On the Christian Faith 3.16–4.4

Let no one be afraid, let no one be in dread: he who threatens confers more on the faithful. The flatteries of the faithless are poisonous, and they are most to be guarded against when they pretend to preach what they deny. So those were deceived before who believed easily, and fell into the snares of faithlessness where they believed the faith to be the same. “Whoever says,” they say, “that Christ is a creature like the other creatures, let him be anathema.” The simple heard and believed; for “the innocent,” as it is written, “believes every word.” They heard, then, and believed, deceived at first by the sound; and like birds intent on the bait of faith, they did not beware of the snare stretched out for them. So while they followed faith, they touched the hook of an abominable fraud. And so: “Be wise as serpents,” he says, “and simple as doves”; wisdom is put first, so that simplicity may be safe. For there are Gospel serpents, who put off their old habit in order to put on new conduct, as it is written: “Stripping off the old man with his deeds, and putting on the new, according to the image of him who created him.” Let us learn, then, having put off the slough of the old man, the ways of the Gospel serpents, so that like serpents we may know how to guard the head and beware of fraud. It would have been enough to say: “Whoever says that Christ is a creature, let him be anathema.” Why, Arian, do you mix poison with the good of a confession, so as to contaminate the whole body? For by adding “like the other creatures,” you do not deny that Christ is a creature; you say that he is an unlike creature; for you call him a creature, even if you assert that he is more excellent than the other creatures. Indeed Arius, the master of this impiety, said that the Son of God is a perfect creature, but not like the other creatures. You see, then, that you have used your father’s inherited language? It is enough to deny that he is a creature; what need was there to add, “but not like the other creatures”? Cut off what has rotted, lest the contagion spread: it has poison; it brings death. Next, you sometimes call Christ God; but call him true God in such a way that you assign to him the fullness of the Father’s divinity; for there are those who are called gods, whether in heaven or on earth. He is not, then, to be named God perfunctorily, but in such a way that you proclaim in the Son the same divinity that the Father has, as it is written: “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son also to have life in himself.” He gave it, of course, as to a Son through generation, not as to one in need through grace. “And he has given him power to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man.” See what he added, lest you should raise a false charge from the word. You read “Son of Man,” and do you argue that he is a receiver? Deny that he is God, then, if not all things that are God’s are ascribed to the Son; for since he said, “All that the Father has is mine,” why do you not confess that all things that belong to the divine nature are in the Son as well? For he who says, “All that the Father has is mine,” what does he except as something he does not have? Why do you make much of it, with rhetorical emphasis rather than in the language of faith, that he raised the dead, crossed seas on foot, and cured the infirmities of men? For these he granted even to his servants. I marvel at these things more in men, that he gave them such power. I want to hear something of Christ that is special to Christ, that cannot be shared with things that are created: that he is begotten, that he is the only Son of God, that he is true God from true God, that he sits at the right hand of the Father. Wherever I read of the session of the Father and the Son, the Son always sits at the right hand. Is the Son, then, better than the Father? We do not say that; but him whom the love of God honors, human wickedness disparages. The Father knew that questions would be sown about the Son, and he gave us an example of love to follow, so that we should not disparage the Son.

