On the Christian Faith

The Queen of the South came to hear the wisdom of Solomon, as we read in the book of Kings. Hiram the king also sent to Solomon in order to come to know him. You too, holy Emperor Gratian, imitating that ancient story, have wished to hear my faith. But I am not Solomon, that you should marvel at my wisdom; nor are you Augustus of one nation, but of the whole world, and you have ordered the faith to be set out in a little book, not in order to learn it, but in order to approve it. For what could you learn, Emperor Augustus, of a faith which you have always cherished with devout affection from your very cradle? “Before I formed you,” he says, “in your mother’s womb, I knew you, and before you came forth from the womb, I sanctified you.” Sanctification, then, is not handed on; it is poured in. Guard therefore the divine gifts; for what no one taught you, God, its author, has certainly poured into you. You ask me, holy emperor, for a little book on the faith as you are about to set out for battle; for you know that victory is usually sought by the faith of the commander more than by the valor of the soldiers. Abraham too led three hundred and eighteen men to war and brought back trophies from countless enemies; and by the sign of the Lord’s cross and name, having subdued the strength of five kings and their victorious troops, he both avenged his neighbor and won his brother’s son and a triumph. Jesus also, the son of Nave, conquered by the sound of seven priestly trumpets the enemies whom he could not overcome by the strong hand of the whole army, when he recognized the commander of the heavenly host. So you too are preparing to conquer, you who worship Christ; you are preparing to conquer, you who defend the faith, a book on which you have asked of me. I would rather indeed undertake the duty of exhorting to faith than of disputing about faith; for the one is a devout confession, the other a rash presumption. But since you do not need exhortation, and I am not free to excuse myself where it is a duty of piety, I will undertake a bold task on a modest occasion, so as to argue a little about the faith and to weave together more from the testimonies of Scripture. From the councils I shall follow above all what the three hundred and eighteen priests, chosen as it were by the judgment of Abraham, victors by the harmonious strength of faith, raised up like a trophy when the faithless had been subdued throughout the world; so that it seems to me a divine thing that we have the oracle of faith in the councils by the same number by which we have the example of piety in the history.

This is the assertion of our faith: that we say that God is one; and that we do not, like the pagans, separate the Son; nor, like the Jews, deny that he was begotten of the Father before all time and afterwards born of the Virgin; nor, like Sabellius, confuse the Father and the Word, so as to assert that the Father and the Son are the same; nor, like Photinus, hold that the Son had his beginning from the Virgin; nor, like Arius, by believing in many unlike powers, make many gods, in the error of the pagans. For it is written: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God.” For “God” and “Lord” is a name of majesty, a name of power, as he himself says: “The Lord is my name”; and as the prophet asserts elsewhere: “The Lord Almighty is his name.” He is Lord and God, then, either because he rules over all, or because he beholds all things and is feared by all. If, then, God is one, the name is one, the power of the Trinity is one. Indeed he himself says: “Go, baptize the nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”: in the name, certainly, not in the names. He himself also says: “I and the Father are one.” He said “one,” so that there might be no separation of power and nature; he added “are,” so that you may recognize Father and Son; for the perfect Father is believed to have begotten a perfect Son, and Father and Son are one, not by confusion of person but by unity of nature. We say, then, one God, not two or three gods; this is the charge which the impious heresy of the Arians brings against us and itself incurs. For whoever separates the divinity of the Trinity speaks of three gods; whereas the Lord, by saying, “Go, baptize the nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” showed that the Trinity is of one power. We confess Father and Son and Holy Spirit in such a way that in the perfect Trinity there is both fullness of divinity and unity of power. “Every kingdom divided against itself will easily be destroyed”: the Lord says this. The kingdom of the Trinity, then, is not divided. If, then, it is not divided, it is one; for what is not one is divided. They want the kingdom of the Trinity, then, to be such as would easily be destroyed by being divided within itself. On the contrary, because it cannot be destroyed, it is plain that it is not divided. For unity is not divided or split, and so it is subject neither to corruption nor to age.

“Not everyone,” he says, “who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven.” Faith, then, must not be perfunctory, Emperor Augustus; for it is written: “Zeal for your house has consumed me.” So with a faithful spirit and a devoted mind let us call upon Jesus as Lord and believe that he is God, so that whatever we ask of the Father in his name we may obtain. For the Father wishes to be asked through the Son; the Son wishes the Father to be asked. The grace of their devotion is in accord, and the deeds of their power are not at variance. For “whatever the Father does, the Son also does likewise.” The Son does both “likewise” and “the same things”; but he wishes the Father to be asked for what he himself is going to do, so that you may recognize in this not a sign of inability but the unity of power. Rightly, then, is the Son of God to be adored and venerated, who by his divinity founded the world and by his love formed our affection. And so we must believe God to be good, eternal, perfect, almighty, and true, as we have received in the Law and the prophets and the other divine Scriptures; for without these there is no God. For he who is God cannot fail to be good, since in the nature of God there is fullness of goodness; nor can he who made time be God from a point in time; nor can God be imperfect, for he who is less is certainly imperfect, since he lacks something by which he could be equal to the greater. This, then, is the proclamation of the faith: God is not evil; to God nothing is impossible; God is not temporal; God is not less. If I am wrong, let them refute me. Since, then, Christ is God, he is certainly good, almighty, eternal, perfect, and true; for these things belong to the nature of divinity. Either, then, let them deny the nature of divinity in Christ, or they cannot deny to God what belongs to the divine nature. Certainly, so that no one may go astray, let him follow the terms by which Holy Scripture has signified the Son, so that we might understand him. He is called the Word, he is called the Son, he is called the power of God, he is called the wisdom of God: the Word, because he is spotless; the power, because he is perfect; the Son, because he is begotten of the Father; the wisdom, because he is one with the Father, one in eternity, one in divinity. For the Father is not himself the one who is the Son; but between Father and Son a distinction of generation is expressed, so that he is God from God, abiding from abiding, full from full. These, then, are not bare names but signs of an active power; for there is fullness of divinity in the Father and fullness of divinity in the Son, not differing, but one divinity. What is one is not confused, nor is what is without difference multiple. For if all who believed, as it is written, had one soul and one heart; if everyone who clings to the Lord is one spirit, as the Apostle said; if husband and wife are in one flesh; if all of us human beings, as far as nature is concerned, are of one substance; if Scripture says this of human beings, that many are one, though there can be no comparison between them and divine things; how much more are the Father and the Son one in divinity, where there is no difference either of substance or of will! For otherwise how shall we speak of one God? Diversity makes many; unity of power excludes numerical quantity, because unity is not a number but is itself the beginning of all numbers.

How fully divine Scripture has expressed the unity of the Father and the Son according to divinity, the prophetic oracles bear witness. For thus says the Lord of hosts: “Egypt has labored, and the merchandise of the Ethiopians and of the Sabeans; men of stature will pass over to you and will be your servants, and they will follow behind you bound in chains, and will worship you and make supplication in you; for God is in you, and there is no God besides you. For you are God, and we did not know it, the God of Israel.” Hear the prophet’s voice: “In you,” he says, “is God, and there is no God besides you.” How does this fit the Arians? They must deny the divinity either of the Father or of the Son, unless they believe in the unity of one and the same divinity. “In you,” he says, “is God,” because the Father is in the Son. For it is written: “The Father who abides in me, he speaks,” and: “The works that I do, he also does.” But elsewhere too the Son is in the Father, for he says: “I am in the Father, and the Father is in me.” Let them undo, if they can, this property of nature and this unity of work. God, then, is in God, but they are not two gods, for it is written that God is one; and Lord is in Lord, but they are not two Lords, for it is equally written: “You cannot serve two masters.” And the Law says: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God.” And certainly in the same Testament it says: “The Lord rained from the Lord.” “The Lord,” it says, “rained from the Lord.” So also you have in Genesis: “And God said,” and “God made”; and further on: “And God made man in the image of God.” Yet not two Gods, but one God made. In both places, then, the unity of operation and of name is preserved. For certainly when we read “God from God,” we do not say two gods. Indeed you have in the forty-fourth Psalm that the prophet both spoke of God the Father and declared God the Son, saying: “Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever,” and further on: “God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions.” It is God who anoints, and God, the Son of God, who is anointed according to the flesh. For who are Christ’s companions in his anointing, if not in the flesh? You see, then, that God was anointed by God; but it is in the assumption of human nature that the Son of God is described as anointed, and the form of the Law is not violated. Here too, then, when it is said, “The Lord rained from the Lord,” recognize the unity of divinity. For unity of operation does not make divinity plural, as the Lord himself showed when he said: “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me; otherwise believe for the sake of the works themselves.” And here we observe that he indicated the unity of divinity through the unity of works. But so that one deity and one dominion of Father and Son might be proved, lest we fall into the error of pagan or Jewish impiety, the Apostle foresaw this and showed what we should follow, saying: “One God the Father, from whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him.” For just as by saying “one Lord Jesus Christ” he did not deny that the Father is Lord, so by saying “one God the Father” he did not separate the Son from the truth of deity either. Hence he showed not a plurality of divinity but a unity of power; for there is both divinity in dominion and dominion in divinity, as it is written: “Know that the Lord himself is God; he made us, and not we ourselves.” “In you,” then, “is God,” through unity of nature; “and there is no God besides you,” through the property of substance, all difference being excluded. In the book of Jeremiah too Scripture speaks of one God, and yet confesses both Father and Son. For you have it thus: “This is our God, and no other will be accounted of in comparison with him. He found out every way of discipline and gave it to Jacob his servant and to Israel his beloved. After this he was seen on earth and lived among men.” He is speaking of the Son, for it is he who lived among men; and he says: “This is our God, and no other will be reckoned in comparison with him.” Why do we debate about him, of whom so great a prophet says that no other can be reckoned in comparison with him? For what other reckoning can there be where there is unity of deity? The people confessed this when they were placed in dangers; one who feared religion did not know how to sow questions. Be present, Holy Spirit, with your prophets, in whom you are accustomed to dwell, and whom we believe. If we do not believe the prophets, shall I believe the wise men of this world? But “where is the wise man, where is the scribe?” Our countryman, while grafting figs, found what the philosopher did not know. For “God chose the foolish things of this world to confound the things that are strong.” Do we believe the Jews because God was once “known in Judea”? But they deny the very thing on account of which we believe, because they did not know the Father, since they denied the Son.

The common nature of things testifies to one God, because the world is one. Faith signifies one God, because the faith of the New and the Old Testament is one. Grace testifies to one Holy Spirit, because there is one baptism in the name of the Trinity. The prophets speak of one God; the apostles hear of him. The Magi believed in one God, and as suppliants brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh to Christ’s cradle, confessing him king by the gold and venerating him as God by the incense. For treasure belongs to a kingdom, sacrifice to God, myrrh to burial. What, then, did the mystic gifts mean amid the lowly manger, but that we should understand in Christ the difference between divinity and flesh? He is seen as a man; he is adored as Lord. He lies in swaddling clothes, but shines in the stars; the cradle shows him being born, the stars show him reigning. It is the flesh that is wrapped up; it is the divinity that is served by angels. Thus neither is the dignity of his natural majesty lost, nor is the reality of the flesh he assumed called in question. This is our faith. So God willed to be known by all; so the three youths believed and did not feel the fires around them, when the harmful fire burned up the faithless and the harmless flame bedewed the faithful, who were refreshed by the fires that burned others; for by the merit of faith the punishment had lost its own nature. For one was present in the form of an angel, who admonished them that in the number of the Trinity there should be the praise of one power. God was blessed; the Son of God was seen in the angel; the holy and spiritual grace spoke in the youths.

Now let us consider what questions the Arians raise about the Son of God. They say that the Son of God is unlike the Father. If this were said against a man, it would be an insult. They say that the Son of God began in time, though he himself is the founder of times. We are human beings, and we do not wish to be temporal. We began in time, and we believe that we shall be beyond time. We long to be made eternal; how then can we deny that the Son of God is everlasting, whom nature, not grace, teaches and shows to be everlasting? They say that he was created. Who would count an author among his own works, so that he should seem to be what he made? They deny that he is good. The sacrilegious utterance condemns itself, so that it cannot hope for pardon. They deny that he is the true Son of God; they deny that he is almighty, though they admit that all things were made through the Son, that all things were created through the power of God. For what is power but perfect nature? They deny also that he is one with the Father in divinity. Let them, then, erase the Gospel; let them erase the voice of Christ. For he himself said: “I and the Father are one.” It is not I who say this; Christ said it. Was he deceitful, that he should lie? Was he impious, that he should claim what he was not? But these points will be treated more fully, each in its own place. Now, since the heretic says that he is unlike, and strives to build this up by cunning disputations, we must say what is written: “Take care that no one despoils you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men and according to the elements of this world, and not according to Christ; for in him dwells all the fullness of divinity bodily.” For they rest all the force of their poisons on dialectical disputation, which by the opinion of the philosophers is defined as having no power to establish anything, but only an eagerness to destroy. But it did not please God to save his people by dialectic; “for the kingdom of God is in simplicity of faith, not in contention of speech.”

They say, then, that he is unlike; we deny it; indeed we shudder at the word. But I do not want you, holy Emperor, to trust to argument and to our disputation. Let us question the Scriptures, let us question the apostles, let us question the prophets, let us question Christ. In short, let us question the Father, whose honor they claim to champion if the Son is judged inferior. But an injury to the Son is no honor to a good Father. It cannot please a good Father if the Son is believed to have fallen short of the Father rather than to be his equal. Pardon me, holy Emperor, if I turn my words to them for a little while. But whom in particular shall I single out? Eunomius, or Arius and Aetius, his teachers? For there are many names but one faithlessness: in impiety they are not discordant, in communion they are at odds; not unlike in deceit, but divided in their association. Why they will not agree with one another I do not understand. The Arians shun the person of Eunomius, but they assert his faithlessness and carry out his impiety. They say that he published too lavishly what Arius had written. What a great outpouring of blindness! They approve the author and repudiate the one who carried it out. And so they have now divided themselves into several forms. Some follow Eunomius or Aetius, others Palladius or Demophilus and Auxentius, or the heirs of this faithlessness; others follow various leaders. Is Christ divided? But those who divide him from the Father split themselves. And so, since those who do not agree among themselves have conspired in common against the Church of God, I shall call those whom I must answer by the common name of heretics. For heresy, like some Hydra of the fables, has grown by its wounds, and though it is often cut back it has sprouted again, destined for the fire and to perish in burning; or, like some Scylla, a monstrous portent, divided into various forms of faithlessness, it holds out the name of the Christian sect as a pretense; but the wretches whom it finds tossing amid the shipwrecks of faith in that strait of its impiety, girt with bestial monsters, it tears apart with the savage tooth of its foul doctrine. Its cave, holy Emperor, bristling, as sailors say, with hidden lairs, and all its neighborhood, which resounds with dark dogs among the rocks of faithlessness, we must sail past with our ears, as it were, closed. For it is written: “Hedge your ears with thorns.” And elsewhere: “Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers.” And again: “Avoid a heretical man after a first correction, knowing that such a one is perverted and sins, since he is condemned by his own judgment.” So, like good pilots, let us spread the sails of faith where we can pass by most safely, and retrace the course of the Scriptures.

The Apostle says that Christ is the image of the Father; for he says that he is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” “Firstborn,” he says, not “first-created,” so that he may be believed to be both begotten, as regards his nature, and first, as regards his eternity. Elsewhere too the Apostle asserted that God “appointed him heir of all things, through whom also he made the ages, who is the radiance of his glory and the impress of his substance.” The Apostle says “image,” and Arius says that he is unlike. Why an image, if it has no likeness? People do not want their portraits to be unlike them, and Arius maintains that the Father is unlike the Son, and would have it that the Father begot one unlike himself, as though he were powerless and could not beget one like himself. The prophets say: “In your light we shall see light.” The prophets say: “For she is the radiance of eternal light, and the spotless mirror of God’s majesty, and the image of his goodness.” See what great things are said! “Radiance,” because the brightness of the Father’s light is in the Son; “spotless mirror,” because the Father is seen in the Son; “image of goodness,” because what is seen in the Son is not a body in a body but the whole power. “Image” teaches that he is not unlike; “impress” signifies that he is the exact expression; “radiance” marks him as eternal. The image is certainly not a bodily face, not composed of paints or of wax, but simple, from God, gone forth from the Father, drawn from the fountain. By this image the Lord showed Philip the Father, saying: “Philip, he who sees me sees the Father also. And how do you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?” For he who sees him in the Son sees the Father in the image. Do you see what kind of image he means? This image is truth, this image is righteousness, this image is the power of God: not mute, because it is the Word; not without feeling, because it is wisdom; not empty, because it is power; not void, because it is life; not dead, because it is the resurrection. You see, then, that when he is called an image, this signifies that there is a Father whose image the Son is; for no one can be his own image. I could say more from the Son’s testimonies; but lest he should perhaps be said to have favored himself too much, let us question the Father. He certainly said: “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” The Father says to the Son, “in our image and likeness,” and do you say that the Son of God is unlike? John says: “Beloved, we are children of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be; we know that when it is revealed, we shall be like him.” O heedless madness! O shameless obstinacy! We are human beings, and as far as we can we shall be in the likeness of God; and do we dare to deny that the Son of God is like him? So the Father said: “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” At the very beginning of the world I hear that there are the Father and the Son, and I see one work. I hear one speaking, I recognize one making; but I read of one image, one likeness, of Father and Son. This likeness is not one of diversity but of unity. What you claim for yourself, then, you take away from the Son of God; and yet you certainly cannot be in the image of God except through the image of God.

It is clear, then, that he is not unlike; and so the way is easier for us to confess that he is also everlasting, since one who is like the Everlasting is certainly everlasting. But if we call the Father everlasting and deny this same thing of the Son, we say that he is unlike; for the temporal is unlike the everlasting. The prophet proclaims him everlasting, and the Apostle too proclaims him everlasting; the Old Testament is full of testimonies to the everlasting Son, and so is the New. Let us keep to order, then. It is written in the Old Testament, to cite one text out of many: “Before me there was no other God, and after me there will be none.” I will argue nothing, then; I question you yourself. Who says this, the Father or the Son? Whichever you say, you will understand that by it you are refuted, or, if you believe, taught. Who, then, says this, the Father or the Son? If the Son: “Before me,” he says, “there was no other God”; if the Father: “After me,” he says, “there will be none.” The one has no one before him, the other no one after him; the Father is known in the Son and the Son in the Father, each in the other. For when you have named the Father, you have also indicated his Son, because no one is father to himself; when you name the Son, you also confess his Father, because no one is son to himself. So neither can the Son be without the Father, nor the Father without the Son. Always, then, the Father; always also the Son. For “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; he was in the beginning with God.” “He was,” it says, “with God.” Was, was, was, was: see, “was” four times. Where did the impious find that “he was not”? Elsewhere too John says in his epistle: “That which was from the beginning.” The “was” stretches out without limit: whatever you may imagine, the Son was. Our fisherman shut out all heresies with this short chapter. For what “was in the beginning” is not enclosed by time, is not preceded by a beginning: so let Arius fall silent. What “was with God” is not confounded by mingling, but is distinguished by the solid perfection of the Word abiding with the Father: so that Sabellius may be struck dumb. “And the Word was God”: this Word, then, is not in the utterance of speech but in that designation of heavenly power: so that Photinus may be refuted. That he “was in the beginning with God” teaches the inseparable unity of eternal divinity in Father and Son: so that Eunomius may blush. Finally, since all things are said to have been made through him, he is shown to be the founder of both the New and the Old Testament: so that the Manichaean can find no foothold for his temptation. Thus the good fisherman enclosed them all within one net, to make them incapable of deceit, though they were not worth the catching.

Tell me, heretic (for the most clement emperor gives me leave to address you for a little, not from any eagerness to converse with you or desire to hear you, but for the sake of setting the matter out), tell me, I say, was there ever a time when almighty God was not Father and yet was God? “I do not maintain a time,” you say. Well and cleverly said. For if you say a time, you will convict yourself; for you must assert that there was a time before the Son, though the Son is the author and creator of time; for he cannot have begun after his own work; you must therefore admit that he is the author of his own work. “I do not deny,” you say, “that the Son was before time; but when I call him Son, I show that the Father is prior, because the Father,” you say, “is prior to the Son.” What is this? You deny that there was time before the Son, and yet you want something or other that belongs to time to have preceded the Son; and you show that there were some intermediate exertions of begetting, by which you indicate that the Father’s begetting was temporal. For if he began to be Father, then he was God first and afterwards became Father. How then is God unchangeable? For if he was God first and Father afterwards, he was certainly changed by the addition of begetting. But God forbid such madness! We have raised this question in order to refute their impiety. For a devout mind asserts a generation without time, so as to call the Father everlasting together with the Son and never to assert that he was changed. Let honor, then, join to the Father the Son whom divinity has joined; let impiety not separate him whom the property of generation has united. Let us honor the Son, so that we may honor the Father also, as it is written in the Gospel. The everlastingness of the Son is the mark of the Father’s majesty. If the Son did not always exist, then the Father was changed; but the Son always existed; therefore the Father too was never changed, for he is always unchangeable. So you see that those who wish to deny that the Son is everlasting wish to teach that the Father was changed.

Take another argument to make it clear that the Son is everlasting. The Apostle says that God’s power and divinity are everlasting; and Christ is the power of God, for it is written that Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. If, then, Christ is the power of God, since the power of God is everlasting, Christ too is therefore everlasting. Do not, then, heretic, build a false charge on the custom of human generation, nor make one up out of our way of speaking. For we cannot shut up in our narrow words the greatness of the immeasurable divinity, “of whose greatness there is no end.” For if you set out to define the generation of a man, you point to a time; but the divine generation is above all things; it extends far and wide; it rises above all thoughts and senses. For it is written: “No one comes to the Father except through me.” Whatever, then, you think of the Father, however great you think his eternity, do not suppose that you think anything of him except through the Son; nor can any understanding pass to the Father except through the Son. “This is,” he says, “my most beloved Son.” “Is,” he says: he who is what he is always is. Hence David also says: “For ever, O Lord, your Word abides in heaven.” For what abides fails neither in substance nor in eternity. Do you ask me how he is Son, if he does not have a Father prior to him? I in turn ask you when, or how, you think the Son was begotten. For to me it is impossible to know the secret of his generation: the mind fails, the voice is silent, not only mine but the angels’ too. It is above the Powers, above the Angels, above the Cherubim, above the Seraphim, above all understanding; for it is written: “And the peace of Christ, which is above all understanding.” If the peace of Christ is above all understanding, how is so great a generation not above all understanding? You too, lay your hand on your mouth; it is not lawful to pry into the mysteries above. It is lawful to know that he was born; it is not lawful to examine how he was born. The one I may not deny; the other I am afraid to inquire into. For if Paul says that what he heard when he was caught up into the third heaven cannot be uttered, how can we express the secret of the Father’s generation, which we could neither perceive nor hear? But if you drag me to the custom of human generation, so as to say that the Father is prior, see whether examples from earthly generation suit the generation of God. If we speak in human terms, you cannot deny that in human beings the father’s experiences come before the son’s. He grew first, he grew old first, he grieved first, he wept first. If, then, the son is younger in time, the father is older in suffering. If the son has incurred the stage of life that comes with being born, neither has the father escaped the shame of begetting. Why do these racks of questions delight you? You hear “Son of God”: either erase the name or acknowledge the nature. You hear “womb”: acknowledge the truth of a manifest generation. You hear “heart”: understand the Word. You hear “right hand”: acknowledge the power. You hear “mouth”: acknowledge the wisdom. These things are not to be reckoned in God in a bodily way. The Son is begotten incomprehensibly; the Father begets impassibly; and yet he begot from himself, and before all understanding true God begot true God. The Father loves, and you examine; the Father is well pleased, and you with the Jews look on with envy; the Father honors, and you with the pagans revile.

