On the Trinity 3.3

Let these points, then, stand as proved. The first problem of the heretics, the most impious and most blunt, is what is written in the Proverbs of Solomon: “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works; before the age he founded me; in the beginning, before he made the earth, and before he made the depths, before the springs of the waters came forth, before the mountains were settled, and before all the hills he begets me.” By this problem they try to force the conclusion that the Creator and Benefactor is a creature. But the understanding of this Scripture too is stronger and more persuasive than their wish. For if all the heads set out above, and those arranged in the first book, are true and prevail, as indeed they are, having received the clearest testimony from the divine oracles, how is it not among the most unholy and most impossible things to take in this way divine matters shown under concealment? Is it not then plain … became so [proud] and self-willed against God, who even after such great sins pardoned and had compassion, as he always does toward all, and toward him too. But if he has, as indeed he has, some perception of what happens here, or of what is said by those who think otherwise, I think that even before the appointed day that has no evening he contradicts them, blames them, and opposes them, teaching that he never even entertained such a suspicion about him. For he says that he knows, since he sought wisdom above a kingdom, obtained it, and received the kingdom as an addition; and indeed that he heard from his father David that the Lord, as life-giver and life, did not begin to be according to the generation above, and that, as life-giving and eternal light shining forth from the paternal light co-subsistently and consubstantially, he was not enlightened by another; but that he himself spoke about the wisdom in the world: that in speech, in generalship, in medicine, in architecture, and in short the wisdom present in every marvelous science in all wise men.

And truly, if anyone is willing to examine soberly and piously what precedes and what follows “The Lord created me,” he will quickly, immediately, and on the spot find ample refutation. For he placed first: “The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, and good understanding is for all who practise it”; and again: “By me kings reign, and rulers write righteousness; by me great men are magnified, and by me tyrants hold the earth.” … Without wisdom, he says (which is the prudence, good sense, and excellence of speech imparted to us from above), nothing that is needed is accomplished; for the many fine thoughts escape the one who is deprived of it. But the man who has a share in it both fears God as he should and does what is pleasing to him, and gives law to man; and this one masters that one, and has gained many times over; and not only does he take pleasure in speaking and acting himself, but he also brings to their senses those who listen to him, or who learn his works in deed. And in what follows he set out these things here and there: “[The Lo]rd made uninhabited lands and the inhabited heights of the earth under heaven. When he prepared the heaven, I was present with him; when he marked out his own throne upon the winds, when he made strong the clouds above, and when he set firm the springs of the earth under heaven, when he set for the sea its limit.” Now he who made the earth from no earth, and skilfully fashioned the circling orbs of the heavens from no heavens, and the sun that completes its swift courses and shines everywhere in heaven and on earth, and in short brought all things to light by a word, is the only-begotten Son, the Word of God, who is praised as the power of God and the wisdom of God; and being these things of his Father, who is without beginning and is truly his Father, he has no beginning, as they teach: John saying, “All things came to be through him”; Paul writing to the Hebrews, “But of the Son he says, Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever.” And a little after he says, “And you, Lord, in the beginning founded the earth, and the heavens are the works of your hands.” So it is not he, but another person, who has said all these things and “The Lord created me.” Then he added: “And the waters shall not pass his mouth.” So then, speaking as the wisdom that was created, he is explaining about the intelligible mouth of God the Word, the Creator. And again: “When he made strong the foundations of the earth, I was beside him, fitting things together; I was the one in whom he delighted daily; and I rejoiced before him at all times, when he rejoiced at having completed the world, and rejoiced in the sons of men.” For the Son, the Word, the Creator, who foreknew all things and had the power for them beforehand, … the repentance of those …, having completed all things, delighted in the wisdom present in his creatures, and rejoiced in it, glorying in his own work; and it too rejoiced before him. Then after other things he says: “For my goings forth are the ways of life, and favor is prepared from the Lord. But those who sin against me will act impiously against their own souls, and those who hate me love death.” … steering by wisdom, they plot against themselves and find a death worthy of their own folly and lack of discipline. And so that even the blind, as the saying goes, may not doubt that our interpretation is sound: the created wisdom says, about him of whom John said, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” “Wisdom built herself a house and set up seven pillars.” Of this house the Master himself said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

