Theological Oration 3: On the Son 1–17

This, then, is what one might say to check their readiness and quickness in argument, and the danger of haste in all matters, but above all in discourse about God. But since finding fault is no great thing (it is very easy, and open to anyone who likes), while putting forward one’s own view in its place is the mark of a pious and sensible man, come, let us take courage in the Holy Spirit, who is dishonoured by them but worshipped by us, and bring our own conceptions of the Godhead, whatever they are, into the light like a noble and timely offspring. We have not been silent at other times (for in this alone we are bold and high-minded), but now we will speak the truth even more freely, so that we may not, as it is written, be condemned as displeasing by shrinking back. Every discourse is twofold: one part establishes its own position, the other overturns the opposing one. So we too will first set out our own position and then try to overturn that of our opponents; and both as briefly as possible, so that what is said may be easily taken in at a glance (like the introductory handbook they themselves devised to deceive the simpler or more foolish), and so that the thoughts may not be dissipated by the length of the discourse, like water that is not confined in a pipe but spreads over a plain and runs to waste.

There are three most ancient opinions about God: anarchy, polyarchy, and monarchy. The first two were the playthings of the children of the Greeks, and let them go on playing with them. For anarchy is disorder; and the rule of many is factious, and so anarchic, and so disorderly. Both lead to the same thing, disorder, and disorder to dissolution, for disorder is a rehearsal for dissolution. What we honour is monarchy; not a monarchy that one person circumscribes (for even the one, if at odds with itself, can become many), but one constituted by equality of honour of nature, agreement of will, sameness of movement, and the convergence toward the one of those who are from it, something impossible in created nature; so that, although there is a difference in number, there is no division in substance. For this reason a monad from the beginning, moved to a dyad, came to rest at a triad. And this for us is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit: the one the begetter and emitter (I mean impassibly, timelessly, and incorporeally); of the others, one the begotten and the other the emitted, or I do not know what one might call them, abstracting altogether from visible things. We will not dare to speak of an overflow of goodness, as one of the Greek philosophers dared to say, “like a mixing bowl overflowing,” saying so plainly where he philosophizes about the first and second cause; lest we bring in an involuntary begetting, a kind of natural and uncontrollable excess, least fitting for conceptions of the Godhead. For this reason, keeping within our own bounds, we speak of the unbegotten, the begotten, and what proceeds from the Father, as God the Word himself says somewhere.

When, then, did these come to be? They are above “when.” But if I must speak somewhat boldly: when the Father did. And when did the Father? There was never a time when he was not. So too, then, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Ask me again, and again I will answer you. When was the Son begotten? When the Father was not begotten. When did the Spirit proceed? When the Son did not proceed but was begotten, timelessly and beyond explanation; although we cannot express what is above time when we wish to avoid a temporal sense. For “when,” “before this,” “after these things,” and “from the beginning” are not timeless, however much we force them; unless we take “age” to mean the extension that is coextensive with eternal things, not divided or measured by any motion or by the course of the sun, as time is. How then are they not without beginning together with the Father, if they are eternal together with him? Because they are from him, though not after him. For what is without beginning is also eternal; but what is eternal is not necessarily without beginning, so long as it refers back to the Father as its beginning. So they are not without beginning with respect to cause; and it is plain that a cause is not necessarily older than what it causes, for the sun is not older than its light. And they are in a sense without beginning with respect to time, even if you frighten the simpler with bogeys; for the sources of time are not subject to time.

How then is the begetting not a matter of passion? Because it is incorporeal. For if bodily begetting involves passion, incorporeal begetting is free of passion. But I will ask you in return: how is he God, if he is a creature? For what is created is not God. I will not say that there is passion here too, if it is taken in a bodily way: time, desire, forming an image, anxiety, hope, grief, risk, failure, correction, all of which and more belong to creation, as everyone sees. I am surprised you do not dare to go so far as to think of couplings, times of pregnancy, and dangers of miscarriage, as though he could not have begotten at all if he had not begotten in this way; or again, listing the ways birds, land animals, and water creatures reproduce, to bring the divine and ineffable begetting under one of these, or even to abolish the Son on the strength of this novel hypothesis. And you cannot even see that he whose birth in the flesh was different (for where among your examples did you find a virgin mother of God?) also differs in his spiritual begetting; or rather, he whose being is not the same as ours begets in a different way too.

