On the Christian Faith 2.5–2.10

Nor do I fear that, because it is written of God, “blessed and only Potentate,” the Son of God would be separated from him; for Scripture said that God is the only Potentate, not the Father only; and God the Father himself declares of Christ through the prophet: “I have laid help upon one who is mighty.” The Father, then, is not alone mighty; God the Son too is mighty; for in the Father the Son also is praised. Certainly let someone show what there is that the Son of God cannot do. Who was his helper when he made heaven? Who was his helper when he founded the world? Did he who needed no helper in establishing the Angels and the Dominions need one to free man? “It is written,” they say: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” And so, if he is almighty, how does he doubt about what is possible? Well, since I have proved him almighty, I have surely proved that he cannot doubt about what is possible. “They are the words of Christ,” you say. You say what is true; but notice when, and in what form, he speaks. He bore the substance of a man; he took on the affections of a man. Indeed you have, just before, that “going a little farther he fell on his face, praying and saying: Father, if it is possible.” He speaks, then, not as God but as man; for did God not know whether something was possible or impossible? Or is anything impossible to God, when it is written: “For nothing is impossible to you”? About whom, then, does he doubt? About himself, or about the Father? Surely about him to whom he says, “Let it pass”; and he doubts with the affection of a man. So the prophet does not think anything impossible to God. The prophet does not doubt, and do you believe that the Son doubts? Do you set God below men? And does God doubt about the Father, and is he afraid of death? Does Christ, then, fear; and while Peter does not fear, does Christ fear? Peter says: “I will lay down my life for you”; Christ says: “My soul is troubled.” Both are true, and both are full of reason: that he who is the inferior does not fear, and he who is the superior bears the affection of one who fears. For the one, as man, does not know the power of death; the other, as God set in a body, displays the frailty of the flesh, so that the impiety of those who forswear the sacrament of the incarnation might be shut out. And indeed he said these things, and yet the Manichaean did not believe, Valentinus denied, Marcion judged it a phantom. So far did he make the man, whom he showed by the reality of his body, equal to us in affection, that he said: “Yet not as I will, but as you will”; though surely it belongs to Christ to will in the same way what the Father wills, as it belongs to him to do in the same way what the Father does. At this point that question of yours also falls silent, which you are accustomed to raise because the Lord said: “Not as I will, but as you will”; and elsewhere: “I came down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.”

So, granting for a little while a truce, as it were, to a fuller explanation of why he said, “If it is possible,” let us meanwhile show that the Lord was of free will. Have you gone so far in impiety as to deny that the Son of God is of free will? You are certainly accustomed to disparage the Holy Spirit too, and yet you cannot deny that it is written: “The Spirit breathes where he wills.” “Where he wills,” it says, not where he is commanded. If, then, the Spirit breathes where he wills, does the Son not do what he wills? And certainly it is the same Son of God who in his Gospel says that the Spirit has the power to breathe where he wills. Does he, then, confess the Spirit his superior, because the Spirit may do what he himself may not? The Apostle too says that “one and the same Spirit works all things, distributing to each as he wills.” “As he wills,” he says, that is, by the judgment of free will, not by the compliance of necessity. And the Spirit distributes no ordinary things, but what God is accustomed to work: the grace of healings and the working of miracles. Does the Spirit, then, distribute as he wills, and does the Son of God not set free whom he wills? But hear that he himself also does what he wills. For he said: “I willed to do your will, my God.” And elsewhere: “I will sacrifice to you willingly.” The holy apostle Peter knew that Jesus had in his power whatever he willed; and so when he saw him walking on the sea, he said: “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the waters.” Peter believed that if Christ commanded, the condition of nature could be changed, so that the wave would submit to human footsteps and natures at variance could be joined in harmony. Peter asks Christ to command, not to pray; Christ did not pray but commanded, and it was done; and does Arius contradict? Yet what is there that the Father wills and the Son does not will, or the Son wills and the Father does not will? The Father gives life to whom he wills, and the Son gives life to whom he wills, as it is written. Tell me now whom the Son has given life to whom the Father did not will to give life. And since the Son gives life to whom he wills, and the operation is one, do you see that not only does the Son do the Father’s will, but the Father also does the Son’s will? And what is giving life, if not through the Son’s passion? But the passion of Christ is the will of the Father. Those, then, to whom the Son gives life, he gives life through the Father’s will. The will, then, is one. And what is the Father’s will, if not that Jesus should come into this world and cleanse us from our sins? Hear the leper saying: “If you will, you can make me clean.” Christ answered, “I will,” and at once the healing followed. Do you see that the Son is master of his own will, and that Christ’s will is the same as the Father’s? Indeed, since he said, “All that the Father has is mine,” then without doubt, since nothing is excepted, the Son has the same will that the Father has.

