On the Christian Faith 5.3–5.7

But the Arians assert: “If you say that the Son as well as the Father is the only true God, and confess that the Father and the Son are of one substance, you bring in not one God but two gods; for those who are of one substance seem to be not one God but two gods, as we speak of two men or two sheep or more; but a man and a sheep are called neither two men nor two sheep, but one man and one sheep.” This the Arians say, and by this cunning disputation they try to catch the simpler. Yet if we read the divine Scriptures, we shall find that plurality rather falls on things of diverse and distinct substance, that is, heterousia. And we have this expressed in the books of Solomon, in the place where he says: “Three things are impossible to understand, and a fourth I do not know: the tracks of an eagle flying, and the ways of a serpent on a rock, and the paths of a ship sailing, and the ways of a man in his youth.” Certainly the eagle and the ship and the serpent are not of one kind and nature, but of different and distinct substance, and yet they are three. So they understand from the testimonies of the Scriptures that their arguments tell against themselves. So by saying that the substance of the Father and the Son is distinct and their deity different, they themselves certainly assert two gods; but we, when we confess both the Father and the Son, yet assert that they are of one deity, speak not of two gods but of one God. And we prove this from the Lord’s words; for where there are several, there is a difference either of nature or of wills and operations. Indeed, so that they may be refuted by their own testimonies: two men are spoken of because, although they are of one nature by right of birth, yet they differ in time, in thought, in work, and in place; and so one man cannot be spoken of in the sense and number of two, because there is no unity where there is diversity; but God is called one, and the glory and fullness of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is signified. Indeed so great is the truth of unity that, even when only the nature of human generation or flesh is signified, one man is spoken of out of many, as you have it: “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear what man can do to me”; that is, not one person of a man, but one flesh and one frailty of human generation. And he added: “It is better to hope in the Lord than to hope in man.” Here too he certainly designated not a particular man but the general condition. Indeed he immediately added about many: “It is better to trust in the Lord than to trust in princes.” But where “man” is said, sometimes, as we said above, the unity of nature common to all is signified; where “princes,” there is a certain difference of various powers. But between men, or in men, there is a unity of some one thing, whether of love, or of desire, or of flesh, or of devotion and faith; but the general unity, which embraces all things in itself according to the glory of divinity, belongs to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit alone. Hence the Lord too, when he was marking the diversity of men among themselves, who have nothing between them that could belong to the unity of an undivided substance, said: “In your law it is written that the testimony of two men is true.” And having said first, “The testimony of two men is true,” when he came to his own testimony and the Father’s, he did not say, “Our testimony is true, because it is the testimony of two gods,” but: “I,” he says, “am the one who bears witness to myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness to me.” Above too he likewise says: “And if I judge, my judgment is true, because I am not alone, but I and the Father who sent me.” So both below and above he signified both the Father and the Son, and neither mixed in plurality nor separated the unity of the divine substance. It is evident, then, that what is of one substance cannot be separated, even if it is a matter not of singularity but of unity. I call singularity what in Greek is called monotēs. Singularity belongs to person, unity to nature. But that things of diverse substance are usually called not only one but also many, although it has already been made clear by the prophetic testimony, the Apostle himself declared more expressly, saying: “For even if there are those called gods, whether in heaven or on earth.” You see, then, that those who are of diverse substances, and not of the one truth of nature, are called gods. But the Father and the Son, because they are of one substance, are not two gods but one God: the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things. “One,” he says, “God the Father, and one Lord Jesus”; and above: “one God,” not two gods; and below: “one Lord,” and not two. Plurality, then, is excluded; unity is not divided. But just as, when we read “Lord Jesus,” we do not separate the Father, as we said above, from the right of lordship, which he has in common with the Son, so, when we read that the Father is the only true God, we cannot separate the Son from the right of the only true God, which he has in common with the Father. Or let them say what else they think or judge when we read: “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve”: do they think that Christ is not to be worshiped and that Christ is not to be served? But if that Canaanite woman who worshiped him deserved to obtain what she asked, and the apostle Paul, who in the preface of his first writings professes himself the servant of Christ, deserved to be an apostle “not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ,” let them say what they think they should follow: whether they prefer to share in faithlessness with Arius, so that by denying that Christ is the only and true God they show that they judge that he is neither to be worshiped nor to be served; or whether they prefer to share with Paul, who, by serving and worshiping Christ, certainly did not deny in word or in heart that he was the only true God, whom he confessed by his devout service.

