On the Christian Faith 2.11–3.2

Let us too act in the way of kindness; let us persuade them of what is for their own good; let us beseech and weep before the Lord who made us. For we do not wish to conquer but to heal; we do not act with guile but warn them devoutly. Kindness often bends those whom neither strength nor reason could overcome. Indeed the Lord cured with oil and wine that man who, going down from Jericho, fell among robbers, whom he had not cured with the harsher medicines of the Law nor with the severity of the prophets. Let all, then, who wish to be healed come to him; they receive the medicine which he brought from the Father and prepared in heaven, compounded from those immortal juices. This does not spring up from the earth; for no nature has any share in this compound. For by divine counsel he took on this flesh, to show that the law of the flesh is subject to the law of the mind. He took on flesh so that he who was to teach men might conquer as man. What would it have profited me if, as God, putting forth his power, he had only shown his divinity to be inviolable? Or why should he take on flesh, except to allow himself to be tempted under the condition of my nature and infirmity? He had to be tempted, he had to suffer with me, so that I might know how, when tempted, I may conquer, and how, when suffering, I may escape. He conquered by self-control, he conquered by contempt of riches, he conquered by faith; he trampled on ambition, he put intemperance to flight, he banished wantonness. Peter saw this medicine and left his nets, that is, the instruments and resources of gain, renouncing the lust of the flesh as a rotten ship into which, like bilge water, a multitude of passions enters. Great, then, is the medicine, which not only cut away the scar of an old wound but even cut off the cause of the suffering. O faith, richer than all treasures! O medicine, more excellent for our wounds and our sins! Let us consider that it profits us to believe rightly. For it profits me to know that for my sake Christ took on my infirmities and underwent the sufferings of my body: for me he was made sin, that is, for every man; for me he was made a curse; for me and in me he was subject and subjected; for me a lamb, for me a vine, for me a stone, for me a servant, for me the son of a handmaid, for me ignorant of the day of judgment, for us not knowing the day or the hour. For how could he not know the day who made days and times? How could he be ignorant of the day of judgment who declared both the hour and the cause of the judgment to come? He was made a curse, then, not according to his divinity but according to the flesh; for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.” He hung, certainly, according to the flesh; and so he became a curse who took on our curses. He wept, so that you, man, might not weep long; he suffered injuries, so that you might not grieve over your own injury. It is a great remedy to have consolation from Christ. For he bore these things for us with great patience; and are we unable to bear them patiently for his name? Who that is attacked would not learn to forgive, when Christ, even when crucified, prayed for his persecutors? Do you see that the things you think are Christ’s weaknesses are your strengths? Why do we raise a question against him about our own remedies? Those tears wash us, that weeping cleanses us, and that doubt strengthens us, so that you may not despair if you begin to doubt. The greater the injury, the more abundant the gratitude owed. But in the very injuries recognize his divinity. He hung on the cross, and all the elements served him. The sun fled, the day set, darkness was poured over and around, the earth trembled: he who hung did not tremble. What else do these signify but reverence for their Author? You see that he is on the cross; you do not see that he gives the kingdom of God. You read that he tasted death; you do not read that he invited even the thief to paradise. You gaze at the women weeping at the tomb; you do not gaze at the angels keeping watch. You read what he said; you do not read what he did. You say that the Lord said to the Canaanite woman: “I was sent only to the sheep that have perished of the house of Israel”; you do not say that he did what she asked of him. From this you ought to understand that “sent” does not signify that he was constrained by another’s command, but that he acted by his own free judgment; otherwise you show contempt for the Father. For if, as you interpret it, Christ had come into Judea as a servant of his Father’s commands, to heal only its inhabitants, and yet he first freed the daughter of the Canaanite woman, as we read, he was certainly not carrying out another’s command but the command of his own free will. And where there is freedom of will, there is no transgression of the mission. Nor should you fear that what the Son did displeased the Father, since he himself says: “I always do the things that please him”; and elsewhere: “The works that I do, he himself does.” How, then, could what the Father himself did through the Son displease him? For God is one, as it is written, who justified circumcision by faith and uncircumcision through faith. Read everything, observe everything carefully: you will find that Christ so showed himself that God was discerned in the man. And do not take it maliciously that the Son glories in the Father, when you hear of the Father well pleased in the Son.