There is one will, then, where there is one operation; for in God the course of willing is the effect of working. But the will of man is one thing, the will of God another. Indeed, so that you may know that clinging to life belongs to the will of man, because we fear death, but that the passion of Christ belongs to the divine will, that he should suffer for us: when Peter wished to call him back from the passion, the Lord said: “You do not mind the things of God, but the things of men.” He took on, then, my will; he took on my sorrow. I name sorrow with confidence, because I preach the cross. Mine is the will which he called his own; for as man he took on my sorrow, as man he spoke; and so he says: “Not as I will, but as you will.” Mine is the sorrow which he took on with my feelings; for no one about to die exults. He suffers with me, he is sad for me, he grieves for me. So for me and in me he grieved, he who had nothing to grieve for on his own account. You grieve, then, Lord Jesus, not for your own wounds but for mine; not for your own death but for our infirmity, as the prophet says: “For he grieves for us; and we, Lord, thought that you were in pains,” when you grieved not for yourself but for me. And what wonder if he grieved for all, who wept for one? What wonder if he is weary when about to die for all, who weeps when about to raise Lazarus? But there he is moved by the tears of a loving sister, because he was touched in his human mind; and here he works with a deep feeling, so that, as his death took away death and his bruise healed our wounds, so his sorrow might abolish our sorrow. As man, then, he doubts; as man he is troubled. His power is not troubled, his divinity is not troubled; but his soul is troubled; he is troubled according to the human frailty he assumed. And so, because he took on a soul, he took on also the passions of the soul; for God, inasmuch as he was God, could not have been troubled or have died. Indeed, “God, my God,” he says, “why have you forsaken me?” As man, then, he speaks, carrying about my fears; for when we are placed in dangers we think ourselves forsaken by the Lord. As man he is troubled, as man he weeps, as man he is crucified. For so the apostle Paul too said that they crucified the flesh of Christ. And elsewhere the apostle Peter says: “Christ having suffered in the flesh.” It was the flesh, then, that suffered, while the divinity is free from death; the body yielded to suffering by the law of human nature. Or can the divinity die, when the soul cannot? “Do not fear,” he says, “those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” If, then, the soul cannot be killed, how can the divinity? Hence, as to what is read, that the Lord of majesty was crucified, let us not think that he was crucified as in his majesty; but because the same is God and the same is man, God by divinity and man by the assumption of flesh, Jesus Christ is said to be the Lord of majesty crucified, because, sharing in both natures, that is, the human and the divine, he underwent the passion in the nature of man; so that he who suffered is called without distinction both the Lord of majesty and the Son of Man who, as it is written, came down from heaven.