You ask me whether he who is Father can fail to be prior. I ask you to show me when the Father was prior: gather the truth from testimonies or from arguments. If from testimonies, you have certainly received that God’s power is everlasting. You have also read the one who says: “Israel, if you hear me, there shall be no new God in you, nor shall you worship a strange God.” The one of these signifies eternity, the other the property of a substance without difference, so that we may believe the Son neither later than the Father nor of another divinity. For if he is later than the Father, he is new; and if he is not of one divinity, he is strange. But he is not later, for he is not new; nor is he strange, for he was born of the Father, and because, as it is written, he is “God over all, blessed for ever.” But if they think him strange, why do they worship him, when it is written: “Nor shall you worship a strange God”? Or, if they do not worship him, let them say so, and there is an end of it, so that they deceive no one under the profession of a religious name. These, then, are the testimonies of the Scriptures. Or if you have another, you must bring it forward. It remains for the truth to be gathered from arguments as well. Although arguments usually give way even to human testimonies, still, argue as you will, heretic. “We learn from experience,” you say, “that he who begets is prior to him who is born.” Follow out, then, all the traces of custom; and if the rest agree, I do not object to your requiring this too; but if none agrees, how can you demand this alone when all the rest are lacking? So, since you require custom: when he was begotten of the Father, he was a little child. You have seen a little infant wailing in the cradle; he received certain advances of age; for if he had the infirmity of generation, he must have incurred the infirmity not only of being born but also of living. But perhaps you slip into such madness as not to refuse to say this of the Son of God, measuring him as you do by human infirmity. What if, though you cannot deny him the name of God, you want to prove him a man by his infirmity? What if, while you examine the Son, you accuse the Father, and while you prejudge Christ, you condemn the Father along with him? For if the divine generation was subject to time, and this is claimed from the custom of human generation, then the Father too carried the Son in a bodily womb and bore the burden through the course of ten months. But how is there the custom of generation without the other sex? You see that the customary order of generation did not apply at the beginning, and yet you think that the births bound to a certain bodily necessity were the custom. You look for custom, I for sex; you demand time, I order; you examine the end, I seek the beginning. Surely the end depends on the beginning, not the beginning on the end. “Everything,” you say, “that is born has a beginning; and so, because he is Son, he has a beginning and began to exist in time.” Let that be said by their own mouth. I, for my part, profess that the Son was born; at the rest of it, which is impiety, I shudder. Man, you confess God, and do you hem him in with such a slander? May God avert this madness!

Again they object: “Then he is not Son, if he does not have what sons have.” May the Father pardon me, may the Son pardon me, may the Holy Spirit pardon me, as I wish to report the question for the sake of piety. Certainly the Father is, and abides always; there are also creatures, by the divine disposition. Is there, then, any of them that is not subject to places, or to times, or to creation, or to some cause or author? Surely none. What then do you say? Is there any of these things that the Father needs? It is impious to say so. Either, then, stop applying to the divinity what belongs to creatures, or, if you insist on comparing, consider where your impiety is heading; may it never so much as enter our thoughts! For we hold to a devout answer. God is almighty, and so the Father needs none of these things, for he undergoes no change of himself and no advance such as we need, whose infirmity gains advancement from such things. But he who is almighty is certainly not created; he is without place and above time. For there is nothing before God; indeed it is a grievous thing even to say this very word, that something is before God. If, then, this is so, that there is nothing in God the Father of the things that signify advancement, because he is God, then none of these things can be applied to the Son of God either, so that he should receive either a beginning or an advance, because he is true God from true God. So, since we do not find the customary order, accept, Arian, that the generation of the Son was unique. Accept it, I say; and if you do not believe me, blush at least at the voice of God, who says: “To whom have you likened me?” And again: “For God is not as man is.” For if the working of God is unique, because he does not work anything with hands, does not complete it by labor, does not finish it in days (“for he spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created”), why should we not believe that his generation in the Son is unique, when we recognize that his creation in his works is unique? It is certainly fitting that he should be seen to have begotten the Son in a special and unique way. Let him who has the grace of an unusual power have the glory of an unusual generation. Not only is Christ’s generation from the Father wonderful; his very generation from the Virgin is wonderful too. You say that the former is like our conception; I prove that even the latter is unlike ours; indeed, I will make you yourself confess it. Tell me how he was born of Mary, by what custom a virgin womb held him, how there was a birth without a man’s seed, how a virgin was pregnant, how a girl became a mother before she knew union as a wife. The cause was lacking, and yet a son was begotten. Whence, then, the birth by a renewed law? If, then, in the Virgin the custom of human generation was lacking, how can you require in God the Father the custom of ordinary generation? Certainly custom belongs to sex, because sex belongs to the flesh; where, then, there is no flesh, how can you demand the infirmity of the flesh? No one sits in judgment on his superior: you have been commanded to believe, not permitted to examine. For it is written: “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Speech fails not only in the generation of the Son but also in the works of God. For it is written: “All his works are in faith.” Are his works, then, in faith, and his generation without faith? And do we examine what we do not see, we who are commanded to believe rather than to examine even the things we do see?

Someone will say: “How was the Son begotten?” As one everlasting, as the Word, as the radiance of eternal light; for radiance is active at the very moment it is born. This example is the Apostle’s, not mine. Do not, then, believe that there was even a single moment in which God was without wisdom, or light without radiance. Do not, Arian, judge divine things from ours; but believe divine things where you do not find human ones. A pagan king saw in the fire with the three Hebrew youths the form of a fourth, as of an angel; and because he thought him superior to angels, he judged him to be the Son of God, of whom he had not read but whom he believed. Abraham too saw three and worshiped one. Peter on the mountain saw Moses and Elijah with the Son of God, and he made no mistake about the nature, nor about the glory. Indeed, he asked not them but Christ what he ought to do; for although he was preparing a service for three, he awaited the command of one. But because in his simplicity he thought that the tabernacles should be offered to three, he is corrected by the authority of God the Father, who says: “This is my most beloved Son; listen to him”; that is: why do you rank your fellow servants with your Lord? “This is my Son”: not Moses a son, not Elijah a son, but this one is the Son. The apostle perceived the correction; he fell on his face, overwhelmed by the Father’s voice and the Son’s brightness; but he is raised up by the Son, who is accustomed to lift up those who lie fallen. He saw one; he saw the Son of God alone. For the little servants withdrew, so that the Lord alone, who alone was designated Son, might be seen. What, then, did that vision mean, signifying not the equality of Christ and his servants but a mystery, except that it might be made plain to us that the Law and the Prophets, in agreement with the Gospel, revealed the everlasting Son of God whom they had announced? So when we too hear of the Son from the womb and the Word from the heart, let us believe that he was not formed by hands but born of the Father, not the work of a craftsman but the offspring of a parent. And so he who says, “This is my Son,” did not say, “This one is temporal”; he did not say, “This is my creature, this my making, this my servant”; but “This is my Son, whom you see in glory.” This is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, who appeared to Moses in the bush, of whom Moses says: “He who is has sent me.” It was not the Father in the bush, not the Father in the desert, but the Son who spoke to Moses. Indeed Stephen said of him: “This is he who was in the assembly in the wilderness with the angel.” This, then, is he who gave the Law, he who spoke to Moses, saying: “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.” This, then, is the God of the patriarchs; this is the God of the prophets. We read, then, of the Son: let your mind take in what is read; let your tongue give forth the confession. Away with arguments here, where faith is sought; let dialectic now keep silent even in its own schools. I do not ask what the philosophers say; I inquire what they do. They have been left alone in their schools. See how faith outweighs arguments. Those who dispute copiously are deserted daily by their companions; those who believe simply grow daily. Philosophers are not believed; fishermen are believed. Dialecticians are not believed; tax collectors are believed. The former bound the world with pleasures and delights; the latter stripped it of them by fasting and sufferings. And so suffering has now begun to attract more people than pleasure. Now let us see how far the Arians differ from the pagans. The pagans call their gods unequal in sex and unlike in power; the Arians assert a Trinity of differing divinity and unlike power. The pagans assert that their gods had a temporal beginning; the Arians falsely say that Christ began in time. Did they not draw the whole color of their impiety from philosophy? Yet the pagans magnify what they worship; the Arians assert that the Son of God, who is God, is a creature.

It has been made clear, I think, holy Emperor, that the Lord Jesus is neither unlike the Father nor from time. It remains to refute that other sacrilege too, and to prove that the Son of God is not a creature; and in this the oracle of today’s reading breathes help upon us, for we heard it read, with the Lord saying: “Go into the whole world and preach the Gospel to every creature.” He who says “every creature” excepts none. Where, then, are those who call Christ a creature? For if he were a creature, would he command the Gospel to be preached to himself? He is not, then, a creature, but the Creator, who entrusts to his disciples the duty of teaching the creature. Christ is not a creature: for “the creature was subjected to futility,” as the Apostle said. Was Christ, then, subjected to futility? Again, according to the same Apostle: “The creation groans and is in labor together until now.” Does Christ, then, groan and labor, he who freed our groanings from death? “The creation,” he says, “will be set free from the slavery of corruption.” We see, then, that there is a great distance between the creature and the Lord; for the creature belongs to slavery, but “the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” Who brought in this error, so that someone should call him a creature who created all things, who rules all things? Did the Lord create himself? For if it is read that all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made, did he make himself? If it is read, as cannot be denied, that God made all things in wisdom, can it seem likely that wisdom was made in itself? We read that he was begotten, for the Father said: “From the womb, before the morning star, I begot you.” We read that the Son is firstborn; we read that he is only-begotten: firstborn, because no one is before him; only-begotten, because no one is after him. We read also: “Who will declare his generation?” “Generation,” it says, not creation. What can be set against such great testimonies? The Son of God also showed the difference between generation and grace, saying: “I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” He did not say, “I ascend to our Father,” but, “I ascend to my Father and your Father.” This separation shows a difference: that he is his begetter, our creator. And he added: “my God and your God”; for although he and the Father are one, and the Father is his Father by the property of nature, while God began to be our Father through the Son, not by right of nature but of grace, yet here he seems to signify both natures in Christ, of divinity and of flesh: of divinity from the Father, of flesh from the mother; the one before all things, the other from the Virgin. Indeed he first named the Father as Son, and afterwards called him God as man. And everywhere the testimonies teach that he says “my God” in the person of a man: “O God, my God, look upon me; why have you forsaken me?” And elsewhere: “From my mother’s womb you are my God.” Above, he suffers as man; below, it is as man that he is cast forth from his mother’s womb. So when he says, “From my mother’s womb you are my God,” he signifies that he who was always Father is his God from the time when he was cast forth from his mother’s womb. Since, then, we have read of the generation of Christ in the Gospel, in the Apostle, in the prophets, how do they dare to say that he was created or made? And indeed they ought to consider in what respect they have read that he was created, in what respect made. For it is taught that the Son of God was begotten of God, born of God; but in what respect I read that he was made, let them carefully observe; for God was not made, but God the Son of God was born; afterwards, however, according to the flesh, he was made man from Mary. If they do not believe me, let them believe the Apostle, who says: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, made from a woman, made under the Law.” “His Son,” he says: not one of many, not common, but his own. When he says “his own,” he marked the property of eternal generation. He asserted that this Son was afterwards made from a woman, so that his being made might be ascribed not to the divinity but to the assumption of a body: made from a woman by taking on flesh; made under the Law by the observance of the Law. But that heavenly generation was before the Law; this one after the Law.

Hence they are also accustomed to boast idly of what is written: “And God made him both Lord and Christ.” Let the unlearned read the whole and understand; for thus it is written: “And God made him Lord, and made him Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” It was not the divinity that was crucified but the flesh. That, certainly, could be made which could be crucified. The Son of God, then, is not a thing made. Let that text also be dismissed on which they are accustomed to build their false charge, and let them learn in what sense it was said: “The Lord created me.” He did not say, “The Father created,” but, “The Lord created me.” The flesh acknowledges a Lord; glory signifies a Father; our created nature confesses a Lord; love knows a Father. Who, then, does not know that this is said on account of the incarnation? He says, then, that he was created in that respect in which he also testifies that he is a man, saying: “Why do you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth?” He says “man” in that respect in which he was crucified, died, and was buried. Nor should one doubt that he put in the past tense what was still to come; for this is the custom of prophecy, that things to come are spoken of as present or as done. For instance, you have read in the twenty-first Psalm: “Fat bulls besieged me”; you have also read: “They divided my garments among them,” which the evangelist shows was prophesied of the time of the passion; for to God things to come are present, and to him to whom all things are foreknown, things to come are as things done, as it is written: “Who has made the things that are to come.” Nor is it surprising if he says that he was established before the ages, since you have read that he was predestined before eternal times. How truly this appears to be said of the incarnation, what follows makes plain: “Wisdom,” it says, “has built herself a house and set up seven pillars, and has slain her victims; she has mixed her wine in the bowl and prepared her table; and she has sent out her servants, calling with the loftiest proclamation and saying: Whoever is foolish, let him turn aside to me.” Do we not see in the Gospel, after the incarnation, all these things fulfilled: that he celebrated the mysteries of the sacred banquet, that he sent out the apostles, that he cried with a loud voice, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink”? So what follows corresponds to what goes before, and we see the whole course of the incarnation laid out in the exposition of the prophecy. Many other proofs could be at hand that sayings of this kind are spoken of the incarnation; but I do not entangle myself in books, lest the treatise seem too long.

Now I ask the Arians themselves whether they think that “begotten” is the same as “created.” For if they say it is the same, there is certainly no difference between begetting and creating. Then, since we too were created, there is no difference between us, Christ, and the elements. But however mad they are, they will not dare to say this. Finally, to indulge their folly in what is not true: if, as they think, there is no difference in the word, why do they not call him whom they worship by the better name? Why do they not use the Father’s word? Why do they reject what conveys honor and take up what conveys insult? But if there is a difference between created and begotten, as I think there is, then when we read “begotten” we certainly do not understand begotten and created to be the same. Let them say, then, that he was begotten of the Father and brought forth of the Virgin; or let them say how the Son of God is both begotten and created. One nature, and above all God, does not admit of diversity. But let our own opinion be set aside: let us question Paul, who, full of the Spirit of God and foreseeing these questions, speaking generally against the pagans and specially against the Arians, says that by divine judgment those are condemned who serve the creature rather than the Creator. For you have it thus: “God gave them up to the desires of their hearts, so that they dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is God blessed for ever.” So Paul forbids me to serve the creature, and admonishes me that Christ is to be served. Christ, then, is not a creature. “Paul,” he says, “a servant of Jesus Christ.” And this good servant, who acknowledges his Lord, himself forbids us to serve the creature: how, then, would he himself serve Christ if he thought Christ a creature? Either, then, let them stop worshiping him whom they call a creature, or let them stop calling a creature him whom they pretend to worship, lest under the name of worshipers they commit graver sacrileges. For an enemy in the household is more detestable than one from outside, and it is a heavier crime to abuse the name of Christ against Christ. What better interpreter of the Scriptures, then, do we seek than that teacher of the nations, the chosen vessel, chosen from among the persecutors? He who had persecuted Jesus confesses him. He had certainly read Solomon more than Arius had, and he was learned in the Law; and so, because he had read, he says that Christ was not created but begotten. For he had read: “He spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created.” Was Christ made by a word? Was Christ created by a command? And how can there be a creature in God? For God is of a simple nature, not conjoined and composite; nothing is added to him, but he has in his nature only what is divine; he fills all things and is nowhere himself confused; he penetrates all things and is nowhere himself to be penetrated; he is everywhere whole, and at the same moment present in heaven, on earth, and in the farthest part of the sea; incomprehensible to sight, inexpressible in speech, beyond the estimate of sense; to be followed by faith, to be venerated with reverence; so that you may understand that whatever can be thought more reverently, whatever is more excellent in beauty, whatever more sublime in power, this befits God. So, since the Father is well pleased in the Son, believe that the Son is worthy of the Father; believe that the Son came forth from God, as he himself testifies, saying: “I proceeded from God and have come”; and elsewhere: “I came forth from God.” He who proceeded from God and came forth from God can have nothing but what is God’s.

Hence he is not only God but true God, true from true, and so true that he is himself the truth. So if we seek his name, he is the truth; if we seek his natural majesty, the Son of God is true to such a degree that he is also the Father’s own. For it is written: “He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us,” delivered him up, of course, according to the flesh. “Own” speaks of the property of divinity; “Son,” of the truth of that property; “did not spare,” of the mercy of love; “delivered up,” of the offering made for our safety. But lest they raise a false charge because it is written that the Father delivered him up, the Apostle himself said elsewhere: “Peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins”; and elsewhere: “As Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.” If, then, he was both delivered up by the Father and delivered himself up, it is plain that there is one operation, one will of Father and Son. If, then, we seek his natural majesty, he is begotten. He who denies that he is begotten denies that he is the Father’s own; he who refuses him that, thinks him one in common with the rest. But if we seek the property of the generation itself, he came forth from God. For since in our usage “to come forth” is said of what already is, and what is said to come forth seems to proceed from inner hidden places, we perceive the property of the divine generation, though in narrow words: that he should not seem to have come forth from some place, but as God from God, Son from Father; nor should he seem to have begun in time, who came forth by being born of the Father, as he who was born said himself: “I came forth from the mouth of the Most High.” But if they do not acknowledge his nature, if they do not believe the Scriptures, let them at least believe the works. To whom does the Father say, “Let us make man,” except to him whom he knew to be his true Son? In whom would he recognize his image, except in the true one? The adoptive and the true are not one; nor would the Son say, “We are one,” if he compared himself with the true while not being true himself. “Let us make,” then, says the Father. He who said it is true; can he who made, then, not be true? Is what is granted to the speaker denied to the maker? And how, unless he knew him to be his true Son, would he entrust to him the unity of his will and the reality of his work? For since the Son does the same works as the Father does, and the Son gives life to whom he will, as it is written, he is not different in power and is free in will; thus unity is preserved, for the power of God lies in the property of divinity, and freedom lies not in any difference but in the unity of will. The apostles, troubled on the sea, though they did not yet believe in their hearts, when they first saw the waters play beneath the Lord’s feet and the fearless footsteps of the Lord walking on the waters amid the restless surge of the sea, and then, when Christ boarded the ship that was being tossed by the waves, beheld the waters calmed and the elements obedient, believed him to be the true Son of God, saying: “Truly you are the Son of God.” The centurion, with the others who were with him, confesses the same when the hinges of the world trembled at the Lord’s passion; and you, heretic, deny it! The centurion says: “Truly this was the Son of God.” “Was,” says the centurion; and the Arian says, “He was not.” The centurion, then, bloodstained in hand but devout in mind, asserts both the truth and the eternity of the generation; you, heretic, deny the truth of the generation and ascribe time to it. Would that you had stained your hand rather than your soul! But you, not innocent even of hand and savage in mind, inflict death as far as in you lies, you who think him weak; indeed, what is graver, although the divinity cannot feel a wound, yet as far as in you lies you try to slay in Christ not his body but his majesty. We cannot doubt, then, that he is true God, whom both his executioners believed and the demons confessed to be the true Son of God; their testimonies are not needed now, yet they are to be preferred to your sacrileges. We have named them so that you might blush; we have also brought forward divine answers so that you might believe. The Lord cries out through Isaiah: “Those who serve me will be called by a new name, which will be blessed on the earth, and they will bless the true God; and those who swear on the earth will swear by the true God.” This, I say, Isaiah said when he saw his majesty; the Gospel indicates that he saw the majesty of Christ and spoke of him. But take also what John the Evangelist wrote in his epistle, saying: “We know that the Son of God has appeared and has given us understanding, that we may know the Father and may be in his true Son Jesus Christ our Lord. This is the true God and eternal life.” John calls the Son of God both true and true God; if, then, he is true God, he is certainly not created, having nothing deceptive or counterfeit, nothing confused or unlike.

God, then, from God, light from light, true God from true God, born of the Father, not made, of one substance with the Father. So indeed our Fathers spoke according to the Scriptures; and they thought that the sacrilegious doctrines should be inserted in their decrees precisely so that the faithlessness of Arius might betray itself and not be veiled, as though smeared with paints and colors. For those make a pretense who do not dare to set out what they think. And so, in the manner of the censor, the Arian impiety is not opened up by exposition but uncovered by condemnation, so that whoever is curious and eager to hear it may first know that it is condemned, and so not slip, before he hears it expounded so as to believe it. “Those,” it says, “who say, ‘There was when he was not,’ and ‘Before he was born he was not,’ and who say that the Son of God was made from nothing, or is of another substance or ousia, or is mutable or changeable, the catholic and apostolic Church anathematizes.” You have accepted, holy Emperor, that those who assert such things are justly condemned. It was not by human contrivance, not by any arrangement, that three hundred and eighteen bishops came together to the council, as I said above more briefly; but so that in their number the Lord Jesus might prove by the sign of his passion and of his name that he was present at his own council: the cross is in the three hundred, the name of Jesus in the eighteen priests. This was also held in the first confession at the Council of Ariminum, and in the second correction after the Council of Ariminum. The letter sent to the Emperor Constantius testifies to the confession; the councils that followed confess the correction.

Arius, then, says, “There was when he was not”; but Scripture says “was”; it does not say “was not.” Indeed John wrote: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; he was in the beginning with God.” See how many times “was,” and nowhere did he say that he “was not.” Whom, then, do we believe? John, reclining on Christ’s breast, or Arius, wallowing among his own poured-out bowels, so that we might recognize that the faithlessness of Arius too was like that of Judas the traitor, since a like punishment condemned him? For Arius’s bowels too gushed out (I am ashamed to say where), and so he burst asunder in the middle, fallen on his face, defiling the foul mouth with which he had denied Christ. For he burst, just as the apostle Peter said of Judas, that “he acquired a field with the reward of iniquity, and falling on his face he burst asunder in the middle, and all his bowels gushed out.” It is no chance death when, in equal sacrilege, an equal punishment follows as an example, so that those who denied the same Lord, and betrayed the same Lord, underwent the same penalty. Let us come to the other points. Arius says, “Before he was born he was not”; but Scripture says that all things exist through the Son. How then did he who was not give being to others? And when the impious man says “when” and “before,” these two words certainly point to time. How, then, do they deny that there was time before the Son, and yet want things belonging to time to have been before him, since this very “when” and “before” and “at some time not to have been” belongs to time? Arius says that the Son of God is from nothing. How, then, is he the Son of God? How was he begotten from the Father’s womb? How do we read that the Word was uttered from the heart, unless it is understood that, as it is written, he came forth from the inmost and inestimable secret of the Father? For a son is so either by adoption or by nature: by adoption we are called sons; he is Son by the truth of nature. How, then, is he from nothing who made all things from nothing? He does not have the Son who does not know whence he is. Indeed the Jews did not have the Son, because they did not know whence he was. And so the Lord said to them: “You do not know whence I come”; and further on: “You know neither me nor my Father.” For he who denies that the Son is from the Father does not know the Father from whom the Son is; nor does he know the Son, since he does not know the Father. Arius says: “From another substance.” What other substance, then, is equal to the Son of God, that the Son of God should be from it? Or how do they find fault with us for speaking of ousia in God in Greek, or substance in Latin, when by saying that the Son of God is from another substance they themselves confirm that God has a substance? But if they want to speak of the name of the divine substance or nature, they will easily be refuted; for Scripture has often mentioned ousia in Greek and substance in Latin. And Peter, as we read, wants us to become partakers of the divine nature. But if they say that the Son is from another substance, they refute themselves, both by confessing the word “substance,” which they fear, and by comparing the Son with the creatures above whom they pretend to place him. Arius says that the Son of God is a creature, but not like the other creatures. But what creature is not unlike another creature? Man is not like an angel, earth not like heaven, the sun not like water, light not like darkness. So by this preference he gave him nothing, but to deceive the simple he covered the fraud of his impiety with a wretched color. Arius says that the Son of God is mutable and changeable. How, then, is he God, if he is mutable, since he himself said: “I am, I am, and I have not been changed”?