But if they cannot be moved by appeals to conduct, let us appeal to the judge. To whom, then, shall we go? Surely to him who holds the judgment. To the Father? But “the Father judges no one; for he has given all judgment to the Son.” He gave it, of course, by begetting, not by bestowing a favor. See how unwilling he was that you should disparage his Son, so that he gave him to you as your judge. Let us see, then, before the judgment, who has the better case, I or you. Surely it is the part of a prudent pleader first to win the judge over to himself. You honor a man, and do you not honor God? What, then, wins over the judge, honor or insult? Suppose I have sinned, which is not the case: is Christ offended by his own honor? We all sin: who, then, will deserve pardon, he who pays honor or he who offers insult? Or if reason does not move you, let at least the very sight of the judgment move you. Lift your eyes to your judge; behold who sits, with whom he sits, where he sits. Christ sits at the right hand of the Father. Or if you cannot grasp this with your eyes, hear the prophet saying: “The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand.” The Son, then, sits at the right hand of the Father. Tell me now, you who think that divine things are to be estimated from worldly ones: does he who sits at the right hand seem to you inferior? Is it an insult to the Father that he sits on the left? The Father honors, and you think it an insult? The Father wills it to be an example of love, and you think it the authority of a command? He rose from death and sits at the right hand of God. “But it was the Father,” you say, “who said it.” Take, then, a place where the Father does not say it, but the Son foretells it: “Hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power.” And he says this of the body he assumed; to this the Father says: “Sit at my right hand.” For if you ask about the eternal seat of divinity: when he was asked by Pilate whether he was the king of the Jews, he said: “For this I was born.” Hence the Apostle too counsels that it is useful for us to believe that Christ sits at the right hand of God not by command, nor by favor, but as the most beloved Son. For thus you have it: “Seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; set your minds on the things that are above.” For this is to set one’s mind on higher things: to believe that Christ sits there not as one who obeys an order but as the most beloved Son who is honored. It is on account of the body, then, that he says: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet.” But if you drag this too into a false charge, because the Father said, “I will make your enemies,” the Father also draws to the Son those whom the Son is to raise up and give life to: “For no one,” he says, “can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.” And do you say that the Son of God is subject through weakness, the Son for whom the Father draws those whom he is to raise up on the last day? Does this seem to you to be subjection, in which the kingdom is prepared for the Father, when the Father draws to the Son, and there is no room for a false charge when the Son hands over the kingdom to the Father, and neither is preferred? For these are proofs of love, that the Father hands over to the Son and the Son to the Father; for they hand over to each other in such a way that neither does he who receives acquire something not his own, nor does he who hands over lose it. To sit at the right hand is no preference, nor at the left an insult; for divinity knows no rank, is not circumscribed by any place, nor limited by times. It is we men who weigh these things with narrow minds. There is no difference of love, no division of unity. But why do we wander farther? You have looked around at everything; you have seen the judge; you have noticed the angels proclaiming him. They praise, and you find fault! The Dominions and Powers venerate him, and you raise false charges! All his saints adore: the Son of God does not adore, the Holy Spirit does not adore. The Seraphim say: “Holy, holy, holy.” What does the threefold repetition under one name of holiness mean? If it is repeated three times, why is the praise one? If the praise is one, why is it repeated three times? Why is it repeated three times, unless because Father and Son and Holy Spirit are one in holiness? He did not say it once, lest he set the Son apart; not twice, lest he pass over the Spirit; not four times, lest he join creatures to them. And to show that the deity of the Trinity is one, when he had said three times, “Holy, holy, holy,” he added in the singular: “Lord God of hosts.” Holy, then, is the Father, holy the Son, holy also the Spirit of God. The Trinity, then, is adored, it does not adore; the Trinity is praised, it does not praise. I prefer to believe as the Seraphim do, and to adore as all the heavenly Powers and Virtues do.