It was through the nature of man, then, that he both doubted and was weary, and rose again; for what fell is what rises again. It is through the nature of man that he also says the words on which they are accustomed to build their false charge, because it is said: “For the Father is greater than I.” But since it is said elsewhere, “I came forth from the Father and have come into the world; again I leave the world and go to the Father,” how does he go except through death, and how does he come except through the resurrection? Indeed he added, to make plain that he had spoken of what he assumed: “And now I have told you before it happens, so that when it has happened you may believe.” For he was speaking of the passion of his body, and of the resurrection, through which those who before had doubted began to believe; for God, who is always everywhere, does not pass from place to place. It is as man that he goes; it is he who comes. Indeed elsewhere he says: “Rise, let us go hence.” He goes and comes, then, in that which he has in common with us. For how can God be less, when God is perfect and full? But he is less in the nature of man; and do you wonder if in the person of man he called the Father greater, when in the person of man he said that he was a worm and not a man? For he said: “But I am a worm and not a man”; and elsewhere: “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter.” If you call him less in this respect, I cannot deny it; but, to use the word of Scripture, he was not born less but was made less, that is, he was made lower. And how was he made lower, except that “though he was in the form of God, he did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself”? He did not give up what he was, but took on what he was not; for he took the form of a servant. Indeed, so that we might know that he was made lower by taking a body, David showed that he was prophesying of a man, saying: “What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you visit him? You have made him a little lower than the angels.” And the Apostle, interpreting this very text, says: “For we see Jesus, made a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, that apart from God he might taste death for all.” The Son of God, then, was made lower not only than the Father but also than the angels. And if you drag this to his prejudice, is the Son, then, in the nature of God lower than his own angels, who serve and minister to him? So while you wish to assert that he is less, you fall into impiety, so that you prefer the nature of angels to the Son of God. But “the servant is not above his lord.” Indeed, angels ministered to him even when he was set in the flesh, so that you may recognize that he was in no way diminished by the nature of the body; for God could not suffer loss of himself, since what he assumed from the Virgin is neither an increase nor a diminution of the divine power. He, then, is not less according to divinity who has the fullness of divinity and glory. For greater and less are usually distinguished in things that are bodily: one is greater in stature, or in bulk, or certainly in age. These have no place when the discussion is brought to divine things. For he is commonly called greater who instructs and forms someone; but it does not apply to the Wisdom of God to be instructed by another’s teaching, since it has itself handed on the ordering of all teaching. And how well the Apostle put it, “that apart from God he might taste death for all,” lest we should think that the passion belonged to the divinity and not to the flesh! So if they have not found how they could prove the Father greater, let them not raise false charges on words, but seek the meaning of the words. So I ask them in what respect they think him greater. If they think him greater because he is the Father: but here there is no age and time, no gray hair of the father and boyhood of the son; for it is these that usually make a father greater. Otherwise, father and son are names of the one who begets and the one who is born; they seem not to separate but to join; for natural affection is no detriment, since kinship unites men to one another and does not separate them. So if they cannot raise any question about the nature, let them at least believe the testimonies. Indeed the evangelist testifies that the Son is not less because he is Son; and he indicates that he is equal because he is Son, saying: “For this reason the Jews sought to kill him, because he not only broke the Sabbath, but also called God his own Father, making himself equal to God.” It is not the Jews who say this; the Evangelist testifies that he made himself equal to God by calling himself God’s own Son. For it is not written as from the person of the Jews saying, “For this reason we sought to kill him”; but the evangelist says in his own person: “For this reason the Jews sought to kill him.” And he explained the cause: that the Jews were moved to kill him because, in both breaking the Sabbath as God and claiming God the Father as his own, he took to himself not only the majesty of divine power in breaking the Sabbath but also, in the name of his own Father, the right of eternal equality. To them the Son of God answered most fittingly, so as to prove himself both Son of God and equal: “Whatever the Father does,” he