Who, then, is a Father who did not begin to be one? He who did not begin to exist. One whose existence began also began to be a father. So he did not become Father later, for he did not begin. And he is Father in the proper sense, because he is not also son; just as the Son is Son in the proper sense, because he is not also father. Our relations are not so in the proper sense, because we are both, and not one more than the other; and we come from two, not one, so that we are divided, and become human beings gradually, and perhaps not even human beings, and such as we were not wanted to be, leaving and being left, so that only the relations remain, orphaned of the realities. “But the words ‘he begot’ and ‘he was begotten,’” he says, “what else do they introduce but a beginning of begetting?” What if we do not even say this, but “he was begotten from the beginning,” so as easily to escape your meddling and time-bound objections? Will you bring Scripture against us, as though we were debasing something in Scripture and the truth? Or is it not plain to everyone that many things said with reference to time are expressed with the tenses interchanged, especially in the usage of Scripture, not only of past or present time but also of the future? As in “Why did the nations rage?” for they had not yet raged; and “They will pass through the river on foot,” meaning they have crossed. It would take long to list all such expressions, which have been noted by the diligent.

So much for that. Consider another of their arguments, which is very contentious and shameless. “Did he beget the Son,” they say, “willing it, or not willing it?” Then, as they think, they bind us on both sides with knots, which are not strong but very weak. “If he did not will it,” they say, “he was under compulsion. And who compelled him? And how is one who was compelled God? But if he willed it, the Son is a son of will; how then is he from the Father?” And they invent a new kind of mother, the will, in place of the Father. One pleasing thing in them, if they say this, is that they abandon passion and take refuge in will; for will is not a passion. Secondly, let us see what their strong argument amounts to. It is best to grapple with them at close quarters first. You yourself, who say so easily whatever you like: did you come into being from a father who willed it or who did not will it? If from one who did not will it, he was compelled. What violence! And who compelled him? You will not say nature, for nature also allows for self-control. If from one who willed it, your father has perished for you in a few syllables: you have turned out to be the son of a will and not of a father. But I will pass on to God and his creatures and put your question to your wisdom. Did he bring all things into being willingly or under compulsion? If under compulsion, here too there is tyranny and one who exercised it. If willingly, the creatures too are deprived of God, and you before all, who invent such arguments and play such sophistries; for they are walled off from the Creator by the will in between. But one who wills is different, I think, from willing, one who begets from begetting, one who speaks from speech, unless we are drunk: the one is the mover, the other, as it were, the motion. So what is willed is not the offspring of willing, for it does not always follow; nor is what is begotten the offspring of begetting, nor what is heard of utterance, but of the one who wills, begets, and speaks. The things of God are beyond all these; for him perhaps begetting is the will to beget, but with nothing in between, if we accept even this at all, and do not rather say that begetting is superior to will.

Would you like me to play a little with the Father too? You have given me licence for such daring. The Father is God either willing or not willing. And how will you escape your own two-edged argument? If willing, when did he begin to will? Not before he existed, for there was nothing before. Or is part of him the willer and part the willed? Then he is divisible. And how is he too not, on your reasoning, the product of will? If not willing, what compelled him to exist? And how is he God if he was compelled, and that to nothing other than being God? How then was the Son begotten? How was he created, if he was created, as you say? For this too is the same difficulty. Perhaps you would say, by will and word. But you have not yet said everything: how did will and word get the power to act? That remains to be said, for that is not how it is with a human being.

How then was he begotten? The begetting would not be great if it were grasped by you, who do not even know your own begetting, or have grasped only a little of it, and that such as you are ashamed to speak of; and then you think you know the whole? You would toil long before you found the principles of your composition, formation, and manifestation, the bond of soul to body, of mind to soul, of reason to mind; movement, growth, the assimilation of food, sense, memory, recollection, and the other things of which you are made; which belong to soul and body together, which to each separately, and which they receive from one another. For the principles of those things whose completion comes later are present with the begetting. Tell me what they are; and even then do not philosophize about the begetting of God, for it is not safe. For if you know your own, it does not follow that you know God’s; and if you do not even know your own, how can you know God’s? As God is harder to trace out than man, so much is the begetting above harder to grasp than yours. And if, because you have not grasped it, he was therefore not begotten, it is time for you to strike out many things that exist which you have not grasped, and above all God himself; for you cannot say what he is, however daring you are and extravagant in your ambitions. Throw away your flowings and divisions and cuttings, and your thinking of the incorporeal nature as of a body, and perhaps you might think something worthy of the begetting of God. How was he begotten? I will say the same thing again, with vexation: let the begetting of God be honoured in silence. It is a great thing for you to learn that he was begotten. How, we will not grant that even angels understand, let alone you. Shall I show you how? As the Father who begot knows, and the Son who was begotten. Anything beyond this is hidden by a cloud and escapes your dim sight.