But now I must make my own that prophetic confession which Isaiah puts first when he is about to prophesy of the Lord, saying: “O wretched am I, and pierced at heart, for though I have unclean lips, and dwell in the midst of a people that has unclean lips, I have seen the Lord of hosts.” If, then, Isaiah calls himself wretched, who saw the Lord of hosts, what shall I say of myself, who, though I have unclean lips, am compelled to treat of the generation of God? How then shall I burst out to speak of things I fear, when David asks for a guard on his mouth concerning things he knows? O that for me too one of the Seraphim would bring that glowing coal which he took from the divine altar with the tongs of the two Testaments, and burn my unclean lips! But since then a Seraph came down to the prophet in a figure, while you, Lord, having revealed the mystery, came to us in the flesh, not by an envoy nor by a messenger but yourself in person, cleanse my conscience from my hidden faults, so that I too, long unclean but now by your mercy made clean through faith, may sing that song of David, saying: “I will sing to you on the harp, God of Israel; my lips will rejoice when I sing to you, and my soul, which you have redeemed.” So, Lord, leave your slanderers and enemies and betake yourself to us; sanctify the ears of the prince Gratian, and of all besides into whose hands this little book may come; and give me ears that are empty, so that no filth of faithlessness once heard may linger anywhere. Cleanse, then, cleanse the ear, not with draughts from springs, nor with drinks from rivers, nor with the murmur of a passing stream, but with words that act in place of water, clearer than the brightness of waters and purer than any snow; with those words, certainly, with which you said: “If your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow.” There is also a cup with which you are accustomed to cleanse the secret places of the mind: a cup not of the old nature, nor from the customary vine, but a new cup brought down from heaven to earth, pressed from that foreign cluster which hung in the flesh from the wood of the cross as a grape hangs from the vine. From this cluster, then, comes the wine that gladdens the heart of man, that makes sobriety drunk, that breathes out the intoxication of faith and true religion, that pours in the intoxication of chastity. With this wine, my Lord, cleanse the ears of the mind of my lord Augustus, so that, as men drunk with natural wine love quiet, drive out the fear of death, do not feel injuries, do not seek what belongs to others, and forget their own, so he too, drunk with your wine, may love peace, and, secure in the exultation of faith, may know nothing of the death of unbelief, may show the patience of love, may not hold on to the sacrileges of others, and may prefer faith even to his own dear ones, according to what is written: “Leave all that is yours, and come, follow me.” With this wine, Lord Jesus, wash our senses also, that we may adore you, that we may worship you, the Creator of things visible and invisible. You cannot, then, fail to be invisible and good, since you have bestowed this even on your works.

Enough has been taught, I think, holy Emperor, in the preceding book, that the Son of God is everlasting, not unlike the Father, begotten, not created; we have also proved from the readings of the Scriptures that the Son of God is true God, marked out by the plain signs of his majesty. And so, although these things are richly abundant for faith (since the greatness of a river flowing down is usually estimated from the course of its source), yet, so that our faith may shine more purely, it seems right to draw out a threefold distinction. For there are clear signs that show the property of the deity; there are some that show the likeness of Father and Son; and there are also some that express the manifest unity of the divine majesty. The signs of property, then, are: generation, God, Son, Word; of likeness: radiance, impress, mirror, image; of eternal unity: wisdom, power, truth, life. These signs mark out the Son of God in such a way that from them you may know both that the Father is everlasting and that the Son does not differ from him. For from him who is comes generation; from the Everlasting, God; from the Father, the Son; from God, the Word; the radiance of glory, the impress of substance, the mirror of God, the image of majesty; from the good, goodness; from the wise, wisdom; from the strong, power; from the true, truth; from the living, life. The signs of Father and Son, then, agree, so that no one could doubt that they do not differ from each other but are of one majesty. We would bring forward examples of each of these names, were we not held back by the wish to keep our discourse short. With these twelve, as with precious stones, the pillar of faith rises up. For these are those precious stones, sardius, jasper, emerald, chrysolite, and the rest, with which the vestment of holy Aaron is interwoven, of Aaron, that is, who bears the figure of Christ, the true priest: stones set in gold and engraved with the names of the sons of Israel, twelve stones closely joined to one another. For if anyone separates and divides them, the whole structure of faith is dissolved. So the beginning of our faith is to know that the Son of God is begotten: if he is not begotten, neither is he Son. Nor is it enough to have said “Son” unless you also designate him the only-begotten Son. If he is a creature, he is not God; if he is not God, neither is he life; if he is not life, neither is he truth. So those three, namely generation, Son, only-begotten, principally and properly indicate that the Son is from God. The three that follow, namely God, life, truth, make manifest his power, by which he founded the creation and made it subsist: “For in him we live and move and have our being,” as Paul said. And so in those three the property of the Son is declared, and in these others the unity of the operation of Father and Son. The Son of God is also called image and radiance and impress, because these have revealed in the Son the incomprehensible and unsearchable divinity of the Father’s majesty and its expressed likeness. These three also, we see, belong to likeness. There remain power, wisdom, and justice, so that by each of these operations his eternity might be proved. This, then, is that vestment adorned with precious stones; this is the robe of the true priest; this the wedding garment; this the prophet’s weaver, who knows well how to weave these together. Nor is this weaving cheap, of which the Lord says through the prophet: “Who gave women wisdom in weaving?” Nor are these common stones, but, as we read, “stones of filling,” for all perfection lies in this, that nothing is lacking. The stones are set together and surrounded with gold, that is, with a nature perceived by the mind, if our mind sets them well together and natural sense joins them with sound reason. Indeed the reading teaches how far from ordinary these stones are: while others brought other, cheaper things, these stones the devout leaders carried on their own shoulders, and from them they made the breastpiece, a woven work. For it is a woven work when deeds agree with faith. Let no one think I am mistaken because above I made a threefold distinction of fours, and below a fourfold distinction of threes. The beauty of a good work pleases more for being in different forms. For good too is she whom the weaving of the priestly garment displays, whether the Law or the Church, who made two garments for her husband, as it is written: one of deeds, the other of mind, weaving together the coverings of faith and of deeds. And so in one place, as we read, she weaves gold first, and afterwards adds blue and purple with scarlet and fine linen. Again, elsewhere she first forms little flowers out of blue and the rest, and then attaches gold; and the priest’s attire is one, so that, gleaming with the same colors, the diversity of grace and beauty shines out in the diversity of order. And so, to set out also the sequence of the figurative meaning: there is no doubt that by gold and tested silver are designated the words of the Lord, on which faith rests. For it is written: “The words of the Lord are pure words, silver tried by fire, proved for the earth, purified seven times.” Blue has the likeness of the air, which we breathe and whose breath we draw in; purple expresses the appearance of the waters; by scarlet fire is understood; earth by fine linen, for it is produced from the earth. And from these four elements the human body consists. Whether, then, you attach the deeds of the body in harmony with the faith of the mind that goes before, or the deeds go before and faith attends them as their devout companion, this is the adornment of the devout high priest, this the covering of the priest. Good, then, is faith when it shines with the beautiful adornment of works. Of this faith, to speak in sum, these are the definitions, which cannot be undone. If he is from nothing, he is not Son; if he is a creature, he is not Creator; if he is a thing made, he is not the maker of all things; if a learner, not one who knows beforehand; if a receiver, not perfect; if one who advances, not God; if unlike, not the image; if Son by grace, not by nature; if without share in divinity, an author of evil: “No one is good but one, God.”

So I am astounded at what remains, holy Emperor, and I fail in my whole body and mind, that there should be some men, or rather not men but beings clothed in the outward form of men, yet within full of bestial madness, who after such great and such divine benefits of the Lord deny that the very author of good things is good. “It is written,” they say: “No one is good but one, God.” I acknowledge what is written. But the letter has no error; would that the Arian interpretation had none! The letters are without fault; the fault is in the sense. I acknowledge the saying of the Lord and Savior; but let us consider when he says it, to whom he says it, with what circumspection he says it. The Son of God certainly says it in the form of a man, and he says it to a scribe, that is, to one who called the Son of God “good teacher” while denying that he was God. What that man did not believe, Christ adds, so that he might believe the Son of God to be not a good teacher but a good God. For if, wherever God is said to be one, the Son of God is by no means separated from the fullness of the unity, how is the Only-begotten excluded from the fullness of the divine goodness where one God is called good? They must, then, either deny that the Son of God is God or confess that God is good. And so, with heavenly circumspection, he did not say, “No one is good but the Father alone,” but, “No one is good but one, God.” For “Father” is the proper name of the one who begets, but “one God” by no means excludes the deity of the Trinity, and so it is the nature that is praised. Goodness, then, is in the nature of God, and in the nature of God is also the Son of God; and so what is proclaimed is not what belongs to singularity but what belongs to unity. Goodness, then, is not denied to the Lord; rather, such a disciple is rebuked. For when the scribe had said, “Good teacher,” the Lord answered: “Why do you call me good?” That is: it is not enough for you to call good one whom you do not believe to be God. I do not look for disciples who believe me to be a good teacher according to the man rather than good God according to the divinity.

But I do not want him to use the prerogative of his nature and the privilege of his power. Let him not be called good by us if he does not deserve it. If he does not deserve it by his works, if he does not deserve it by his benefits, let him renounce his right of nature and submit to our judgment. He who is to judge us does not disdain to be judged, “that he may be justified in his words, and may prevail when he is judged.” Is he, then, not good who has bestowed good things on me? Is he not good who, when six hundred thousand of the Jewish people were giving way before their persecutors, suddenly split the surge of the Red Sea and divided it into an unbroken mass of waters, so that the wave poured around them might protect the faithful, and poured back might drown the faithless? Is he not good, at whose command the seas became solid for those who fled and the rocks became moist for those who thirsted, so that the work of the true author might be recognized, when water stiffened and rock flowed? So that you might recognize this as the work of Christ, the Apostle said: “And the rock was Christ.” Is he not good who fed so many countless thousands of the people in the desert with heavenly bread, lest any hunger should creep in, without the toil of labor, with the fruit of rest; so that for forty years neither their clothes grew old nor their shoes wore out, showing the faithful a likeness of the future resurrection, that neither the beauty of splendid deeds, nor the brightness of the virtue poured around them, nor the course of human life should perish? Is he not good who has made earth to be what heaven is, so that, as in heaven, as in a mirror, the orbs of the shining stars gleam, so also the choirs of apostles and martyrs and priests should shine out like gleaming stars through the whole world? So he is not only good, but also the good shepherd, that is, good not only for himself but also for his sheep: for “the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.” He clearly laid down his life to raise up ours; but by the power of his divinity he laid it down and took it up again, as it is written: “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself.” You see his goodness, because he laid it down willingly; you see his power, because he took it up again; and you deny that he is good, though he said of himself in the Gospel: “If I am good, why is your eye evil?” Ungrateful man, what are you doing? Do you deny that he is good, through whom you hope for good things, if indeed you believe? Do you deny that he is good who has given us what “eye has not seen nor ear heard”? It is to my profit to believe him good: “For it is good to trust in the Lord.” It is to my profit to confess the Lord, for it is written: “Confess to the Lord, for he is good.” It is to my profit to think my judge good; for “the Lord is a good judge to the house of Israel.” So if the Son of God is judge, then, since God the judge is good and the Son of God is judge, the good God and judge is the Son of God. But perhaps you do not believe others; you do not believe the Son: hear the Father saying: “My heart has uttered a good Word.” The Word, then, is good, this Word of which it is written: “And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” If, then, the Word is good, and the Son of God is the Word, the Son of God is certainly a good God, even if this does not please the Arians. Let them blush at last. The Jews said: “He is good.” Although some said, “He is not,” still others said, “He is good”; and all of you deny that he is good. Is he good who forgives the sin of one man, and is he not good who has taken away the sin of the world? For of him it is said: “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sin of the world.” But why do we hesitate? The Church has already believed him good and has confessed it by saying: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your breasts are better than wine”; and elsewhere: “And your throat is like the best wine.” So he, being good, nourishes us with the breasts of the Law and of grace, soothing the cares of men with heavenly preaching; and do we deny that he is good, when he is the image of goodness, expressing in himself the likeness of the eternal goodness, as we have shown above that it is written that he is “the spotless mirror and the image of his goodness”?

But what do you think, you who deny that the Son of God is good and true God, since it is written that there is no God but one? For even if there are those who are called gods, do you number Christ among those who are called gods and are not? For it is his special mark that he always is, and that besides him there is no other good and true God, since God is in him; and it is also the Father’s special mark that after him there is no other true God; for God is one, and our faith neither confuses Father and Son with the Sabellians nor separates Father and Son with the Arians. For Father and Son have distinction, as Father and Son; they do not have separation of divinity.

So since the Son of God is true and good, the Son of God is surely almighty God: can this too be doubted? We said above that it is read that “the Lord Almighty is his name.” So since the Son is Lord, and the Lord is almighty, the Son of God is almighty. But take also a reading about which you cannot be in doubt: “Behold,” it says, “he comes with the clouds, and every eye will see him, and those who pierced him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over him. Even so; amen. I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” Whom, then, did they pierce, and whom do we hope will come, if not the Son? So Christ is the almighty Lord and God. Take another, holy Emperor, and hear Christ speaking: “Thus says the Lord Almighty: After the glory he has sent me against the nations that plundered you; for he who touches you is as one who touches the apple of his eye. For behold, I lay my hand on those who plundered you, and I will rescue you; and those who plundered you will become a prey, and they will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me.” Both he who speaks is the Lord Almighty and he who sent is the Lord Almighty. Omnipotence, then, belongs both to the Father and to the Son; yet God almighty is one, because there is unity of power. And so that you may know, august Emperor, that it is Christ who spoke both in the prophet and in the Gospel, he says through Isaiah, as though foreordaining the Gospel: “I who spoke am here”; that is: I am here in the Gospel, I who spoke in the Law. Then elsewhere: “All that the Father has is mine.” What are “all things”? He was certainly not speaking of created things, for all these were made through the Son, but of what the Father has, that is, eternity, majesty, divinity, which he possessed by being born. So we cannot doubt that he who has all that the Father has (for it is written, “All that the Father has is mine”) is almighty.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So when you read “God,” do not separate the Father, do not separate the Son; for the deity of the Father and of the Son is one and the same. And so do not separate them even where you read that he is “blessed and the only Potentate”; for this is said of God, as you have it: “I charge you before God, who gives life to all things”; but Christ also gives life; the name of God, then, befits both the Father and the Son, since the effect of the working also befits both. Let us follow out the rest. “I charge you,” he says, “before God who gives life to all things, and Christ Jesus.” In God is also the Word, as it is written: “In God I will praise the Word.” In God is Jesus, his everlasting power; in “God,” then, he bore witness to the unity of divinity, and in the name of Christ to the mystery of the incarnation. Indeed, to show that he had spoken of the incarnation of Christ, he added: “who bore witness under Pontius Pilate to the good confession, that you keep the commandment without spot until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, whom in his own times the blessed and only Potentate will show, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality and dwells in light unapproachable, whom no man has seen nor can see.” These things, then, were written of God, whose name in both its dignity and its truth is common to the Son. Why, then, is the Son separated in this place, when all these things befit the Son as well? Or, if they do not befit him, deny that he is God, if you deny him the things that befit God. He cannot be denied to be blessed who bestows blessedness: “For blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven.” He cannot be denied to be blessed who imparts sound doctrine, as it is written: “which is according to the gospel of the glory of the blessed God.” He cannot be denied to be mighty, of whom the Father says: “I have laid help upon one who is mighty.” And who would dare to deny his immortality, when he himself has bestowed immortality on others, as it is written of the Wisdom of God: “Through her I shall have immortality”? But the immortality of his nature is one thing, ours another. Frail things are not to be compared with divine. There is only one substance, that of the divinity, which cannot die. Hence the Apostle too, though he knew that both the soul and the angels are immortal, proclaimed that God alone has immortality. For the soul also dies: “For the soul that sins, it shall die”; nor is an angel immortal by nature, since his immortality lies in the will of the Creator. And do not drag it to a prejudice that Gabriel does not die, Raphael does not die, Uriel does not die; for in them too the capacity of their nature is open to sin, though by discipline they are not open to it. For every rational creature admits accidents and is subject to judgment. And among accidents are the penalty of judgment, corruption, and advancement. Hence Ecclesiastes too says: “For God will bring every work of his into judgment.” So every creature, even if it does not die or sin, is still capable of corruption and death; and it has this not from an immortal nature but from discipline or grace, if in any respect it does not change toward vices. One immortality, then, is that which is given; another is that which is always without the capacity of change. Is the divinity of Christ denied to be immortal because on the cross he tasted death for all? Then Gabriel is better than Christ, because he has not died while Christ died. But the servant is not above his lord; for the weakness of the flesh is one thing, the eternity of the divinity another: death belongs to the flesh, immortality to the power. But if the divinity brought it about that the flesh should not see corruption, though it was liable to corruption by nature, how could the divinity itself die? And how does the Son not dwell in light unapproachable, when the Son is in the bosom of the Father, and the Father is light, and the Son himself also is light, for God is light? Or if we think of some unapproachable light other than that of the deity, is it a light better than the Father, so that he is not in the light who, as it is written, is both with the Father and in the Father? Let them not, then, separate the Son when they read “God alone,” nor separate the Father when they read “the Son alone.” On earth the Son is not without the Father; and do you think that the Father is in heaven without the Son? The Son is in the flesh (when I say “in the flesh” or “on earth,” I am speaking according to the times of the Gospel, for now we no longer know Christ according to the flesh); the Son, then, is in the flesh, and he is not alone, according to what is written: “And I am not alone, because the Father is with me”; and do you think that the Father is alone in the light? But lest you think this a mere argument, take also a testimony: “No one,” he says, “has ever seen God, except the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father; he has declared him.” How is the Father alone, if the Son is in the bosom of the Father? How does he declare one whom he does not see? The Father, then, is not alone. Take now both “the Father alone” and “the Son alone.” The Father alone, because there is no other Father; the Son alone, because there is no other Son; God alone, because the divinity of the Trinity is one.

It is clear enough, then, both that God alone is not the Father without the Son, and that the Son is not understood to be God alone without the Father; for the Son of God is read to have been made according to the flesh, not according to the divine generation. And in what respect he was made, he declared, speaking through the mouth of the holy patriarch: “For my soul is filled with evils, and my life has drawn near to hell. I am counted with those who go down into the pit; I have become as a man without help, free among the dead.” Here too, “as a man,” he says, not as God, “I have become.” And “my soul is filled with evils”: the soul, certainly, not the divinity. He was made in that respect in which he was due to hell; he was made in that respect in which he was counted with others; for the divinity rejects any likeness of comparison. And yet, even in that very flesh subject to death, notice the majesty of divinity in Christ. Though he became as a man, and became as flesh, he nevertheless became free among the dead, and free without help. But how does the Son say here that he was without help, when it was said above, “I have laid help upon one who is mighty”? Here too, then, distinguish the natures. The flesh has help; the divinity has none. He is free, then, because he did not know the bonds of death; he was not captured by the underworld, but worked in the underworld. He is without help, because not by a messenger nor by an envoy, but himself in person, the Lord saved his people. For how could he seek help to raise his own body, who raised others? And although men too have raised the dead, they did not do it by their own power but in the name of Christ. It is one thing to ask, another to command; one thing to merit, another to give. Elijah, then, raised the dead, but he prayed; he did not command. Elisha raised the dead by fitting himself to the dead body; even the touch of his own dead body raised a dead man, so that he might be a type that he who was to come, sent in the likeness of sinful flesh, would raise the dead even when buried. Peter too, when he cured Aeneas, said: “In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise and walk”: not in his own name, he says, but in the name of Christ. “Rise” is the word of one who commands; but the confidence comes from merit, not from a presumption of power; and the authority of the command comes from the working of the name, not from his own power. What, then, do the Arians say? In the name of Christ even Peter commands, and they will not have it that the Son of God commanded, but that he asked. “But it is read that he asked.” Learn the difference. He asks as son of man; he commands as Son of God. Do you not grant to the Son of God what even the devil granted, and do you disparage him with a greater sacrilege? The devil says: “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” He says “command”; you say “beseech.” He believes that at the command of the Son of God the nature of the elements and of things would be turned into its opposite; you believe that unless the Son of God asks, not even his own will is fulfilled. The devil thinks the Son of God is to be judged by his power; you, by weakness. The temptations of the devil are more tolerable than the arguments of Arius. Nor let it trouble you that the Psalm called the Son of man mighty, since you read that the Lord of majesty was crucified. And what greater power is there than to have dominion over the heavenly powers? And he had it, who commanded Thrones, Dominions, and Angels. For although he was among the wild beasts, as it is written, yet the angels ministered to him, so that you may recognize that one thing belongs to the incarnation, another to his power. According to the flesh, then, he is tried by the beasts; according to his dignity he is adored by the angels. We have learned, then, that he was made man, and that this is to be referred to the man. Indeed you have elsewhere: “Who was made to him from the seed of David.” According to the flesh he was certainly made from the seed of David; but as God he was born of God before the ages.

Yet “made” is not always referred to creation; for it is written: “Lord, you have been made our refuge”; and: “You have been made my salvation.” Certainly no definition or production of creation is declared here; rather, he is said to have been made my refuge and to have turned to me for salvation, as the Apostle also said: “Who was made for us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” He said “made for us,” not “created from the Father.” Indeed, how he says that wisdom was made for us, he explained in what follows, saying: “But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, which was hidden, which God predestined before eternal times for our glory, which none of the rulers of this world knew. For if they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of majesty.” Where the mystery of the passion is expressed, the course of the eternal generation is certainly not being declared. My wisdom, then, is the Lord’s cross; my redemption is the Lord’s death; for we have been redeemed with precious blood, as the apostle Peter said. With his blood, then, the Lord redeemed us as man; and the same, as God, forgave our sins. Let us not, then, lay ambushes in words and go hunting with the snares of words, so that, because the word that is read is thought by the impious to signify something else, we interpret not what the sense expresses but what the letter shows. So the Jews perished, while they despise the depths of meaning and follow the bare words; “for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life.” And yet, between two grave sacrileges, it is perhaps more detestable to refer to the divinity what belongs to the flesh than to refer to the letter what belongs to the spirit. The Jews were afraid to believe in flesh in God, and so they lost the grace of redemption, because they repudiate the cause of salvation; these men drag the majesty of the divinity down to the weaknesses of the flesh. Detestable are the Jews, who crucified the Lord’s flesh; yet I think those more detestable who have believed that the divinity of Christ was subjected to the cross. Indeed he who often dealt with the Jews says: “Avoid a heretic after one correction.” Nor is it without injury to the Father that by a sacrilegious interpretation they divert the words “made for us wisdom” to that ineffable generation of Christ, which is subject to no times or moments. For besides the fact that an injury to the Son is an insult to the Father, these sacrileges also proceed against the Father, of whom it is written: “But let God be true, and every man a liar.” Or if they think it said of the Son, they do not indeed prejudice his generation; but what they deny, that he is God and true God, they confess on the authority of this reading. It would be lengthy if I wished to review one by one how often we have read “made,” certainly not through nature but through grace. For Moses too says: “He has become my helper and protector for salvation.” And David says: “Be to me a God and protector and a house of refuge, to save me.” And Isaiah says: “You have become a helper to every lowly city.” Certainly the saints do not say to God, “You were created,” but, “You have become our protector and helper through your grace.”