And Solomon, showing more and more that he is not discussing the creative wisdom, goes on in what follows thus: “Son, if you become wise, you will be wise for yourself and for your neighbors; but if you turn out bad, you alone will bear …” … “… will be wise, and will use the fool as a servant”; and again: “The wise in heart receives commandments”; and, “This one brings forth wisdom from his lips. Strike a heartless man with a rod; the wise will hide perception”; and again: “Wisdom bears prudence for a man”; and again: “The mouth of the righteous drips wisdom”; and, “The tongues of the wise heal”; and, “He who walks with the wise will be wise”; then next: “You will seek wisdom among the wicked and will not find it”; and after other things: “The wisdom of the clever will know their ways; the fear of the Lord is instruction and wisdom”; and again: “Nests are more desirable than gold, and nestlings of prudence than silver.” If, according to the heretics, who break off the head of the Christian faith, or rather choose to scrape it away as far as it lies with them, the creative Wisdom said this, whom shall we take to be her nestlings? And again: “One lacking sense has no need of wisdom”; and again: “Wisdom is an ornament for young men”; and again: “The fear of the Lord is the offspring of wisdom.” What offspring will they give to the Creator here too, if he said of himself, “The Lord created me”? And in what follows he says: “With wisdom a house is built, and with understanding a city is set upright”; then: “A wise man is better than a strong one.” … for when he mentions the wisdom of God the Father, the only-begotten and true Son, the Word, in these very Proverbs, he cries out in extraordinary terms, as if in amazement: “God taught me wisdom, and I have known the knowledge of the holy; I understand holy things. Who has gone up to heaven and come down? Who has gathered the winds in his bosom? Who has wrapped up all the water in a garment? Who has taken hold of all the ends of the earth? What is his name? Or what is the name of his child, that you may know?” And the words “before all the hills he begets me” he speaks as of the created wisdom in us: that it is begotten in the manner of a thing made and, so to speak, is born each day together with each wise man. For the Son of God was begotten co-subsisting with [the Father], as Word and radiance and stamp of his hypostasis; but he is not still being begotten. And not only this: the book also has the name “Proverbs,” as not always meaning what appears, but rather signifying one thing through another thing or person; and [there is the fact] that Solomon is a maker of proverbs, not a prophet … creation; and the most wise son of Sirach says: “Wisdom was created before all things, and understanding of prudence from eternity”; and he adds to this: “With the faithful she was created with them in the womb, and with men she made her nest as an eternal foundation”; and the Apostle wrote to the Corinthians the first time in this way: “For since,” he says, “in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, God was pleased through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe”; and, “God has made foolish the wisdom of the world.” And Job too mentions this wisdom thus: “But where was wisdom found? And what is the place of understanding?” and elsewhere: “The wisdom of the poor man is despised”; and, “This one of the …” … understood “The Lord created me” to have been said in the person of created wisdom. For the Savior, who gives subsistence to all things, often speaks taking up the person of creatures: as when, in the person of the Church once persecuted by Paul, he says, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” and to those who did good, “I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink”; and the like. … goodness, and, as the apostle Jude said, the only Master, spares all and makes his own the sins committed against the works of his hands. And indeed we shall find other things said in human terms about the unattainable Divine: as when it writes in parables, “There was a man, a householder”; and again, “There was a man who had a vineyard”; and when it compares the heavenly kingdom to a grain of mustard seed and to seed.