But if anyone says that the Son too worships God the Father, because it is written, “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know,” let him consider when, to whom, and with what assumed affection he speaks. Indeed, it was not without reason set down just before that Jesus, wearied from the journey, was sitting and was asking the Samaritan woman for a drink; for he was speaking according to man’s flesh, since according to his divinity he could neither be wearied nor thirst. Then, when the Samaritan woman called him a Jew and thought him a prophet, he answered as a Jew who would teach the mysteries of the Law spiritually: “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know.” “We,” he says; that is, he joined himself with men. And how is he joined with men except according to the flesh? And to show that he had answered according to the incarnation, he added: “For salvation is from the Jews.” But immediately after this he set aside the affection of a man, saying: “The hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father.” He did not say, “We will worship,” which he would certainly have said if he were sharing our service. But when we read that Mary worshiped him, we ought to understand that he cannot by the same nature both worship as a servant and be worshiped as Lord; but rather that as man among men he is said to worship, and as Lord he is worshiped by his servants. Many things, then, we read and believe according to the mystery of the incarnation, but in the very affections of human nature we may behold the divine majesty. Jesus is wearied by the journey, so as to refresh the weary; he asks to drink, being about to give spiritual drink to the thirsty; he hungers, being about to hand on the food of salvation to the hungry; he dies, to give life; he is buried, to rise again; he hangs on the trembling tree, to strengthen the trembling; he covers heaven with darkness, to give light; he makes the earth quake, to make it firm; he troubles the seas, to calm them; he opens the tombs of the dead, to show that they are dwellings of the living; he is created from the Virgin, so that he may be believed to have been born of God; he feigns ignorance, to make the ignorant know; he is said to worship as a Jew, so that as the Son he may be worshiped as true God.

“How,” they say, “can the Son of God, the only true God, be like the Father, when he himself said to the sons of Zebedee: You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to give you, but it is for those for whom it is prepared by my Father?” This, then, is your argument, as you will have it, for divine inequality; whereas in it you ought rather to venerate the Lord’s clemency and adore his grace, if indeed you could perceive the deep secrets of the power and wisdom of God. For consider who it is that asks, with her sons and for her sons. She is certainly a mother, anxious for her sons’ honor, and the measure of her prayers is immoderate indeed, but pardonable. And she is a mother of advanced age, devout in zeal, bereft of comforts; who, at the time when she should have been helped or supported by the aid of strong offspring, let her children be away from her, and had preferred to her own pleasure the reward of her sons in following Christ; for they, called by the Lord at his first word, as we read, left their nets and their father and followed him. She, then, more indulgent from the zeal of a mother’s care, besought the Savior, saying: “Say that these my two sons may sit, one at your right hand and the other at your left, in your kingdom.” Though it is an error, it is an error of love; for a mother’s heart does not know patience. Though greedy in her prayer, hers was a pardonable desire, eager not for money but for grace; nor was it a shameless request, which looked not to herself but to her children. Consider the mother; think of the mother. But no wonder if the affection of parents for their sons seems base to you, who think even the love of the almighty Father for his only-begotten Son base. The Lord of heaven and earth was ashamed (to speak according to the flesh he assumed and the qualities of a soul), was ashamed, I say, and, to use his own word, was abashed to deny a mother asking for her sons even a share in his seat; you contend that the eternal God’s own Son sometimes stands to serve, sometimes sits as an attendant; that is, you want his session to come not from the unity of majesty but from the Father’s command; and you deny to the true God, the Son of God, what he would not harshly deny to men. For he considered the mother’s love, who consoled her advanced old age with the reward of her sons and, though worn out by a mother’s longings, endured the absence of her dearest children. Consider also the woman, that is, the frailer sex, which the Lord had not yet strengthened by his own passion. Consider, I say, the heir of that first woman Eve, slipping through the succession of immoderate desire poured into all, whom the Lord had not yet redeemed with his own blood, from whose affections he had not yet washed away with his blood the inbred and unlawful appetite for immoderate honor. The woman, then, was sinning by an inherited error. And what wonder if a mother asked for her sons, which is more tolerable than asking for herself, when even the apostles themselves, as we read, were disputing among themselves about precedence? The physician of all, then, ought not to wound a bereft mother, a mind still sick, with the reproach of shame, lest, her request haughtily refused, she should grieve as one condemned for an immoderate petition. Indeed the Lord, who knew that love was to be honored, answered