says, “the Son also does likewise.” The Son, then, is both called and proved equal to the Father. A good equality, which both excludes a difference of divinity and, with the Son, points to the Father to whom the Son is equal; for equality is neither diverse nor solitary, since no one is equal to himself alone. So the Evangelist explained what it is to call oneself God’s own Son: that is, to make oneself equal to God. Following this, the Apostle said: “He did not think it robbery to be equal with God.” For what a person does not have, he tries to seize. So he did not hold as robbery the equality with the Father which he possessed in his own substance as God and Lord. Hence he added: “He took the form of a servant.” A servant and an equal are certainly contraries. Equal, then, in the form of God; less in the assumption of flesh and in the passion of man. For how could the same nature be both less and equal? And how, if he is less, does he likewise do the same things that the Father does? For how could the same operation belong to different powers? Can the less work in the same way as the greater? Or can there be one operation where the substance is diverse? So take this: Christ cannot be called less according to divinity. He himself speaks to Abraham: “By myself I have sworn.” And the Apostle shows that he who swears by himself cannot be less. For he says thus: “When God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying: Surely blessing I will bless you and multiplying I will multiply you.” Christ, then, had no one greater, and so he swore by himself. And he rightly added: “For men swear by one greater than themselves”; for men have one greater, God has not. Or, if they want it to be understood as said of the Father, the rest does not fit; for the Father was not seen by Abraham, nor did Abraham wash the feet of God the Father, but of him in whom was the figure of the man that was to be. Indeed the Son of God says: “Abraham saw my day and was glad.” It is he, then, who swore by himself, whom Abraham saw. And truly, how does he have one greater, who in divinity is one with the Father? For what is one is not unlike; but between greater and less there is distinction. So the example of the present reading teaches about the Son and the Father that neither does the Father have one less, nor the Son of God one greater, since in Father and Son there is no difference of divinity but one majesty.

Nor do I fear in the least the argument they are accustomed to put forward, that he is less because he was sent. For if he is not taught to be less, and equality of honor is taught, since all are to honor the Son as they honor the Father, it is plain that he is not less because he was sent. Do not look, then, at the narrowness of human speech, but at the clear sense of the words; believe the works. Consider that our Lord Jesus Christ said in Isaiah that he was sent by the Holy Spirit. Is the Son, then, less than the Spirit because he was sent by the Spirit? You have it written, then, that the Son says he was sent by the Father and his Spirit: “I am,” he says, “the first, and I am for ever; and my hand founded the earth, my right hand established the heaven”; and further on: “I have spoken, and I have called; I brought him, and made his way prosperous. Come near to me and hear this: I have not spoken in secret from the beginning. When they were made, I was there; and now the Lord has sent me, and his Spirit.” Certainly he who made heaven and earth himself says that he was sent by the Lord and by his Spirit. You see, then, that this is simplicity of speech, not an injury done by sending. He, then, is sent by the Father; he is sent by the Spirit. And so that you may know that there is no difference of majesty, the Son also sends the Spirit, as he himself said: “But when the Paraclete comes, whom I shall send you from my Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from my Father.” He taught earlier that this same Paraclete was to be sent by the Father as well, saying: “But that Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name.” See the unity: whom God the Father sends, the Son also sends; and whom the Father sends, the Spirit also sends. Or, if they will not have the Son sent, since we read that the Son is the right hand of the Father, they will confess of the Father what they refuse of the Son, unless perhaps the Arians invent for themselves either another Father or another Son. Let empty questions about words, then, fall silent; for the kingdom of God, as it is written, is not in persuasiveness of speech but in demonstration of power. Let us keep the distinction between divinity and flesh. The one Son of God speaks in both, because both natures are in the same person; and though it is the same who speaks, he does not always speak in one manner. Observe in him now the glory of God, now the passions of man. As God he speaks what is divine, because he is the Word; as man he says what is human, because he was speaking in my substance. “This is the living bread which came down from heaven.” This bread is flesh, as he himself said: “This bread which I shall give is my flesh.” This is he who came down from heaven; this is he whom the Father sanctified and sent into this world. The very letter teaches us that it was not the divinity that needed sanctification but