Hence there is no need to fear the argument which the Arians are accustomed to put together by a savage interpretation, saying that the Word of God was made, because, they say, it is written: “What was made in him was life.” First let them understand that if they refer “what was made” to the divine substance, they entangle themselves in the questions of the Manichaeans. For the Manichaeans object: “If what was made in him is life, then there is something that was not made in him, and that is death,” so as impiously to bring in two principles. But the Church condemns this. Next, how can they show that the Evangelist punctuated it in this way? For very many learned and faithful people punctuate it thus: “All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made”; others thus: “All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made”; then they read “What was made,” and add “in him,” that is: “Whatever was made is in him.” What is “in him”? The Apostle teaches, saying: “For in him we are and live and move.” Yet however they wish to punctuate it, they cannot raise a false charge here against God the Word, if they want to refer “what was made” to his substance, without raising a false charge against God the Father too, of whom it is written: “But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his works may be made manifest, because they were made in God.” See, here we read that the works of man were made in God, and yet we cannot refer them to the divine substance; but either we recognize them as made through him (as in that saying of the Apostle, that all things were created through him and in him, and he is before all, and all things hold together in him), or, as the testimony of the present reading teaches, we must reckon as made in God the virtues by which the fruit of eternal life is acquired: chastity, piety, religion, faith, and the others of this kind, which were made in the will of God. So as they were made in the will and power of God the Father, so they were made in those of Christ too, as we read: “Created in Christ in good works”; and in the psalm: “Let peace be made in your power”; and elsewhere: “You made all things in wisdom.” “In wisdom,” it says, “you made,” not “you made wisdom.” For since all things were made in wisdom, and Christ is the wisdom of God, not an accident, surely, but subsisting and abiding for ever, then, if wisdom was made, it was made in a worse condition than all things, since wisdom could not be made through itself. So if “to be made” is often referred to some purpose and not to nature, “to be created” too is referred to a cause.

Hence we understand that what is written of the Lord’s incarnation, “The Lord created me the beginning of his ways for his works,” means that the Lord Jesus was created from the Virgin to redeem the works of the Father. For there can be no doubt that it was said of the mystery of the incarnation, since the Lord took on flesh for the sake of his works, to free them from the slavery of corruption, so that through the passion of his body he might destroy him who had the power of death. For the flesh of Christ is for the sake of the works; the divinity is before the works; for he is before all things, and all things hold together in him. The divinity, then, is not for the sake of the works, but the works are for the sake of the divinity, as the Apostle declared when he said that all things are on account of the Son of God. For thus you have it: “For it was fitting that he, through whom are all things and for whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering.” Did he not plainly set out that the Son of God, who by his divinity created all things, afterwards, for the salvation of the people, took on both the assumption of flesh and the suffering of death? And for what works he was created from the Virgin, the Lord himself showed when he cured the blind man, saying: “I must work the works of him who sent me.” And he added, so that we might believe that it was said of his incarnation: “While I am in this world, I am the light of this world.” For as man he is in this world for a time; as God he always is. Indeed elsewhere he says: “Behold, I am with you until the end of the world.” Nor does any question remain about the “beginning,” since, when he was asked in the flesh, “Who are you?” he answered: “The beginning, who also speak to you.” This is referred not only to the substance of the eternal divinity but also to the lessons of the virtues. For by this he proved himself to be eternal God, because he is himself the beginning of all things and the author of every virtue, because he is head of the Church, as it is written: “For he is the head of the body, the Church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead.” It is clear, then, that “the beginning of his ways” was said of the incarnation too, and is to be referred to the mystery of the body he assumed. For he took on flesh in order to lay out for us the road to heaven. Indeed he says: “I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Indeed, so that you may know that the almighty Father prescribed his ways to the Son according to the incarnation, you have in Zechariah what the angel said to Jesus, who was clothed in filthy garments: “Thus says the Lord Almighty: If you walk in my ways and keep my commandments.” What is that filthy garment but the assumption of flesh? The ways of the Lord, then, are like paths of good life, which are directed by Christ, who says: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” The heavenly way, then, is the power of God; for Christ is the way for us. And a good way, which has opened the kingdom of heaven to believers. And the ways of the Lord are right ways, as it is written: “Make your ways known to me, O Lord.” Chastity is a way, faith a way, abstinence a way. For there is a way of virtue, and there is also a way of iniquity; for it is written: “And see if there is a way of iniquity in me.” The beginning of our virtue, then, is Christ. He is the beginning of integrity, who taught virgins not to look for a husband’s embrace but to dedicate the integrity of mind and body to the Holy Spirit rather than to a husband. Christ is the beginning of frugality, who became poor though he was rich. Christ is the beginning of patience, who when he was reviled did not revile in return, and when he was struck did not strike back. Christ is the beginning of humility, who took the form of a servant, though he was equal to God the Father in the majesty of power. For from him every virtue has received its beginning. And so, that we might learn these kinds of virtues, “a Son is given to us, whose beginning is upon his shoulders.” That beginning is the cross of the Lord, the beginning of fortitude, by which the way was opened for the holy martyrs to the suffering of the sacred contest.

Isaiah saw this beginning, and so he says: “A child is born, a Son is given to us.” The Magi too saw it, and so, when they beheld the little one in the manger, they worshiped, saying, “A child is born”; when they beheld the star, they proclaimed, “A Son is given to us.” One gift from the earth, another gift from heaven, and both are one, perfect in both, without change of divinity and without diminution of human nature. They worshiped one, and offered their gifts to the same one, to show that he who was seen in the manger was the Lord of heaven. Distinguish the weight of each word: “A child is born, a Son is given to us.” Though he was born of the Father, he was not born to us, but given; for the Son is not for our sake, but we are for the Son’s sake. For he was not born for us who was born before us and is the founder of the whole creation; nor is he now born for the first time who always was and was in the beginning; but that which was not is born for us. This the angel too, speaking to the shepherds, said had been brought forth, as you have it written: “For to us is born this day a Savior, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David.” What was not, then, was born to us: that is, a child from the Virgin, a body from Mary; for this is after us, that is before us. Other manuscripts read thus: “A child is born to us, a Son is given to us”; that is, he who was the Son of God, this one was born to us from Mary as a child and was given to us. That he was given, hear the prophet saying: “And give us your salvation.” For what is above us is given; what is from heaven is given; as we read of the Spirit too: “The love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” But see how this passage extinguishes many heresies. “A child is born to us,” not to the Jews; “to us,” not to the Manichaeans; “to us,” not to the Marcionites. The prophet says “to us,” that is, to believers, not to unbelievers. And indeed by his mercy he was born for all; but the faithlessness of heretics has brought it about that he who was born for all was not born for all. For the light of day too is commanded to rise upon the good and the bad; but to those who do not see, it does not appear to rise. As, then, the child was not born to all but to the faithful, so the Son was given not to the unbelieving but to the faithful. He was given to us, not to the Photinians; for they say that the Son of God was not given to us, but was born among us at the beginning of his existence. He was given to us, not to the Sabellians; for they will not have the Son given, asserting that the Father is the same as the Son. To us, not to the Arians; for they too do not have the Son given for salvation, but sent in weakness; they do not have the Counselor, since they think he did not know the future; they do not have the Son, since they do not think him everlasting; though it is written of the Word of God that he was in the beginning, and elsewhere: “In the beginning was the Word.” Indeed, to return to the example proposed: “In the beginning,” it says, “before he made the earth, before he made the depths, and before he brought forth the springs of waters, before all the hills he begot me.”

Perhaps you will say: how have I stated that “The Lord created me” was said of the incarnation of Christ, when the creation of the world came before Christ’s incarnation? But consider that it is the custom of the divine Scriptures both to speak of things to come as past, and to signify the twofold substance in Christ, of divinity and of flesh, lest anyone deny either his divinity or his flesh. For just as you have in Isaiah, “A child is born to us, and a Son is given to us,” so here too he first set down the creation of the flesh and then added the assertion of the divinity, so that you might know that there are not two Christs but one, who was both begotten of the Father before the ages and in the last times created from the Virgin; that is: “I am he who was created from man, created for a purpose, who was begotten before the ages.” Indeed, when about to say, “The Lord created me,” he first said: “I will recount the things that are from of old.” When about to say “he begot,” he first said: “In the beginning, before he made the earth, before all the hills he begot me.” “Before,” when it is said, stretches back to infinity without any limit. Indeed, “Before Abraham,” he says, “I am,” certainly not after Adam; and “before the morning star,” certainly not after the angels. But when he said “before,” he did not say that he was within anything, but that all things were within him; for this is how the divine Scriptures are accustomed to signify the eternity of God. Indeed elsewhere you have: “Before the mountains were made and the world was formed, from age to age you are.” Before all things, then, is the generation; among all things and for the sake of all things, the creation. Born of the Father above the Law, made from Mary under the Law.

But it is written: “After me comes a man who was made before me, because he was prior to me.” Hence they say: “See, he who was, was made.” Let us weigh the very words. “After me,” he says, “comes a man.” It is a man, then, who comes, the same who was made. But “man” is the name of a sex, and sex is assigned not to the divinity but to human nature. I could say, then: he was, in the foreknowledge of the body indeed, but in the eternity of power; for the Church too existed, and the saints were predestined before the ages. But I do not say that in this place; rather I assert that “was made” belongs not to the divinity but to the nature of the incarnation, as John himself said: “This is he of whom I said: After me comes a man who was made before me.” So, since he had set forth, as I said above, the twofold substance in Christ, so that you might understand both, that of divinity and that of flesh, in this place he began from the flesh. For the divine Scriptures have a varied custom: sometimes they begin from Christ’s divinity and descend to the mysteries of the incarnation; sometimes they start from the lowliness of the incarnation and rise to the glory of the divinity, as often in the prophets and in the evangelists, and in Paul. So here too, according to this custom, being about to speak of his divinity, he began from the Lord’s incarnation, not to confuse human and divine but to distinguish them. But the Arians, like Jewish innkeepers, mix water with wine, because they confuse the divine and the human generation, referring to the deity what was said of the flesh. Nor do I fear the objection they seem likely to make, that in the earlier passage it does not have “man,” for it reads thus: “He who comes after me.” But let them see what he set before it there too: “The Word,” he says, “was made flesh.” And so he did not add “man,” because he had said “flesh”; and there we understand “man” by “flesh” and “flesh” by “man.” So since he had said, “The Word was made flesh,” it was superfluous to name “man” in this place, whom he had already marked out by the word “flesh.” By the same pattern, in what follows he first spoke of the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world; and so that you might understand that he whom he had mentioned before was incarnate, he says: “This is he of whom I said before: After me comes a man who was made before me”; that is, I said that a man, not God, was made. But to declare that the same one who was incarnate existed before the ages, lest we should believe in two sons, he says: “Because he was prior to me.” For if he had referred “was made” to the divine generation, what need was there for him to add a third phrase and repeat what he had said above? But since before he had spoken only of the incarnation, “After me comes a man who was made before me,” he therefore added, “because he was prior to me,” since the eternity of the divinity had to be expressed. And this is the reason why he is preferred: that he should rightly be seen to be set before, who is the everlasting power of his own Father. Yet the richness of spiritual understanding allows us to run out and range widely so as to hem in the Arians, who want to refer “was made” in this place not to the man but to the divinity. For what can they hold, when the Baptist said, “He who comes after me was made before me”; that is, made above my merit, above my grace, later in the time of the flesh, venerable in the honor of divinity? For “comes after me” belongs to time; “was prior to me” to eternity; “was made before me” to honor; because even the mystery of the incarnation is above human grace. Indeed, further on he expressed what he had woven together above, saying: “After me comes a man whose shoes I am not worthy to carry,” setting forth the excellence of his dignity, certainly not the eternity of the divine generation. And this belongs to the incarnation so much that he had earlier set forth among men a type of the mystical shoe. For by the Law the union with the wife of a dead kinsman or brother was conferred on the next of kin, so that he might raise up seed for his brother or kinsman. Hence Ruth, though herself a foreigner, yet because she had had a husband from among the Jews, who had left a surviving kinsman: Boaz saw her gathering the sheaves of his harvest, with which she fed herself and her mother-in-law, and he loved her; and he did not take her as wife until he to whom she was owed as wife by the Law had first loosed his shoe. The story is simple, but the mysteries are deep; for one thing was being done, another was being prefigured. For if we twist the sense according to the letter, there is something like shame and horror in the word, if we refer the meaning and understanding to the custom of bodily union. But there was signified one to come from the Jews, from whom Christ is according to the flesh, who would raise up the seed of his kinsman, that is, of the dead people, by the seed of heavenly doctrine; to whom the spiritual precepts of the Law assigned the nuptial shoe for union with the Church. Moses is not the bridegroom; for to him it is said, “Loose the shoe from your feet,” so that he might yield to his Lord. Jesus the son of Nave is not the bridegroom; for to him too it is said, “Loose the shoe from your feet,” lest because of the likeness of the name he should be believed to be the bridegroom of the Church. No other is the bridegroom; Christ alone is the bridegroom, of whom John said: “He who has the bride is the bridegroom.” For them, then, the shoe is loosed; for him it cannot be loosed, as John said: “I am not worthy to loose the strap of his shoe.” Christ alone, then, is the bridegroom, to whom that bride coming from the nations, once needy and hungry but now rich with Christ’s harvest, is married; she gathers the sheaves of the fruitful field and the remnants of the Word into the inner bosom of her mind, so that she may feed with new nourishment that widow exhausted by the death of her son, the needy mother of a dead people, not leaving the widow destitute, and seeking new food. Christ alone, then, is the bridegroom, who would not begrudge even the Synagogue the sheaves of his harvest. Would that she did not shut herself out! She had those whom she could gather for herself; but because her people is dead, she, like a woman left in want by the death of her son, was gathering through the Church sheaves on which to live; and these, coming, they will carry with exultation, as it is written: “But coming they will come with exultation, carrying their sheaves.” For who else would dare to claim the Church as his bride, whom he alone called from Lebanon, saying: “Come hither from Lebanon, my bride; come hither from Lebanon”? Or of whom else could the Church say: “His throat is sweetness, and he is all desire”? And since we have taken up the discussion of the shoe of the feet, to whom else but the incarnate Word of God does the saying fit: “His legs are pillars of marble, set upon bases of gold”? For Christ alone walks in souls and moves in the mind of the saints, in whom, as on golden bases and precious foundations, the firm footsteps of the heavenly Word have been planted. It is clear, then, that both “man” and the type look to the mystery of the incarnation.

“Was made,” then, refers not to the substance of the divinity but often to the incarnation, and sometimes also to a cause. For if you refer it to the divinity, then God was also made a reproach; for so you have it: “But you have rejected and brought to nothing; you have spurned your Christ”; and further on: “He was made a reproach to his neighbors.” “To his neighbors,” it says: not to his fellow citizens, not to those of his household, not to those who cling to him; since “he who clings to the Lord is one spirit”; he who is a neighbor does not cling. He was made a reproach, because the cross of the Lord is to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks folly. For to the wise, through the same cross, he was made higher than the heavens, higher than the angels, and he who was the surety of the former covenant was made the surety of a better one. See how far I am from avoiding these texts: I even gather them together; but consider how he was made. First, that having made purification, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, made so much better than the angels. Where there is purification, there is a victim; where a victim, a body; where a body, an offering; where there is the gift of an offering, there is the sacrifice of the passion. Next, the surety of a better covenant. Where there is a testament, the death of the testator must come first, as is written further on; but death is referred not to the eternity of the divinity but to human frailty. How he was made higher than the heavens is also shown: “Undefiled,” it says, “separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens; who does not have the need daily, like the priests, to offer a victim first for his own sins, then for those of the people. For this he did once for all by offering himself,” as it is written. No one is said to have been made higher except one who was lower in some respect; he was made higher, then, by sitting at the right hand of the Father, in that respect in which, made lower than the angels, he offered himself to the passion. Finally, the Apostle himself says to the Philippians that, “made in the likeness of man, and found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death.” See in what respect he was made: “in the likeness,” he says, “of man,” not in the power of God; and “made obedient to death,” so that he had the obedience of a man and the kingdom of the divinity. How many more examples, then, shall we use to show that “he was made” is to be referred to the incarnation or to some purpose? But “made” is the same as “created”: “For he spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created.” “The Lord created me” was said according to the flesh; we have also shown above, in the first book, that “created” seems to be said of the incarnation. The Apostle himself, too, by asserting that the creature is not to be served, signified that the Son was not created from God but begotten. Yet elsewhere too, to make clear how “The Lord created me” is to be read in Solomon, he showed what it was that was created in Christ. Let us review, then, the course of the whole chapter; for you have it thus: “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise became a partaker of the same, that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death.” Who is it, then, who willed that we should be partakers of his flesh and blood? Certainly the Son of God. How did he become a partaker of what is ours except through the flesh? Or through what, except through the death of the body, did he loose the bonds of death? For the taking on of death in Christ became the death of death. So he set forth a teaching about the incarnation. Let us see what follows: “For he did not immediately take on angels, but the seed of Abraham. Hence he had to be made like his brothers in all things, so that he might become a merciful and faithful prince, a priest before God, to expiate the sins of the people. For in that he himself suffered and was tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted. Therefore, most holy brothers, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the apostle and high priest of our confession, Jesus, who is faithful to his creator, as Moses also was in his house.” These, of course, are the Apostle’s words. You see in what respect he says that he was created: in that, he says, “he took on the seed of Abraham,” he certainly asserts a bodily generation. And in what, if not in the body, did he expiate the sins of the people? In what did he suffer, if not in the body, as we said above: “Christ having suffered in the flesh”? In what is he a priest, if not in that which he took from a priestly race? For a priest must offer something and, according to the Law, enter the holy place through blood; so, since God had rejected the blood of bulls and goats, this priest certainly had to enter through his own blood, as you have read, penetrating the holy of holies, the heights of heaven, so that there might be an eternal offering for our sins. The same, then, is priest and the same is victim; and yet both priesthood and sacrifice are a function of the human condition; for he was led as a lamb to be sacrificed, and he is a priest according to the order of Melchizedek. Let no one, then, where he sees the order of the human condition, assert there the right of divinity. For that Melchizedek too, through whom Abraham offered his sacrifices, the Church does not understand to be an angel, as in the Jewish fancies, but a holy man and priest of God, who, bearing the type of the Lord, is described as without father and without mother, without genealogy, without beginning and without end, to show that the everlasting Son of God would come into this world, who was born without a father according to the incarnation and without a mother according to the divine generation, and without genealogy; because it is written: “And who will declare his generation?” So we accept that Melchizedek as a priest of God in the type of Christ; but the one in type, this one in truth; and the type is a shadow of the truth; the one king in the name of one city, this one king in the reconciliation of the whole world; because it is written: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself,” that is, the everlasting divinity; or, if the Father is in the Son as the Son is in the Father, then the unity of both substance and operation is certainly not denied. And how can they rightly deny it, even if they wish, when it is written: “But the Father who abides in me, he does the works”; and: “The works that I do, he does”? He did not say, “He also does,” lest you should reckon a likeness rather than a unity of work; but by saying, “What I do, he does,” he left it plain that we are to believe that the work of Father and Son is one. Indeed, where he wanted likeness of works, not unity, to be understood, he says: “He who believes in me, the works that I do he also will do.” Rightly here, by inserting “also,” he granted us likeness, and yet denied natural unity. The work of Father and Son, then, is one, even if it does not please the Arians.

I ask how they would have the kingdom of the Father and of the Son divided, when the Lord said, as we showed above: “Every kingdom divided against itself will easily be destroyed.” And so, to shut out the sacrilege of Arian savagery, holy Peter too asserted one dominion of the Father and the Son, saying: “Therefore, brothers, be diligent to make your calling and election sure. For doing these things you will not stumble; for so an entrance into the eternal dominion of God and of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly supplied to you.” Or if anyone thinks this was said only of Christ’s dominion, and takes it so in order to separate the Father and the Son in power, he will still confess that the Son has a kingdom, and an eternal one. So not only will they bring in two divided kingdoms, which would be liable to fail; but also, since no kingdoms are comparable to the kingdom of God, which, even if they wish, they cannot deny belongs to the Son, either they will go back on their own opinion and confess that the kingdom of the Father and of the Son is the same; or, what it is sacrilege to say, they will ascribe to the Father the right of a lesser kingdom; or, what is contradictory, they will confess that the kingdom of him whom they impiously call lesser in divinity is equal. But this does not square, does not fit, does not hold together. Let them say, then, that the kingdom is one, as we say and prove; and we prove it not by our own testimonies but by heavenly ones. First, learn from other examples too that the kingdom of heaven is also the kingdom of the Son; for he himself said: “Amen, amen, I say to you, there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” It cannot be doubted, then, that there is a kingdom of the Son of God. But learn that the kingdom of the Son is the very kingdom that is the Father’s: “Amen I say to you, there are some of those standing around who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God coming in power.” So far is the kingdom one that the reward is one, the heir the same, the merits the same, the surety the same. How is the kingdom not the same, especially since the Son himself said of himself: “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of my Father”? For what is the Father’s by the property of majesty is also the Son’s by the unity of the same glory. Scripture, then, has spoken of the kingdom of the Father and of the Son. Learn now that when it says “kingdom of God,” it separates the power neither of the Father nor of the Son, for it includes both the Father’s and the Son’s kingdom under the one name of God, as you have it: “When you see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets in the kingdom of God.” Do we deny that the prophets are in the Son’s kingdom, when to the thief who said, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom,” the Lord answered: “Amen I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise”? Or what is it to be in the kingdom of God but not to know eternal death? And those who do not know eternal death see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. How, then, can he not have in his power what he gives, when he says, “To you I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven”? And see the difference. The servant opens, the Lord bestows; the one through himself, the other through Christ; the servant receives the keys, the Lord ordains the powers; the right of the giver is one thing, the service of the steward another. Learn further that the kingdom of the Father and of the Son is one, the dominion one. You have in the letter to Timothy: “Paul, apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the dominion of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope.” One kingdom of Father and Son, then, is plainly declared, as the apostle Paul also asserted, saying: “For know this, that every unchaste or unclean or covetous person, which is idolatry, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.” One kingdom, then, and one divinity. The Law proved one divinity, when it speaks of one God. The Apostle also proved it, when he said of Christ: “In whom dwells all the fullness of divinity bodily.” For if, according to the Apostle, all the fullness of divinity is bodily in Christ, either they will confess that Father and Son are of one divinity, or, if they want to separate the divinity of the Father and of the Son, since the Son has all the fullness of divinity bodily, what do they think is reserved as something more, when nothing is more than the fullness of perfection? One divinity, then.

We have said above that the image is one and the likeness one; it remains for us to show that the Father and the Son are also of one majesty. Nor will it be far to seek; for the Son himself said of himself: “When the Son of Man comes in his majesty, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his majesty.” See, the majesty of the Son is expressed: what does he lack, whose uncreated majesty they cannot deny? There is, then, a majesty of the Son. Let them now accept, so that they cannot doubt it, that the majesty of the Father and of the Son is one; for the Lord himself said: “For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in his majesty and that of the Father and of the holy angels.” What is “and of the holy angels,” but that servants too are honored by the dignity of their lord? He referred his dignity, then, to the Son and to the Father, not so that the angels should have equal fellowship with the Father and the Son, but so that they should behold the preeminent glory of God. For the angels do not have their own majesty, as is read of the Son, “When he sits on the throne of his majesty”; but they stand by, to see the glory of the Father and the Son with such sight as they are able to have or deserve. Indeed the divine words explain themselves, so that you may understand that that glory of the Father and the Son is not shared with the angels; for so you have it: “But when the Son of Man comes in his majesty, and all the angels with him.” And to teach that the majesty and the glory of the Father and of himself are one, he says in another book: “And the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” They are in service, he in glory; they in attendance, he on the throne; they stand, he sits; so that, to use a word of human usage, he judges, they minister. But he did not put the majesty of the Father first and then add his own and that of the angels, lest he should seem to have made a kind of step and order from the higher to the lower. But since the Father could not seem inferior, he put his own majesty first and added that of the Father and of the angels; lest, by naming himself in the middle between the Father and the angels, he should seem either to have made a kind of ascent from the angels to the Father through increments of himself as well, or to be believed to have made, in order, a descent from the Father to the angels with a diminution of himself. For we who confess one divinity of the Father and the Son do not think, as the Arians do, of a diverse order.