Let us see, then, your pleading, how you win the judge over to yourself. Speak, speak, I say: “I think, Christ, that you are unlike the Father.” He in turn will answer: “Distinguish, if you can; distinguish, I say, in what respect you think me unlike.” Say something else: “I think you a creature,” you will say. And Christ will answer: “If the testimony of two men is true, should you not have believed at least me, or the Father, who called me begotten?” “I deny,” you will say, “that you are good.” And he will say: “Be it done to you according to your faith, so that I may not be good to you.” “I do not think you almighty.” He will answer: “Then I cannot forgive you your sins.” “I say that you are subject.” To this he will reply: “Why, then, do you seek liberty and pardon from one whom you think subject as a slave?” I see your pleading stick fast. I do not press, for I am myself conscious of my sins. I do not begrudge pardon, for I myself long for indulgence. I want to know your prayer. See, I put your desires before the judge; I do not betray your crimes; I await the list of your prayers. Say, then, what is in our common prayer; say, I say: “Lord, make me in the image of God.” He will answer: “In what image? The one you denied?” Say: “Make me incorruptible.” He will certainly reply: “How can I make you incorruptible, when by calling me a creature you wanted me to be capable of corruption? The dead will rise incorrupt, and do you call him corruptible whom you see to be God?” Say: “Be good to me.” He will say to you: “Why do you ask for what you denied? I wanted you to be good; I said, Be holy, for I myself am holy; and do you strive to deny this to me? And do you expect pardon of sins? But no one can forgive sins but God alone. So since I am not for you the true and only God, I certainly cannot forgive your sins.” Let the Arian say this, and the Photinian: “I deny,” he says, “that you are God.” The Lord will answer him: “The fool has said in his heart, There is no God.” Of whom do you think this was said: of the Jew, of the pagan, or of the devil? Of whomever it was said, Photinian, he is more tolerable who kept silent; but you have dared to say it even aloud, so as to be proved more foolish than the fool. “You deny,” he says, “that I am God, when I said, You are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High? And do you deny that he is God whose divine works you see all around you?” Let the Sabellian also say: “I think that you yourself are Father and Son and Holy Spirit.” The Lord will answer: “You do not hear the Father; you do not hear the Son. Is there any confusion here? Scripture itself teaches you that it is the Father who has given the judgment and the Son who judges. Did you not hear me say: I am not alone, but I and the Father who sent me?” Let the Manichaean also say: “I believe that the devil is the author of our flesh.” He will answer him: “What, then, will you do in heaven? Go to your author. I want those to be with me whom the Father has given me. You think, Manichaean, that you were created by the devil: hasten, then, to his abode, where there is fire and sulfur, where his burning is not quenched, so that the punishment never dies.” I pass over the other monstrosities of the heretics, not their names: what judgment will there be for them, what will be the form of the sentence? He will answer all of them with gentle reproach: “My people, what have I done to you, or in what have I grieved you? Did I not bring you out of Egypt and free you from the house of slavery?” But it is a small thing to have freed us from Egypt and rescued us from the house of slavery; it is more to have given yourself for us. You will say, then: “Did I not take on all your injuries? Did I not offer my body for you? Did I not seek death, which belonged not to my divinity but to your redemption? Is this the thanks that is returned? Is this what my blood has achieved, as I myself already said in the prophet: What profit is there in my blood, since I went down into corruption? Has it achieved this, that you should impiously deny me, you for whom I endured these things?” But I, Lord Jesus, though I am myself conscious of grievous sins, will nevertheless say then: “I have not denied you; you have the frailty of the flesh to forgive. I confess my fault; I do not deny my sin: If you will, you can make me clean” (for the man who said this obtained his cure). “Do not, I pray, enter into judgment with your servant.” I do not ask that you judge, but that you forgive.