“Did he, then, beget one who existed or one who did not exist?” What nonsense! That applies to you and me, who in part existed, as Levi did in the loins of Abraham, and in part came into being; so that our existence comes in a way both from what existed and from what did not. The opposite is true of primeval matter, which clearly came into being from what did not exist, even if some imagine it to be unoriginate. But here being begotten coincides with being, and is from the beginning. Where then will you put this precipitous question? For what is older than “from the beginning,” that we may place there the Son’s having once existed or not existed? Either way, “from the beginning” will be destroyed. Unless, when we ask whether the Father too is from what exists or from what does not, he runs the risk of either existing twice, once pre-existing and once existing, or of suffering the same as the Son and being from what does not exist, because of your playthings of questions and your houses built on sand, which cannot stand even against breezes. I accept neither alternative; and I say that the absurdity lies in the question, not a difficulty in the answer. But if you think, by your dialectical assumptions, that one of the two must be true in every case, accept a small question from me. Is time in time or not in time? If in time, in what time? And what is that besides time? And how does it contain time? If not in time, what surpassing wisdom it is to bring in a timeless time! Take the statement, “I am now lying”: grant one of the two, that it is only true or only false; for we will not grant both. But that cannot be; for either in lying he will speak the truth, or in speaking the truth he will lie; it is inevitable. What wonder, then, that as here opposites coincide, so there both are false, and so your cleverness will turn out foolish? Solve one more riddle for me. Were you present to yourself when you were being born? Are you present to yourself now? Or neither? If you were and are, as whom, and to whom? And how did you, being one, become both? If neither, how are you separated from yourself, and what is the cause of the separation? “But it is uneducated to inquire about one being whether it is present to itself or not; for these things are said of others, not of oneself.” It is more uneducated, you may be sure, to inquire whether what was begotten from the beginning existed before its begetting or not. For that question applies to things divided by time.

“But the unbegotten and the begotten are not the same,” he says. If so, neither is the Son the same as the Father. Need I say that this argument plainly expels either the Son or the Father from the Godhead? For if being unbegotten is the substance of God, being begotten is not that substance; and if the latter is, the former is not. What argument can contradict this? Choose, then, whichever impiety you prefer, you empty theologian, if you are determined to be impious at all costs. Next, in what sense do you say that the unbegotten and the begotten are not the same? If you mean the uncreated and the created, I agree; for what is without beginning and what is created are not the same in nature. But if you mean the begetter and the begotten, it is wrongly said; for they must be the same. For this is the nature of offspring, to be the same in nature as the begetter. Or again: in what sense do you speak of the unbegotten and the begotten? If you mean unbegottenness itself and begottenness, they are not the same; but if you mean those to whom these belong, how are they not the same? For unwisdom and wisdom are not the same as one another, yet they belong to the same subject, a human being; they do not divide substances but are divided within the same substance. Or are immortality, innocence, and unchangeableness also the substance of God? But if so, there are many substances of God, not one; or the divine is compounded of them, for they cannot be there without composition if they are substances.

“We do not say these,” they reply, “for they are shared with others; what belongs to God alone and is proper to him, that is his substance.” Those who bring in matter and form as unbegotten too would not agree that being unbegotten belongs to God alone; and let us cast the darkness of the Manichaeans still further off. But let it belong to God alone. What of Adam? Was he not alone the direct handiwork of God? Certainly, you will say. Was he then alone a man? By no means. Why so? Because being moulded is not what humanity is; for what was begotten is also a man. So too it is not only the unbegotten that is God, even if unbegottenness belongs to the Father alone; accept that the begotten is also God, for he is from God, however fond you are of the unbegotten. Then how can you call the substance of God not the affirmation of what is but the denial of what is not? For the word shows that he has no begetting; it does not present what he is in nature, nor what it is that has no begetting. What, then, is the substance of God? It would take your madness to say, you who busy yourself even with his begetting. For us it will be a great thing if we ever learn it, even later, when our darkness and grossness have been dissolved, as the one who cannot lie has promised. Let this be the thought and hope of those who are being purified for it. We will dare to say this much: if it is great for the Father to originate from nowhere, it is no less great for the Son to be from such a Father. For he would share the glory of the uncaused, since he is from the uncaused; and to this is added the glory of his begetting, a thing so great and venerable to those whose minds are not wholly earthbound and material.

