On the Christian Faith 5.16–5.19

Hence we ought to know that those who say these things are accursed and condemned by the Holy Spirit. For whom else does the prophet condemn, if not specially the Arians, who say that the Son of God does not know times and years? For there is nothing that God does not know; and Christ is God, and Christ is the Most High; for he is God over all. See how holy David shudders at men of this kind, who take knowledge away from the Son of God; for so you have it: “They are not in the toils of men, and they will not be scourged with men; therefore pride has taken hold of them; they are covered with their iniquity and their impiety; their iniquity has come forth as from fatness; they have passed into the disposition of the heart.” He certainly condemns those who think that divine things are to be judged from the disposition of the heart; for God is subject neither to disposition nor to order; since we see that even the things that belong to the life of men and to the succession of the human race do not always happen by some regular disposition of reason, but for the most part run their course by secret and hidden mysteries. “They have thought,” he says, “and spoken wickedness; they have spoken iniquity against the Most High; they have set their mouth against heaven.” We see, then, that he condemns as guilty of impious sacrilege those who, from the likeness of human nature, claim for themselves the disposition of the heavenly secret. “And they said: How did God know? And is there all knowledge in the Most High?” Do not the Arians din this out every day, that all knowledge cannot be in Christ? “Because,” they say, “he himself professed that he did not know the day and the hour.” Do they not say, “How did he know?”, recalling that he could not know except what he had heard and seen, and by a sacrilegious interpretation turn to weakness the things that belong to the unity of the divine nature? “It is written,” they say: “But of that day and hour no one knows, not the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.” First, the old Greek manuscripts do not have “nor does the Son know”; but no wonder if they have falsified this too, who have interpolated the divine Scriptures. And why it seems to have been added is betrayed when it is turned to the support of so great a sacrilege. Yet suppose that it was written by the evangelists. The name “Son” certainly stands between the two natures; for he is also called Son of Man; so that he might seem not to have known the day of future judgment according to the ignorance belonging to our nature which he assumed. For how could the Son of God not know the day, when in him are hidden the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God? I ask whether he had his knowledge from substance or from accident; for all knowledge comes either from nature or from instruction: from nature, as a horse can run and a fish swim, for they do these things before they learn; from instruction, as a man can swim, for unless he learns he cannot know how. Since, then, dumb animals can by nature do and know things they have not learned, what do you think of the Son of God: does he have knowledge from instruction or from nature? If from instruction, then he was not born Wisdom, and he began to be perfect by progress, and was not always so. But if he has natural knowledge, he was certainly perfect in the beginning, he came forth perfect from the Father; and so he had no need of foreknowledge of the future. He was not, then, ignorant of the day; for it does not belong to the Wisdom of God to know in part and in part not to know. For how can he not know a part, who made all things, since knowing is less than making? For we know many things that we cannot do; nor do we all know in the same way, but we know in part. For the countryman knows the force of the winds and the courses of the stars in one way, the town-dweller in another, the pilot in another. Though not all know all things, yet they are said to know; but he alone knows fully who made all things. The pilot knows at what watch Arcturus advances, what risings of Orion he watches for; yet he does not know the bonds of the Pleiades and the number or names of the other stars, as he does “who numbers the multitude of the stars and calls them all by name,” whom the power of his own work certainly does not escape. How, then, would you have the Son of God make these things? Like a signet ring, which does not perceive what it impresses? But the Father made all things in wisdom, that is, he made all things through the Son, who is the power and wisdom of God; and it befits wisdom to know the powers and causes of its works. And so the Creator of all could not be ignorant of what he made, nor not know what he himself bestowed; he knew, then, the day which he made. But you say that he knows the present day but does