In one place only did Stephen say that he saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God. Learn this too, so that you raise no question from it. For why is he everywhere shown sitting at the right hand, and in one place read of as standing? He sits as judge of the living and the dead; he stands as advocate of his own. He stood, then, as priest, when he was offering to the Father the sacrifice of a good martyr; he stood as the president of so great a contest, about to award the prize to a good wrestler. Receive the Spirit of God, you too, so that you may distinguish these things, as Stephen received him; and say as the martyr said: “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” He who has the heavens opened sees Jesus at the right hand of God; he who has the eyes of his mind closed does not see Jesus at the right hand of God. Let us confess, then, Jesus at the right hand, so that heaven may be opened for us too. Those who confess otherwise close heaven to themselves. But if any object that the Son was standing, let them show that the Father was sitting in this place. For although he said that the Son of Man was standing, he did not mention in this place that the Father was sitting. And so that it might be recognized more clearly that standing is no injury but power, Stephen besought the Son to commend him further to the Father, saying: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” And to show that the power of Father and Son is the same, he repeated, saying: “Lord, do not lay this sin against them.” This the Lord, in his own passion, says to the Father as Son of Man; this Stephen too, in his martyrdom, asks of the Son of God. When the same grace is asked of the Father and the Son, the same power is declared. Or if they want Stephen to have said this to the Father, let them see what they signify by their own testimony. Though these things do not trouble us, let those who place everything in the letter and in the order notice that the Son was asked first. But we show, even according to their interpretation, the unity of the majesty of Father and Son; for when the Father and the Son are asked, the equality of the prayer points to a unity of operation. But if it does not please them that “Lord” was said to the Son, we see that they are trying to deny that he is even Lord. But now, since the crown of so great a martyr has come forth, let us relax the efforts of the contest and take a rest from today’s discourse. Let us follow the holy martyr with praises, as was fitting after great contests: bloodied indeed by the wounds of the adversary, but crowned with the rewards of Christ.

As I consider, august Emperor, how the human race has gone so far astray that many (woe is me!) have followed different views about the Son of God, it seems to me not at all surprising that human knowledge has erred about heavenly things, but that it has not rendered obedience to the Scriptures. For what wonder is it if men could not grasp by the wisdom of the world the mystery of God the Father and of the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, which not even the angels could know except by revelation? For who could follow by opinion rather than by faith the Lord Jesus, now passing from the heights of heaven into the underworld, now rising again from the underworld to heavenly things; suddenly emptied, to dwell in us, yet never diminished, since the Son was always in the Father and the Father in the Son? Even the Forerunner doubted about him, though as a type of the Synagogue; he doubted, who was himself sent ahead before the face of the Lord. Indeed, sending his disciples, he asks: “Are you he who is to come, or do we look for another?” The angels too were astounded at the heavenly mystery. Hence, when the Lord rose again, and the heights of heaven could not contain him as he rose from the underworld, whom shortly before, according to the flesh, the narrow space of the tomb had covered, even the heavenly beings were held in uncertainty of opinion. For the Lord was coming into his holy temple, a victor crowned with new spoils; angels and archangels went before him, marveling at the spoil won from death; and though they knew that nothing could be added to God from the flesh, since all things are below God, yet, beholding the trophies of the cross, whose beginning is upon his shoulders, and the spoils of the eternal triumpher, as though the gates of heaven could not receive him whom they had sent forth (though they never contain his majesty), they sought some greater way for him as he returned: so little had he lost by being emptied! Yet a new road had to be prepared for a new victor; for the victor always appears greater and more exalted. But since the gates of righteousness are eternal, the same gates of the New and the Old Testament by which heaven is opened, they are not changed but lifted up; because it was not one man but the whole world that was entering in the Redeemer of all. Enoch had been translated, Elijah caught up; but the servant is not above his lord. “For no one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven.” For as for Moses too, though his body did not appear on earth, we nowhere read of him in heavenly glory until after the Lord, by the pledge of his resurrection, had loosed the bonds of hell and raised up the souls of the godly. Enoch, then, was translated, Elijah caught up, both servants, both with the body; but the angels had not seen them after a resurrection, not with the spoils of death and the triumph of the cross. And so, seeing the Lord of all coming, the first and the only one to triumph over death, they commanded the princes to lift up the gates, saying in wonder: “Lift up your gates, O princes, and be lifted up, everlasting gates; and the King of glory shall come in.” Yet there were still some in the heavens who were astonished, who wondered at the new procession, the new glory; and so they asked: “Who is this King of glory?” For since angels too have advances in knowledge and a capacity for progress, they certainly have differences of power and of prudence; for God alone is without advance, since he is always eternal in all perfection. Others said, surely those who had been present at the resurrection, who had seen or already known: “The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.” Again the multitude of angels sang out in triumphal array: “Lift up your gates, O princes, and be lifted up, everlasting gates; and the King of glory shall come in.” Again others, astonished, said: “Who is this King of glory? We saw him having neither form nor comeliness; if, then, it is not he, who is this King of glory?” Those who knew answered: “The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory.” The Lord of hosts, then, is the Son himself. And how do the Arians call him weak, whom we believe to be the Lord of hosts, as the Father is? How do the Arians make a distinction of power, when we have read that the Father is Lord Sabaoth and the Son is Lord Sabaoth? For here too most manuscripts have it this way: “The Lord Sabaoth, he is the King of glory”; and “Sabaoth” the translators have rendered in some places “Lord of hosts,” in some “king,” in some “almighty.” So since he who ascends is the Son, and he who ascends is the Lord Sabaoth, the Son of God is certainly almighty.

