Defence of the Nicene Definition 21–29

So if these men too make the words an excuse as being strange, let them hold the sense in which the council wrote thus, anathematizing what the council anathematized; and then, if they can, let them find fault with the terms. But I know well that if they hold the sense of the council, they will certainly accept the words that express that sense too. And if they wish to find fault with the sense as well, it is plain to all that they talk idly about the words too, and are merely inventing occasions for impiety for themselves. This, then, is the reason for such terms. But if they murmur again that they are not in Scripture, let them be thrown out at once as idle talkers of unsound mind; and let them blame themselves in this too, because they first gave occasion for such a thing and began to fight against God with unscriptural terms. Yet let anyone who loves learning know that, even if the terms are not found in just this form in the Scriptures, still, as was said before, they contain the sense of the Scriptures, and in expressing it they convey it to those whose hearing is sound for piety. This you may consider; those uneducated men had better listen. It has been shown above, and it is true to believe, that the Word is from the Father and is alone his own and natural offspring. For from where else could one conceive the Son, who is the Wisdom and the Word in whom all things came to be, to be, if not from God himself? Yet this too we have learned from the Scriptures, as the Father says through David, “My heart has uttered a good Word,” and “From the womb, before the morning star, I have begotten you”; and as the Son shows of himself to the Jews, “If God were your Father, you would love me; for I came forth from the Father”; and again, “Not that anyone has seen the Father, except he who is from God; he has seen the Father.” Moreover, “I and the Father are one,” and “I am in the Father and the Father in me,” is equivalent to saying, “I am from the Father, and inseparable from him.” And John, in saying, “The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known,” said it having learned it from the Savior. For what else does “in the bosom” signify but the genuine generation of the Son from the Father?

If, then, anyone thinks that God is composite, so that there is accident in his essence, or that he has some covering from outside and is veiled, or that there are things around him that complete his essence, so that when we say “God” or name “Father” we do not signify his invisible and incomprehensible essence itself but something about it, then let them find fault with the council for writing that the Son is from the essence of God; but let them consider that, in thinking thus, they utter two blasphemies: they bring in a bodily God, and they falsely say that the Lord is Son not of the Father himself but of the things around him. But if God is something simple, as indeed he is, it is plain that in saying “God” and naming “the Father” we name nothing as if it were about him, but signify his very essence. For though it is impossible to comprehend what the essence of God is, yet understanding only that God is, and since Scripture signifies him by these terms, we too, wishing to signify none other than him, say God and Father and Lord. When, then, he says, “I am He who is,” and “I am the Lord God,” and wherever Scripture says “God,” we in reading understand nothing other than his incomprehensible essence itself to be signified, and that he is the one of whom they speak. So let no one be startled on hearing that the Son of God is from the essence of God, but rather let him approve the fathers, who, purifying the sense, wrote “from the essence” more clearly and as an equivalent for “from God.” For they considered it the same thing to say that the Word is “from God” and to say that he is “from the essence of God,” since the word “God,” as I said before, signifies nothing other than the essence of him who is. If, then, the Word is not from God as a genuine Son by nature from a Father, but is said, like all things, to be from God as creatures are, because of being made, then he is neither from the essence of the Father, nor is the Son himself Son by essence, but by virtue, like us who are called sons by grace. But if he alone is from God as a genuine Son, as indeed he is, the Son may rightly be said to be from the essence of God too.

For the illustration of the light and its radiance too has this meaning. The saints have not said that the Word is related to God like the fire kindled from the heat of the sun, which is also usually put out again; for that is a work external to its maker and a creature. Rather, they all proclaimed him as radiance, in order to show his being proper to the essence and inseparable from it, and his oneness with the Father. For in this way his being truly unchangeable and unalterable will also be preserved; for how else could he be such, unless he is the proper offspring of the Father’s essence? For in this too he must preserve his identity with his own Father. Since, then, the doctrine has been shown to be pious, it would follow that the Christ-fighters should not be startled at “of the same essence” either, since this term too has a sound meaning and proof. For if we say that the Word is from the essence of God (and from now on let the term be acknowledged by them too), what would this mean but the truth and eternity of the essence from which he is begotten? For he is not of a different kind, as though something foreign and unlike were mixed with the essence of the Father; nor is he merely like from outside, as though he should appear to be of another essence in some respect or wholly, as shining brass is to gold, or silver to tin. For these are foreign to one another and of different essences, and separated in nature and in power; brass is not proper to gold, nor is the wild pigeon born of the dove; they are thought to be alike, yet they are of different essence from one another. If, then, the Son is so, let him be a creature as we are, and not of the same essence; but if the Son is Word, Wisdom, Image of the Father, Radiance, he would rightly be of the same essence. For unless it is shown that he is not from God, but is like an instrument of a different nature and a different essence, the council wrote well and understood rightly.