not know the future one. Though the proposition is inept, yet, to satisfy you from the Scriptures, learn that he made not only things past but also things to come, as it is written: “Who made the things that are to come.” And elsewhere Scripture says: “Through whom also the ages were made, who is the radiance of his glory and the impress of his substance.” For the ages are past, present, and future. How, then, were the things to come made, unless because his working power and knowledge embraced the number of all the ages? For as he calls things that are not as though they were, so he made the things to come as though they were; because it cannot happen that they should not be, but the things he commanded to be are necessarily to come. So he who made the things to come knew them in the way in which they are to come. If this is so of the ages, much more is it to be believed of the day of judgment, that the Son of God has knowledge of it as of something already made by him; for it is written: “By your ordinance the day will continue.” And he did not only say “continues” but “will continue,” so that the things that are to come may be governed by his ordinance. Does he not know, then, what he ordained? “He who planted the ear, will he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see?” Let us see, however, whether there is anything great that could escape its Creator; and let them choose whether they think it something great and more excellent than other things, or something very small and abject. If very small and abject, it is no slight, to speak in our way, not to know cheap and petty things; for since it belongs to power to know the greatest things, he seems rather to have disdained the cheapness of a mean work. He is excused, then, by disdain, not defrauded of power. But if they think it a great and supreme thing to know the day of judgment, let them say what is greater or better than God the Father. The Son knows God the Father, as he himself says: “No one knows the Father but the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal him.” Does he know the Father, I say, and not know the day? Do you believe, then, that he reveals the Father and cannot reveal the day? Next, since you make certain grades, so as to set the Father above the Son and the Son above the Spirit, tell me whether the Holy Spirit knows the day of judgment; for nothing is written of him in this place. You certainly deny it. What if I show that he knows? For it is read: “But God has revealed it to us through his Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.” Certainly, since he searches the depths of God, as God knows the day of judgment, the Spirit too knows it. For he knows all the things that God knows, as the Apostle declares, saying: “For who among men knows the things of a man, except the spirit of the man which is in him? So also no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.” Take care, then, lest by denying that the Holy Spirit knows, you deny that the Father knows too; for what belongs to God, the Spirit of God knows; and what the Spirit of God does not know certainly does not belong to God; or else, by confessing that the Spirit of God knows what you deny that the Son knows, you set the Spirit above the Son against your own assertion. But this doubt is not only sacrilegious but also inept. Now let us consider by what ways knowledge is gathered, and show that the Son himself demonstrated that he knew the day. For what we know, we declare by time, or by place, or by signs, or by persons, or by order. How, then, did he not know the day of judgment, who set out the hour of the judgment, and the place, and the signs, and the causes? Indeed you have it thus: “In that hour, let him who is on the housetop not come down to take his goods from his house; and let him who is in the field likewise not turn back.” So far did he know the outcome of the dangers to come that he even pointed out safeguards to those in danger. Could the Lord be ignorant of the day, who said of himself that the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath? He also indicated the place elsewhere, when, as the disciples showed him the buildings of the temple, he said: “Do you see all these? Amen I say to you, not a stone will be left upon a stone that will not be thrown down.” Asked also by the apostles about the sign, he answered: “See that you are not led astray. For many will come in my name, saying, I am the Christ”; and further on: “There will be great earthquakes in various places, and famines and pestilences, and terrors from heaven, and there will be great signs.” So he set out both the persons and the signs. And in what manner he says that armies will surround Jerusalem and that the times of the nations will be fulfilled, and in what order, is disclosed by the witness of the Gospel reading. He knew, then, all things.