But even if it must be conceded that Solomon did not write in the person of the wisdom in us, still it must be understood as said in the person of the wise and incomprehensible incarnation, and in no way of the beginningless and unseeable nature of the only-begotten God. For he did not say “He created me” absolutely, … and having come to be not for himself but for others, that … he himself is the guide both of wisdom and of the wise (how else can one understand it?), of those for whose sake and after whose likeness he came to be. So, conversely, they are found in a certain way to be what he is, he who for their sake came to be after their likeness. Accordingly, being in the form of God, he took the form of a servant; and we came to be according to the image of him who created us, as Paul taught. Or perhaps he used the word “created” here in place of “established” or “appointed,” at the time when he was at once upon the cherubim and in the manger; as, showing in riddles the things of his incarnation, he foretold: “But I was established as king by him on Zion, his holy mountain”; and as the hymnist sings: “The Lord reigned, he clothed himself with majesty”; although he pre-existed eternally as King of those who reign, having incomprehensible majesty. Likewise he did not say “in the beginning” or “before the beginning of his ways,” but “as the beginning of his ways,” so that again what is foretold is the beginning of his incarnation, and not the nature of his beginningless Godhead. For when men had lost the way that leads to God, he became for us in the economy a new and living way; and just as because of the economy in the flesh he said, “I am the way,” and again, “No one comes to the Father except through me,” that is, unless he walks through faith in my incarnation, so because of it he also said, “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways.” For he was born from the hypostasis of the Father without beginning and ineffably; and from the undefiled Virgin: in that he foreknew all things as God and predetermined the economy, before the age (as they write: Paul to the Colossians, “This mystery, hidden from the ages and from the generations, has now been revealed to his saints”; Peter in his first Letter, about Christ, “foreknown before the foundation of the world, but made manifest in the last times”), but in actuality when he dawned from on high upon those who once sat in darkness and the shadow of death; when he was called, figuratively, a stone; when he became the beginning of ways and our foundation. To this foundation and stone they bear witness thus: Paul writing to the Corinthians the first time, “For no one can lay a foundation other than the one that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” He received the beginning of being called Christ Jesus in the incarnation. Hence in Luke the angel gives his name as of something future, saying to the Virgin, “You will have a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called Son of the Most High”; and after other things, “Therefore also the child to be born …” … [to the] Romans: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense; and everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” And the Acts of the Apostles: “This,” it says, “is the stone that was despised by you, the builders, which has become the head of the corner; and there is salvation in no one else.” Observe that if the holy Trinity did not have one Godhead and power, salvation would not be with the Father either. May the holy Trinity be gracious to us. And indeed Daniel too saw a stone cut from a mountain without hands (that is, the one born of Mary without …) … image, that is, the world, from the grossness of mind and the vulgarity with which it lived.

And why do we marvel if a saving deed beyond reason and mind came about before the ages by divine foreknowledge? For the Apostle says that we too were created and saved before the ages by this unspeakable foreknowledge and power, writing thus to the Ephesians: “He chose us for himself before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love, having predestined us for adoption”; and to Timothy: “According to the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before eternal times, but has now been made manifest through the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ.” For the Holy Spirit, who knows and can do all things, is accustomed to foretell many things: things that are going to happen as if already done, and things done as if still happening or yet to be; and not least he declared the things of the unspeakable economy as past before they happened: as when the Master, not yet become flesh, says in the twenty-first Psalm, “They dug my hands and my feet”; and again, “They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots”; and in the hundred and seventeenth, “The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner, and it will be marvelous in our eyes”; and Isaiah: “A child has been born to us.” He speaks of what was not yet born. And again: “He was led like a sheep to slaughter,” though the lamb had not yet been born of Mary. And again: “We saw him, and he had no form nor beauty.” Yet it was many generations later that he was seen so, in the saving passion. And elsewhere: “Your new moons and your sabbaths and your feasts my soul hates.” But he hated them much later, when he had become man and made the New Covenant with us. And it narrates past things as present, as has been said, as when it says, “Who makes his angels spirits,” in place of “who made”; and, “Who founds the earth on its firm base,” that is, “who founded.” For these reasons it is necessary to refer the proverb set out, if not to the wisdom in our pursuits, at least to the Master’s sinless incarnation, and in no way to the Son, the Word of the ineffable divine nature, through whom, and from whom, and in whom all things were set in order. For to say “The Lord created me” and to add “But before all the hills he begets me” is the same as saying: “Me, who am from him co-subsistently, he created later, in that by his will I shared sinlessly in the nature of men, as was said a little before; but before all the hills he begot me impassibly, without beginning, and ineffably,” because the Godhead is above the incorporeal. For “before” is altogether indefinite in its case; and moreover the conjunction “but” shows this. For if he created, how did he beget? And if he begot, how did he create? One might call a creature the offspring of its creator, as we have heard that we are sons of the Most High; but what is truly offspring could never be called a creature of the one who begot it. For to this day we know of no such thing being said. So it is found from every side that the wisdom in the best pursuits is the one that said, “The Lord created”; or else, by a forced interpretation, the one who became conformed to humanity. For by the decree of divine foreknowledge he came to be before all creation; and [Scripture] calls humanity “creation” by an extended use, as it also so names the wisdom in the world, in the words in which Paul says, “Be subject to every human creation for the Lord’s sake, whether to the king as supreme, or to governors as sent by him.” … or [that one] “made” a bishop, or a clergy, or a camp, it does not signify that a substance was brought forth from non-existence, though it uses the same word, but it calls those who already exist, or matter already subsisting, into some order or such an arrangement. And the Hymnist prayed for a part already present in him as though it were yet to be given him, crying, “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” And the most holy Paul writes in agreement with this, and plainly: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; behold, the old has passed away; all things have become new”: not by being newly created, but by shining forth henceforth. And elsewhere: “That he might create the two into one new man,” in place of “bring together.” See whether what is said to those renewed in baptism can also help us: “Put on the new man, created according to God,” and whatever oracles of this kind one may find by searching. And it is written metaphorically also of parents: “He made sons and daughters”; and, “I have acquired a man through God”; and yet it speaks of begetting, not of making. And if by concession “The Lord created me” must be taken of God from God, let it be recalled again, and let it be said and believed by us again and again, that it was for this reason he added, “But before all the hills he begets me,” so as to cancel “He created me.” For in oracles what comes second, as finer and firmer, everywhere puts an end to what came before.