Here again let every bodily thought be set aside; and rising above every image of the senses, let us understand with pure thought and with the mind alone the genuineness of the Son in relation to the Father, the Word’s being proper to God, and the unvarying likeness of the radiance to the light. For as “offspring” and “Son” are said, and are so, not in a human way but as befits God, in the same way, when we hear the term “of the same essence,” let us not fall into the notions of human sense and think of portions and divisions of the Godhead; but, conceiving as of incorporeal things, let us not divide the oneness of nature and the identity of the light. For this is proper to the Son in relation to the Father, and this shows that God is truly Father of the Word. Here again the illustration of the light and the radiance is necessary. Who will dare to say that the radiance is foreign to the sun and unlike it? Or rather, who, looking thus at the radiance in relation to the sun and at the identity of the light, would not say with confidence: “Truly the light and the radiance are one; the one is shown in the other, and the radiance is in the sun, so that whoever sees the one sees the other too”? And such a oneness and natural property, what would those who believe and see rightly call it, but an offspring of the same essence? And the offspring of God, what could one fittingly and properly think it to be, but Word and Wisdom and Power, which it is not holy to call foreign to the Father, nor lawful even to imagine as not existing eternally with the Father? For by this offspring the Father made all things, and, extending his providence to all, he shows his love for humankind through him; and so he and the Father are one, as has been said—unless indeed the perverse dare to say again that the essence of the Word is one thing, and the light from the Father in him another, so that the light in the Son is one with the Father, while he himself is foreign in essence, as a creature. But this is simply the mind of Caiaphas and of the Samosatene, which the church cast out but which these men now dissemble; and so they too, having fallen from the truth, have been shown to be heretics. For if he partakes at all of the light from the Father, why is he not rather himself what is partaken of, so that nothing may be found between him and the Father? For if it is not so, it is no longer shown that all things came to be through the Son, but through that of which he too partakes. But if this is the Word, the Wisdom of the Father, in whom the Father is revealed and known and creates, and without whom the Father does nothing, it is plain that it is he who is from the Father; for all originated things too partake of him, partaking of the Holy Spirit. Being such, he will not be from nothing, nor a creature at all, but rather the proper offspring from the Father, as radiance from light. [25] Those who assembled at Nicaea, then, having this meaning, wrote such terms too. And that they did not invent these terms by fashioning them themselves (since they make this a pretext as well), but said them after receiving them from those before them, come, let us prove this too, so that not even this pretext of theirs may be left. Learn, then, you Christ-fighting Arians, that Theognostus, a learned man, did not decline to say “from the essence.” For writing about the Son in the second book of his Outlines, he said this: “The essence of the Son is not something devised from outside, nor was it brought in from nothing; but it sprang from the essence of the Father, as the radiance of light, as the vapor of water. For neither the radiance nor the vapor is the water itself or the sun itself; nor is it foreign, but it is an effluence of the essence of the Father, the essence of the Father undergoing no division. For as the sun, remaining the same, is not diminished by the rays poured out from it, so neither did the essence of the Father undergo alteration in having the Son as its image.” Theognostus, then, after first examining matters as in an exercise, afterwards set down his own opinion and spoke thus. … And Dionysius, who became bishop of Alexandria, when writing against Sabellius and explaining at length the Savior’s dispensation according to the flesh, and refuting the Sabellians from it—that it is not the Father who became flesh but his Word, as John said—was suspected of calling the Son a thing made and originated, and not of the same essence as the Father; and so he writes to his namesake Dionysius, bishop of Rome, defending himself that this was a slander against him. For he affirmed that he had not called the Son a thing made, but that he also confessed him to be of the same essence. His words run thus: “And in another letter I wrote, in which I refuted the charge they bring against me, which is false, that I do not say that Christ is of the same essence as God. For even if I say that I have not found this word anywhere in the holy Scriptures, yet my arguments that followed, which they have passed over in silence, are not out of keeping with this meaning. For I set forth human generation, which is plainly of the same kind, saying that parents differ from their children only in this, that they are not themselves the children; otherwise there could be neither parents nor children. The letter, as I said before, I cannot produce because of circumstances; otherwise I would have sent you the very words I used then, or rather a copy of the whole, which I will do if I am able. But I know and remember that I added more comparisons with things akin. For I said that a plant coming up from a seed or a root is other than that from which it sprang, and yet is entirely of the same nature with it; and that a river flowing from a spring has taken another name—for neither is the spring called river, nor the river spring—and that both exist, and that the river is what comes from the spring …