But we ask why he did not wish to indicate the moments. If we inquire, we shall find that this came not from ignorance but from wisdom. For it was not profitable for us to know; so that, while we do not know the fixed moments of the future judgment, we may always be as though posted on guard and set on a watchtower of virtue, and avoid the habit of sinning, lest the day of the Lord should catch us among our vices. For it does not profit us to know what is to come, but to fear it; for it is written: “Do not be high-minded, but fear.” For if he had indicated the day expressly, he would seem to have prescribed a rule of life for one generation of men only, the one nearest to the judgment; and in earlier times the righteous man would have been slacker or the sinner more secure. For the adulterer, unless he fears punishment every day, cannot give up the desire of adultery; nor can the robber leave the hiding places of the woods he infests unless he knows that punishment threatens him at every moment. For those to whom impunity is an incentive generally find fear a burden. So I said that it was not profitable to know, indeed that it was profitable not to know; so that, not knowing, we might fear, and, keeping watch, we might be amended, as he himself said: “Be ready, for you do not know at what hour the Son of Man will come.” For a soldier, unless he knows that war is at hand, does not know how to keep guard in camp. Hence elsewhere too the Lord himself, when he was asked by the apostles (the apostles, I say, who certainly did not understand as Arius does, but believed that the Son of God knew the future; for if they had not believed this, they would never have asked), when he was asked, then, when he would restore the kingdom to Israel, did not say that he did not know, but said: “It is not yours to know the times or the years which the Father has placed in his own power.” Notice what he said: “It is not yours to know.” Read it again: “It is not yours.” He said “yours,” not “mine”; for now he was speaking not according to perfection but according to the growth of the human body and of our soul. He said, then, “yours,” not “mine.” The Apostle too followed this: “But concerning the times and moments, brothers,” he says, “you have no need that we write to you.” So not even the Apostle himself, the servant of Christ, said that he did not know the moments, but that there was no need for the people to be taught, who ought always to be armed with spiritual defenses, so that the power of Christ may stand guard in each one. And when the Lord speaks of the times which the Father has placed in his own power, he certainly cannot be without share in the Father’s knowledge, since he is by no means without share in his power; for power is signified by wisdom and might, and Christ is both. But you ask why he did not refuse the disciples in such a way as to show that he knew and would not tell, but said that neither the angels nor the Son knew. I too will ask you why God says in Genesis: “I will go down, then, to see whether they have done altogether according to the cry that comes to me; and if not, that I may know.” Why does Scripture also say of the Lord: “And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men were building”? Why does the prophet also say in the Psalter: “The Lord looked down upon the sons of men, to see if there were any who understood or sought God”; as though there, if God did not come down, and here, if the Lord did not look down, he would be ignorant of the works or merits of men? But in the Gospel too you have, according to Luke, that the Father says: “What shall I do? I will send my most beloved Son; perhaps they will respect him.” But according to Matthew and according to Mark you have: “He sent his only Son, saying: They will respect my Son.” In one book he says, “Perhaps they will respect him,” and doubts as though he did not know; for this is the speech of one who doubts; but in the other two books he says, “They will respect my Son”; that is, he affirms that reverence ought to be paid. But it does not belong to God either to doubt or to be deceived; for he doubts who does not know what is to come; and he is deceived who has foretold one thing when another followed. And what is plainer than that Scripture has the Father saying one thing about the Son, while the same Scripture testifies that another thing happened? He said, “They will respect my Son”; but the Son was beaten, mocked, crucified, killed; and he suffered according to the flesh much more grievously than those servants who had been sent before. Did the Father, then, deceive, or was he ignorant, or was he unable to help? But the True cannot deceive; for it is written: “God is faithful, who does not lie.” And how was he ignorant who knows all things? Or what could he not do, who can do all things? Yet if he was either ignorant or unable (for you agree more readily to say that the Father was ignorant than to confess that the Son knew), you see that from this very fact the Son is of one substance with the Father; if, as the Father, so also the Son, to speak according to your folly, either does not know all things or cannot do all things. For I am not grasping or rash about the Son’s praises, so as to dare to say that the Son can do more than the Father, I who make no distinction of power between the Father and the Son. But perhaps you say that the Father did not say this, but that the Son deceived us about the Father. Then you accuse the Son not only of weakness but also of sacrilege and lying. But if you do not believe the Son about the Father, do not believe him about himself either; for if he wished to deceive us by saying that the Father doubted, as though he did not know what would come, then he also wished to deceive us about himself, when he said that he did not know the future; and it is much more tolerable to his modesty if he put forward ignorance, as he did about himself, than if he should seem to be mocked by an outcome contrary to his promises, as he foretold of the Father. But neither is the Father deceived nor does the Son deceive; but this is the custom in the divine Scriptures, as both the examples above and many others testify, that God pretends not to know what he knows. In this too, then, the unity of divinity and the unity of purpose is proved in the Father and the Son, if, as God the Father conceals what he knows, so the Son too, being in this also the image of God, conceals what he knows.

