Oration II Against the Arians 31–40

But the mind of truth must not keep silent; rather it is especially fitting to proclaim it aloud. The Word of God did not come into being for our sake; rather we came into being for his sake, and “in him all things were created.” Nor was it because of our weakness that he, being able, came into being from the Father alone, so that God might craft us through him as through an instrument—God forbid! it is not so. For even if God had resolved not to make originated things, the Word would nonetheless have been “with God,” and the Father in him. But the originated things could not come into being without the Word; that is how they came into being through him, and fittingly. For since the Son is the Word proper by nature to the substance of God, and is from him and “in him,” as he himself said, the things crafted could not come into being except through him. For as light illuminates all things by its radiance, and without the radiance nothing could be illuminated, so too the Father worked all things in the Word, as by a hand, and makes nothing without him. God said, at any rate, as Moses records, “Let there be light,” and “Let the water be gathered,” and “Let the earth bring forth,” and “Let us make man”; as holy David also sings, “He spoke, and they came to be; he commanded, and they were created.” And he spoke, not so that, as with human beings, some assistant should hear and, having learned the will of the speaker, go off and do the work. This is proper to creatures, but it is unfitting to think or say it of the Word. For the Word of God is creator and maker, and he himself is the Father's counsel. That is why the divine Scripture did not say that the one who heard heard and answered how or what kind of things he wanted to come to be; but God only said, “Let there be,” and it added, “And it was so.” For what was resolved and willed was at once done and completed by the Word. When God gives commands to others, or to angels, or converses with Moses, or makes a promise to Abraham, then the one who hears answers; one says, “By what shall I know?” and another, “Appoint someone else”; and again, “If they ask me, What is his name? what shall I say to them?” And the angel said to Zechariah, “Thus says the Lord,” but asked the Lord, “O Lord Almighty, how long will you not have mercy on Jerusalem?” and waits to hear good and comforting words. For each of these has the Word as mediator, and the Wisdom of God who makes known the Father's will. But when the Word himself works and creates, there is no question and answer there; for the Father is in him, and the Word in the Father; willing suffices, and the work is done; so that the “he said” is a sign of the will, for our sake, and the “and it was so” signifies the work done through the Word and the Wisdom, in whom also the Father's will is. And the very “God said” is made known in the Word; for “you made all things in wisdom,” it says, and “By the Word of the Lord the heavens were established,” and “one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him.”

From these things it can be seen that the Arians' fight over their heresy is not with us; they make a show of fighting us, but they are fighting against the Godhead itself. For if the voice that says, “This is my Son,” were ours, our censure would matter little to them; but if the voice is the Father's, and the disciples heard it, and the Son himself says of himself, “Before all the hills he begets me,” how are they not now fighting against God like the giants of the myths, having, as the psalmist said, “their tongue a sharp sword” for impiety? For they neither feared the voice of the Father nor reverenced the words of the Saviour; nor were they persuaded by the saints: by the one who writes, “who, being the radiance of his glory and the impress of his subsistence,” and “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God”; by the one who sings, “For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we shall see light,” and “You made all things in wisdom”; by the prophets who say, “And the word of the Lord came to me”; by John, “In the beginning was the Word”; and by Luke, “as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word handed them down to us”; as David too says again, “He sent his Word and healed them.” All these everywhere pillory the Arian heresy and signify the eternity of the Word, and that he is not foreign to the Father's substance but proper to it. For when has anyone seen light without its radiance? Or who dares to say that the impress is alien to the subsistence? Or how is one not even more mad who so much as imagines that God was ever without Word and without wisdom? For Scripture has set down such examples and such images so that, since human nature is incapable of comprehending God, we may be able to think of him from these at least in some small and faint way, as far as is attainable. And just as creation suffices for knowledge that God is and that there is providence—“for from the greatness and beauty of creatures their author is correspondingly perceived”—and we learn not by demanding voices from creatures, but hearing the Scriptures we believe, and contemplating the very order and harmony of all things we recognize that he is maker and Master and God of all, and we grasp his wonderful providence and governance over all; in the same way, since the sayings cited above suffice concerning the Son's divinity, it is superfluous, or rather beyond madness, to doubt and to ask in heretical fashion, “How then can the Son be eternally? Or how can he be from the Father's substance and not be a part? For what is said to be from something is a part of it; and what is divided is not whole.”