not the woman but her sons, saying: “Can you drink the cup which I am about to drink?” And when they said, “We can,” Jesus said to them: “You will drink my cup; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to give you, but it is for those for whom it is prepared by my Father.” How patient and merciful is the Lord, how deep his wisdom and how good his love! For, wishing to show that the disciples were asking for no trivial thing, but for something they could not obtain, he reserved its prerogative for the Father’s honor; not fearing to take anything from his own right, since he did not think it robbery to be equal with God; at the same time loving his disciples, since, as you have it, “he loved them to the end,” he did not want to seem to have refused those he loved what they asked; a holy and good Lord, who would rather pass over something of his right than lay aside anything of love; “for love is patient, is kind, does not envy, is not puffed up, does not seek its own.” Indeed, so that you may recognize that it was from indulgence, not from weakness, that he said, “It is not mine to give you”: where the sons of Zebedee ask without their mother, he said nothing of the Father; for you have it thus: “It is not mine to give you, but it is for those for whom it is prepared.” So Mark the evangelist set it down. But where the mother asks for her sons, that is, according to Matthew, “It is not mine,” he says, “to give you, but it is for those for whom it is prepared by my Father”; here he added “by my Father,” because a mother’s affection asked for greater indulgence. But if they think that by saying “for whom it is prepared by my Father” he either gave more to the Father or took something from himself, let them say whether they think that something was taken from the Father there too, because the Son said of the Father in the Gospel, “The Father judges no one.” But if we think it sacrilege to believe that the Father so handed over judgment to the Son as not to have it himself (for he has it, and the divine majesty cannot lose what it has by nature), so we ought to think it sacrilege to suppose that the Son cannot give whatever men can deserve or any creature can receive; especially since he himself said: “I go to the Father, and whatever you ask of him in my name, I will do.” For if the Son cannot do what the Father can give, then the Truth lied, and he cannot do whatever the Father has been asked in his name. For he did not say, “for those for whom it is prepared by my Father,” so that it should be asked of the Father only; for he declared that he gives all things that are asked of the Father. Indeed he did not say, “Whatever you ask of me, I will do,” but, “Whatever you ask of him in my name, I will do.”

I ask now whether they think that what was asked by the wife of Zebedee and her sons was something possible for the human condition or for any creature, or impossible. If possible, how did he lack the power to grant the apostles a seat at his left or at his right, he who made to be all things that were not? Or how could he not judge the merits of men, to whom the Father has given all judgment? It is known how he gave it; for how could the Son receive as one in need, who created all things from nothing? Did he not have judgment over those whose natures he had made? But the Father gave all judgment to the Son: “so that all,” he says, “may honor the Son as they honor the Father.” It is not the Son’s power, then, that advances, but our knowledge; nor is anything added to his substance, but to our profit, when he is known by us, so that by knowing the Son of God we may have eternal life. And since in the knowledge of the Son of God the honor is his but the profit is ours, not his, if anyone thinks that the power of God is increased by that honor, he must believe that God the Father too can be increased, because he too is glorified through our knowledge, as the Son is, according to what is written, when the Son says: “I have glorified you on earth.” So if what was asked was something possible, it was certainly in the Son’s power. But let them show, if they think it possible, who among men or other creatures sits at the right or at the left of the Son; for the Father says to the Son: “Sit at my right hand.” So if anyone sits at the Son’s right, then the Son, to speak in human fashion, is found in the middle between him and the Father. It was not, then, something possible for man that was asked; but he did not want to say that men cannot sit with him, since he wished his divine glory to be hidden, not published, before he rose again. For earlier too, when he had appeared in glory among his servants Moses and Elijah, he had warned the disciples to tell no one what they had seen. So if it was not possible for men or other creatures to merit this, the Son should not seem to have less power because he did not give the apostles what the Father too has not given to men or to other creatures. Or let them say to which of these the Father has given it. Certainly not to the angels, of whom Scripture says that all the angels stood around the throne. Indeed Gabriel said that he stood, as you have it: “I am Gabriel, who stand before the Lord.” Not, then, to the angels; not to the elders who worship him who sits; for they do not sit on the throne of majesty but, as Scripture said, around the throne; for there are twenty-four other seats, as you have in the Apocalypse of John: “And on the seats, twenty-four elders sitting.” In the Gospel too the Lord himself says: “When the Son of Man sits on the throne of his majesty, you too will sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” So