What, then, shall we do? How shall we ascend to heaven? Powers are stationed there, princes set in order, who guard the doors of heaven and question anyone who ascends: who will admit me, unless I proclaim Christ almighty? The gates are closed; they are not opened to just anyone; not whoever wishes, but only he who believes faithfully, will enter. The imperial hall is guarded. But suppose an unworthy man has crept in, has escaped the notice of the princes of the heavenly gates, has reclined at the Lord’s supper: the Lord of the banquet, coming in and seeing him not clothed with the wedding garment of faith, will cast him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, if he has not kept faith and peace. Let us keep, then, the wedding garment we have received, and let us not deny to Christ what is his own, whom the angels proclaim almighty, the prophets signify, and the apostles testify, as we have already shown above. And perhaps the prophet did not speak only of the gates of this heaven through which he will pass; for the Word of God penetrates other heavens too, of which it was said: “For we have a great priest, the high priest, who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God.” What are these heavens, if not also those of which the prophet says: “The heavens declare the glory of God”? For Christ stands at the door of your mind; hear him saying: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone opens to me, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” And the Church says of him: “The voice of my brother knocks at the door.” He stands, then, and he does not stand alone; angels go before him, who say: “Lift up your gates, O princes.” What gates? Surely those of which he says elsewhere: “Open to me the gates of righteousness.” Open your gates to Christ, then, that he may come into you; open the gates of righteousness, open the gates of chastity, open the gates of fortitude and of wisdom. Believe the angels who say: “And be lifted up, everlasting gates, and the King of glory, the Lord Sabaoth, shall come in.” Your gate is the clear-sounding confession of a faithful voice; your gate is the door of the word, which the Apostle wishes to be opened to him, saying: “That a door of the word may be opened to me, to speak the mystery of Christ.” Let your gate, then, be opened to Christ, and not only opened but lifted up, if indeed it is everlasting and not perishable; for it is written: “And be lifted up, everlasting gates.” The lintel was lifted up for Isaiah when the Seraph touched his lips and he saw the King, the Lord Sabaoth. Your gates, then, will be lifted up if you believe that the Son of God is everlasting, almighty, beyond estimate, incomprehensible, one who knows all things past and to come. But if you think him of limited power and knowledge, and subject, you do not lift up the everlasting gates. Let your gates, then, be lifted up, so that Christ may enter you, not small in the Arian sense, not puny, not subject, but entering in the form of God, entering with the Father, entering such as he is, having passed beyond heaven and all things, and sending the Holy Spirit to you. It is to your profit to believe that he ascended and sits at the right hand of the Father. For if by impious thought you hold him back among creatures and earthly things, if he does not go away for you and does not ascend for you, neither will the Paraclete come to you, as he himself said: “For if I do not go away, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go away, I will send him to you.” But if you look for him among earthly things, as Mary Magdalene looked for him, beware lest he say to you too: “Do not touch me; for I have not yet ascended to my Father.” For your gates are narrow; they cannot hold me; they cannot be lifted up; I cannot enter. “Go, then, to my brothers,” that is, to those everlasting gates which are lifted up when they see Jesus. Peter is an everlasting gate, against whom the gates of hell will not prevail. John and James are everlasting gates, being sons of thunder. The churches are everlasting gates, where the prophet, desiring to proclaim the praises of Christ, says: “That I may proclaim all your praises in the gates of the daughter of Zion.” Great, then, is the mystery of Christ, at which even the angels were astounded; and so you ought to venerate it, and you, a servant, ought not to disparage your Lord. It is not permitted to be ignorant; for he came down so that you might believe; if you do not believe, he did not come down for you, he did not suffer for you. “If I had not come,” he says, “and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. He who hates me hates my Father also.” Who, then, hates Christ but he who disparages him? For as it belongs to love to pay honor, so it belongs to hatred to disparage. He who hates raises questions; he who loves pays reverence.