These are the clever mischiefs of the heterodox. And although we have already refuted their empty talk on these points in what went before, nevertheless the precision of these sayings and the sense of the examples refute the shadow-painting of their foul doctrine. For we see that a word is always present, is from him whose word it is, and is proper to his substance, and has no before and after. We see too that the radiance from the sun is proper to it, and that the sun's substance is neither divided nor diminished, but is itself whole, and the radiance perfect and whole, not diminishing the substance of the light, but being its true offspring from it. We perceive likewise that the Son is begotten not from outside but “from the Father,” and that the Father remains whole, while the impress of his subsistence always exists and keeps an exact resemblance and unvarying image of the Father, so that whoever sees him sees in him also the subsistence of which he is the impress. And from the activity of the impress we understand the true divinity of the subsistence; for this is what the Saviour himself taught when he said, “He who abides in me, he does the works that I do,” and “I and the Father are one,” and “I am in the Father and the Father in me.” So let the Christ-fighting heresy first try to divide the examples found in originated things and say, “There was once when the sun was without its radiance,” or that “this is not proper to the substance of the light,” or “it is proper, but it is a part of the light by division”; and again let it divide the word and say that it is foreign to the mind, or that “once it was not,” or “it is not proper to its substance,” or “it is a part of it by division.” And let it divide the impress, the light, and the power in the same way as the word and the radiance; and then let it fancy whatever it pleases. But if they cannot dare even this in those cases, how are they not greatly mad, vainly stretching themselves toward what lies beyond originated things and beyond their own nature, and attempting impossibilities?

For if even among these originated and bodily things offspring are found not to be “parts of the substances from which they are,” nor to “come to subsist by way of passion,” nor to “diminish the substances of their parents,” how again are they not mad, looking for and suspecting parts and passions in the case of the incorporeal and true God, and attaching divisions to the impassible and unchangeable God, so as to trouble the ears of simpler people with these things and turn them away from the truth? For who, hearing “son,” does not think of what is proper to the father's substance? And who, when he was first instructed and heard that “God has a Son, and has made all things by his own Word,” did not receive it in his mind as we now think? Who, when the foul heresy of the Arians arose, was not at once startled on hearing what they say, as men saying alien things and sowing over the word sown from the beginning a seed contrary to it? For what is sown from the beginning in every soul is that God has a Son, the Word, the Wisdom, the Power, and that these are his image and radiance; and from what has been said there spring at once the “always,” the “from the Father,” the “like,” the “eternal” of the offspring of the substance; and in these there is no thought of “creature” or “work.” But when “an enemy” sowed, while people slept, the “creature,” and the “there was once when he was not,” and the “how then can it be?”, then the wicked heresy of the Christ-fighters came up like a tare; and at once, as men bereft of all right understanding, they busy themselves like robbers and dare to say, “How then can the Son coexist eternally with the Father? For human beings become sons from human beings after a time; the father is thirty years old, while the son begins then, having been begotten; and in general every son of man was not before he was begotten.” And again they whisper, “How can the Son be Word, or the Word be the image of God? For the word of human beings, composed of syllables, only signifies the will of the speaker, and at once ceases and vanishes.”

They, then, as though forgetting the refutations already made against them, “pierce themselves” again with such bonds of impiety, and reason in this way; but the word of truth refutes them thus. If they are reasoning about some man, let them think in human terms about his word and his son; but if about God, who created human beings, let them no longer think in human terms, but otherwise, beyond human nature. For of whatever kind the begetter is, such must the offspring be; and of whatever kind the Father of the Word is, such also would his Word be. Man, then, being begotten in time, himself also begets his child in time; and since he came into being from what is not, his word too ceases and does not remain. But “God is not as man”—for this is what Scripture said—but he “is,” and is always; therefore his Word too “is,” and is eternally with the Father, as the radiance of light. The word of human beings is composed of syllables, and neither lives nor effects anything, but only signifies the mind of the speaker; it merely went out and passed by, no longer to be seen, since it did not exist at all before it was spoken; therefore the word of human beings neither lives nor effects anything, nor is it a man at all. It undergoes this, as I said before, because the man who begets it also has his nature from what is not. But the Word of God is not, as one might say, a word uttered, nor a sound of speech; nor is “the Son” God's commanding; but as the radiance of light, so he is perfect offspring from perfect. Therefore he is also God, being the image of God; for “the Word,” it says, “was God.” The words of human beings are of no effect for working; that is why a man works not by words but by his hands, because these exist, while his word does not subsist. But as for the Word of God, as the apostle said, “The Word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart; and no creature is hidden before him, but all things are naked and laid bare to his eyes, to whom we must give account.” He is creator, then, and “without him not one thing came into being,” nor can anything come into being without him.