Contending against these heretics, who say nothing trustworthy or true and follow no orderly teaching, he who received the gift of theology from the much-longed-for and forbearing Savior, of whose mercy the earth is full, and who teaches what view one must hold about him, put forth a doctrine common to all men: “In the beginning was the Word,” that is, without beginning, which is uncreated. The “was” cannot be passed beyond, permitting no non-existence to be thought of before it, as was said also in the first book. “And the Word was with God,” in place of: he was incomparable, like the Father, uncreated, and he existed beholding within his unattainable Godhead. For “he was with this one” is understood not only as “he was together with this one,” but also comparatively, “he was like this one.” “And the Word was God,” that is, without cause; for a cause of God is out of the question and impossible. “All things came to be through him, and without him not one thing came to be,” in place of: he himself is uncreated; for once [for all] every created thing [came to be] through him, as through the uncreated maker ….

Besides these irrefutable points there is another counter-argument too, against which no one will be able to say anything, even in thought, by way of attack. Aquila, one of the translators, rendered this Scripture, which in Hebrew reads “Adonai kanoni” [qānānî], thus: “The Lord acquired me”; though even he did not render it with strict propriety; for precisely it is translated, “The Lord hatched me,” that is, “bore me.” For “hatched” or “leapt forth” is said properly of things that leap forth from an egg, not of things created; and … what leaps forth from the nest is not of another substance. So both in wording and in sense their problem departs from the truth. And some have rightly understood “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways” to have been said of the Church, in which the way of truth and wisdom is proclaimed, which the Apostle also called the body of Christ, writing thus [to the Colossians: “I fill up what is lacking of the afflic]tions of Christ in my flesh for the sake of his body, which is the Church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship of God given to me”; and to the Corinthians in the first Letter: “Our members are members of Christ. Shall I then make the members of Christ members of a harlot? Never!” [and: “… all the members of the] one [body], though many, are one body; so it is with Christ.” So even if, by an economy one can hardly look upon, Scripture knows the Church as his body and us created beings as his brothers, still, as only-begotten and true Son of the most high God, he is in no way included in the constitution of the multitude of creatures. Nor does any other Scripture contain such a word; rather, all of it is filled with him: that he is true God and truly only-begotten Son. But [the argument] was carried off, as if swept by some current. Let us turn, then, to another head.

