Oration III Against the Arians 64–67

If, then, things made came to subsist “by will and good pleasure,” and all creation came into being by will, and Paul was called an apostle “through the will of God,” and our calling came about “by good pleasure and will,” and “all things came into being through the Word,” then he is outside the things that came into being by will, and is rather himself the living counsel of the Father, in which all these things came into being; the counsel in which holy David too, giving thanks, said in the seventy-second psalm, “You held my right hand, and in your counsel you guided me.” How, then, can the Word, being counsel and will of the Father, himself come into being “by will and counsel,” like each thing, unless, as I said before, in their madness they say again that he came into being through himself or through some other? Who, then, is it through whom he came into being? Let them fashion another Word, and, emulating the teachings of Valentinus, let them name another “Christ”; for it is not written. But even if they fashion one, that one too certainly comes into being through someone; and so, as we reason further and examine the consequences, the many-headed heresy of the godless is found falling into polytheism and measureless madness, in which, wishing the Son to be “a creature” and “from nothing,” they signify the same things in another way, putting forward “counsel and will,” which could reasonably be said above all of originated and created things. How, then, is it not impious to refer the things of originated beings to the Creator? Or how is it not blasphemous to say that there is a will in the Father before the Word? For if will precedes in the Father, the Son does not speak the truth in saying, “I am in the Father”; or if he too is in the Father, he will be reckoned second, and it would not have been fitting for him to say, “I am in the Father,” since there would be a will before him, in which all things came into being and he himself came to subsist, on your view; for even if he differs in glory, he is none the less one of those that come into being by will. And, as we said before, if it is so, how is he Lord and the others servants? But he is Lord of all because he is united to the Father's lordship; and creation is surely servant, since it is outside the Father's unity and, once not being, came to be.

When they say that the Son is “by will,” they ought also to have said that he came into being “by understanding”; for I consider understanding and will to be the same; for what one deliberates, this he surely also understands, and what he understands, this he also deliberates. The Saviour himself, at any rate, joined these together as sisters by analogy, saying at once, “Mine are counsel and security, mine is understanding, and mine is strength.” For as strength and security are the same (for it is the same power), so it is the same to say understanding and counsel, which the Lord is. But the impious do not want the Son to be Word and living counsel; instead they tell the fable that understanding, counsel, and wisdom arise in God as a habit that comes and goes, in human fashion; and they move everything and put forward Valentinus's “Thought and Will,” only so as to separate the Son from the Father and not call him the Father's own Word, but a creature. Let them, then, hear what Simon the sorcerer heard: “The impiety of Valentinus perish with you”; but let each rather be persuaded by Solomon, who says that the Word himself is wisdom and understanding; for he says, “God by wisdom founded the earth, and prepared the heavens by understanding”; and as here it says “by understanding,” so in the Psalms, “By the Word of the Lord the heavens were established.” And as the heavens were established by the Word, so “he did whatever he willed”; and as the apostle writes to the Thessalonians, “the will of God is in Christ Jesus.” So the Son of God is himself the Word and the Wisdom, himself the understanding and the living counsel; and in him is the will of the Father; he is the truth and light and power of the Father. And if the will of God is the Wisdom and understanding, and the Son is the Wisdom, then he who says that the Son is “by will” is in effect saying that Wisdom came into being “in wisdom,” and the Son was made “in a Son,” and the Word created “through the Word.” This fights against God and contradicts the Scriptures that come from him; for the apostle too proclaims the Son to be the proper “radiance and impress” not of a will, but of the Father's very substance, saying, “who, being the radiance of glory and the impress of his subsistence.” And if, as we said before, the Father's substance and subsistence are not from will, it is very clear that neither would what is proper to the Father's subsistence be from will; for of whatever kind and however that blessed subsistence is, of such a kind and in such a way must its proper offspring from it be. The Father himself, at any rate, did not say, “This is the Son who came into being by my will,” nor “the Son whom I have by good pleasure,” but simply, “my Son,” and rather, “in whom I am well pleased,” showing by these words that “he is Son by nature, and in him is laid up the will of what pleases me.”