And that the Word of God is not a thing made nor a creature, but the inseparable offspring proper to the Father’s essence, as the great council wrote, see how Dionysius too, bishop of Rome, writing against those who held the views of Sabellius, inveighs against those who dared to say such things, and speaks thus: “Next I may reasonably speak against those who divide and cut up and do away with the most venerable proclamation of the church of God, the monarchy, making it three powers of some kind and separated hypostases and three godheads. For I have learned that some among you who catechize and teach the divine word are leaders of this way of thinking, who are diametrically opposed, so to speak, to the opinion of Sabellius. For he blasphemes in saying that the Son himself is the Father, and the Father the Son; but they in a way proclaim three gods, dividing the holy unity into three hypostases foreign to one another and utterly separated. For the divine Word must be united to the God of all, and the Holy Spirit must abide and dwell in God; and so the divine Triad must of necessity be gathered up and brought together into one, as into a summit—I mean the God of all, the Almighty. For the teaching of the foolish Marcion, which cuts and divides the monarchy into three principles, is a devilish teaching, and not that of the true disciples of Christ and of those who are pleased with the Savior’s teachings. For these know well that a Triad is proclaimed by the divine Scripture, but that neither the Old nor the New Testament proclaims three gods. No less would one blame those who hold that the Son is a thing made and suppose that the Lord came to be like one of the things that really came to be, whereas the divine oracles bear witness to a generation fitting and proper to him, but not to some fashioning and making. It is, then, no ordinary blasphemy, but the very greatest, to say that the Lord is in some way handmade. For if the Son came to be, there was when he was not; but he was always, if indeed he is in the Father, as he himself says, and if Christ is Word and Wisdom and Power; for the divine Scriptures say that Christ is these, as you know; and these are powers of God. If, then, the Son came to be, there was when these were not; and so there was a time when God was without them, which is most absurd. And why … Scripture … taking ‘The Lord … of his ways’ … the meaning of ‘created,’ as you know …; for ‘created’ here must be understood as ‘set over the works made by him,’ made through the Son himself. But ‘created’ would not here be said in the sense of ‘made’; for creating differs from making. ‘Is not he himself your Father, who acquired you and made you and created you?’ says Moses in the great song in Deuteronomy. To these one might say: Reckless men! Is he a thing made, the firstborn of all creation, he who from the womb before the morning star … divine oracles one would find the Son said to have been begotten, but not to have come to be; and by these those who dare to call his divine and ineffable generation a making are plainly convicted of conceiving falsehoods about the Lord’s generation. Neither, then, must we divide the wonderful and divine Monad into three godheads, nor diminish by ‘making’ the dignity and surpassing greatness of the Lord; but we must believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Christ Jesus his Son, and in the Holy Spirit, and hold that the Word is united to the God of all. For ‘I and the Father are one,’ he says, and ‘I am in the Father and the Father in me.’ For so both the divine Triad and the holy proclamation of the monarchy would be preserved.”

And concerning the Word’s eternal coexistence with the Father, and his being not of another essence or hypostasis but proper to that of the Father, as those at the council said, you may hear again from the laborious Origen too. For what he wrote as inquiring and exercising himself, let no one take as expressing his own mind, but that of those who contend for the sake of strife in the inquiry; what he declares fearlessly, as a definition, that is the mind of the laborious man. So after what he says as in an exercise against the heretics, he at once brings forward his own view, saying thus: “If he is the image of the invisible God, he is an invisible image; and I would dare to add that, being also the likeness of the Father, there is no time when he was not. For when did God, who according to John is called light (‘For God is light’), not have the radiance of his own glory, so that one should dare to assign a beginning to the Son, as if he did not exist before? And when was the image of the Father’s ineffable and unnameable and unutterable hypostasis, the impress, the Word, who knows the Father, not in existence? Let him who dares to say ‘There was once when the Son was not’ consider that he will also be saying, ‘Wisdom once was not,’ and ‘the Word was not,’ and ‘Life was not.’” And again elsewhere he speaks thus: “But it is neither lawful nor without danger, because of our weakness, that God should be deprived, so far as lies with us, of the only-begotten Word who is always with him, who is the Wisdom in which he rejoiced; for in that case he will not be thought of as always rejoicing.” See, we show that such a mind has passed from fathers to fathers; but you, new Jews and disciples of Caiaphas, what fathers can you show for your phrases? You could not name one of the prudent and wise; for all turn away from you except the devil alone. He alone has become father to you of such an apostasy, he who in the beginning sowed this impiety in you and now has persuaded you to revile the ecumenical council, because they wrote not your views but what those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word handed down. For the faith that the council confessed in writing is the faith of the catholic church. In defense of it the blessed fathers wrote as they did and condemned the Arian heresy; and that is chiefly why these men try to slander the council. For it is not the terms that grieve them, but that by them they were shown to be heretics, and more daring than the other heresies.