What do we think Christ will judge? Do I say “will judge”? He has already judged. We have his sentence: “Let all,” he says, “honor the Son as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.” If the sentence displeases you, appeal to the Father; rescind the judgment which the Father has handed over. Say that he has an unlike Son. He will answer you: “Then I lied when I said to the Son, Let us make man in our image and likeness.” Say that he created him. He will answer you: “Why, then, did you worship one whom you thought a creature?” Say that he begot a lesser Son. He will answer: “Measure him; let us see.” Say that you ought not to have believed him. He will reply to this: “Did I not tell you: This is my most beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; listen to him?” What is “listen to him”? Surely to him when he says: “All that the Father has is mine.” The apostles heard this, as it is written: “And they fell on their faces and were very much afraid.” If those fell who confessed him, what will those do who denied him? But Jesus touched them and raised them up; you he will let lie, so that you may not see the glory you denied. Let us see, then, that whom the Son condemns, the Father also condemns. And so let us honor the Son as we honor the Father, so that through the Son we may come to the Father.

These things, august Emperor, I have set forth piecemeal and briefly, unpolished rather than disentangled and arranged. But if the Arians think some points incomplete, I confess that they are scarcely begun; if they think that some still remain, I think that almost everything remains; for to the faithless everything is lacking, while for the faithful there is abundance. Indeed Peter’s one confession was abundantly sufficient for faith in Christ: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”; for it is enough to know the divine generation: not divided, not diminished, not derivative, not created. This is set forth in whole books of the Scriptures, and still it is not believed by the impious: “For the heart of this people has grown fat,” as it is written, “and they have heard heavily with their ears, and have closed their eyes, lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart.” For in the Jewish manner the Arians are accustomed to shut their ears, or to stir up an uproar, whenever the word of salvation is heard. And what wonder if the unbelieving do not usually believe human voices, when they do not believe divine ones? The Son of God said, as you have in the Gospel: “Father, glorify your name.” The voice of the Father was heard from heaven, saying: “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.” The unbelievers heard this but did not believe. The Son spoke, the Father answered; and the Jews said, “It thundered to him”; others said, “An angel spoke to him.” Paul too, as it is written in the Acts of the Apostles, when he was being called to grace by the voice of Christ, and several companions were travelling with him, alone said that he had heard the voice of Christ. So true is it, holy Emperor, that he who believes hears, and hears in order to believe; he who does not believe does not hear, and neither wishes nor is able to hear, lest he should believe. And would that, as far as lies in me, they were willing to hear in order to believe; to hear with good charity and gentleness, as those who seek what is true, not as those who attack the truth. For it is written that we should not give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which promote questions rather than the edification of God which is in faith. “Now the end of the commandment is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned; from which some, having strayed, have turned aside to vain talk, wishing to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertions.” Elsewhere too the same Apostle says: “But avoid foolish and undisciplined questions.” The Apostle says that such people, who sow questions, are to be shunned, that is, heretics; of whom he says elsewhere that some will depart from the faith, giving heed to spirits of error and doctrines of demons. And John says that heretics are antichrists, surely designating the Arians. For this heresy began after all the heresies and gathered poisons from every heresy. For as it is written of the Antichrist that he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name and to make war on his saints, so these too disparage the Son of God, and they have not spared the martyrs; and, what perhaps he will not do, they have tampered with the divine Scriptures. So he who says that Jesus is not the Christ, he is the Antichrist; he who denies the Savior of the world denies Jesus; he who denies the Son denies the Father also; for it is written: “Everyone who denies the Son denies the Father also.”