So let us discuss their other questions. “It is written,” they say: “The head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God.” In this question, let them tell me, please, whether they wish to join these four or to divide them. For if they wish to join them, and so say that God is the head of Christ as the man is the head of the woman, see what they fall into. For if this comparison is taken as between equals, and these four, that is, woman, man, Christ, and God, are compared as being of the likeness of one and the same nature, then woman and God will begin to be of one nature. But if this displeases them, because it is sacrilege to say, let them divide as they wish. So if they wish Christ to be with God the Father as the woman is with the man, they certainly say that Christ and God are of one substance, since woman and man are of one nature in the flesh; for the difference lies in sex. But since between Christ and the Father no sex intervenes, they will confess what is one in nature between the Son and the Father, and deny what is different in sex. Does this division please them? Or do they want the woman, the man, and Christ to be of one substance, and separate the Father? Does this division please them? If so, see what they fall into. For either they must confess that they are not only Arians but also Photinians, since they confess that Christ is only a man, reckoning that he is to be joined only to human nature; or it is fitting that they acquiesce, even unwillingly, in our opinion, by which we defend piously and religiously what they conceived impiously: that Christ is indeed, according to the divine generation, the power of God, but according to the assumption of the flesh, of one substance in the flesh with all men, saving, however, the glory of his incarnation, because he took on the reality and not the image of flesh. Let God, then, be the head of Christ according to the human condition; for he did not say, “the head of Christ is the Father,” but, “the head of Christ is God”; because the divinity, as creator, is the head of the creature. And he rightly said, “The head of Christ is God,” so as to signify both the divinity of Christ and the flesh, that is, the incarnation, in the name of Christ, and in “God” the unity of divinity and the greatness of power. Just as “the head of Christ is God” was said according to the incarnation, so “the head of man is Christ” was also said according to the incarnation of the Word. The Apostle set this out plainly elsewhere, saying: “For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the Church.” And in what follows he added: “Who gave himself up for her.” It is according to the incarnation, then, that Christ is the head of man, because the giving up took place according to the incarnation. God is the head of Christ, then, where the form of the servant, that is, of man, not of God, is being treated. But it does no prejudice to the Son of God if, according to the reality of the flesh, he is like men, he who in divinity is one with the Father; for his power is not diminished by this interpretation, but his mercy is proclaimed. And who would impiously deny one divinity of the Father and the Son, when the Lord himself, about to complete his precepts, said to his disciples: “That they may be one, as we also are one”? For this was set down as a testimony to the faith, although the Arians divert it into an argument for faithlessness. For since they cannot deny the unity read so often, they try to weaken it, so that the unity of divinity between the Father and the Son may seem to be such as is the unity of devotion and faith among men; although even among men themselves there is unity of nature, from their sharing a common nature. Hence also that text is most plainly resolved which they are accustomed to raise to weaken the Lord’s unity, because it is written: “He who plants and he who waters are one.” The Arians, if they had any sense, would not raise this. For how do they try to deny that the Father and the Son are one, when Paul and Apollos are one both in nature and in faith? Yet these cannot be one in all things, because human things cannot be compared with divine. God the Father, then, is inseparable from the Word, inseparable in power, inseparable in wisdom, through the unity of the divine substance; and he is in the Son, as is often written; but not as sanctifying one in need, nor as filling one who is empty, for the power of God is not empty. For power is not increased by power, because there are not two powers but one power; nor does divinity receive divinity, because there are not two divinities but one divinity; but we, through the power that we receive and that dwells in us, shall be one in Christ. The letter, then, is common, but the divine and the human substance differ. We shall be one; the Father and the Son are one: we according to grace, the Son according to substance. Unity through union is one thing, unity through nature another. Indeed, see what he put first: “That all may be one, as you, Father, are in me, and I in you.” Consider, then, that he did not say, “You in us, and we in you,” but “you in me, and I in you,” so as to separate himself from creatures. And he added, “And these in us,” so as to separate here too his own power and the Father’s from us, so that our being one in the Father and the Son may be seen to be not by nature but by grace, while the Son and the Father are one in a way that the Son may be believed not to have received by grace but to possess naturally as Son.