he did not say that a share in his own throne could be given to the apostles, but that those twelve thrones are others; and these we ought to understand not of a bodily sitting together but of the succession of spiritual grace. Indeed in the book of Kings the prophet Micaiah said: “I saw the Lord God of Israel sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing around him, at his right and at his left.” How, then, while the angels stand at the right or the left of the Lord God, while all the host of heaven stands, will men sit at the right of God or at his left, men to whom the likeness of angels is promised as the reward of virtue, as the Lord says: “They will be as the angels in heaven”? “As the angels,” he says, not more than the angels. If, then, the Father has given nothing more than the Son, the Son has certainly given nothing less than the Father; the Son, then, can do nothing less than the Father. But suppose that what was asked was possible for men to obtain: what does he mean by saying, “But to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to give you”? What is “mine”? Above he said, “You will drink my cup”; below he put, “It is not mine to give you”; above and below he said “mine,” and did not change it. So what came before teaches why he said “mine.” For he was asked by the woman as a man, to let her sons sit at his right or at his left; since she had asked him as a man, the Lord also answered as though he were only a man, about his passion: “Can you drink the cup which I am about to drink?” So, since he was speaking according to the flesh about the passion of his body, he wanted to show that according to the flesh he would leave us the example and likeness of the suffering to be undergone, but that according to the human condition he would not grant a share in the heavenly throne. This is why he said, “It is not mine,” as elsewhere: “My teaching is not mine”; “it is not mine,” he says, that is, according to the flesh; because divine things are not the words of the flesh. And how plainly he revealed his indulgence toward the disciples he loved, by putting first: “You will drink my cup”! For since he ought not to give what they had asked, he offered something else, so as to mention first what he was granting them rather than what he was refusing, so that they might understand that what was lacking was the fairness of their request rather than the eagerness of the Lord’s generosity. “You will drink my cup,” he says; that is, I will not refuse the passion, which belongs to my flesh; what I have from the humanity I assumed, you can imitate: I have given you the victory of suffering, the inheritance of the cross. “But to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to give you.” He did not say, “It is not mine to give,” but, “It is not mine to give you”; that is, asserting not that power was lacking to him, but that merit was lacking to creatures. Take it another way: “It is not mine to give you,” that is, it is not mine, who came to teach humility; not mine, who came not to be served but to serve; not mine, who keep justice, not favor. Indeed, referring it to the Father, he added, “for whom it is prepared,” to show that the Father too is accustomed to have regard not to petitions but to merits, because God is no respecter of persons. Hence the Apostle too says: “Those whom he foreknew, he also predestined”; for he did not predestine before he foreknew, but he predestined the rewards of those whose merits he foreknew. Rightly, then, is the woman rebuked, who asked for things both impossible and by a special privilege from that Lord who, by his own free generosity, without anyone asking, conferred what he judged was to be given to the saints, not on two apostles but on all the disciples, as it is written: “You twelve will sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” So even if we think that what was asked was possible, there is no room for a false charge; yet when I read that the Seraphim stand, how can I think that men sit at the right or the left of the Son of God? The Lord sits above the Cherubim, as you have it: “You who sit upon the Cherubim, appear”; how will the apostles sit above the Cherubim? And I gather this not from my own wit but from the oracle of the Lord’s voice; for the Lord himself, commending the apostles to the Father at the end, says: “Father, I will that where I am, those whom you have given me may also be with me.” Certainly, if he had judged that the Father would give the divine throne to men, he would have said: “I will that where I sit, they also may sit with me.” But “I will,” he says, “that they may be with me,” not that they may sit with me; and “where I am,” not “as I am.” Then follows: “That they may see my glory.” Nor did he say here, “That they may have my glory,” but “that they may see”; for the servant sees, the Lord possesses; as David too taught, saying: “That I may see the delight of the Lord.” And the Lord himself revealed it in the Gospel, declaring: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” “They shall see,” he says; they will not sit with God above the Cherubim. Let them stop, then, thinking baser things of the Son of God according to his divinity, lest they think baser things of the Father too. For he who believes wrongly about the Son cannot think rightly about the Father; he who believes wrongly about the Spirit cannot think rightly about the Son. For where there is one dignity, one glory, one love, one majesty, whatever you think should be taken away in one is taken away from all in common; for there will no longer be a fullness which you can distinguish and divide into portions.