But I must not detain you longer, Emperor, intent as you are on war and planning victorious trophies over the barbarians. Go forth, then, protected by the shield of faith and holding the sword of the Spirit; go forth to the victory promised in former times and prophesied by divine oracles. For Ezekiel already in that distant time prophesied both our coming devastation and the wars of the Goths; for you have it thus: “Therefore prophesy, son of man, and say: O Gog, thus says the Lord: On that day, when my people Israel is established to dwell in peace, will you not rise up and come from your place, from the far north, and many nations with you, all of them riders on horses, a great and mighty assembly and a numerous force; and go up against my people Israel like clouds to cover the land in the last days,” and so on. That Gog is the Goth, whom we already see gone forth, over whom victory is promised us to come, as the Lord says: “And they will plunder those who had plundered them, and despoil those who had carried off spoils for themselves, says the Lord. And it will be on that day: I will give to Gog” (that is, to the Goths) “a place of renown, a tomb in Israel, a heap of many men who came against the sea; and he will build up the mouth of the valley all around, and will bury Gog there and all his multitude, and it will be called Ge Polyandrium of Gog; and the house of Israel will bury them, so that the land may be cleansed.” Nor is there any doubt, holy Emperor, that we who have borne the onslaught of another’s faithlessness will have the help of the catholic faith that flourishes in you. For plainly a cause of divine wrath went before: that faith in the Roman Empire should be broken first in that place where it was broken toward God. I have no wish to recall the deaths of confessors, the tortures, the exiles, the offices of devout bishops made the rewards of traitors. Have we not heard that from the parts of Thrace, through Ripensian Dacia and Moesia and all Valeria of the Pannonians, that whole frontier bristled alike with sacrilegious voices and barbarian movements? What could so deadly a neighborhood bring upon us, or how could the Roman state be safe under such a guard? But already, almighty God, we have washed away, sufficiently and more than enough, by our exile and our blood, the deaths of confessors, the exiles of priests, and the crime of so great an impiety; it has become quite clear that those who violated the faith cannot be safe. Turn, O Lord, and raise the standards of your faith. Here it is not the military eagles nor the flight of birds that lead the army, but your name, Lord Jesus, and your worship. Here it is not some faithless region, but Italy, which is accustomed to send out confessors; Italy, at times tempted, never changed; which you long ago defended from the barbarian enemy and now have also avenged. Here there is no slippery mind in the emperor, but a fixed faith. Show now a clear sign of your majesty, so that he who believes you to be the true Lord of hosts and commander of the heavenly army, he who believes you to be the true power and wisdom of God, not temporal and not created, but, as it is written, the everlasting power and divinity of God, may, supported by the help of your majesty, win the trophies of his faith.

Since, most clement Emperor, you had commanded me to write something about the faith for your instruction, and had yourself even urged me in person when I hesitated, I wrote, as one standing ready for battle, only two little books, in which I might point out certain ways and paths of the faith. But since the perverse mind of some, intent on sowing questions, provokes me to contend with a fuller pen, and the devout care of your clemency also calls me to the rest, wishing to test in more what you approved in few, I have decided to treat a little more fully what was touched on briefly above, lest we should seem to have abandoned it from distrust of our assertion rather than to have set it forth with confident security. And since we introduced a comparison with the name of the Hydra and the shore of Scylla, to show that the reviving shoots of faithlessness, or its notorious shipwrecks, are to be shunned: if anyone thinks it unlawful to draw the coloring of such a discussion from the fables of the poets, and, finding nothing to blame in the faith, finds fault with something in the style, let him recognize that not only the thoughts but even the verses of the poets have been inserted into the divine Scriptures. For whence comes that saying, “For we are also his offspring,” which Paul, taught by prophetic usage, makes use of? For the course of prophetic speech does not shrink from the giants and the valley of the Titans either. And Isaiah spoke of Sirens and of daughters of sparrows. And Jeremiah said of Babylon that the daughters of Sirens will dwell in it, to show that the allurements of Babylon, that is, of worldly confusion, are to be compared to the fables of ancient wantonness; for these seemed to sing on the rocky shore of this life a sweet but deadly song to capture the minds of young men; and the Greek poet himself relates that the wise man passed them by as though bound with the cords of his own prudence. So difficult was it judged, before the coming of Christ, for even the stronger not to be captured by the delights of a specious pleasure! But if that poet judged the allurement of worldly wantonness to be pernicious to the minds of men and liable to bring them to shipwreck, what ought we to think, to whom it is written: “Make no provision for the flesh in its lusts”? And elsewhere: “I chastise my body and bring it into subjection, lest, having preached to others, I myself should become reprobate.” For Christ brought us salvation not through luxury but through fasting. Nor did he fast to earn grace for himself, but to instruct us. Nor was he overcome by the weakness of the body so as to hunger; but by hungering he gave proof of the body he had assumed, so as to teach that he had taken on not only the body but also the weaknesses of our body, as it is written: “For he took on our infirmities and bore our sicknesses.”