Indeed, when their little phrases had been shown at that time to be worthless, and were always easy to refute as impious, they next took over from the Greeks the term “unoriginate,” so that under pretext of this name too they might again number among originated things and creatures the Word of God, through whom originated things themselves came to be: so shameless are they in impiety, and so contentious in their blasphemies against the Lord. If, then, they are shameless in this way through ignorance of the name, they should have learned from those who gave it to them that even the Mind which they say comes from the Good, and the Soul which comes from the Mind—though they know from what these are—they nevertheless did not fear to call unoriginate, knowing that in saying this they do not diminish the First, from which these too spring. So they should either speak in the same way themselves, or not speak at all about what they do not know. But if they think they know, they must be questioned, especially since the term is not from the divine Scriptures, but once again they contend while speaking unscripturally. I for my part have explained the reason and the sense in which the council wrote “from the essence” and “of the same essence,” in agreement with what is said in the Scriptures about the Savior and with what the fathers before them set forth and wrote. Let them too, if they can, answer how they found this unscriptural term, or in what sense they call God unoriginate. For I have heard that the name has different meanings. They say that “unoriginate” is said of what has not yet come to be but can come to be; and again of what neither exists nor can come into being; and a third meaning is what exists, but is neither originated nor has had a beginning of being, but is eternal and incorruptible. Perhaps, then, they will wish to pass over the first two senses because of the absurdity that follows from them; for according to the first, both things that have already come to be and things expected to come to be will be unoriginate; and the second is even more absurd. They will then go to the third, using “unoriginate” in that sense. But in saying this too they are no less impious. For if by “unoriginate” they mean what has no beginning of being, and is neither originated nor created but eternal, and say that the Word of God is the contrary of this, who does not see the craftiness of the God-fighters? Who would not stone them for such madness? For since they are ashamed to bring forward any longer the first catchwords of their fables, for which they were condemned, the wretches have devised a way to signify them differently through the name, as they call it, “unoriginate.” For if the Son is among originated things, plainly he too came to be from nothing; and if he has a beginning of being, then he was not before he was begotten; and if he is not eternal, there was once when he was not.

If they think this, then, they ought once more to signify their heterodoxy in their own proper words, and not cover their malice with the term “unoriginate,” as they pretend. But the malicious men do not do this; they do everything with craft, after the manner of their father the devil. For as he tries to deceive in borrowed clothing, so these men have devised the use of the name “unoriginate,” so that, pretending to speak well of God, they may keep their blasphemy against the Lord hidden and signify it to others under a veil. But now that this sophism of theirs too has been detected, let them say what else is left to them. “We have found something,” say the villains, and, adding to their earlier statements, they say that “unoriginate” is that which has no cause of its being, but is itself the cause of their coming to be for originated things. Ungrateful men, and truly deaf to the Scriptures, who do and say everything not for the honor of God but for the dishonor of the Son, not knowing that whoever dishonors the Son dishonors the Father! For, first, even if they name God thus, the Word is not shown to be among originated things. For as offspring of the Father’s essence, he is thus with him eternally. This name does not take away the nature of the Word, nor again does “unoriginate” have its meaning in relation to the Son, but in relation to the things that came to be through the Son. One who addresses an architect and calls him maker of a house or a city does not include under this name the son begotten from him; he calls him maker because of his skill and knowledge in the works, signifying that he is not such as the things made by him are; but knowing the nature of the maker, he knows that the son begotten from him is other than these, and he calls him father on account of the son, and builder and maker on account of the works. In the same way, one who calls God unoriginate in this sense names him from his works, signifying not only that he is not originated, but also that he is the maker of originated things; yet he knows that the Word is other than originated things, and alone the proper offspring of the Father, through whom all things came to be and hold together.