It has been shown, then, that the Son of God was not ignorant of the things to come. If they grant this, I too, to answer now on what account he said that neither the angels nor the Son but the Father knew, recognize in this place also his customary love and grace toward the disciples, which by its very frequency ought already to be known to all. For the Lord, inclined by an exceeding love toward his disciples, when they asked things which he judged useless to know, prefers to seem not to know what he knew rather than to refuse; and he loves to build up our profit more than to display his own power. There are many, however, who are not so timid as I (for I prefer to fear high things rather than to presume to know them); yet there are many who, relying on what is written, “And Jesus advanced in age and wisdom and grace with God and men,” say confidently that according to his divinity he could not be ignorant of the things to come, but that according to his assumption of our condition he said before the cross that he did not know, as Son of Man. For when he says “Son,” he does not speak as of another; for he himself is both our Lord, the Son of God, and the Son of the Virgin; but by a word that stands between the two he takes on our condition of feeling, so that as son of man, according to his taking up of our ignorance, or his growth, he might be believed not yet to know all things fully; for it is not ours to know the things that are to come. He seems, then, to be ignorant under the same condition under which he advances; for how could he advance according to his divinity, he in whom dwells the fullness of the divinity? Or what is there that the Son of God does not know, who said: “Why do you think evil in your hearts?” How should he not know, of whom Scripture says: “But Jesus knew their thoughts”? Others, however, will say these things. But I, to return to what I said above, having set forth the text in which the Father said, “Perhaps they will respect my Son,” think that it was written for this reason: that, since the Father was speaking of men, he might seem to have spoken with human feeling. Much more, I think, did the Son, who lived among men, acted as a man, and took on flesh, assume our feeling, so as to say that he did not know by our ignorance, not because he himself was ignorant of anything. For although he was seen as a man in the reality of a body, yet he was life, he was light, and power went out from him which by the authority of his majesty healed the wounds of the injured. You see, then, that the question has been taken away from you, since the Son’s saying is referred to his taking up of the whole human condition, and the saying about the Father was written so that even in this way you might cease to slander the Son. There was nothing, then, of which the Son of God was ignorant; for there was nothing of which the Father was ignorant. But if the Son too was ignorant of nothing, then, to conclude, let them say in what they would have him seem less. If God begot the Son less, he bestowed less; if he bestowed less, either he willed less or he was able to do less. But the Father is neither weak nor envious; for neither will nor power was before the Son. In what, then, is he less, who has all that the Father has? For he received all things from the Father by right of generation, and expressed the whole Father by the glory of his majesty. “It is written,” they say: “For the Father is greater than I.” But it is written: “He did not count it robbery to be equal with God.” It is written that the Jews therefore sought to kill him, because he said that he was the Son of God, making himself equal to God. It is written: “I and the Father are one.” They read one thing; many they do not read. Can the same one, then, be both less and equal according to the same nature? But one thing refers to the divinity, another to the flesh. They say he is less. I ask who has measured; who is of so exalted a heart that he would set God the Father and the Son as though before his own tribunal, to decide which takes precedence? “My heart is not exalted, nor are my eyes lifted up in vain,” says David. King David feared to exalt his heart in human affairs; we exalt ourselves against the divine secrets. Who, then, judges of the Son of God? Thrones, Dominions, Angels, Powers? But the archangels attend and serve, the Cherubim and Seraphim minister and praise. Who, then, judges of the Son of God, when he has read that the Father himself knows the Son and does not judge him: “For no one knows the Son except the Father”? “Knows,” he says, not “judges.” To know is one thing, to judge another. The Father has knowledge in himself; the Son has no power above himself. And again: “No one knows the Father except the Son”; and he knows the Father as the Father knows him. But you say that he called himself less; he also called himself a stone. You say more, and slander impiously; I say less, and assert devoutly. You call him less, and yet confess him above the angels; I call him less than the angels, and do not detract from him, because I do not accuse his divinity but proclaim his mercy.