One must not ask, “Why is God's Word not such as ours is?”, since God is not such as we are, as was said before; nor is it fitting to ask, “How is the Word from God?” or “How is he the radiance of God?” or “How does God beget, and what is the manner of God's begetting?” For one would be mad to dare such things, since he demands that a thing ineffable and proper to God's nature, known to him alone and to the Son, be explained in words; for it is the same as for such people to ask, “Where is God, and how is God, and of what sort is the Father?” But as it is impious to ask such things, and belongs to those who do not know God, so too it is not right to dare such things about the begetting of the Son of God, nor to measure God and his Wisdom by their own nature and weakness. Nor on that account is it fitting to think contrary to the truth; nor, if someone is at a loss when he inquires about these things, ought he therefore to disbelieve what is written. For it is better, when at a loss, to be silent and believe than to disbelieve because one is at a loss; for the one who is at a loss may somehow have pardon, since, having inquired, he at least came to rest; but the one who because of his perplexity devises for himself what he should not, and utters things unworthy of God, incurs for his daring a penalty without pardon. For one can find some consolation even in such perplexities from the divine Scriptures, so as to take rightly what is written and to think of our own word as an example: that as this is proper to us and from us, and not a work outside us, so too the Word of God is proper to him and from him, and is not a work; nor is he like the word of human beings, since then one would have to think of God as a man. For see again: many and various words of human beings pass by every day, because the first do not remain but vanish. This happens, again, because those who father them, being men, have ages that pass and thoughts that come upon them one after another; and as they reason and reason further, so they speak; so that they have many words, and after the many, none of them at all; for the speaker has stopped, and the word is at once used up. But the Word of God is one and the same, and, as it is written, “The Word of God abides for ever,” not changing, nor first or second to another, but always being the same. For it was fitting, since God is one, that his image too should be one, and his Word one, and his Wisdom one.

So I wonder how, though God is one, these men according to their own notions bring in many images and wisdoms and words, and say that the Father's proper and natural Word is another, in whom he also made the Son, while the one who is truly Son is only notionally called “Word,” as he is called “vine,” and “way,” and “door,” and “tree of life.” And they say that he is called “Wisdom” in name, but that the Father's proper and true Wisdom is another, which coexists with him unbegottenly, in which he made the Son too and named him “wisdom” by participation in that one. These things have not stopped with them at the level of talk: Arius composed them in his Thalia, and the sophist Asterius wrote what we cited in the earlier discourse too, as follows: “Blessed Paul did not say that he preaches Christ as the power of God or the wisdom of God, but without the addition of the article, ‘God's power and God's wisdom’; proclaiming that God's own proper power, which is innate in him and coexists with him unbegottenly, is another—generative, clearly, of Christ, and creative of the whole world—about which he teaches in the letter to the Romans, saying, ‘For his invisible things from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, both his eternal power and divinity.’ For just as no one would say that the divinity mentioned there is Christ, but that it is the Father himself, so, I think, his eternal power and divinity is not the only-begotten Son but the Father who begot him. But he teaches that there is another power and wisdom of God, which is shown through Christ.” And a little after, the same Asterius says: “And yet his eternal power and wisdom, which the reasonings of truth declare to be without beginning and unbegotten, would surely be one and the same; but those created by him individually are many, of which Christ is the firstborn and only-begotten; all of them, however, depend alike on their possessor, and all are rightly called powers of him who created and uses them; as the prophet says that the locust, sent by God as a penalty for human sins, is called by God himself not only ‘power’ but ‘great power’; and blessed David in many of the psalms bids not only angels but also powers to praise God.”