It belongs to the body, then, that is, it is ours, that he hungered; it is ours that he wept, that he was sorrowful even to death. Why are things that are ours referred to the divinity? It belongs to the body that he is also said to have been made. Indeed you have it thus: “Mother Zion will say: A man, and a man was made in her, and the Most High himself founded her.” “A man,” it says, “was made,” not “God was made.” And who is both the Most High and a man, if not the Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a redemption for us? And this certainly belongs to the incarnation; for our redemption is through his blood, remission through his power, life through his grace. As the Most High he gives; as man he prays: the one belongs to the Creator, the other to the Redeemer. Though they are distinct, they are the benefits of one author; for it was fitting that he who created us should redeem us. And who would deny that Christ is signified as the Most High? For whoever thinks otherwise ascribes the mystery of the incarnation to God the Father. But from this it cannot be doubted that Christ is the Most High, since elsewhere too it says of the mystery of the passion: “The Most High gave his voice, and the earth was moved.” And in the Gospel you have: “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways.” Who is the Most High? The Son of God. So the Most High God is Christ. And certainly, when God is said to be alone, the Son of God is not separated from him. For he who is the Most High is alone, as it is written: “And let them know that your name is Lord; you alone are Most High over all the earth.” Hence also that argument is exploded which they are accustomed to divert into a false charge, because it is written of God, “who alone has immortality and dwells in light unapproachable”; for this is written of God, which is a name common to the Father and the Son. For if wherever they read “God” they deny that the Son too is designated, they are both impious in denying the power of divinity to the Son, and they will seem, with the Sabellian impiety, to assert that the Father was incarnate. For let them say how they could understand of the Father, without impiety, what the Apostle says: “In whom you also rose again through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead”; and let them notice from what follows what they incur; for it continues: “And when you were dead in sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, he gave us life together with him, forgiving us all our sins, blotting out the handwriting of the decree that was against us, which was contrary to us; and he took it out of the way, nailing it to the cross, stripping himself of the flesh.” So it is not God the Father alone who is to be understood as having raised the flesh, and not also the Son, whose temple was raised. He who raised also gave life; he who gave life also forgave sins; he who forgave sins also took away the handwriting; he who took away the handwriting nailed it to the cross; he who nailed it to the cross stripped himself of the flesh. But the Father did not strip himself of flesh; for it was not the Father who was made flesh, but the Word, as we read, was made flesh. You see, then, that the Arians, while they separate the Son from the Father, fall into the danger of saying that the Father suffered. But we easily show that this is said of the working of the Son; for he himself raised his own body, as he himself said: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” And he gives us life together with his own body: “For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.” And he forgave sins, saying: “Your sins are forgiven you.” And he nailed the handwriting to the cross, he who was crucified through the passion of his body. Nor did anyone else strip himself of the flesh but the Son of God, who put on the flesh. It is he, then, who is signified as God, who accomplished the work of our resurrection.