… and to show their own [opinion] more venerable through the same texts. For he is shown, he says, to be created, and to hold the name “only-begotten Son” and “God” as something feigned, as it were, and spurious, from what Paul wrote to the Colossians about him: “Firstborn of all creation.” For if he is firstborn, he is not only-begotten, but firstborn in relation to those created after him; and if he is only-begotten Son, how is he firstborn? Having said first that the depth of this oracle is beyond their perception, and that Paul spoke things he did not know [of himself], and believed what he spoke, since it was a prompting of the true wisdom, which made all these things manifest, we shall write out this whole passage and so proceed to its interpretation, not needing conjectures, nor explaining by probabilities things brighter than light, but stating what these men, willingly or unwillingly, overlooked, and what we see can fight on the side of our argument. The Letter runs thus: “Giving thanks to God the Father, who called us to the share of the inheritance of the saints, who rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins; who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things were created, in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities; all things were created through him and for him; and he is before all things, and in him all things hold together; and he is the head of the body, the Church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent; for in him it pleased all the fullness to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things to himself, making peace by the blood of his cross, whether things on earth or things in heaven.”

See then with understanding how the Scripture has been prepared to explain things contrary to the heretics, and how each word sends out, as it were, rays of thoughts about the incarnation of God; and that it first called him Son and image of God, and then firstborn and head of the body of the Church, and firstborn from the dead, who made peace by the blood of his cross for things visible and invisible, and all the fullness of [what is] above the incorporeal; so that we might in some way worthily understand both his nature, which is from God the Father and incomparable in relation to him, and his incarnation and ensoulment from the Virgin and after her likeness, perfect and unified. For what else could you understand among all the words set out, and in all things holding together, being reconciled, and being made peace through him and for him, except that through his unchangeable and sinless incarnation for our sake and on our behalf we are turned back to the knowledge of his uncreated Godhead? He is called Only-begotten, then, since according to the birth above, which is without flux, he has no other brother by nature besides him …; [firstborn, not as having been] created … of it (for then he would have been called first-created), but as, by foreknowledge (as was mentioned in the head before this), born of the holy Virgin before every created thing; and he would be both firstborn and Only-begotten of all creation, ineffable, according to the divine writing; just as the same one is also named firstborn from the dead, not because he died before them, but because, having been raised from the dead, he first gave us universally the assurance of the resurrection, to us who by his grace and gift have been counted worthy of sonship with God the Father and of brotherhood with him. For “I,” he said, “am the life and the resurrection.” And Paul too pointed out the very time in which he, having resolved in his goodness to count us worthy to enjoy forever participation in the light above, free from toil, became firstborn of all creation, in the words: “The old has passed away; behold, all things have become new.” And other words of his both thrust away this heretical notion, which tries to sophisticate against Paul, as though he had written such things, and against him who made and possesses all things, as though such words had been uttered about him, a thing hard both to invent and to hear; and they show expressly that “firstborn of all creation” was said in place of “of all humanity.” For he calls humanity creation, as was said in the previous head in these very words: “Be subject to every human creation for the Lord’s sake, whether …” … “[first]born from the dead”: that the same Paul taught the Corinthians in the first letter he wrote to them, “Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive, but each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then those who belong to Christ at his coming, then the end.” One might use this too rightly. For in such lofty words one must not consider one thing only, nor the lesser, but the better; for in what concerns God, the truth lies in the better. [Thus:] that he has been named firstborn of all creation because of those who are born of God in divine baptism by the adoption of the Holy Spirit, and because all that we are and possess we have received from him, as the same [Apostle] again says in teaching: “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?” As even the children of the Greeks, leaving aside their other contradictions, declare: “All the most high gifts are of the immortal God, and above all among mortals the great blessing of truth.”