Is it, then, that since the Son is by nature and not from will, he is already unwilled by the Father, and the Son exists “without the Father's willing”? By no means! Rather, the Son is willed by the Father, and, as he himself says, “The Father loves the Son and shows him all things.” For as God's being good did not begin from will, yet he is not good without willing or wishing it (for what he is, this he also wills), so too the Son's existence, even if it did not begin from will, is not unwilled by him nor against his inclination. For as he wills his own subsistence, so too the Son, being proper to his substance, is not unwilled by him. Let the Son, then, be willed and loved by the Father; and so let one piously reckon God's “willing” and “not being unwilling.” For the Son, with the same willing with which he is willed by the Father, himself too loves and wills and honors the Father; and the will from the Father in the Son is one, so that from this too the Son is seen in the Father and the Father in the Son. But let no one, after Valentinus, bring in a preceding “will,” nor let anyone thrust himself between the only Father and the only Word on the pretext of “deliberating”; for one would be mad to place “will” and consideration between Father and Son. For it is one thing to say, “he came into being by will,” and another to say, “he loves and wills his Son, who is his own by nature.” For to say “he came into being from will” signifies, first, that he once was not; and then it can lean both ways, as has been said, so that one might think that he could also not have willed the Son. But to say of the Son, “he could also not have been,” is impious, and the daring reaches to the Father's substance, if indeed what is proper to it could not have been; for it is as if one said, “the Father could also not have been good.” But as the Father is always good, and by nature, so he is always begetting by nature; and to say, “The Father wills the Son,” and “The Word wills the Father,” shows not “a preceding will,” but makes known the genuineness of nature and the propriety and likeness of substance. For as one might say in the case of the radiance and the light, that the radiance has no “preceding will” in the light, but is its offspring by nature, willed by the light that begot it, not by consideration of will but by nature and in truth; so too in the case of the Father and the Son one would rightly say that the Father loves and wills the Son, and the Son loves and wills the Father.

So let the Son not be called a product of will (nor let the doctrines of Valentinus be brought into the church), but living counsel, and truly offspring by nature, as the radiance is of the light. For so the Father too said, “My heart has uttered a good Word,” and the Son correspondingly, “I am in the Father and the Father in me.” And if the Word is in the heart, where is the will? And if the Son is in the Father, where is the wishing? And if he himself is the will, how is the counsel “in a will”? It is absurd; lest the Word too come to be in a word, and the Son in a son, and the Wisdom in a wisdom, as has often been said. For the Son is everything that is the Father's; and there is nothing in the Father before the Word; but the will too is in the Word, and through him the things of the will are brought to completion in deed, as the divine Scriptures have shown. I would like to ask the impious, who have thus fallen into unreason and deliberate about “will,” no longer the women who give birth among them, whom they questioned before, saying, “Did you have a son before you gave birth?”, but the fathers, and to say to them, “Do you become fathers by deliberating, or by nature and apart from your will? Or are your children like your nature and substance?” so that at least they may be put to shame by the parents from whom they demanded the premise about “generation,” and from whom they hoped to gain knowledge. For they will answer them, “What we beget is like not our will but ourselves; nor do we become parents by deliberating beforehand, but begetting is proper to nature; since we too are images of those who bore us.” Either, then, let them condemn themselves and stop questioning women about the Son of God, or let them learn from them that a son is begotten not “by will” but by nature and in truth. And this refutation from human examples is fitting and suitable for them, since the evil-minded reason in human terms about the Godhead. Why, then, do the Christ-fighters still rage? For this too, like their other propositions, has been shown and proved to be only fancy and fable; and therefore they ought, even at this late hour, seeing into how deep a precipice of folly they have fallen, to rise up and flee from “the snare of the devil,” being admonished by us. For the truth loves humankind, crying out always: “If you do not believe me” because I am clothed with the body, yet “believe the works, so that you may know that I am in the Father and the Father in me,” and “I and the Father are one,” and “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” But the Lord, as is his way, shows his love for humankind, and wills all “those who are bowed down to be raised up,” as the “praise” of David says; but the impious, not willing to hear the Lord's voice, nor bearing to see the Lord confessed by all as God and Son of God, go about, the wretches, like dung beetles, seeking with their father the devil pretexts for impiety. What pretexts, then, will they be able to find after this, or from where—unless they borrow blasphemies from the Jews and Caiaphas, and take their atheism from the Greeks? For the divine Scriptures have been closed to them, and from them they have been refuted on every side as senseless and Christ-fighters.