But as to substance, august Emperor, what shall I say: that the Son is of one substance with the Father, since we read that the Son is the image of the Father’s substance, so that you may understand that he differs from the Father in nothing according to divinity? According to this image he said: “All that the Father has is mine.” So neither can we deny that there is substance in God; for he is not without substance who has given others to have substance, though the substance of God is one thing, that of the creature another. Nor could the Son of God be without substance, through whom all things subsist. And so he says: “My bone was not hidden from you, which you made in secret, and my substance in the lower parts of the earth.” For the things that were done before the foundation of the world, or in unsearchable majesty, could not be hidden from his power and divinity. We read, then, “substance.” But you will say that “substance” here is said of the incarnation. Meanwhile I have proved that the word “substance” is read, and read not in the sense of property, as you say. Now, if you please, let us take it according to the mystery, that the substance of Christ was in the lower parts. For in order to free the souls of the dead in the soul of his body, to loose the bonds of death, and to forgive sins, he worked in the underworld. And yet what prevents you from understanding it as the divine substance, since God is everywhere in such a way that it was said to him: “If I ascend into heaven, you are there; if I descend into hell, you are present”? Indeed he showed by what follows that the meaning is to be referred to the divine substance, saying: “Your eyes saw my unwrought one,” because the Son is not the product of a work but the begotten Word of eternal power; for it said akatergaston, that is, the Word unwrought and uncreated, born of the Father without the witness of any creature. And yet we have an abundance of other testimonies to substance. Let “substance” be bodily in this place, provided that you yourself confess that the Son of God is not a work of God, but his unwrought divinity. I know, however, that some say that the mystery of the incarnation too was unwrought, because no use of union with a man worked it, since it is the childbearing of a virgin. If, then, many have said that in this place not even Mary’s childbearing was a work, do you, Arian, think that the Word of God is a work? Or do we read “substance” only here? Did it not say elsewhere too: “The gates of the cities were broken, the mountains fell, and the substance was revealed”? Is a creature signified here too? For some are accustomed to say that “substance” means wealth. So if you take it in this sense, the mountains fell so that a monetary patrimony might be seen. But let us remember which mountains fell: surely those of which it was said: “If you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain: Be lifted up and be cast into the sea.” The mountains, then, are heights that exalt themselves. Indeed in the Greek it reads: “kingdoms fell.” What kingdoms, but those of Satan, of whom the Lord said, “How will his kingdom stand?” We read, then, that these very mountains are the kingdoms of the devil. And so, when these kingdoms fell from the heart of the faithful, it was revealed that Christ the Son of God is of the Father’s substance. Who also are those mountains of bronze, from between which the four chariots come out? We observe that that height which exalted itself against the knowledge of God fell at the word of the Lord, when the Son of God said: “Be silent, and come out, unclean spirit.” Of it the prophet also said: “Behold, I am against you, corrupt mountain.” These mountains, then, fell, and it was revealed that there was divine substance in Christ, when those who had seen it said: “Truly he is the Son of God”; for he commanded the demons not by human but by divine power. Jeremiah too says: “Take up lamentation on the mountains and wailing on the desert paths, because they have failed, because there are no men; they did not hear the voice of substance; from the birds to the cattle they were terrified and failed.” Nor did he pass it over elsewhere, when he was setting forth the frailties of the human condition: to show the infirmity of the flesh he had taken on and the affections of our mind, the Lord said through the prophet: “Remember, Lord, what my substance is”; because the Son of God was speaking in the nature of human frailty. Of him, just before, to reveal the mysteries of the incarnation, he says: “But you have rejected, Lord, and held as nothing; you have spurned your Christ; you have overturned the covenant of your servant; you have profaned his holiness on the earth.” In what respect did he call him servant, if not in the flesh, because “he did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of men, and found in appearance as a man”? He is servant, then, by taking on what is mine; Lord by his own power. And what of the text you have: “For who has stood in the substance of the Lord?” and elsewhere: “And if they had stood in my substance, and heard my words, and if they had taught my people, I would have turned them from their wickedness and their inventions”?

How can they deny that God has substance? How can they think that the word “substance,” which is very frequent in the Scriptures, is to be avoided, when they themselves, by calling the Son “of another substance,” that is, heteroousios, do not deny that there is substance in God? It is not the word, then, that they flee, but the force of the word, because they do not want the Son of God to be true. For although the course of the divine generation cannot be comprehended by human words, the Fathers nevertheless judged that their faith was to be marked by such a term, properly against “heteroousios,” following the authority of the prophet who says: “Who has stood in the substance of the Lord and seen his Word?” The Arians, then, accept the word “substance” when it is put according to their impiety; but when it is approved according to the piety of the faithful, they reject and refute it. For what other reason is there why they do not want the Son to be called homoousios with the Father, except that they do not want to confess that he is the true Son of God? As their own author, Eusebius of Nicomedia, betrayed in his letter, writing: “If we say that he is the true and uncreated Son of God, we begin to confess that he is homoousios with the Father.” When this letter had been read at the Council of Nicaea, the Fathers put this word in the statement of the faith, because they saw that it was a terror to the adversaries; so that, with the sword which they themselves had drawn, as it were, they cut off the head of their abominable heresy. In vain do they say that they avoid this word on account of the Sabellians, and in this they betray their ignorance; for homoousios is said of one thing with another, not of a thing with itself. Rightly, then, do we call the Son homoousios with the Father, because by that word both the distinction of persons and the unity of nature are signified. Can they deny that ousia is read in Scripture, when the Lord spoke of epiousios bread, and Moses wrote: “You shall be to me a periousios people”? Or what is ousia, or from what is it named, but from ousa aei, “being always,” that which always abides? For he who is, and always is, is God; and so the divine substance, always abiding, is called ousia. Therefore the bread is epiousios, because from the substance of the Word it supplies the substance of abiding power to heart and soul; for it is written: “And bread strengthens the heart of man.” Let us keep, then, the precepts of our forebears, and let us not violate the hereditary seals with rash daring. That sealed prophetic book neither the Elders nor the Powers nor the Angels nor the Archangels dared to open: to Christ alone was the prerogative of explaining it reserved. Which of us would dare to unseal the priestly book, sealed by confessors and already consecrated by the martyrdom of many? Those who were forced to unseal it nevertheless sealed it again afterwards, condemning the fraud; those who did not dare to violate it became confessors and martyrs. How can we deny the faith of those whose victory we proclaim?

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.

How is it that the Son can do nothing of himself? Let us ask what it is that he cannot do. There are many kinds of impossibility. There is something impossible by nature; and there is something that is possible by nature but impossible through weakness. There is also a third: something possible by strength of body and mind but impossible through lack of skill or of authority. There is also that which, by the determination of an unchangeable purpose and the constancy of will and friendship, cannot be changed. But so that we may observe these more clearly, let our discussion be guided by examples. It is impossible for a bird to acquire any learning or art of wisdom; it is impossible also for a stone to go anywhere; for it is impossible for a stone to be moved unless it is moved by the motion of another; a stone, then, cannot move itself and pass from its place. Nor can an eagle be trained in human learning. You have one kind, in which the cause of impossibility is nature. It is impossible also for a weak man to do the works of a strong one; but here there is another cause of impossibility; for what he can do by nature, he cannot do through weakness. The cause of this impossibility, then, is weakness. This is another kind of impossibility, since he is kept from the possibility of acting by the weakness of the body. There is also a third cause of impossibility, by which, even if someone could do something by nature and strength of body, he still cannot do it through lack of skill or of authority, as one untaught, or a slave. Which, then, of these causes of impossibility that we have listed (setting the fourth aside for the moment) do you think suits the Son of God? Is he by nature without sense and immovable, like a stone? He is indeed a stone, a ruin for the impious, a cornerstone for the faithful; but not without sense, he upon whom the affections of believing peoples, who have sense, are built. Not an immovable rock: “For they drank from the rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.” The Father’s work, then, is not impossible to Christ through difference of nature. Do we perhaps think something impossible to him through weakness? But he was not weak who healed the weaknesses of others by a word of command. Did he seem weak when he commanded the paralytic, “Take up your bed and walk,” and was already assigning him the tasks of a healthy man while the man was still praying for a remedy for his weakness? Was the Lord of hosts weak when he gave light to the blind, raised up the bent, raised the dead, when the effect of his healing ran ahead of our prayers, when he cured those who prayed and the touch of his fringe cleansed them? Unless, perhaps, impious men, you thought that was weakness when you saw his wounds. They were indeed wounds of the body, but there was no weakness in that wound from which the life of all was flowing, and the prophet said: “By his bruise we are healed.” Was he who was not weak in his wound weak in his majesty? How, I ask? When he commanded demons and forgave the guilty their sins, or when he asked the Father? Here perhaps they may say: “How are the Father and the Son one, if the Son now commands, now prays?” They are one, and he both commands and prays; but neither when he commands is he alone, nor when he prays is he weak. He is not alone, because whatever the Father does, the Son also does likewise; he is not weak, because although he was made weak in the flesh for our sins, yet that was in him the chastisement of our peace, as it is written, not a weakness of his majesty. Indeed, so that you may know that he asks as man and commands by his divinity, you have in the Gospel that he said to Peter: “I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail.” But to the same Peter, who had said above, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” he answered: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church; and I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” Could he, then, not strengthen the faith of one to whom he was giving a kingdom by his own authority, whom he declared the foundation of the Church when he called him rock? Consider, then, when he asks and when he commands. He asks when he is shown about to suffer; he commands when he is believed to be the Son of God. We already see, then, that two kinds of impossibility do not apply, since the power of God can be neither without sense nor weak. Do you bring forward the third, that he can do nothing without a master, as one unskilled, or without a lord, as a slave? Then you lied, Lord Jesus, when you called yourself both master and lord; and you deceived your disciples when you said, “You call me master and lord, and you say well; for so I am.” But you, the Truth, would not deceive, least of all those whom you called friends. Yet if they set you apart as unskilled from the craftsman, let them see that they are saying that skill was lacking to you, that is, to the Wisdom of God; still, they cannot separate the unity of substance between you and the Father. For it is lack of knowledge, not nature, that separates the craftsman from the unskilled; but in the Father there is no mere craftsmanship, nor in you any lack of wisdom; for Wisdom is not unwise. So if in the Son there can be neither a nature without sense, nor weakness, nor lack of skill, nor servitude, let them consider that the Son is one with the Father in both nature and majesty, and that the Power does not differ from the Father in operation, since whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise; for no one can do the same work likewise that another has done unless he has no inequality of operation and has the unity of the same nature. Still I ask what it is that the Son cannot do of himself unless he sees the Father doing it; and foolishly I put forward examples from humbler things: “I have become foolish; you compelled me.” For what is more foolish than to discuss arguments about the majesty of God, which promote questions rather than the edification of God which is in faith? But let arguments answer arguments: to them their words, to us love, which is in God, from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned. So, to undermine so inept a proposition, I am not ashamed to draw even ridiculous examples. How, then, does the Son see the Father? A horse sees a picture, which by nature it cannot imitate: certainly the Son does not see in that way. A child sees the works of a grown man but cannot imitate them: certainly the Son of God does not see in that way either. So if the Son, through the secret communion of the same nature with the Father, can both see and act invisibly, and through the fullness of divinity carry out whatever he wills, what remains but that we believe that, through the inseparable unity of power, the Son does nothing but what he sees the Father doing; because, through incomparable love, the Son does nothing of himself, since he wills nothing that the Father does not will? And this certainly belongs not to weakness but to unity.

Nor, then, is the Son contumacious, to speak also of the fourth kind; for the Son, the Counselor, did nothing that does not agree with the will of the Father. Indeed the Father saw what the Son made, and approved it, because it was very good. For so you have it in Genesis: “And God said: Let there be light, and there was light; and God saw the light, that it was good.” Did the Father say here, “Let there be such light as I myself made,” or “Let there be light, which had not been before”? Or did the Son ask what kind he should make? No; he made it as he willed, of such a kind as the Father willed so fully that he approved it. It is a new work of the Son, then. Next, if, according to the interpretations of the Arians, it is held against the Son that he did what he saw, he who according to the Scriptures did even what he had not seen and gave being to things that were not, what do they say of the Father, who praised what he had seen, as though he could not foresee the things that were to be made? Likewise, then, the Son sees the Father’s work as the Father sees the Son’s work; nor does he praise it as another’s, but recognizes it as his own: “For whatever the Father does, the Son also does likewise,” so that you may perceive that the work of the Father and of the Son is the same. The Son, then, does nothing but what the Father approves, the Father praises, the Father wills, because he is wholly from the Father; not like a creature, which commits many things and, by eagerness and the slip of sin, often offends the will of its author. The Son, then, does nothing but what pleases the Father; because there is one will, one judgment, one true love, the effect of one operation. … “The Son can do nothing of himself except what he sees the Father doing”: having first said, “Whatever he does, the Son also does likewise,” he added: “For the Father loves the Son.” So what Scripture said, that he “cannot,” it referred to the unity of an inseparable and undivided love. But if love is inseparable by nature, as it truly is, then the operation too is certainly inseparable by nature; and it is impossible that the Son’s work should not agree with the Father’s will, since what the Son works the Father also works, and what the Father works the Son also works, and what the Son speaks the Father also speaks, as it is written: “My Father, who abides in me, he speaks; and the works that I do, he does.” For the Father founded nothing without his power and wisdom, for he made all things in wisdom, as it is written: “You made all things in wisdom.” Nor did God the Word make anything without the Father. He does not work without the Father; not without the Father’s will did he offer himself to that sacred passion as the saving victim for the whole world; not without the Father’s will did he raise the dead. Indeed, when he was about to raise Lazarus, he lifted up his eyes and said: “Father, I thank you that you have heard me; and I knew that you always hear me; but I said it because of the crowd standing around, that they may believe that you sent me”; so that, although he spoke from his having taken on the person of the incarnate man, he nevertheless expressed the unity of the Father’s will and operation; because the Father hears all, sees all that the Son wills. The Father, then, sees the Son acting and hears him willing. Indeed he had not asked, and yet he said that he had been heard. Nor can it be thought that the Father does not hear what the Son wills; and so that you may know that he is always heard by the Father, not as a servant nor as a prophet but as Son: “And I knew,” he says, “that you always hear me; but I said it because of the crowd standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.” For this reason, then, he gives thanks: so that we should not believe the Father and the Son to be the same, when we hear that the work of the Father and of the Son is the same. For so that you might know that he did not give thanks as one weak, but as the Son of God who always claims divine power for himself, he cried: “Lazarus, come out.” This is certainly the voice of one who commands, not of one who prays.

But to return to what came before and to conclude what we proposed: the Son, as the Word, does the will of the Father. This word of ours is certainly uttered; it is syllables, it is sound; and yet it does not differ from our sense and mind, and what we hold in our inner affection we signify as by the testimony of a word that acts. But our speech does not work; only the Word of God works, which is neither uttered nor what they call endiathetos, but which works and lives and heals. Do you want to know what kind of Word he is? Hear the one who says: “For the Word of God is living and strong and effective, and sharper and more piercing than any sharpest sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow.” You hear, then, that the Son of God is the Word, and do you separate him from the Father’s will and power? You hear that he lives, you hear that he heals: do not, then, compare him with our word. For if our word speaks of things it has not seen with sight nor heard with hearing, and yet speaks of things known through certain inner mysteries of human nature, how is he not impious who, in regard to the divinity, demands in the Word of God a kind of bodily sight and hearing, and thinks that the Son can do nothing of himself except what he has seen the Father doing; although, through the unity of the same substance, as we have said, the same willing, the same not willing, and the same power are in the Father and in the Son and in the Holy Spirit? But if men, though generally distinct in the quality of their senses, nevertheless agree in pursuing one purpose, what is it fitting for us to think of God the Father and the Son, when the divine substance possesses what human love imitates? Let us suppose, however, as they wish, that the Son does what he sees the Father doing, as from a pattern. Even this certainly belongs to the same substance; for no one can carry out the imitation of another’s operation unless he has the unity of the same nature.

It is ridiculous, august Emperor, that some are accustomed to use this too as an objection, to show the inequality of God the Father and the Son: they say that the Father is almighty because he begot a Son, but deny that the Son is almighty, saying that he could not beget. But see how savage impiety, like the dialectic of the philosophers, refutes itself. For by this question either they must confess with their own voice that the Son is coeternal with the Father, or, if they ascribe some beginning in time to the Son, they must attribute a beginning of power to the Father too. So when they deny that the Son is almighty, they begin to assert (what is wicked to say) that the Father began to be almighty through the Son. For if the Father is almighty through begetting, then either the Son is coeternal with the Father, because if the Father is always almighty, the Son too is everlasting; or, if there was a time when the Son was not everlasting, then there was a time when the Father was not almighty. For when they want to say that the Son began at some time, they fall back into this: that they say that the Father’s power too did not always exist, but began from the generation of the Son. So, while they desire to disparage the Son of God, they grant him more, so that against all right they seem to declare him the author of the Father’s power; whereas the Son says, “All that the Father has is mine,” that is, not what he himself handed over to the Father, but what he received from the Father by right of generation. And so we say that the Son is the everlasting power; if, then, his power and divinity are everlasting, his might too is certainly everlasting. He who disparages the Son, then, disparages the Father, offends piety, and violates love. Let us honor the Son, in whom the Father is well pleased; for it pleases the Father that the Son in whom he is well pleased should be praised. Yet let us answer their contention, lest we should seem to have escaped the odium of the question by a kind of epilogue. “The Father begot,” they say; “the Son did not beget.” What argument for inequality is there here? For generation belongs to the Father’s property, not to power; and natural affection makes equal, it does not separate. Indeed, in the very experience of our weakness we know that it often happens that the weak have sons and the stronger do not; slaves have them, and masters do not; the poor have them, and those who are powerful do not. But if they say that this too is weakness, because men want to have sons and cannot, then, although human things are not to be compared with divine, let them understand that even among men themselves, to have sons or not to have them is a matter not of power but of the property of fatherhood; and that it is not in the power of our will to beget, but in the condition of the body; for if it were a matter of power, the more powerful would certainly have many. So to have sons or not to have them is not a matter of power. Is it a matter of nature? If you think it a weakness of nature, and compare yourselves with human examples, the nature of the Father is the same as that of the Son. So either you call him the true Son, and then in disparaging the Son you disparage the Father through the unity of the same nature (for as the Father is God by nature, so also is the Son; but the Apostle says that the gods are not gods by nature but are so called); or, if you deny that he is the true Son, that is, of the same nature, then he was not begotten; and if the Son was not begotten, the Father did not beget. It follows, then, according to your opinion, that God the Father is not almighty, because he could not beget, if he did not beget the Son but created him. But since the Father is almighty, and according to your opinion only the begetter is almighty, he certainly begot the Son; he did not create him. But indeed he is to be believed rather than you. He says, “I have begotten,” and he says it often, the witness of his own generation. There is, then, no weakness of nature or of power in Christ because he did not beget; for generation, as we have often said, is referred not to the height of power but to the property of nature. For if the Father is almighty because he has a Son, then he could have been more almighty if he had more. Or did his power fail after one generation? But I will show that Christ too has sons, whom he begets daily, but by that generation, or rather regeneration, which belongs to power, not to nature; for adoption belongs to power, generation to property. Scripture itself has taught us this; for John says that “he was in this world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own did not receive him. But as many as received him, to them he gave power to become sons of God, to those who believe in his name.” We have learned, then, that his making us sons of God belongs to his power; but the divine oracles declare that generation belongs to property; for the Wisdom of God says, “I came forth from the mouth of the Most High,” that is, not compelled but free, not subject to a power, but born in the secret of generation, with the privilege of dominion and the right of power. Indeed, of the same Wisdom, that is, of the Lord Jesus, the Father says elsewhere: “From the womb, before the morning star, I begot you.” He said this certainly not to declare a bodily womb, but to show the property of true generation. For if you refer it to a bodily womb, then the almighty Father begot with pain and conception. But far be it from us to measure God by the weakness of the body. There is a kind of womb, the secret of the Father’s substance, an inner hidden place, which neither Angels nor Archangels nor Powers nor Dominions nor any nature of creatures could penetrate. For the Son is always with the Father and always in the Father: with the Father through the undivided distinction of the eternal Trinity, in the Father through the unity of the divine nature. Who, then, is this judge of the divinity, to examine the Father and the Son, the one as to why he begot, the other as to why he did not beget? No one condemns his little slave or his maidservant for not begetting; these men condemn Christ for not begetting, for they condemn him in their opinion when they disparage him. Nor between spouses is love diminished or merit disparaged because they have not had children; these men diminish Christ’s power because he did not beget. “Why,” they say, “is the Son not Father?” Because the Father is not Son either. “Why did this one not beget?” Because that one was not begotten either. The Son does not have less because he is not Father, nor does the Father have less because he is not Son. For the Son said, “All that the Father has is mine.” So truly does generation belong to the Father’s property and not to a right of power. There is in the substance of the Trinity, incomprehensible and ineffable, a certain undivided distinction. For we have received a distinction of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, not a confusion; a distinction, not a separation; a distinction, not a plurality. By a divine and wonderful mystery, then, we receive the Father as always abiding, the Son always, the Holy Spirit always; not two Fathers, not two Sons, not two Spirits. “For there is one God the Father, from whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus, through whom are all things, and we through him.” One Lord Jesus, born of the Father, and therefore only-begotten. One also is the Holy Spirit, as the same Apostle said. So we receive, so we read, so we hold. We know the distinction; we do not know the secrets; we do not discuss the causes; we keep the mysteries. It is an unworthy thing that those who do not have the power of their own begetting should arrogate to themselves the examination of the divine generation and claim authority over it. Let them deny, then, that the Son is equal to the Father because the Son did not beget; let them deny that the Son is equal to the Father because he has a Father. If they said this of men, some of whom want to have sons and cannot, we would think it an insult; as if, even between two men equal in honor, the one who does not have sons were denied to be equal to the one who has. And the same thing seems grievous even among men, that someone should be thought lesser because he has a father. Unless perhaps they think that Christ, as one set in a household, is grieved that he has not been emancipated by his Father and does not have the power of administering the patrimony. But Christ is not bound by family rites, he who destroyed all such rites. Yet, however they wish, let them answer whether the generation is true, and whether the true Son was born of God the Father, that is, of the substance of the Father, or born of another substance. For if they say, “of the Father,” that is, of the substance of God, we agree; for they say that the Son is of the substance of the Father. So since he is of one substance, he is certainly of one power. But if the Son is of another substance, how is the Father almighty and the Son not almighty? For what is the greater excellence, if God made a Son from another substance, when the Son too made sons of God from no other substance? So the Son is of one substance with the Father, or of one power. Their question, then, is cold, because they cannot judge Christ; rather, because he prevails when he is judged. Yet these who raise this question deserve their own judgment. For if the Son is not equal to the Father because he did not beget a son, then let those who sow questions of this kind, if they do not have sons, confess that they set even their own slaves above themselves, since they cannot be equal to those who have sons. But those who have sons, let them not think that merit is assigned to themselves, but to the right of their sons. This question, then, does not stand, that the Son cannot be equal to the Father because the Father begot a Son and the Son himself begot none. For a spring begets a river, and the river does not beget a spring from itself; and light begets radiance, not radiance light; and the nature of radiance and light is one.