To you now, almighty Father, I turn my words with tears. I would readily call you inaccessible, incomprehensible, beyond all estimate; but I would not dare to call your Son less. For since I have read that he is the radiance of your glory and the image of your substance, I fear that by calling the image of your substance less I may seem to call your substance less, of which the Son is the image, since the whole fullness of your divinity is in the Son. I have often read, and I gladly believe, that you and your Son and the Holy Spirit are immeasurable, uncircumscribed, beyond estimate, beyond telling. And so I cannot estimate you so as to be able to weigh you. Yet suppose that with a rash spirit and daring I wished to measure you: with what, I ask, should I measure you? The prophet saw a surveyor’s line, with which the angel measured Jerusalem. Yet it was an angel who measured, not Arius; he measured Jerusalem, not God. And perhaps not even an angel could measure Jerusalem; for he was a man. Indeed you have it thus: “And I lifted up my eyes and saw, and behold, a man, and in his hand a surveyor’s line.” He was a man, because a figure of the body to be taken up was being declared. That man was the one of whom it was said: “After me comes a man, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” So Christ in a figure measures Jerusalem; Arius measures God. And Satan transforms himself into an angel of light; what wonder if Arius imitates his author, so as to usurp what is not lawful? Indeed, what his father the devil did not do himself, this man with more intolerable sacrilege presumes: the knowledge of divine secrets and the mysteries of the heavenly generation; for the devil confessed the true Son of God; Arius denies him. If, then, I cannot measure you, almighty Father, can I without sacrilege dispute about the secret of your generation? Can I say that there is any more or less between you and your Son, when he who was born of you said: “All things that the Father has are mine”? “Who made me a judge or divider” in human affairs? The Son says this, and do we claim for ourselves division and judgment between the Father and the Son? Good piety shrinks from arbiters even in the division of an inheritance. Shall we, then, be arbiters, to divide the majesty of the uncreated substance between you and your Son? “This generation,” he says, “is an evil generation; it seeks a sign, and no sign will be given it except the sign of Jonah the prophet.” A sign is given, certainly, not of the divinity but of the incarnation. Indeed, when about to speak of the incarnation, he says: “Ask a sign for yourself.” And when the king had said, “I will not ask, and I will not tempt the Lord,” the answer was: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb.” We cannot see a sign of the divinity, then, and do we seek its measure? Woe is me! Do we dare to examine impiously him whom we cannot worthily entreat? Let the Arians see what they are doing; as for me, Father, if I call you greater than all, I have wronged you by comparing you with your works; if greater than the Son, as Arius asserts, I have judged impiously. That sentence would be passed on you first; for no preference can be made except by comparison, nor can anyone be preferred unless judgment has first been passed on him. It is not lawful for us to swear by heaven; is it lawful to judge of God? But to your Son alone you have given judgment over all. John feared to baptize the Lord’s flesh; John forbade him, saying: “I ought to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” And shall I subject Christ to my judgment? Moses excuses himself from the priestly office; Peter declines the service commanded him in the ministry; does Arius search even the deep things of God? But Arius is not the Holy Spirit; to Arius and to men it was said: “Do not seek things higher than you.” Moses is forbidden to see the face of the Lord; has Arius deserved to see the secret? “Moses and Aaron among his priests”: Moses, who appears with the Lord in glory; that Moses saw only the back of God, in a figure; Arius grasps the whole of God face to face. But “no one,” he says, “can see my face and live.” Paul too says of the lower things: “We know in part and we prophesy in part.” Arius says: “I have known God wholly, not in part.” Paul, then, is lower than Arius; the vessel of election knows in part, the vessel of perdition knows the whole. “I know a man,” he says, “whether in the body or outside the body I do not know, God knows, that he was caught up into paradise and heard unspeakable words.” Paul, caught up to the third heaven, did not know himself; Arius, wallowing in dung, has known God. Paul says of himself, “God knows”; Arius says of God, “I know.” But Arius was not caught up into heaven, though he followed him who with damnable boasting presumed upon divine things, saying: “I will set my throne above the clouds, and I will be like the Most High.” For as that one said, “I will be like the Most High,” so Arius too wants the most high Son of God to seem like himself, him whom he does not venerate in the majesty of eternal divinity but measures by the weakness of the flesh.