them as their devout companion, this is the adornment of the devout high priest, this the covering of the priest. Good, then, is faith when it shines with the beautiful adornment of works. Of this faith, to speak in sum, these are the definitions, which cannot be undone. If he is from nothing, he is not Son; if he is a creature, he is not Creator; if he is a thing made, he is not the maker of all things; if a learner, not one who knows beforehand; if a receiver, not perfect; if one who advances, not God; if unlike, not the image; if Son by grace, not by nature; if without share in divinity, an author of evil: “No one is good but one, God.”

So I am astounded at what remains, holy Emperor, and I fail in my whole body and mind, that there should be some men, or rather not men but beings clothed in the outward form of men, yet within full of bestial madness, who after such great and such divine benefits of the Lord deny that the very author of good things is good. “It is written,” they say: “No one is good but one, God.” I acknowledge what is written. But the letter has no error; would that the Arian interpretation had none! The letters are without fault; the fault is in the sense. I acknowledge the saying of the Lord and Savior; but let us consider when he says it, to whom he says it, with what circumspection he says it. The Son of God certainly says it in the form of a man, and he says it to a scribe, that is, to one who called the Son of God “good teacher” while denying that he was God. What that man did not believe, Christ adds, so that he might believe the Son of God to be not a good teacher but a good God. For if, wherever God is said to be one, the Son of God is by no means separated from the fullness of the unity, how is the Only-begotten excluded from the fullness of the divine goodness where one God is called good? They must, then, either deny that the Son of God is God or confess that God is good. And so, with heavenly circumspection, he did not say, “No one is good but the Father alone,” but, “No one is good but one, God.” For “Father” is the proper name of the one who begets, but “one God” by no means excludes the deity of the Trinity, and so it is the nature that is praised. Goodness, then, is in the nature of God, and in the nature of God is also the Son of God; and so what is proclaimed is not what belongs to singularity but what belongs to unity. Goodness, then, is not denied to the Lord; rather, such a disciple is rebuked. For when the scribe had said, “Good teacher,” the Lord answered: “Why do you call me good?” That is: it is not enough for you to call good one whom you do not believe to be God. I do not look for disciples who believe me to be a good teacher according to the man rather than good God according to the divinity.

But I do not want him to use the prerogative of his nature and the privilege of his power. Let him not be called good by us if he does not deserve it. If he does not deserve it by his works, if he does not deserve it by his benefits, let him renounce his right of nature and submit to our judgment. He who is to judge us does not disdain to be judged, “that he may be justified in his words, and may prevail when he is judged.” Is he, then, not good who has bestowed good things on me? Is he not good who, when six hundred thousand of the Jewish people were giving way before their persecutors, suddenly split the surge of the Red Sea and divided it into an unbroken mass of waters, so that the wave poured around them might protect the faithful, and poured back might drown the faithless? Is he not good, at whose command the seas became solid for those who fled and the rocks became moist for those who thirsted, so that the work of the true author might be recognized, when water stiffened and rock flowed? So that you might recognize this as the work of Christ, the Apostle said: “And the rock was Christ.” Is he not good who fed so many countless thousands of the people in the desert with heavenly bread, lest any hunger should creep in, without the toil of labor, with the fruit of rest; so that for forty years neither their clothes grew old nor their shoes wore out, showing the faithful a likeness of the future resurrection, that neither the beauty of splendid deeds, nor the brightness of the virtue poured around them, nor the course of human life should perish? Is he not good who has made earth to be what heaven is, so that, as in heaven, as in a mirror, the orbs of the shining stars gleam, so also the choirs of apostles and martyrs and priests should shine out like gleaming stars through the whole world? So he is not only good, but also the good shepherd, that is, good not only for himself but also for his sheep: for “the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.” He clearly laid down his life to raise up ours; but by the power of his divinity he laid it down and took it up again, as it is written: “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself.” You see his goodness, because he laid it down willingly; you see his power, because he took it up again; and you deny that he is good, though he said of himself in the Gospel: “If I am good, why is your eye evil?” Ungrateful man, what are you doing? Do you deny that he is good, through whom you hope for good things, if indeed you believe? Do you deny that he is good who has given us what “eye has not seen nor ear heard”? It is to my profit to believe him good: “For it is good to trust in the Lord.” It is to my profit to confess the Lord, for it is written: “Confess to the Lord, for he is good.” It is to my profit to think my judge good; for “the Lord is a good judge to the house of Israel.” So if the Son of God is judge, then, since God the judge is good and the Son of God is judge, the good God and judge is the Son of God. But perhaps you do not believe others; you do not believe the Son: hear the Father saying: “My heart has uttered a good Word.” The Word, then, is good, this Word of which it is written: “And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” If, then, the Word is good, and the Son of God is the Word, the Son of God is certainly a good God, even if this does not please the Arians. Let them blush at last. The Jews said: “He is good.” Although some said, “He is not,” still others said, “He is good”; and all of you deny that he is good. Is he good who forgives the sin of one man, and is he not good who has taken away the sin of the world? For of him it is said: “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sin of the world.” But why do we hesitate? The Church has already believed him good and has confessed it by saying: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your breasts are better than wine”; and elsewhere: “And your throat is like the best wine.” So he, being good, nourishes us with the breasts of the Law and of grace, soothing the cares of men with heavenly preaching; and do we deny that he is good, when he is the image of goodness, expressing in himself the likeness of the eternal goodness, as we have shown above that it is written that he is “the spotless mirror and the image of his goodness”?

But what do you think, you who deny that the Son of God is good and true God, since it is written that there is no God but one? For even if there are those who are called gods, do you number Christ among those who are called gods and are not? For it is his special mark that he always is, and that besides him there is no other good and true God, since God is in him; and it is also the Father’s special mark that after him there is no other true God; for God is one, and our faith neither confuses Father and Son with the Sabellians nor separates Father and Son with the Arians. For Father and Son have distinction, as Father and Son; they do not have separation of divinity.

So since the Son of God is true and good, the Son of God is surely almighty God: can this too be doubted? We said above that it is read that “the Lord Almighty is his name.” So since the Son is Lord, and the Lord is almighty, the Son of God is almighty. But take also a reading about which you cannot be in doubt: “Behold,” it says, “he comes with the clouds, and every eye will see him, and those who pierced him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over him. Even so; amen. I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” Whom, then, did they pierce, and whom do we hope will come, if not the Son? So Christ is the almighty Lord and God. Take another, holy Emperor, and hear Christ speaking: “Thus says the Lord Almighty: After the glory he has sent me against the nations that plundered you; for he who touches you is as one who touches the apple of his eye. For behold, I lay my hand on those who plundered you, and I will rescue you; and those who plundered you will become a prey, and they will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me.” Both he who speaks is the Lord Almighty and he who sent is the Lord Almighty. Omnipotence, then, belongs both to the Father and to the Son; yet God almighty is one, because there is unity of power. And so that you may know, august Emperor, that it is Christ who spoke both in the prophet and in the Gospel, he says through Isaiah, as though foreordaining the Gospel: “I who spoke am here”; that is: I am here in the Gospel, I who spoke in the Law. Then elsewhere: “All that the Father has is mine.” What are “all things”? He was certainly not speaking of created things, for all these were made through the Son, but of what the Father has, that is, eternity, majesty, divinity, which he possessed by being born. So we cannot doubt that he who has all that the Father has (for it is written, “All that the Father has is mine”) is almighty.