Hence, since they could not prove inequality from the objection about generation, let them understand that that widely spread false charge of their question also is exploded. For they are accustomed to propose: “How can the Son be equal to the Father? For if he is a Son, before he was begotten he was not; or if he was, why was he born?” And do those who propose the questions of Arius deny that they are Arians? So they demand an answer from us, so that if we say, “Before he was begotten, he was,” they may slyly reply: “Then before he was begotten he was created, and he does not differ from the other creatures, since he began to be created before he was Son.” And they add: “Why was he born who already was? Was it because he was imperfect, so as to become more perfect afterwards?” But if we answer that he was not, they object at once: “Then generation conferred on him that he should be, who was not before he was born”; so as to infer from this: “There was, then, when the Son was not.” But let those who propose this, and want to wrap the truth in obscurity, say themselves whether the Father begets temporally or non-temporally. For if they say temporally, they will ascribe to the Father what they object against the Son, so that the Father seems to have begun to be what he was not; if non-temporally, what remains but that they themselves should solve the question they proposed, so that, since they deny that the Father’s begetting is temporal, they confess that the Son’s generation too is not temporal? If, then, his generation is not from time, it may be concluded that nothing preceded the Son, who is not from time. For if anything was before the Son, then not all things that are in heaven or on earth were created in him, and the Apostle, who wrote this in his epistle, is refuted; but if nothing was before the generation, I do not see why he is asserted to be later, whom no one preceded. To this must be added another objection of theirs, full of impiety, which has a hidden trick by which to bind the senses and minds of the simple. For they ask whether everything that has an end began at some time. And if they receive such an answer, that what has an end began at some time, they ask whether the Father has ceased to beget the Son. When they have obtained this with our agreement, they connect: “Then the generation began.” If you do not deny this, it seems to follow that, if the generation began, it seems to have begun in him who was born, so that he is said to have been born who was not before; from which they conclude: “At some time, then, the Son was not.” They add other follies of their talkativeness, saying: “If the Son is the Word of the Father, and is therefore called begotten because he is the Word, and what is a word is not a work: the Father spoke in many ways; therefore he begot many sons, if he did not work but spoke the Word.” Senseless men! As though they did not understand the difference between uttered speech and the Word of God, born of the Father and abiding for ever: born, certainly, not uttered; in whom there is not a composed syllable but the fullness of eternal divinity and life without end. They add another impiety, asking whether the Father begot willingly or unwillingly; so that if we say willingly, we seem to confess that his will was older than the generation, and they may reply that the Son is not coeternal with the Father, since something went before him; or that he too is a creature, because it is written, “All that he willed, he made,” though this was said not of the Father and the Son but of the creatures which the Son made. But if we answer that the Father begot unwillingly, we seem to have called the Father powerless. But for me, in the everlasting generation neither willing nor not willing comes first; so I would say that he begot neither unwillingly nor willingly; because generation lies not in the capacity of the will but in a certain right and property of the Father’s secret. For just as the Father is good not from will or from necessity, but above both, that is, by nature, so the Father does not beget from will or from necessity. Yet suppose that the generation lies in the will of the begetter: when do they say this will existed? If in the beginning, then the Son was certainly in the beginning; if the will is everlasting, the Son too is everlasting; if the will began, then what he was as God the Father displeased him, so that he changed his state. Then he was displeased with himself without the Son, and began to be pleased with himself in the Son. Then this consequence follows, so that we may say: if he took up the desire of begetting in our manner, then he also took up in our manner the other things that usually precede generation; but in our usage of generation there is a wish, not a will. Those, then, betray their impiety who want Christ’s generation to have begun, so that it may seem to be not the generation of the abiding Word but the utterance of flowing speech; next, by bringing in many sons, they deny in Christ the property of the divine nature, so that he is reckoned neither only-begotten nor firstborn; finally, so that, if he is believed to have received a beginning, he may also seem to be going to have an end. But the Son of God, who was in the beginning, never took a beginning; nor will he have an end, who is the beginning and end of the universe. For since he is the beginning, how did he receive what he already had? Or how will he have an end of himself, when he is himself the end of all things, so that we may abide in him firmly without end? For since the generation of God is not temporal, it finds time neither before itself nor in itself. Their question, then, is cold and vain; it has no place even in created things; for even things that are temporal do not in some cases seem to have a distinction of time. Light, of course, begets radiance, and it cannot be understood that the radiance is later than the light, or the light older than the radiance; because where there is light there is radiance, and where radiance, light also. So neither can light be without radiance nor radiance without light; because light is in the radiance and radiance in the light. Hence the Apostle too called the Son the radiance of the Father’s glory; because the Son is the radiance of the Father’s light: coeternal, because of the eternity of power; inseparable, because of the unity of brightness. So if we cannot grasp and separate these temporal and airy things that we see, can we grasp God, whom we do not see, who is above all creation, in the very secret of his generation? Can we separate him from the Son by time, when all time is the work of the Son? Let them stop saying, then, “And before he was begotten he was not.” For “before” belongs to time, while the generation is before all times; and so what is later is not earlier, nor can a work be before its author, since works take their beginning from their maker. For how can the use of a work be reckoned before its maker, when all time is a work, and every work has received its being from its maker? I wish still to test these men who think themselves clever, so that they may answer from our human matters, they who slander divine things and shrink far back from the unsearchable secret of the heavenly generation: let them build their question on the example of human generation. They say of the Son of God that before he was begotten he was not; that is, of the wisdom of God, of the power of God, of the Word of God, whose generation knew nothing before itself. But if at some time, as they wish, he was not (which is wicked to say), then at some time the fullness of divine perfection was not in God, if afterwards he received the process of generation. Yet so that they may know how vain and easily solved their question is, although there is nothing common here between human and divine things, I will show that men existed before they were born. Let them deny that Jacob was holy before he was born, who supplanted his brother while still placed in the secret of his mother’s womb; let them deny that Jeremiah existed before he was born, to whom it is said: “Before I formed you in your mother’s womb I knew you, and before you came forth from the womb I sanctified you, and I appointed you a prophet among the nations.” What is plainer than the example of so great a prophet, who was sanctified before he was born and known before he was formed? What shall I say also of John, of whom his devout mother testifies that while still placed within his mother’s womb he recognized by the Spirit the presence of the Lord and marked it by leaping, as we remember it is written, when his mother says: “For behold, when the voice of your greeting came into my ears, the infant leapt for joy in my womb”? Did he who prophesied exist, then, or did he not? Certainly he existed; for he existed who worshiped his author, he existed who spoke in his mother. Indeed Elizabeth was filled with the spirit of her son, Mary was sanctified by the spirit of her Son; for so you have it, that “the infant leapt in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.” See the proper force of each word. Elizabeth heard Mary’s voice first, but John first perceived the Lord’s grace. Beautifully do oracles agree with oracles, woman with woman, child with child. The women speak of grace, the children work within, and through their mothers’ progress they take up the mystery of godliness; and by a twofold miracle, though of differing honor, the mothers prophesy by the spirit of their little ones. Who, then, is the author of this miracle? Is it not the Son of God, who made them to exist before they were born? If your question cannot hold for human things, can it hold for divine secrets? What is “Before he was begotten he was not”? Did the Father receive some times of conception, so that times should precede the Son? Or did he labor to bring forth his offspring in the manner of a female nature, so that the labor itself should be older than the Son? What is this? Why do we examine divine secrets? I have read of the property of the divine generation, not of its manner. It is an unworthy thing that some should measure heavenly things by themselves, who think that Christ could not be born but made, as though he were one of the eunuchs; or that the Father, like one of the eunuchs, adopted a Son whom he could not beget.

Many also raise a question from this, because it is written: “As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me”; and they say: “How is the Son equal to the Father, when he said that he lives because of the Father?” Let those who propose this first answer what kind of life the Son has: is it a life that the Father bestowed on him when he did not have it? But how could he ever have been without life, since he himself is life, as he says: “I am the way, the truth, and the life”? Life everlasting, certainly, as power is everlasting. Was there a time, then, when Life, so to speak, did not have itself? Consider what was read today of the Lord Jesus, that he died for us, so that whether we wake or sleep we may live together with him. He whose death is life, is his divinity not life, when divinity is life everlasting? Or is his life in the Father’s power? But he did not say that even the life of his body was in another’s power, as it is written: “I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again: this commandment I received from my Father.” Is his life according to divinity judged to be placed in another’s power, whose life according to the body was not subject to another’s power? For it would be another’s power if there were not unity of power. But as laying down his life signifies that it was in his own power and of his free will, so his laying it down according to the Father’s commandment signifies the unity of his will and the Father’s. If, then, the Son neither received life from some point of time nor has it subject to another’s power, let us see why he said: “As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father.” Let us explain it as we can; or rather, let him explain it. Consider, then, what he set before it; for he says: “Amen, amen I say to you.” First he instructs you how you ought to listen: “Truly,” he says, “truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you.” He said first that he was speaking as Son of Man; and do you think that what he said as Son of Man of his flesh and blood is to be referred to the divinity? Indeed he added: “For my flesh is truly food, and my blood is truly drink.” You hear of flesh, you hear of blood, you recognize the sacraments of the Lord’s death; and do you slander the divinity? Hear him saying: “For a spirit does not have flesh and bones.” And as often as we receive the sacraments, which through the mystery of the sacred prayer are transfigured into flesh and blood, we proclaim the death of the Lord. So after he declared that he was speaking as the Son of Man, and had repeated flesh and blood many times, he then added: “As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me.” How, then, do they think this should be taken? For the comparison can be seen in two ways. The first thus: “As the living Father sent me, so I live because of the Father.” The second thus: “As the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so too he who eats me lives because of me.” If they choose the first, it means: as I was sent by the Father and came down from the Father, so I live because of the Father. But as what was he sent, and as what did he come down, except as Son of Man, as he himself said above: “No one has ascended into heaven except he who came down from heaven, the Son of Man”? So as he was sent and came down as Son of Man, so as Son of Man he lives because of the Father. Indeed he who eats him as Son of Man also lives because of the Son of Man. He compared this act, then, to the coming of his incarnation. But if the second pleases them, do we not gather by a clear distinction both the equality of the Son with the Father and his likeness to man? For what is “As he lives because of the Father, so we live because of him,” but that the Son gives life to man as the Father gave life to human flesh in the Son? “For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will,” as the Lord himself said above. The equality of the Son with the Father, then, is established through the unity of giving life as well, since the Son gives life as the Father does. Recognize, then, his everlasting life and power. Our likeness to him also, and a certain unity according to the flesh, is declared; since, as the Son of God was given life in the flesh by the Father, so man is given life. For it is written that as God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, so we too, as men, are given life by the Son of God. According to this explanation, then, not only is the grace of his bounty extended to the human condition, but the eternity of the divinity is also proclaimed: of the divinity, because it gives life; of the human condition, because even in Christ it was given life. But if anyone refers both to the divinity of Christ, then the Son of God is compared to men, so that the Son lives because of the Father in the way that we live because of the Son of God. But the Son of God bestows eternal life, and we cannot bestow it; then, on the comparison with us, neither does he bestow it. Let the Arians, then, have the reward of their faith, that they may not obtain eternal life from the Son. Let us go further now; for if they like to refer this passage to the perpetuity of the divine substance, let them take a third explanation as well. Does he not plainly seem to say that as the Father is living, so the Son also lives? Who would not see that this is to be referred to the unity of life, that the life of the Father and of the Son is the same? “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son also to have life in himself.” He gave it through unity; he gave not to take it away but to be glorified in the Son; he gave to be well pleased; he gave not so that the Father should keep it but so that the Son should possess it. But they think it must be objected that he said, “I live because of the Father.” Certainly, if they refer it to the divinity, the Son lives because of the Father: because the Son is from the Father; because of the Father, because he is of one substance with the Father; because of the Father, because the Word was uttered from the Father’s heart, because he proceeded from the Father, because he was begotten from the Father’s womb, because the Father is the fount of the Son, because the Father is the root of the Son. But perhaps they say: “If you think there is a unity of life of the Father and the Son, since the Son said, And I live because of the Father, is there then a unity of the life of the Son and of men, since the Son said, He who eats me also lives because of me?” Indeed there is: as I confess that there is a unity of heavenly life in the Father and the Son through the unity of the divine substance, so, excepting the privilege of the divine nature and of the Lord’s incarnation, I profess that we share a fellowship of spiritual life in the Son through the unity of human nature: “For as is the heavenly, such also are those who are heavenly.” Indeed, as we sit in him at the right hand of the Father, not because we sit beside him but because we sit in the body of Christ, of which we shall speak more fully later, as, I say, we sit in Christ through the unity of the body, so we also live in Christ through the unity of the body. Not only am I not afraid because it is written, “And I live because of the Father”; I would not be afraid even if he had said “through the Father.” For they are also accustomed to object that he said: “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that his Son may be glorified through it.” For not only is the Son glorified through the Father and by the Father, since it is written, “Glorify me, Father,” and elsewhere, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him, and God has glorified him”; but the Father too is glorified through the Son and by the Son, for the Truth said: “I have glorified you on earth.” As, then, he is glorified through the Father, so too he lives because of the Father. Hence some, too, have thought that doxa means “opinion” rather than “glory,” and so have interpreted it thus: “I have glorified you on earth; I have finished the work you gave me; and now glorify me, Father,” that is, doxason; so that the sense is: “I have instilled in men such an opinion of you that they know you as the true God; and you confirm in them this opinion of me, that they may believe me to be your Son and true God.”

It is ridiculous, too, that some make a distinction of power between the Father and the Son from that saying of the Apostle, because it is written: “Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him.” For they say that there is no small distance of divine majesty, because it is said: “From him are all things,” and “through him are all things.” But nothing is more expressly shown than that in this place the Son is marked out as almighty by plain reasoning; for as all things are from the one, so all things are through the other. The Father is not among “all things,” for to him it is said: “For all things serve you.” The Son is not among “all things,” because all things were made through him, and all things hold together in him, and he is above all the heavens. The Son, then, is not among all things but above all things; according to the flesh he is indeed from the race of the Jews, yet the same is God over all, blessed for ever; his name is above every name, and of him it is said: “You have put all things under his feet.” And in subjecting all things, he left nothing not subject to him, as the Apostle said. But if he said this too according to the mystery of the incarnation, how can we doubt the incomparable majesty of the heavenly generation? It is certain, then, that there is no difference of power between the Father and the Son. Indeed so far is there no difference of power that the same Apostle said that all things are from the very one through whom are all things, as you have it: “For from him and through him and in him are all things.” If, then, as they think, only the Father is signified here, the same cannot be both almighty, because all things are from him, and not almighty, because all things are through him. So either they will call the Father powerless and not almighty by their own assertion, or certainly they will confess with their own voice, even unwillingly, that the Son too is almighty. Let them choose, however, whether they think the Father is spoken of here. If the Father, then all things are also through him; if the Son, then all things are also from him. But if all things are also through the Father, nothing is to be taken away from the Son; and if all things are from the Son, likewise honor is to be paid to the Son. And lest they think that we lay a trap by stealthily taking one verse, let us review the whole chapter: “O the depth,” he says, “of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Or who has first given to him, and it will be repaid to him? For from him and through him and in him are all things; to him be glory for ever.” Of whom, then, do they think it is said, of the Father or of the Son? If of the Father: but the Father is not the Wisdom of God; the Son is the Wisdom of God. And what is there that Wisdom cannot do, of which it is written: “Being one, she can do all things, and abiding in herself she renews all things”? We read, then, not that she is added to but that she abides. You have, then, according to Solomon, Wisdom almighty and abiding. You have her also good, for it is written: “But malice does not overcome wisdom.” But let us return to our subject. “How unsearchable,” he says, “are his judgments!” If, then, the Father has given all judgment to the Son, it seems to be the Son who is declared, since it is he who judges. Indeed, so that you may know that he is speaking not of the Father but of the Son, he added: “Who,” he says, “has first given to him?” For the Father did give to the Son, but he gave by right of generation, not by a gift of bounty. And so, since it cannot be denied that the Son received from the Father, according to what is written, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father,” yet by saying, “Who has first given to him?” he did not deny that the Son received from the Father by nature, but declared that neither of the Father and the Son can be called prior; because, although the Father gave to the Son, he did not give as to one who came later, for the uncreated and inestimable Trinity, which is of one eternity and glory, admits neither time nor rank, whether of later or of earlier. But if we think the Greek manuscripts are rather to be followed, which have “Who has given in addition to him?” (prosedōken), you see that he to whom nothing can be added is not unequal to the one who is full. So if this whole chapter of the Apostle fits the Son better, we see that we must believe of the Son also that all things are from him, as it is written: “For from him and through him and in him are all things.” But suppose they think it said of the Father. Then let us remember that as we read that all things are from him, so too all things are through him; for the authority of the Father and the Son is set forth over the whole universe of creation. And although we proved above by the Father’s example that the Son is almighty, yet since they are eager to disparage, let them consider that they disparage the Father too. For if the Son is weak because all things are through him, is the Father weak too, because all things are also through the Father? But so that they may recognize that there is no distinction between these phrases, I will show again that “from whom” something is and “through whom” something is belong to the same, and I will show that both are read of the Father. For we have it thus: “God is faithful, through whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son.” Let them consider what the Apostle said. We are called through the Father, and there is no question; we are created through the Son, and do they reckon this baser? The Father called us into the fellowship of his Son, and we receive this devoutly, as we ought; the Son created all things, and do they think that this was not the judgment of free will but the compliance of a forced and servile operation? And so that you may recognize more fully that there is no difference between the power of the Father and of the Son: although we are called through the Father into the fellowship of his Son, the fellowship itself is from the Son, as it is written: “For from his fullness we have all received,” although according to the Greek Gospel we should understand “out of his fullness.” See, the fellowship is both through the Father and from the Son; yet it is not discordant but one fellowship, as the same John said in his epistle: “And that our fellowship may be with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” Take note also that Scripture has spoken of one fellowship for us not only from the Father and the Son but also from the Holy Spirit: “The grace,” it says, “of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” I ask, then, in what respect he through whom are all things seems less than he from whom are all things. Is it because he is said to be a worker? But the Father too works; for the Truth said: “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” As, then, the Father works, the Son also works. The worker, then, is not weak or base, since the Father too works; and so what the Son has in common with the Father ought not, for the Father’s sake at least, to be taken in an inferior sense, lest the heretics should rather disparage the Father in the Son. Nor is that of small weight which the same holy John says elsewhere, refuting the questions of Arian faithlessness: “If you know that he is righteous, know that everyone who does righteousness is born of him.” And who is righteous but the Lord, who has loved righteousness? Or whom, as the preceding words indicate, do we have as the promiser of eternal life, if we do not have the Son? If, then, the Son of God has promised us eternal life, and he is righteous, we are certainly born of him. Or if they deny that we are born of the Son by grace, they do not confess that the Son is righteous either. You must believe, then, that all things are also from the Son of God; for as the Father, so also the Son is the author and creator of all things. We see, then, that this question is empty, since it is fitting to believe of the Son also that from him and through him and in him are all things. We have said how “from him,” and how also “through him.” And who would doubt that all things are in him, when it is written elsewhere: “For in him all things in heaven were established, and in him they were created; and he is before all, and all things hold together in him”? You have, then, grace from him, him as the worker, and in him the foundation of all things.

They are also accustomed to raise this objection in order to separate the divinity of the Father and of the Son, because the Lord said in the Gospel: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser”; and they say that the vinedresser and the vine are of different natures, and that the vine is in the vinedresser’s power. So you would have the Son, according to his divinity, be like a vine, so that without the cultivator he is worth nothing and can be abandoned or cut back; and do you build a false charge on the letter, because the Lord said that he was a vine, signifying the mystery of his incarnation? Yet if you want us to argue from the letter, I too confess, indeed I profess, that the Son called himself a vine. For woe to me if I deny the mystery of the salvation of all! How, then, would you have it taken that the Son of God called himself a vine? If you take it as said according to the divine substance, and believe that as there is a difference between the vinedresser and the vine, so there is a difference of divinity between the Father and the Son, you do a double injury to the Son and a double injury to the Father. To the Son, because if according to his divinity he is inferior to the vinedresser, then by your assertion he must also be reckoned inferior to the apostle Paul; for Paul too said that he was a cultivator, as you have it: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.” Do you want Paul, then, to be better than the Son of God? There you have one injury. The other is that if the Son is the vine according to the substance of the eternal generation, since he said, “I am the vine, you are the branches,” that divine generation too will seem to be of one substance with us. But “who is like you among the gods, O Lord?” as it is written. And again in the psalm: “For who in the clouds shall be equal to the Lord? Or who shall be like God among the sons of God?” Nor do you disparage the Son alone, but also the Father. For if the whole prerogative of the Father’s power lies in the name of vinedresser, then, since Paul too is a cultivator, you certainly make the Apostle equal to the Father, though you deny that the Son is equal to him. Next, since it is written, “But neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase,” you will place the summit of the Father’s majesty in a name which you see is weak. For if he who plants and he who waters is nothing, but God who gives the increase, see what your impiety is trying to assert: that the Father is to be despised under the name of vinedresser, and that some God must be sought who gives increase to the Father’s work. Impiously, then, do they think that the power of God the Father is to be preferred because of the name of vinedresser, in which the Father shares a common title with man. And what is excellent in his being preferred, as you heretics would have it, to a Son whose divine substance does not differ from the human condition? For if you think that the Son was called a vine according to the divine substance, you judge him not only liable to corruption and to the uncertainties of the elements, but also a sharer only in human nature; for the vine and the branches are of one nature; so that the Son of God would seem not to have taken flesh through the mystery of the incarnation, but to have taken his beginning from the flesh. But I will say plainly that his flesh, though by a new mystery of birth, was of one nature with us, and that this is the mystery of our salvation, not the beginning of the divine generation. For he is a vine because he bears my sufferings; since, leaning on him, the human condition, frail before, has grown up with the abundant fruits of a renewed devotion. But if the pomp of the vinedresser delights you, tell me, please, who it is who spoke in the prophet: “Lord, make it known to me, that I may know; then I saw their thoughts. I was led like an innocent lamb to be sacrificed, and I did not know; they devised a plan against me, saying: Come, let us put wood into his bread.” For if it is the Son who speaks of the mystery of his future incarnation (since it is impious to believe it of the Father), it is certainly the Son who says earlier: “I planted you a fruitful vine; how have you turned into the bitterness of a strange vine?” So you see that the Son too is the vinedresser, of one name with the Father, of one work, of one dignity and substance. So if the Son is both vinedresser and vine, we certainly take “vine” according to the mystery of the incarnation. But he not only said that he was a vine; through the prophetic voice he also called himself a cluster, at the time when Moses, at the Lord’s command, sent spies to the valley of the cluster. What is that valley but the lowliness of the incarnation and the fruitfulness of the passion? And I think he is called a cluster because from that vine transplanted out of Egypt, that is, from the family of the Jews, a fruit useful to the world shone forth. Certainly no one can refer the cluster to the divine generation; or whoever does so leaves nothing else but that we should believe that cluster to be born of the vine. So the fool ascribes to the Father what he blames in the Son. But if it can no longer be doubted that the Son of God was named a vine according to the incarnation, you see according to what mystery the Lord said: “For the Father is greater than I.” For when he had said this just before, he immediately added: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser,” so that you might recognize that the Father is greater in this respect; because as the vinedresser is of the vines, so the Father is the cultivator of the Lord’s flesh, which could both grow with age and be cut back by the passion; so that the shade of the cross, spread out with saving arms, might shelter the whole human race from the harmful heat of worldly pleasures.