But if “firstborn of all creation” is to be boldly taken even of his incomprehensible Godhead, he might be understood to have been so called either as begotten before every created generation, or as the first and only Son, the Word, who brought forth and fashioned from nothing all creation that came first in creation, being the cause of all, and then also as a foundation bearing it by the word of his power, according to the psalmist: “You made all things in wisdom”; and according to the Proverb of Solomon that says: “God by wisdom founded the earth, and he prepared the heavens by understanding.” And this very part of the Letter set out decides it, which says: “Firstborn of all creation, for in him all things were created,” and, “All things were created through him and for him; and he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” And for this reason alone, he says, all things [exist], the word “for” being soundly understood in place of “because” or “since”; for they would not exist, or remain unharmed, unless they had the creative Son, the Word of God, as their base and foundation, and rested upon him. Therefore he did not say “first-created,” but “firstborn”; nor, “He came to be before all things,” but, “He is before all things,” that is, without beginning. For in the ineffable nature all time is present and is there in the now, and nothing in it has passed or is to come, but it continues somehow eternally in the one time, as Plato says in the Timaeus: “Hence we do not speak rightly in the case of the ineffable nature. For we say that it was, is, and will be; but to it ‘is’ alone belongs according to the true account; and what is always in the same state, unmoved, cannot become older or younger through time, nor ‘have come to be’ now, nor ‘be’ hereafter.” And that, as we said, all things have appeared in God and from him, the Greeks too have written in testimony: “God immortal leads himself; from him are all things, and in the mind of the great God they came to light.” But the firstborn is not altogether not only-begotten; [to refer “firstborn”] to the eternal substance [in the heretics’ sense] is not right; for we say … thus he is also found firstborn without having a second-born or third-born, as begotten alone and having acquired the name from the reality. Indeed in Jeremiah too he says, from the all-holy Spirit, “And Ephraim is my firstborn.” But Ephraim was not even firstborn to his own father. Since then he himself is the truth, and the creative and untaught wisdom, it is fitting that what is written about him should keep its freedom from falsehood by an understanding worthy of God. Let him be, then, both only-begotten and firstborn; but the word “firstborn” suits him rather with reference to the economy. For if, through unspeakable love for humankind, the Holy Spirit had not regenerated us, and the only-begotten God had not, unchangeably and without flux, become, as he knows how, son of man for the salvation of men, neither would he have been named “firstborn among many brothers,” nor would we, the sons of men, have been called gods and sons of God; for no one is by nature brother of an only-begotten son. But the Maker and steward of all, the only compassionate one, … it is fitting to call him brother with respect to the birth that came about in time …; he is both our [brother] and is reckoned firstborn. For he emptied himself from infinite height for the sake of his own servants, renewed all things, and provided by his coming the beginning of a better life, and for this reason was called firstborn; yet he was in no way harmed in his divine glory, for he could not in any way be diminished or brought down to the measure of what is worse … by the force of words uttered in an extended use because of the unspeakable economy; while we, from great lowliness and darkness, were led up to glory and infinite light, having received faith in him. For each thing, whatever it is by nature, neither leaps up and is exalted by the grandeur of a word, nor indeed descends, as it were, from itself by a word’s lowliness ….

And not a little is shown together with what we have set out [by the psalm …]: “I found David my servant; with my holy oil I anointed him. For my hand will help him, and my arm will strengthen him; the enemy will gain no advantage over him, and the son of lawlessness will not again harm him. And I will cut down his enemies before him, and put to flight those who hate him. And my truth and my mercy will be with him, and in my name his horn will be exalted. And I will set his hand on the sea, and his right hand on the rivers. He will call upon me: You are my Father, my God, and the helper of my salvation. And I will make him firstborn, high above the ki[ngs of the earth” …] … with the paternal glory of the radiance, and in the last days blossoming from the root of Jesse; and even if we grant that this is said of him, the firstborn would not be understood in the customary sense. For how will he make firstborn one who is already a man (for he says, “I found David my servant”), or one who has elder brothers? And that it is customary for Scripture to announce that those who already exist become in some way what they were not, Paul, full of Christ and filled with the Holy Spirit, says somewhere thus: “You are no longer a servant, but a son.” For “no longer” signifies, for those who already exist, a change of state to something else henceforth. And again: “Those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers”; in place of: God, who foreknew the descendants and sees all things past and to come as existing and present, with whom all the ages are one single measure and nothing divided, as was said a little earlier, foresaw and manifestly promised that men would be conformed to him who is eternally in the form of [God] … [who emptied] himself for us into the form of a servant, by his own gift: “No longer do I call you servants, but friends” and brothers, as it is written. For in the same way as we, the created, were called sons of God by grace, not by nature, so the Only-begotten of God, when he mingled earthly things with heavenly and a new salvation came about for us once for all, was called our brother and firstborn, not according to the nature from the Father, but according to his incarnation from the Virgin and in her likeness. It would be timely, then, to say to the heretics what was well said by those outside: “Hate falsehoods, so that truth may become your habit …”