Again they raise another objection, asserting that the power of the Son and the Father cannot be one and the same, because he himself said: “Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of himself, except what he sees the Father doing.” So they say that the Son did nothing of himself and can do nothing except what he sees the Father doing. O Wisdom, foreseeing the arguments of the unbelievers, which added what would resolve the question, by adding what follows: “For whatever he does, the Son also does the same likewise”; for this is what follows. Why, then, is it written “the Son does the same,” and not “such things,” unless that you might reckon in the Son unity, not imitation, of the Father’s work? But still, so that we may examine their arguments too, I ask them to answer whether the Son sees the works of the Father. Does he see them or not? If he sees, then he also does them; if he does them, let them stop denying that he is almighty, whom they confess can do all the things that he sees the Father doing. And what is “sees”? Is there some use of bodily eyes? But if they want to say this of the Son, they will also show a bodily mode of operation in the Father, so that the Son sees him doing what he himself is going to do. And what is “The Son can do nothing of himself”? Let us ask this, let us consider this. Is anything, then, impossible to the power and wisdom of God? For that is what the Son of God is, who certainly did not receive a strength not his own, but just as he is life, not sustained by another’s giving of life but giving life to others, because he is himself life, so too he is wisdom, not as one unwise receiving wisdom, but as one who from what is his own makes others wise; so too he is power, not as one who through weakness gained increases of power, but power itself, who bestows power on the strong. How, then, does Power say, as with the attestation of an oath, “Amen, amen, I say to you,” that is, “Faithfully, faithfully I say”? You say faithfully, then, Lord Jesus, and confirm with a kind of repeated oath that you can do nothing except what you see the Father doing. You made the world: did your Father make another world, which you received as a pattern? Then the impious must confess either two or many worlds, as the philosophers assert, so as to involve themselves in this error of paganism too. Or if they want to follow the truth, let them say that you made what you made without a pattern. Tell me, Lord, when did you see the Father, incarnate, walking on the sea? I do not know; I think it sacrilege to believe this of the Father, for I know that you alone took on flesh. When did you see the Father turning water into wine at a wedding? But I have read that you alone are the only-begotten Son born of the Father; I have received that you alone were begotten of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin according to the mysteries of the incarnation. These things, then, which we have recounted as done by you, the Father did not do; but without a pattern of the Father’s work, to win the salvation of the world by that blood, you alone, spotless, came forth from the womb of the Virgin. And lest they perhaps think that only the mystery of the incarnation is to be set apart (although when they say, “The Son can do nothing of himself,” they except nothing, so that a certain impious man even said, “He cannot even make a gnat,” mocking the majesty of the heavenly power with such rash daring and wanton speech), tell me, Lord Jesus, what earth the Father made without you? For he did not make heaven without you, since it is written: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were established.” Nor did he make the earth without you, since it is written: “All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.” For if the Father made anything without you, God the Word, then not all things were made through the Word, and the evangelist lies. But if all things were made through the Word, and all things that were not began to be through you, then certainly you yourself made of yourself what you did not see made by the Father. Unless perhaps they set before you, as patterns, the philosophical Ideas of that Platonic discussion, which we know were mocked even by the philosophers themselves. But if you made them of yourself, vain is the assertion of the faithless, which ascribes progress in learning to the author of all things, who has from himself the mastery of making. But if they deny that heaven or earth was made through you, let the impious consider where they are hurling themselves in their fury, since it is written: “The gods who did not make heaven and earth, let them perish.” Will he perish, then, Arian, who found and redeemed what had perished? But let us return to our subject.