“Who, then, is the faithful and wise servant, whom his lord has set over his household, to give them food in due season? Blessed is that servant whom his lord, when he comes, finds so doing.” This is no ordinary servant; he must be someone great. Let us consider who he is. It is Peter, chosen by the judgment of the Lord himself to feed the flock, who was found worthy to hear three times: “Feed my little lambs, feed my lambs, feed my sheep.” And so by feeding Christ’s flock well with the food of faith he wiped out the fault of his former fall. And for this reason he is told three times to feed, and asked three times whether he loves the Lord, so that he might confess three times the one whom he had denied three times before the cross. Blessed too is that servant who can say: “I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, for you were not yet able”; for he knew how to feed each one. Which of us can do this? Which of us can truly say, “I became weak to the weak, that I might win the weak”? And yet he, so great a man, chosen by Christ for the care of the flock, to heal the weak and tend the sick, drives the heretic from the fold entrusted to him immediately after one correction, lest the scab of one stray sheep should infect the whole flock with its spreading sore. He also commands that foolish questions and disputes be avoided. What, then, shall we do, set unawares among the new tares of an old harvest? If we keep silent, we shall seem to give way; if we contend, there is reason to fear that we too may be judged carnal. For it is written about questions of this kind, which breed strife: “But the servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but be gentle toward all, apt to teach, patient, correcting with modesty those who oppose”; and elsewhere: “If anyone is contentious, we have no such custom, nor have the churches of God.” For this reason it was my intention to write something, so that without any clamor our writings might answer the impiety of the heretics for us. So, august Emperor, I am preparing to begin this fifth book; for it was right that the fourth book should end with that discussion of the vine, lest we should seem to have heaped up that same book with a tumult of questions rather than filled it with the fruit of the spiritual vine; nor was it fitting that the vintage of faith should be left incomplete while so many disputes were still overflowing. In the fifth book, then, we set out the inseparable divinity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, setting aside for the time being a fuller discussion of the Holy Spirit, prompted by the teaching of the Gospel reading, so that we may lend out to human hearts at interest the five talents of faith entrusted to us, as by the allotment of these five books; lest perhaps, when the Lord comes and finds his money hidden in the ground, he should say to me: “Wicked and lazy servant, you knew that I reap where I do not sow and gather where I have not scattered; you ought, then, to have entrusted my money to the bankers, so that on my coming I might have received what is mine”; or as it is in another book: “And I,” he says, “on coming would certainly have demanded it with interest.” Pardon me, then, if the boldness of so long a discourse offends anyone. Regard for my office compels me to lend out what we have received: “We are stewards of the heavenly mysteries.” We are ministers, not all equally, but “to each,” it says, “as the Lord gave. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.” Let each, then, strive to be able to receive his reward according to his own labor; “for we are,” as the Apostle said, “God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.” Blessed, then, is he who sees such interest on his loan; blessed too he who beholds the fruits of his work; blessed also he who builds on the foundation of faith gold, silver, and precious stones. You are everything to us, you who hear or read these things: you are the lender’s interest (interest of the word, not of money); you are the farmer’s harvest; you are the builder’s gold, silver, and precious stones. In your merits lies the sum of the priestly labor; in your souls the fruit of the bishop’s work shines out; in your progress the Lord’s gold gleams and his silver is multiplied, if you hold fast the divine words; for “the words of the Lord are pure words, silver tried in the fire, proved for the earth, purified seven times.” You, then, will make the lender rich and the farmer fruitful; you will prove the architect skillful. I do not say this arrogantly, since what I pray for is not so much mine as yours. O that I might be allowed to say of you with confidence at that time: “Lord, you gave me five talents, and see, I have gained five more,” and show the precious talents of your virtues! “For we have this treasure in earthen vessels.” These are the talents that the Lord commands to be lent out spiritually; or the two denarii of the New and Old Testament, which that Samaritan of the Gospel left for the healing of the wounds of the man stripped by robbers. Nor, brothers, am I greedy in my prayer, wishing for this so as to be set over many things; your progress is reward enough for me. Would that I may not be found unworthy of what I have received! I do not demand what is greater than I am, which is to be given to better men; although you, Lord, are accustomed to say, “But I will give to this last as to you.” Let him receive power over ten cities who deserves it. Let him be such as Moses, who wrote the ten words of the Law. Let him be Jesus son of Nave, who subdued five kings and received the Gibeonites in surrender, so as to be a type of the man of that name who was to come, by whose command all bodily delights would be overcome and the nations converted, so that they would follow the faith of Jesus Christ rather than their former pursuits and desires. Let him be David, whom the young women met singing: “Saul has slain his thousands, David his ten thousands.” It is enough for me if I am not thrust out into the outer darkness, like him who hid the talent entrusted to him in the earth of his own flesh; like the ruler of the synagogue and the other rulers of the Jews, who buried the oracles of God entrusted to them in the earth of their own body, and, intent on the delights of the flesh, sank the heavenly interest as into the pit of a proud heart. Let us not, then, keep the Lord’s money hidden in the lurking places of the flesh, nor lay up that pound in a napkin; but like good bankers, with a certain sweat of mind and body, let us always weigh it out with a fair and ready heart, so that “the word may be near, in your mouth and in your heart.” This is the word of God; it is the precious talent by which you are redeemed. This is the money to be often counted out on the tables of souls, so that by frequent use the sound of the coins may go out into all the world, by which eternal life is gained. “And this is eternal life,” which you bestow, almighty Father, “that we may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

Hence let the Arians notice how impious they are, who raise questions for us out of our hope and our prayer. And since they are accustomed above all to cry out from this text, saying that Christ is separated from the only and true God, let us refute their impious interpretations as well as we can. For in this place they ought rather to understand that this is the profit, this the reward of perfect virtue, this the divine and incomparable gift: that we should know Christ with the Father, and not separate the Son from the Father, as Scripture does not separate them. For this serves the unity rather than the distance of the divine power, that the knowledge of the Father and of the Son gives us one reward, one honor; and no one can have this reward but he who has known both the Father and the Son; for as the knowledge of the Father, so the knowledge of the Son gains eternal life. So, as at the very beginning the Evangelist joined the Word with God the Father in devout confession, saying, “And the Word was with God,” so here too, in writing the Lord’s words, “That they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent,” he certainly joined the Father and the Son by that conjunction, so that no one may separate Christ, the true God, from the majesty of the Father; for a conjunction never separates. And so by saying, “That they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent,” he both struck down the Sabellians and shut out the Jews, those, that is, who heard him speaking; lest the former should think the Father the same as the Son, if he had not added “and Christ,” or the latter should separate the Son from the Father. But I ask why they do not think that it should be understood and gathered from what precedes that, since he first set down “the Father, the only true God,” we should understand also “Jesus Christ, the only true God”? For it could not have been expressed otherwise, lest he should seem to speak of two gods; for neither do we speak of two gods, and we confess the Son to be of the same divinity with the Father. So we ask on what ground of divinity they think a distance is made here: do they deny that Christ is God? But they cannot deny it. Do they deny that he is true God? But let them say, if they deny that he is true, whether they judge him to be a false God or one so called in name only. For according to the Scriptures God is either true, or only so called, or false: true, like the Father; so called, like the saints; false, like demons and idols. Let them say, then, with what confession they designate the Son of God: whether they think that the name of God has been falsely assumed, or that, as in one called God only in name, there is merely an inspiration of divinity. I do not think they will say that the name was falsely assumed, so as to involve themselves in a more open crime of impiety, and betray themselves by suggesting that a false name of God was given to Christ, as to demons and idols. But if they think he is called God because he had an inspiration of divinity, as many holy men did (for Scripture called those gods to whom the word of God came), then they do not set him above men but think him comparable with men, so as to think that he has only what he himself gave to men, when he said to Moses, “He has made you a god to Pharaoh.” Hence also it is said in the psalm: “I said, you are gods.” And yet Paul excludes this opinion of the sacrilegious, when he says: “For even if there are those who are called gods, whether in heaven or on earth.” He did not say, “there are gods,” but “there are those who are called gods.” But Christ, as it is written, “is the same yesterday and today.” “Is,” he says; that is, not only in name but also in truth. And it is well written, “He is the same yesterday and today,” so that the impiety of Arius could find no room to build up its sacrilege. For when he read in the second psalm the Father saying to the Son, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you,” he noted “today,” not “yesterday,” and referred to the eternity of the divine generation what was said of the assumption of flesh, as Paul says in the Acts of the Apostles: “And we announce to you the promise made to our fathers, that God has fulfilled it for our children by raising up the Lord Jesus Christ, as it is written in the second psalm: You are my Son, today I have begotten you.” So the Apostle, filled with the Holy Spirit, to crush that savagery, says: “He is the same yesterday and today and for ever”: yesterday, because of his eternity; today, because of his taking a body. Christ, then, is, and always is; for he who is, always is. And Christ always is, of whom Moses says: “He who is has sent me.” Gabriel was, Raphael was, the angels were; but those who at some time were not are by no means said in the same sense always to be. But Christ, as we read, was not “is and is not,” but in him was “is”; so that to be belongs truly to God alone, who always is. So if they do not dare to call him God in name only, and to call him false is a greater impiety, it remains that he is true God, not unlike his true Father but equal to him. Since he justifies and sanctifies whom he will, not taking the power of sanctifying from outside but having it himself, how is he not true God? For the Apostle certainly called him true God who was God by nature, as you have it: “For then,” he says, “not knowing God, you served those who by nature were not gods”; that is, those who could not be true gods, since this by no means belonged to them by nature.

But we have abundantly proved in the earlier books, from readings of the Scriptures, that Christ is true God. So if Christ, as has been shown, is true God, let us ask on what ground, when they read that the Father is the only true God, they want to separate the Son from the Father. If they say that the Father alone is true God, they cannot deny that the Son too, alone, is God the Truth, because Christ is the truth. Is the truth less than the true, when according to the formation of names “true” is generally named from “truth,” as “wise” from “wisdom” and “just” from “justice”? We do not think this of the Father and the Son, because nothing is lacking to the Father, since the Father is true; and the Son, because he is the truth, is equal to the true. But so that they may know that when they read “alone,” the Son is by no means to be separated from the Father, let them remember that it was said by God in the prophets: “I alone stretched out the heaven.” And certainly the Father did not stretch it out without the Son. For the Son himself, who is the wisdom of God, says: “When he prepared the heaven, I was there with him.” And Paul confirms that it was said of the Son: “In the beginning, Lord, you founded the earth, and the heavens are the works of your hands.” Whether, then, the Son made the heaven, as the Apostle wanted it to be understood, and he certainly did not stretch out the heaven alone without the Father; or whether, as you have in Proverbs, “God by wisdom founded the earth, and prepared the heavens by understanding,” it is shown that neither did the Father alone make the heavens without the Son, nor the Son without the Father; and yet he who stretched out the heaven is called “alone.” How truly this too is to be understood of the Son, that he is called “alone,” though he is believed never to have done anything without the Father’s knowledge, you have elsewhere as well, where it is written: “Who alone stretches out the heaven, and walks on the sea as on a pavement.” For the Gospel of the Lord taught us that it was not the Father but the Son who walked on the sea, when Peter asked him, saying, “Lord, command me to come to you.” But the prophecy itself is also a proof; for holy Job was prophesying the coming of the Lord, of whom he truly said that he would vanquish the great sea monster; and so it was done; for that deadly monster, the devil, he struck down and crushed in the last times, laid low by the venerable passion of his body. The Son, then, is the only and true God; for this prerogative is granted to the Son as well. For of no one who was created can it properly be said that he is alone. For how can one who shares the common lot of a creature be set apart from the rest as if alone? So man seems to be rational among all the living things of earth, yet he is not alone rational; for we know that the heavenly works of God are also rational; we confess that angels and archangels are rational. If, then, angels are rational, man is certainly not said to be alone rational. But they say that the sun can be called “alone,” because there is no other sun. But even the sun has much in common with the stars: it runs through the heaven, it is of that ethereal and heavenly substance, it is a creature, it is counted among all the works of God, with all of them it serves God, with all of them it blesses God, with all of them it praises him. It is not, then, properly called alone, because it is not set apart from the rest. So since no creature can be compared with the divinity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, which alone is not among all things but above all things (to reserve for the moment what is to be asserted of the Spirit), just as the Father is called the only true God, since he has nothing in common with the rest, so too the Son alone is the image of the true God, alone the right hand of the Father, alone the power and wisdom of God. The Son alone, then, acts as the Father does, for it is written: “Whatever I do, he does.” For since the work of the Father and of the Son is one, it is rightly said of the Father and the Son that God alone worked; hence also, when we speak of the Creator, we confess both the Father and the Son. For when Paul said, “Who served the creature rather than the Creator,” he denied neither that the Father is Creator, from whom are all these things, nor the Son, through whom are all things. To the Son, certainly, the saying “who alone has immortality” does not seem foreign. For how does he not have immortality, who has life in himself? He has it in his nature, he has it in his substance; and he has it not through a temporal grace but through his everlasting divinity; he has it not by gift, as a servant, but by the property of generation, as the coeternal Son; and he has it as the Father has: “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son also to have life in himself”; “as he has,” he says, “so he gave.” You learned above how he gave it, so that you might not think it a bounty of grace where there is the secret of generation. Since, then, there is no difference of life between the Father and the Son, how can it be thought that the Father alone has immortality and the Son does not? From this let them understand that here too the Son is not to be separated from the Father, the only true God; for they cannot prove that the Son is not the only and true God; especially since here either, as we have said, it is understood that Christ too is the only true God, or else one thing is to be understood as referring to the divinity of the Father and the Son, another to the incarnation of Christ; because knowledge is not perfect unless it confesses Jesus Christ both, according to his eternity, as the only-begotten, the true God, the Son of God, and, according to the flesh, as born of the Virgin. This same Evangelist taught us this elsewhere, saying: “Every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God.” Indeed, the very sequence of the reading teaches us how fitting it is to understand here the mystery of the incarnation too; for you have it thus: “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son.” Certainly, since he mentions that the hour has come and asks to be glorified, how is it fitting to think that he spoke except according to the assumption of flesh? For the divinity has no moments of time prescribed for it, nor does eternal light need to be glorified. So in “the only true God, the Father” we understand the Son of God also as the only true God, according to the unity of divinity; and in the name of Jesus Christ, which he received when born of the Virgin, we recognize the mystery of the incarnation. But if, when they read that the Father is the only true God, they want to separate the Son, then, when they read of the Son’s incarnation, “This is the stone which was rejected by you builders, which has become the head of the corner,” and further on, “There is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved,” do they think that the Father is to be separated from the benefit of imparting salvation to us? But neither is there salvation without the Father, nor eternal life without the Son.

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.

Hence it is also evident how he calls him Lord whom he knows as Father; for he says: “I confess to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth.” Wisdom first called him its own Father, and afterwards named him Lord of creation. So the Lord himself shows in his Gospel that there is no lordship where there is true offspring, saying: “What do you think of the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him: “David’s.” Jesus said to them: “How, then, does David in the Spirit call him Lord, saying: The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand?” And he added: “If, then, David in the Spirit calls him Lord, how is he his son?” And no one could answer him a word. O how carefully, even in this testimony, the Lord provided for faith against the Arians! For he did not say, “The Spirit calls him Lord,” but that David said it in the Spirit; so that he whose son he is according to the flesh, namely David’s, he might be believed to be also Lord and God according to divinity. You see, then, that the name of fatherly love and the name of lordship are distinct. And the Lord rightly proclaimed his own Father, but Lord of heaven and earth; so that, when you read both “Father” and “Lord,” you may understand Father of the Son and Lord of the creature. In the one is the prerogative of nature, in the other the authority of power; for, taking the form of a servant, he calls him Lord in that respect in which he took on servitude, equal in the form of God, a servant in the form of the body: for servitude belongs to the flesh, lordship to the divinity. Hence the Apostle too says: “The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory”; that is, declaring him God of the human nature assumed, but Father of glory. Did God, then, have two sons, Christ and glory? Not at all. So if Christ is the one Son of God, Christ is certainly glory. And what do you take away from him who is the glory of the Father? If, then, the Son is glory and the Father is glory (for the Father of glory cannot be other than glory), there is not a division of glories but one glory. So glory is referred to the property of nature, but lordship to the servitude of the body he assumed. For if the flesh even of a righteous man is subject to the soul, as it is written, “I chastise my body and bring it into subjection,” how much more is it subject to the divinity, of which it is said, “For all things serve you”? But with one question the Lord shut out the Sabellians and the Photinians and the Arians. For when he says that David called him Lord, Sabellius is shut out, who wants the Father to be the same as the Son. Photinus is shut out, who judges him only according to the flesh; because no one could be lord of King David but one who is God; for it is written: “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.” Would the prophet, who reigned under the Law, think against the Law? Arius is shut out, who hears that the Son sits at the right hand of the Father; so that, if he argues from human custom, he destroys himself and pours back on himself the poison of his sacrilegious disputation; so that, while he interprets the inequality of Father and Son from the custom of men, he strays from the truth on both counts and gives preference to the one he disparages, being bound to confess as the superior the one he hears is at the right hand. The Manichaean too is shut out; for he does not deny that Jesus is the son of David according to the flesh, since, when the blind cried out, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on us,” he was pleased with their faith, stood still, and healed them; but he denies that this belongs to his eternity, that the faithless call him the son of David only. For he is Son of God against Ebion, son of David against the Manichaeans; Son of God against Photinus, son of David against Marcion; Son of God against Paul of Samosata, son of David against Valentinus; Son of God against Arius and Sabellius, heirs of pagan error; Lord of David against the Jews, who, seeing the Son of God in the flesh, believed with impious error that he was only a man. But by the faith of the Church the Son of God the Father and of David is one and the same; because the mystery of God’s incarnation is the salvation of the whole creation, according to what is written: “That apart from God he might taste death for all”; that is, that every creature might be redeemed at the price of the Lord’s blood without any suffering of the divinity, as it has it elsewhere: “Every creature will be set free from the slavery of corruption.” It is one thing, then, for the Son to be named according to the divine substance, another according to his taking of flesh; for according to the divine generation the Son is equal to God the Father, and according to his taking of a body he is servant to God the Father; for, it says, “he took the form of a servant”; yet the Son is one and the same. To the holy patriarch David, on the other hand, he is Lord according to his glory and son according to the line of bodily descent, not falling short of himself, but acquiring for himself the right of our adoption. Nor did he take on servitude in the person of a man only from the race of David, but also from the name, as you have it: “I have found David my servant”; and elsewhere: “Behold, I will send to you my servant; the Dayspring is his name.” And the Son himself says: “Thus says the Lord, who formed me from the womb to be his servant, and said to me: It is a great thing for you to be called my servant. Behold, I have set you for a covenant of my race, for a light of the nations, that you may be for salvation to the end of the earth.” To whom is this said but to Christ, who, though he was in the form of God, emptied himself and took the form of a servant? What is “in the form of God” but in the fullness of divinity? Learn, then, what “he took the form of a servant” means: that is, the fullness of human perfection, the fullness of obedience. And so he says in the thirtieth psalm: “You set my feet in a spacious place. I have become a reproach above all my enemies. Make your face shine on your servant.” Man is called servant, in whom he was sanctified; servant, man, in whom he was anointed; servant, man, in whom he was made under the Law, made from a Virgin; and, to put it briefly, he is called servant in that respect in which he has a mother, as it is written: “O Lord, I am your servant, I am your servant and the son of your handmaid”; and elsewhere: “I am afflicted and humbled exceedingly.” Who was humbled exceedingly but Christ, who came to set all free through obedience? “For as through the disobedience of one man many were made sinners, so through the obedience of one many will be made righteous.” Who received the cup of salvation, Christ the high priest, or David, who neither had the priesthood nor underwent suffering? Who offered the sacrifice of praise? But if this is too little, take another: “Guard my soul, for I am holy.” Would David say this of himself? But it is he who says it who says: “You will not leave my soul in hell, nor give your holy one to see corruption.” The same, then, says both. And he added: “Save your servant”; and further on: “Give power to your servant, and to the son of your handmaid”; and elsewhere, that is, in Ezekiel: “And I will raise up over them one shepherd, and my servant David will rule them; he will feed them and be their shepherd; and I the Lord will be their God, and my servant David a prince in their midst.” Certainly David, the son of Jesse, was already dead. He speaks, then, of Christ, who for our sake was made the son of a handmaid according to the form of man; for according to the divine generation he has not a mother but a Father, nor is he the fruit of a bodily womb, but the everlasting power of God. So when we read too that the Lord said, “My time is not yet fulfilled,” and, “Yet a little while I am with you,” and, “I go to him who sent me,” and, “The Son of Man is glorified,” we ought to refer them to the mystery of the incarnation. But when we read, “And God is glorified in him, and God has glorified him,” what question is there here, where the Son is glorified by the Father and the Father is glorified by the Son? Indeed, to disclose the faith of unity and the bond of the Trinity, he said that he was also to be glorified by the Spirit, as you have it: “He will take of mine and will glorify me.” The Holy Spirit too, then, glorifies the Son of God. How, then, did he himself say, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing”? Is the Son’s glory, then, nothing? It is sacrilege to say so, unless you refer it to the flesh; for the Son was speaking in the person of a man, since in comparison with the divinity the flesh has no glory. Let them stop, then, impiously raising objections that are turned back on their own faithlessness. For they say: “It is written: Now is the Son of Man glorified.” I do not deny that it is written, “The Son of Man is glorified”; but let them see what follows: “And God is glorified in him.” I have an explanation in the case of the Son of Man; he has none in the case of the Father, for the Father did not take flesh. I have an explanation and do not use it; he has none and raises a false charge. Let him allow me either to understand it simply, or to refer to the flesh what belongs to the flesh. A devout mind distinguishes what is read according to the flesh from what is read according to the divinity; a sacrilegious mind confuses them, and twists into an insult to the divinity whatever was said according to the lowliness of the flesh.

What of the fact that the Arians, false and shameless interpreters of the divine words in the Jewish manner, say that the power of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is different, because it is written, “Go, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” and from the order of the words they make a difference of divine power? But although in the earlier books I have claimed this very testimony for the unity of majesty and of name, yet if they raise a question from it, I can show from testimonies of the Scriptures that in very many places the Son is named first and the Father afterwards. Is the Father, then, second to the Son by a prejudice of words, as the Arians would have it, because the mention of the Son was put first? Far be it, I say, far be it. Faith does not know this order; it does not know a separated honor of the Father and the Son. I have not read, I have not heard, nor have I found any rank in God. Nowhere have I read of a second God, nowhere of a third: I have read of the first; I have heard of the first and only. If we demand a superstitious observance of order, the Son ought not to sit at the right hand of the Father, nor should he have called himself the first and the beginning. Then the Evangelist did wrong to begin with the Word rather than with God, saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” For according to human usage he ought to have named the Father first. The Apostle too did not know the order, when he says: “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the Gospel of God”; and elsewhere: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.” If we follow the order of words, in the first he put the Son, in the second the Father. But the order of words is often changed; and so you ought not to raise a question about order or rank between God the Father and his Son, since according to divinity there is no division of the unity.