Yet there arise, august Emperor, those who, wishing to deny this unity of the divine substance, try to weaken the love of the Father and the Son, because it is written: “And you have loved them as you have loved me.” When they say this, what else are they doing but bringing in a certain equality of comparison between the Son of God and men? Can men be loved by God as the Son is, in whom the Father is well pleased? He is well pleasing in himself, we through him; for in those in whom God sees his Son according to his image, he takes them through the Son into the grace of sons; so that, as we are in the image through the Image, so through the generation of the Son we are called to adoption. The love of nature, then, which is everlasting, is one thing; the love of grace another. Or if they raise a question from the words, because it is written, “And you have loved them as you have loved me,” and think that a comparison is made, then let them think that this too was said by way of comparison: “Be merciful, as your Father who is in heaven is merciful”; and elsewhere: “Be perfect, as my Father who is in heaven is perfect.” But as he is perfect according to the fullness of his majesty, and we are perfect according to the progress of an acquired virtue, so too the Son is loved by the Father according to the fullness of an ever-abiding love, while in us the progress of virtue earns the love of God. You see, then, what grace God has given to men; and do you want to dissolve the natural and undivided love of the Father and the Son? And do you still argue about words, when you see the unity of majesty? Look at this whole passage, and see from what feeling he speaks; for you have him saying: “Glorify me, Father, with the glory which I had with you before the world was.” See that he speaks with the feeling of the first man; for by that petition he asks for us those things which man remembers were bestowed in paradise before sin, as he mentioned to the thief at the passion: “Amen, amen I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” This is the glory before the world. And he said “world” for men, as you have it: “See, the whole world has gone after him”; and elsewhere: “That this world may know that you sent me.” And yet, so that you might know that the Son of God is the great God, the Savior, the Almighty, he mixed in a sign of his majesty, saying: “And all mine are yours, and yours are mine.” He has all things, and do you turn his being sent into an insult? And if you do not take “sent” according to the flesh, as the Apostle said, and build a prejudice from a simple word, so as to say that inferiors are usually sent by superiors, what do you answer to the fact that the Son was sent to men? For if you think that the one who is sent is less than the one by whom he is sent, learn that the lesser has sent the greater, and the greater have been sent to the lesser. For Tobias sent the archangel Raphael, and an angel was sent to Balaam, and the Son of God to the Jews. Was the Son of God, then, less even than the Jews to whom he was sent? For of him it is written: “Last of all he sent them his only son, saying: They will respect my son.” And see that he named the servants first and the son afterwards, so that you may know that God, the only-begotten Son, according to the power of his divinity, has neither name nor fellowship in common with servants; he is sent as one to be revered, not to be ranked with the servants. And he rightly added “my,” so that he might be believed to be not one of many, nor of a degenerate nature, nor of some lesser power, but true from true, and to have come as the image of the Father’s substance. Yet suppose that the one who is sent is less than the one by whom he is sent: then Christ was less than Pilate too, since Pilate sent him to Herod. But a word does not prejudge power: Scripture, which says that he was sent by the Father, says that he was sent by the governor. Hence, if we think soberly the things that are worthy of the Son of God, we ought to understand that he was sent in this sense: that out of that incomprehensible and ineffable secret of his deep majesty the Word of God gave himself to be grasped by our minds according to our capacity, not only when he emptied himself but also when he dwelt in us, as it is written: “For I will dwell in them.” Indeed you have elsewhere that God said: “Come, let us go down and confuse their languages.” For God, who says, “I fill heaven and earth,” never goes down from one place to another; but he seems to go down in this, when the Word of God enters our hearts, as the prophet said: “Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight his paths”; so that, as he himself promised, coming with the Father he may make his dwelling with us. It is evident, then, how he comes.