Having uttered even this much, how are they not deserving of all hatred? For if, as they suppose, he is Son not because of his generation from the Father and his being proper to the Father's substance, but is called Word because of rational beings, Wisdom because of those made wise, and Power because of those empowered, then surely he was called Son because of those made sons; and perhaps he has even his being only notionally, because of the things that are. What then is he himself, after all? He would himself be none of these, if these are only his names and he has only an appearance of being, adorned with these names for our sake. But this is rather a devilish madness, and perhaps worse, that they want themselves to subsist truly, but think that the Word of God exists in name only. And how is this too not a monstrous tale of theirs: to speak of a Wisdom coexisting with the Father, but not to say that this is the Christ, and instead to say that there are many created powers and wisdoms, and that the Lord is one of them—he whom they compare with the caterpillar and the locust? And how are they not knaves, since when they hear from us that the Word coexists with the Father they grumble at once, saying, “So you say there are two unoriginates?”, while they themselves, saying “his unoriginate wisdom,” do not see that the vain censure they allege comes back on themselves? And how is that idea of theirs too not utterly foolish, to say that the unoriginate Wisdom coexisting with God is God himself? For what coexists coexists not with itself but with something else, as the evangelists say of the Lord that he was with the disciples; for he was with the disciples, not with himself. Unless indeed they would say that God is composite, having a wisdom interwoven with his substance or completing it, itself unoriginate, which they also bring in instead as creator of the world, so that they may take away from the Son even his creating. For they will say anything rather than think truly about the Lord.

For where at all did they find it said in the divine Scripture, or from whom did they hear, that there is another Word and another Wisdom besides this Son, that they should fashion such things for themselves? It is written indeed, “Are not my words like fire, or like an axe splitting rock?” and in the Proverbs, “I will teach you my words.” But these are commandments and precepts which God has spoken to the saints through his own and only true Word, about which the psalmist said, “I have kept my feet from every evil way, that I may keep your words.” The Saviour, at any rate, indicating that such words are other than himself, said in his own person, “the words that I have spoken to you.” For such words are not offspring or sons; nor are there so many creating words, nor so many images of the one God, nor so many who have become men for us; nor is the one who, according to John, became flesh one out of many such; but as the only Word of God he was proclaimed by John: “The Word became flesh,” and “all things came into being through him.” That is why the testimonies are written and shown about him alone, our Lord Jesus Christ, and about his unity with the Father: the Father indicating that the Son is one, and the saints, having learned this, saying that the Word is one and that he is only-begotten; and the works done through him are shown, for “all things,” visible and “invisible,” “came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” But of any other, different Word they have no notion; and yet they fashion for themselves words or wisdoms whose name and work Scripture nowhere indicates, and which are named by these men alone. For it is their invention and Christ-fighting surmise; they misuse the name of the Word and of Wisdom, and fashioning others for themselves they deny the true Word of God and the real and only Wisdom of the Father; and so the wretches now imitate the Manichees. For they too, seeing the works of God, deny him who alone is and is true God, and fashion for themselves another, whose work and any testimony they cannot show from the divine oracles.

If, then, no other wisdom besides this Son is found in the divine oracles, and we have heard nothing of the kind from the fathers, while these men acknowledge and have written that the wisdom coexists unoriginately with the Father, is proper to him, and is creator of the world, then this would be the Son himself, who even on their view coexists eternally with the Father. For he is also creator, as it is written, “You made all things in wisdom.” Indeed Asterius himself, as though forgetting what he wrote before, later, like Caiaphas, unwillingly, when he himself was opposing the Greeks, no longer names many wisdoms nor the caterpillar, but now confesses one, writing thus: “God the Word is one, but rational things are many; and the substance and nature of Wisdom is one, but wise and beautiful things are many.” And a little after he says again: “Who might those be whom they think fit to call children of God? For they will not say that these too are words, nor will they say that there are more wisdoms. For it is not possible, since the Word is one and Wisdom has been shown to be one, to distribute the substance of the Word to the multitude of children and to bestow on them the name of Wisdom.” It is no wonder, then, that the Arians fight against the truth, when they stumble even over their own writings and clash with one another, now saying there are many wisdoms, now declaring there is one; now joining Wisdom with the caterpillar, now saying it coexists with the Father and is proper to him; at one time saying the Father alone is unoriginate, at another that his wisdom and power too are unoriginate. They fight with us for saying that “the Word of God is always,” but when they themselves say that “wisdom coexists unoriginately with God,” they forget their own words. So they are dizzy about everything, denying the true Wisdom and inventing one that does not exist, like the Manichees, who fashion for themselves another god and deny the God who is.