Finally, to show that they are not Christians, they deny that one must believe in Christ, saying that it is written: “He who believes in me does not believe in me, but in him who sent me.” This is the confession I was waiting for; why did you trifle with me by roundabout ways? I knew that my contest was against pagans; but they are converted, you are not. If they believe, the sacrament is safe; you have lost what you received, and perhaps it was not even begun but feigned. “It is written,” they say: “He who believes in me does not believe in me, but in him who sent me.” But see what follows, and see how the Son of God wishes to be seen; for it goes on: “And he who sees me sees him who sent me”; that is, because the Father is seen in the Son. He explained, then, what he had said before: that he believes in the Son who confesses the Father too. For he who does not know the Son does not know the Father either; for everyone who denies the Son does not have the Father; he who confesses the Son has both the Son and the Father. What, then, is “does not believe in me”? Not in what you see bodily, not only in the man whom you see; for he did not declare that one should believe in a man only, but that you should believe that Jesus Christ himself is the Son of God and man. For this reason he says both, “I have not come of myself,” and elsewhere, “I am the beginning, who also speak to you.” As man he did not come of himself; as Son of God he does not have his beginning from man; but “I am,” he says, “the beginning, who also speak to you”; and the things I have spoken are not human but divine. For it is not permitted to believe that he denied that one must believe in him, since he himself said: “That everyone who believes in me may not remain in darkness”; and elsewhere: “For this is the will of my Father who sent me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life”; and elsewhere: “You believe in God; believe also in me.” Let no one, then, take the Son without the Father, because we read “Son.” The Son has a Father, but not a temporal one, not by passion, not by conception, not by grace. I have read of generation; I have not read of conception. And the Father says, “I have begotten,” not, “I have created”; and the Son, according to the eternity of the divine generation, names God not his creator but his Father. He speaks of himself now in the person of man, now in the majesty of God: now claiming for himself the unity of divinity with God the Father, now taking on the frailty of human flesh; now saying that he does not have his own teaching, now that he does not seek his own will; now that his testimony is not true, now that it is true. For he himself said: “If I bear witness of myself, my testimony is not true.” And he himself says later: “Even if I bear witness of myself, my testimony is true.” How, then, Lord Jesus, is your testimony not true, when the man who believed it, though set on a cross and placed among the punishments of a confessed crime, put off the deserts of a robber and won the rewards of an innocent man? Was Paul deceived, then, who received back his eyes because he believed, having lost them before he believed? Did Jesus son of Nave err too, who recognized the commander of the heavenly army? But as soon as he had believed, he conquered, worthy to triumph in the battle of faith. Indeed he did not lead out bronze-clad lines to war, nor bring down the circuit of the enemy walls with the ram and the other siege engines, but by the sound of seven priestly trumpets. So the blast of the trumpet and the priest’s fillet finished a monstrous war. The harlot saw this, and she who in the destruction of the city despaired of any means of safety, because faith had conquered, raised the signs of faith and the standards of the Lord’s passion and tied scarlet in the window, so that the likeness of the mystic blood which was to redeem the world might flourish. So outside, the name of Jesus was there for the combatants unto victory; inside, the likeness of the Lord’s passion for those in danger unto salvation. Hence, because Rahab understood the heavenly mystery, the Lord says in the psalm: “I will be mindful of Rahab and Babylon, who know me.” How, then, is your testimony not true, Lord, except according to the frailty of men? For “every man is a liar.” Indeed, to show that he had spoken as man, he says: “The Father who sent me bears witness to me.” But according to the divinity the testimony is true, as he himself says: “And my testimony is true, because I know whence I came and whither I go; but you do not know whence I come or whither I go. You judge according to the flesh.” Those, then, who think that Christ lacked the knowledge to bear witness judge not according to his divinity but according to the man. So when you hear, “He who believes in me does not believe in me,” and, “The Father who sent me has given me a commandment,” you have learned to what you should think it refers. Indeed he showed what the commandment was, saying: “I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself.” You see that it was said to show that he had free power to lay down his life and take it up again, as he himself said: “I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment I received from my Father.” Whether, then, it is “commandment” or, as some Latin manuscripts have it, “precept,” it is given not according to the divinity but according to the incarnation, for the victory of the passion that he was to undergo.

Or shall we bring the Son of God down to such lowliness that he cannot do anything or say anything except what he has heard, and shall we think that a measure of acting and speaking was prescribed for him, because it is written, “I have not spoken of myself,” and further on, “As the Father said to me, so I speak”? But let these be referred either to the obedience of the flesh or to the faith of unity. For many of the more learned understand both the Son’s hearing and the Father’s saying something to the Son as being through unity of nature; for what the Son knows, through unity of will, that the Father wills, he seems to have heard. Hence what is declared is not a bodily function but an indissoluble judgment of cooperation; for he signifies here not any hearing of words but the unity of will and power which is both in the Father and in the Son. He mentioned in another place that this is in the Holy Spirit too, saying: “For he will not speak of himself, but whatever he hears he will speak”; so that we might notice that whatever the Spirit speaks, the Son also speaks, and whatever the Son speaks, the Father also speaks; because the mind and operation of the Trinity is one. For as the Father is seen in the Son, not by bodily appearance but by unity of divinity, so also the Father speaks in the Son, not by a temporal voice nor by a bodily sound, but by unity of work. Indeed, when he had said, “The Father who abides in me, he speaks; and the works that I do, he does,” he added: “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me; otherwise believe for the sake of the works themselves.” This is our understanding, following the sequence of the divine Scriptures; but the Arians, who will not think of God what is worthy of him, let them be refuted at least by an example fitting their deserts, so that they may not believe everything carnally, since they themselves see the works of their father the devil without any body. As the Lord declared of their associates the Jews, saying: “You do what you have seen your father doing”; though they are certainly accused not because they saw the devil working, but because they did his will, the devil invisibly working sin in them according to his wickedness. This, as the Apostle says, we have put in because of the folly of the faithless. Otherwise, it has been sufficiently proved by examples from the Scriptures that it belongs to the unity of the divine majesty that the Father abides in the Son, and that the things the Son speaks he seems to have heard from the Father. And in what other way can we understand the unity of majesty than in the fact that the same things are ascribed to the Father and the Son? For what more excellent can be said than what the Apostle said, that the Lord of majesty was crucified? The Son, then, is both God of majesty and Lord of majesty; but majesty is not subject to creatures; the Son, then, is not a creature. The Son is the image of the Father’s substance; but every creature is unlike the supreme substance, while the Son is not unlike God the Father; the Son, then, is not a creature. The Son did not think it robbery to be equal with God; but no creature is equal to God, while the Son is equal; the Son, then, is not a creature. Every creature is changeable; but the Son of God is not changeable; the Son of God, then, is not a creature. Every creature, by the capacity of its nature, admits accidents of good and evil and experiences their departure; but nothing can depart from the Son of God, or be added to him, in his divinity; the Son of God, then, is not a creature. God will bring every work of his into judgment; but the Son of God is not brought into judgment, for he himself judges; the Son of God, then, is not a creature. Finally, so that you may understand the unity, the Savior says of the sheep: “No one,” he says, “has snatched them from my hand. What the Father has given me is greater than all, and no one can snatch them from the hand of my Father. I and the Father are one.” The Son gives life as the Father does: “For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.” The Son raises as the Father does; the Son preserves as the Father does. How is he who is not unequal in grace unequal in power? So too the Son does not let perish, as the Father does not. And so, lest anyone should believe in two gods or bring in a distinction of power, he said that he was one with the Father. How can a creature say that? The Son of God, then, is not a creature. To reign and to serve are not the same; but Christ is both king and the son of a king; the Son of God, then, is not a servant. Every creature serves; but the Son of God, who makes sons of God out of servants, does not serve; the Son of God, then, is not a creature.

In a divine way, then, he brought in that parable of the rich man who went into a far country to receive a kingdom and to return, describing himself according to the substance both of his divinity and of his incarnation. For he is rich according to the fullness of divinity, he who for us became poor though he was rich, an eternal king and born of an eternal king; he went abroad according to his taking of a body, because, entering on the ways of man as on a foreign journey, he came into this world to prepare a kingdom for himself from among us. Jesus came, then, into this earth to receive a kingdom from us, to whom he says: “The kingdom of God is within you.” This is the kingdom that Christ received; this is what he handed over to the Father. For how did he receive a kingdom, who was an eternal king? The Son of Man came, then, to receive a kingdom and to return. The Jews would not receive him, of whom he says: “Those who would not have me reign over them, bring them here and slay them.” Let us follow the order of the Scriptures. He who came will hand over the kingdom to God the Father; and when he has handed over the kingdom, then he himself will also be subject to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all. If the Son of God received the kingdom as Son of Man, then as Son of Man he will certainly also hand over what he received; if he hands it over as Son of Man, then as Son of Man he acknowledges subjection, through the condition of the flesh, not through the majesty of the divinity. And do you raise it as an insult that God subjected all things to him, when you hear that the Son of Man hands over the kingdom to God, and have read, as we said in the earlier books: “No one comes to me unless the Father draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day”? If we follow the letter, see rather and notice the unity of honor: the Father subjected all things to the Son, and the Son hands over to the Father. Tell me which is greater, to draw or to raise? By human custom, is not drawing a service and raising an act of power? But the Son draws to the Father and the Father draws to the Son; the Son raises and the Father raises. Away with the sacrilegious inventions of division, where there is unity of power. Let the Son, then, hand over his kingdom to the Father. The kingdom he hands over is not lost to Christ but advances. We are the kingdom, for it was said to us: “The kingdom of God is within you.” And we are the kingdom of Christ first, afterwards of the Father; for it is written: “No one comes to the Father except through me.” When I am on the way, I am Christ’s; when I have arrived, I am the Father’s; but everywhere through Christ and everywhere under Christ. It is good to be in the kingdom of Christ, so that Christ may be with us, as he himself says: “Behold, I am with you until the end of the world.” But it is better to be with Christ: “For to depart and be with Christ is far better.” While we are in this world under sin, Christ is with us, so that through the obedience of one many may be made righteous. And if I escape the sin of this world, I shall begin to be with Christ. Indeed he says, “I will come again and take you to myself,” and further on, “I will that where I am, these also may be with me.” Now, then, we are under the kingdom of Christ, while we live in the body and are not yet stripped of the form of the servant, which he took when he emptied himself; but when we see his glory, which he had before the world was, we shall be in the kingdom of God, in which are the patriarchs and prophets, of whom it is written: “When you see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets in the kingdom of God”; so that we may then enjoy a fuller knowledge of God. But in the kingdom of the Son the Father also reigns, and in the kingdom of the Father the Son reigns, because the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father; and in whom the Son dwells, the Father also dwells; and in whom the Father dwells, the Son also dwells, as he himself says: “I and the Father will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” As the house is one, then, so the kingdom is one. And the kingdom of the Father and the Son is one to such a degree that what the Son hands over the Father receives, and what the Father receives the Son does not lose. In one kingdom, then, there is unity of power. Let no one, then, divide the divinity between the Father and the Son.

But if the Father and the Son have one name and one right of God, since the Son of God too is true God and eternal king, then the Son of God is certainly not subject according to divinity. So, august Emperor, let us consider how we ought to understand “subject.” For how is the Son of God subject? As the creature is to futility? But it is impious to think any such thing of the substance of the divinity. Or as every creature is to the Son of God, because it is equally written: “You have put all things under his feet”? But Christ is not subject to himself. Or as a woman to a man, as we read, “Let wives be subject to their husbands,” and elsewhere, “Let a woman learn in silence with all subjection”? But it is sacrilege to compare either the Father to a husband or the Son of God to a woman. Or as Peter said: “Be subject to every human creature”? Certainly not so in the case of Christ. Or as Paul wrote: “Being subject to one another, to God and the Father, in the fear of Christ”? But the Son is not subject either in his own fear or in the fear of another Christ, because Christ is one. Consider the force of these words: that we are subject to the Father while we also fear Christ. How, then, do we understand “subject”? Let us review the whole chapter of the Apostle, so that nothing may seem to have been withheld by fraud or curtailed by stealth: “If in this life only,” he says, “we hope in Christ, we are more to be pitied than all men. But now Christ has risen from the dead, the firstfruits of those who sleep.” You see that the discussion concerns the resurrection of Christ. “For as through one man,” he says, “came death, so through a man the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; then those who are Christ’s, who believed at his coming. Then the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God and the Father, when he has destroyed every rule and power and might. For he must reign until he puts all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death; for he has put all things under his feet. But when he says, All things are subjected to him, it is clear that he is excepted who subjected all things to him. And when all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subject to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all.” The same Apostle also said to the Hebrews: “But now we do not yet see all things subjected to him.” We have received the sequence of the Apostle’s reading. How, then, do we speak of his being subject? The Sabellians and the Marcionites say that this subjection of Christ to God the Father will be such that the Son is poured back into the Father. If, then, the subjection of the Word will be such that God the Word is dissolved into the Father, then whatever things are subject to the Father and the Son will be dissolved into the Father and the Son, so that God may be all and in all creatures. But it is absurd to say this; the subjection, then, is not by pouring back. For the things that are subjected, namely the things that were created, are one thing, and he to whom that subjection is made is another. Let the interpreters of this savage pouring back fall silent, then. And would that those too were silent who, since they cannot prove that the Word of God and the Wisdom of God can be dissolved, ascribe the weakness of subjection to the divinity, saying that it is written: “And when all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subject to him.” We see, then, that Scripture speaks of him as not yet subject but as one to be subjected; so now the Son is not subject to God the Father. In what, then, do you say that the Son will be subject? If in the divinity, he is neither disobedient, for he is not at variance with the Father, nor subject, for he is not a servant but the only Son of his own Father. Indeed, when he created heaven and founded the earth, he exercised both power and love. There is, then, no servile subjection in Christ’s divinity. And if there is no subjection, his will is free. But if they think that the Son’s subjection lies in the fact that the Father does all things with his will, let them learn that this itself is a proof of undivided power, because it is a unity of will, which did not begin in time but always existed. And where there is a perpetual unity of will, there is certainly not the weakness of a temporal subjection. For if he were subjected by nature, he would remain always subject; but since he is said to be subjected at a point in time, that subjection will belong to the dispensation he undertook, not to a perpetual weakness; especially since the everlasting power of God cannot change its state with time, nor can a right of power accrue to God the Father in time. For if the Son will at some time be changed, so as to be subjected according to divinity, then God the Father too, if at some time he will be able to do more, so as to have the Son subject according to divinity, must, according to your interpretation, be reckoned to be able to do less in the meantime. And what fault did the Son commit, that he should be believed to be capable of being subjected according to divinity afterwards? Did he, according to the flesh, snatch the seat at the right hand of the Father and, against the Father’s will, claim for himself the prerogative of the Father’s throne? But he himself says: “I always do the things that please him.” If, then, the Son pleases the Father in all things, why will he be subjected who was not subjected before? Let us see, then, whether that subjection is not that of the divinity but ours, in the fear of Christ, full of grace and full of mystery. So let us weigh the Apostle’s words again: “And when all things are subjected to him, then he himself will be subject to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all.” What, then, do you say? Are not all things subject to him now? Are not the choirs of the saints subject? Are not the angels, who ministered to him when he was on earth? Are not the archangels, who were sent even to Mary as heralds of the Lord’s coming? Is not all the heavenly host? Are not the Cherubim and Seraphim, the Thrones and Dominions and Powers, which venerate and praise him? How, then, will they be subjected? Surely as the Lord himself said: “Take my yoke upon you”; for the untamed do not carry the yoke, but the humble and meek. This plainly is a subjection that is not base even for men themselves, but glorious: “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father.” And all things were not subject before, because they had not yet received the wisdom of God, and did not yet carry the easy yoke of the Word on the neck of the mind. “But as many as received him,” as it is written, “to them he gave power to become sons of God.” Someone will say: “Then Christ is already subject, since very many have believed?” Not at all; for the subjection of Christ is not in a few but in all. For as, if in me the flesh still lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, I do not seem to be subject, even if I am partly subdued; so, since the whole Church is the one body of Christ, as long as the human race is at variance, we divide Christ. Christ, then, is not yet subject, since his members are not yet subject. But when we are not many members but one spirit, then he too will be subject, so that through his subjection God may be all in all. But as Christ is not yet subject, so the Father’s work is not yet completed; for the Son of God said: “My food is to do the will of my Father who sent me, and to complete his work.” What question is there, then, that the Son’s subjection will be in me, in whom the Father’s work is incomplete, because I myself am not perfect? Do I, then, who leave the Father’s work incomplete, make the Son himself subject? But this is not an injury but grace; for in our being subjected, the advancement is certainly ours, not the divinity’s: that we may be subject to the Law, subject to grace. For before, as the Apostle himself said, the wisdom of the flesh was hostile to God, for it was not subject to the Law; but now it is subject through the passion of Christ.

And yet, lest anyone raise a false charge, see what Scripture, by divine inspiration, has guarded against; for it shows us in what respect Christ will be subject to God, while it teaches in what respect he subjected all things to himself. And so it says: “But now we do not yet see all things subjected to him. For we have seen Jesus made a little lower than the angels because of the suffering of death.” It shows, then, that he was made lower in taking flesh. What, then, prevents it from signifying subjection too in his taking of flesh, through which he will subject all things to himself, while in it he himself is subject to God the Father? Let us consider, then, his subjection: “My Father,” he says, “if you will, take this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done.” That subjection, then, will be according to his assumption of human nature; for, as we read, “found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death”: subjection certainly belongs to obedience, obedience to death, death to the humanity he assumed; that subjection, then, will belong to the humanity he assumed. It is by no means a weakness of the divinity, but a dispensation of love. See how little I fear their propositions. They object that he is to be subject to God the Father; I read that he was subject to Mary his mother, for it is written of Joseph and Mary: “And he was subject to them.” Or if they think this, let them say that the divinity was subject to human beings. Let it not prejudge him, then, that he is said to be subject, as it does not prejudge him that he is read of as a servant, declared to have been crucified, proclaimed to have died. When he was dying, he was living; when he was subjected, he was reigning; when he was buried, he was raising the dead; and while he offered himself subject to human power, elsewhere he declared himself Lord of eternal majesty. He stood under a judge, and as the everlasting judge he claimed for himself the throne at the right hand of God. Indeed it is written: “Hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the power of God and coming on the clouds of heaven.” He was beaten by the Jews, and he commanded the angels; born of Mary he was under the Law, before Abraham he was above the Law. On the cross he was revered by nature: indeed the sun fled, the earth trembled, the angels fell silent. Could the elements, which feared to see his passion, have borne to see his generation? And would they, who did not bear to see the subjection of his body, endure the subjection of his venerable nature? But since the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are of one nature, the Father certainly will not be subject to himself. And so the Son will not be subject in that in which he is one with the Father, lest through the unity of divinity the Father too should seem to be subject to the Son. So, as on that cross it was not the fullness of divinity but our frailty that was subjected, so also afterwards the Son will be subject to the Father in his sharing of our nature; so that, when the allurements of the flesh have been subdued, there may be in the heart no riches, no ambition, no pleasure, but God may be all things to us, if in all things, as far as we can grasp, we live according to his image and likeness. The benefit, then, passed from the one to all in common, because in his own flesh he subdued the nature of all human flesh. And so, according to the Apostle: “As we have borne the image of the earthly, let us also bear the image of the heavenly”; and this certainly cannot come about except through the inner man. Putting away, then, all these things, that is, the things we read of, anger, wrath, blasphemy, foul speech, and, as is said further on, “stripping off the old man with his deeds, let us put on the new, which is renewed unto knowledge according to the image of him who created him.” And so that you might know that when he says, “that God may be all in all,” he does not separate Christ from God the Father, he himself says to the Colossians: “Where there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, barbarian nor Scythian, slave nor free; but Christ is all and in all.” So in saying to the Corinthians too, “that God may be all in all,” he included both the unity and the equality of Christ with God the Father, since the Son is not separated from the Father. And likewise, as the Father is all and in all, so Christ too works all things in all. If, then, Christ too works all things in all, he is certainly not subject in the majesty of divinity, but in us. And how is he subject in us, except in the way in which he was made lower than the angels, that is, in the mystery of the body? For in this respect all things did not yet seem subject to him, though from their beginning they certainly served their Creator. But if you ask how he is subject in us, he himself shows, saying: “I was in prison, and you came to me; I was sick, and you visited me. For what you did to one of the least of these, you did to me.” You hear “sick” and are not moved; you hear “subject” and are moved; though he is sick in that in which he is subject, in that in which he was made sin and a curse for us. As, then, he was made sin and a curse not for his own sake but for ours, so he will be subject in us not for himself but for us; not subject in his eternal nature, nor accursed in his eternal nature; for “cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.” He is accursed because he took on our curses; subject too, because he himself took on our subjection, but in assuming the form of a servant, not in the majesty of God; so that, while he offered himself in the flesh as a sharer of our frailty, he might make us in his power sharers of the divine nature. Not that we have a natural fellowship with the heavenly generation of Christ, or that that subjection belongs to the divinity in Christ; but as the Apostle said that in him, through that flesh which is the pledge of our salvation, we sit in the heavenly places (though we certainly are not sitting there), so he too, through his assumption of our nature, is said to be subject in us. For who is so mad as to think, as we said above, that a seat at the right hand of God the Father is owed to himself, when, although it is granted by the Father to Christ even according to the flesh, it is granted to one of heavenly generation and equal power? The angels worship, and do you, in sacrilegious presumption, set out for yourself the throne of God? “It is written,” you will say, “that when we were dead in sins, he made us alive together in Christ, by whose grace you are saved, and raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” I acknowledge what is written; but it is not that God allows men to sit at his right hand, but to sit in Christ; for he is the foundation of all, and he is the head of the Church, in whom our common nature according to the flesh has won the prerogative of the heavenly seat. For in Christ the flesh is honored as God’s flesh, and in the flesh the nature of the human race, which all men share. As, then, we sit in him through the fellowship of bodily nature, so he who through taking our flesh was made a curse for us (though a curse certainly does not fall upon the blessed Son of God), so, I say, he too will be subject in us through the obedience of all: when the pagan has believed, when the Jew has acknowledged him whom he crucified, when the Manichaean has worshiped him whom he did not believe to have come in the flesh, when the Arian has confessed as almighty him whom he denied; when, finally, the wisdom of God, righteousness, peace, love, and resurrection are in all. Through his own works, then, and the various kinds of virtues, Christ will be subject to the Father in us; when vices are renounced and sin is at rest, and the spirit of all peoples begins to cling to the one God in all with one mind, then God will be all in all.

Let us, then, briefly gather the conclusion of the whole answer. Unity of power excludes the notion of a degrading subjection; the destruction of the powers and the victory won over death certainly do not diminish the power of the triumpher; obedience works subjection; Christ took on obedience, obedience to the point of the cross, and the cross for salvation. So where the work is, there is also the author of the work. When, then, all things have been subjected to Christ through the obedience of Christ, so that all bend the knee in his name, then he himself will be all in all; for now, since not all believe, not all seem to be subject. When all, then, have believed and done the will of God, Christ will be all and in all; and when Christ is all and in all, God will be all and in all; for the Father abides always in the Son. How, then, is he charged with weakness who redeemed the weak? And lest you should perhaps refer this too to the Son’s weakness, that it is written that God subjected all things to him, learn that he himself also subjected all things to himself; for it is written: “But our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also await a Savior, the Lord Jesus, who will transform the body of our lowliness to be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working by which he is able to subject all things to himself.” You have learned, then, that he is able to subject all things to himself, certainly according to the working of his divinity. Learn now that according to the flesh he receives all things as subjected, as it is written: “Who worked in Christ, raising him from the dead and setting him at his right hand in the heavenly places, above every principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come; and he put all things under his feet.” According to the flesh, then, all things will be handed over to him in subjection, the flesh according to which he was also raised from the dead; and according to the human and rational soul the subjection is to be understood. Many interpret devoutly what is written: “Shall not my soul be subject to God?” He said “soul,” not divinity; “soul,” not majesty. And so that we might know that the Lord spoke through the prophet of the human nature he assumed, he added: “How long will you set upon a man?” according to what he says in the Gospel: “Why do you seek to kill me, a man?” And he added: “But they sought to reject my price; they ran in thirst; with their mouth they blessed, and with their heart they cursed.” For the Jews, when Judas brought back the price, would not receive it, running in the thirst of madness, because they refused the grace of the spiritual drink. This is the devout interpretation of the subjection. For since this is the gift of the Lord’s passion, he will certainly be subject in us in that in which he suffered. Do we ask why? So that neither angels nor powers nor height nor depth nor things present nor things to come nor any other creature may be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. We see, then, from what we have said, that no creature is excepted, but that every creature, whatever there may be, is included among those he named above. At the same time we must also consider that, when he had said earlier, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” he set down below: “Neither death nor life nor any other creature can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.” We see, then, that the love of God is the same as the love of Christ. Indeed it was not idly that he put “the love of God which is in Christ Jesus,” lest you should understand the love of God and of Christ as separate. But there is nothing that love divides, nothing that the eternal divinity cannot do, nothing that escapes the truth, deceives justice, or passes by wisdom.

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.