the flesh. Indeed the Lord himself said: “And I sanctify myself for them,” so that you may recognize that he is both sanctified in the flesh for us and sanctifies by his divinity. This same is he whom the Father sent, but “made from a woman, made under the Law,” as the Apostle said. This is he who says: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; he has sent me to preach good news to the poor.” This is he who says: “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. If anyone wills to do his will, he will know about the teaching, whether it is from God or whether I speak from myself.” One teaching, then, is from God, another from man. So when the Jews were inquiring into his teaching according to the man and were saying, “How does this man know letters, when he has not learned?” Jesus answered and said: “My teaching is not mine”; for since he teaches without the learning of letters, he seems to teach not as man but rather as God, who did not learn his teaching but found it out. For “he found out every way of discipline,” as was read above; for certainly it was said of the Son of God: “This is our God, and no other will be reckoned in comparison with him, who found out every way of discipline. After this he was seen on earth and lived among men.” How, then, does he not have his own teaching according to divinity, who found out every way of discipline before he was seen on earth? Or how is he less, of whom it is said, “No other will be reckoned in comparison with him”? Surely he is called incomparable, with whom no other can be reckoned; but incomparable in such a way that he cannot be set above the Father. But if they think this was said of the Father, they will not escape the impiety of Sabellius, so as to attribute to the Father the assumption of human flesh. Let us follow what comes next: “He who speaks from himself,” he says, “seeks his own glory.” See the unity, which points to both the Father and the Son. He who speaks cannot not exist; but what he speaks cannot be from himself, in whom all things are by nature from the Father. And what is “seeks his own glory”? That is, a glory not divided from the Father; for certainly the Word, being God, has glory. Indeed he says: “That they may see my glory.” But that glory of the Word is the same as the glory of the Father, as it is written: “The Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.” So according to divinity the Son of God has his own glory in such a way that the glory of Father and Son is one. He is not, then, less in splendor, because the glory is one; not less in divinity, because the fullness of divinity is in Christ. “And how,” you say, “is it written: Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son?” He who says this, you say, needs glorifying. Your eyes reach only so far; you have not read the rest; for it continues: “that your Son may glorify you.” Does the Father too need it, then, who is to be glorified by the Son?

In the same way they are accustomed to raise the objection of the Son’s obedience, because it is written: “And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death.” He both put “man” first and said “to death,” so that we might understand that the obedience unto death belonged not to the divinity but to the incarnation, in which he took on both our duties and our names. We have learned, then, that the power of the Trinity is one, as he taught us both in the passion itself and after it; for the Son suffers through the mystery of the body, the Holy Spirit is poured into the apostles, the spirit is commended into the hands of the Father, and God the Father too is named with a loud voice. We have learned that the image of Father and Son is one, the likeness one, the sanctification one. We have learned that the operation is one, the glory one, and the divinity also one. One, then, and the only God; for it is written: “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.” One God, not so that the same is Father and Son, as the impious Sabellius asserts, but because the divinity of Father and Son and Holy Spirit is one; and where the divinity is one, the will is one, the command is one. Indeed, so that you may know that there is a Father and there is a Son, and that the work of Father and Son is one, follow the Apostle, who said: “Now may God himself, our Father, and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you.” He speaks of the Father and he speaks of the Son; but there is unity of direction, because there is unity of power. So you have it elsewhere too: “Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal consolation and good hope in grace, console your hearts and strengthen them.” What great unity he shows, in that the consolation is one and not plural! Let faithlessness, then, fall silent; or if it is not overcome by reason, let it be bent by moral kindness. Let us consider how the Lord acted for our moral instruction, so as to teach us not only faith but also conduct. For when he was set in the form of man, he was subject to Joseph and Mary. Was he, then, less even than human beings, because he was subject? One thing belongs to dutiful love, another to power; but dutiful love does not prejudice power. In what respect, then, do you read that he was subject to the Father? Surely in the body, in which he was subject to his mother.