“But if the Son is the same as the Father in substance,” they say, “and the Father is unbegotten, the Son will be unbegotten too.” Quite right, if being unbegotten is the substance of God; so that there may be a novel mixture, a begotten-unbegotten. But if the difference lies in what surrounds the substance, why do you put this forward as a strong argument? Or are you the father of your father, so as to lack nothing that your father has, since you are the same in substance? Or is it not plain that, while the distinctive property stays unmoved, we will look for the substance of God, whatever it is, if we look for it at all? That “unbegotten” and “God” are not the same, you may learn like this. If they were the same, then, since God is God of some beings, the unbegotten would have to be unbegotten of some; or, since the unbegotten is of no one, God would have to be God of no one. For things wholly the same are also expressed in the same way. But the unbegotten is not unbegotten of anyone (of whom could it be?), while God is God of some, indeed of all. How then could God and the unbegotten be the same? And again, since unbegotten and begotten are opposed to each other as possession and privation, opposed substances would necessarily be brought in, which is not granted; or else, since possessions are prior to privations and privations abolish possessions, the substance of the Son would be not only older than the substance of the Father but even abolished by the Father, as far as your assumptions go.

What unanswerable argument have they left? Perhaps they may take refuge in this last one: “If God has not ceased begetting, the begetting is incomplete and will cease one day; but if he has ceased, he certainly also began.” Once again the bodily-minded speak of bodily things. For my part, I do not yet say whether his being begotten is eternal or not, until I have examined carefully the words, “Before all the hills he begets me.” But I do not see what compels their argument. For if, as they say, what will cease has begun, then what will not cease has certainly not begun. What then will they declare about the soul, or the angelic nature? If it began, it will also cease; if it will not cease, then clearly, on their reasoning, it did not begin either. But in fact it began and will not cease. So it is not true, as they say, that what will cease has begun. Our own account is this. Just as a horse, an ox, a man, and each member of the same species has one definition, and what shares in the definition is properly called by the name, while what does not share in it is either not called so or not called so properly; so too God has one substance, nature, and name, even if the names are divided along with certain distinctions of thought. What is properly called God is God; and what is God by nature is truly named so, if indeed truth for us lies in realities and not in names. But they, as if afraid of leaving no stone unturned against the truth, confess that the Son is God when they are forced by argument and testimony, but only in an equivocal sense, sharing the name alone.

When we object to them: “What then? Is the Son not properly God, as a painted animal is not properly an animal? How then is he God, if he is not properly God?” “What prevents these,” they say, “from being equivocal and yet both properly so called?” And they will bring forward the dog, the land dog and the sea dog, which are equivocal and properly so called (for there is such a class among equivocal terms), and anything else that uses the same name and shares it equally while differing in nature. But there, my good man, in putting two natures under the same name, you do not make one better than the other, nor one prior and the other later, nor one more and the other less what it is called; for nothing is attached to them that imposes such a necessity. One dog is not more a dog and the other less, the sea dog than the land dog or the other way round; why should it be, or on what principle? The sharing of the name is between things of equal honour but different. Here, however, you join to God the attribute of being worshipped and of being above every substance and nature, which belongs to God alone and is, as it were, the nature of the Godhead; then you give this to the Father, but deprive the Son of it and subordinate him, assigning him second place in honour and worship. Even if you grant him likeness in syllables, in reality you cut off his Godhead, and you pass dishonestly from an equivocation that implies equality to one that links unequal things; so that on your view the painted and the living man come nearer to the Godhead than the dogs of your example. Or else grant both the sharing of the name and equality of honour of their natures, even if you introduce them as different; and you have done away with your dogs, which you invented to prove inequality. For what use is the equivocation if those you divide have equal honour? It was not to show equal honour but unequal that you took refuge in equivocation and the dogs. How could anyone be more clearly convicted of fighting both himself and the Godhead?

If, when we say that the Father is greater than the Son as cause, they add the premise “but the cause is by nature,” and then conclude “greater by nature,” I do not know whether they deceive themselves or those they are addressing. For not everything that is said of something will also be said of its subject; it must be clear of what and in what sense. Otherwise, what prevents me too from taking the premise “the Father is greater by nature,” then adding “but what is by nature is not necessarily greater, nor a father,” and from this concluding “the greater is not necessarily greater,” or “the Father is not necessarily a father”? Or, if you like, like this: “God is substance; but substance is not necessarily God”; draw the conclusion yourself: “God is not necessarily God.” I think this fallacy comes from confusing a qualified with an unqualified statement, as is usual among those who practise these techniques. For while we assign “greater” to the nature of the cause, they infer “greater in nature”; just as if, when we said that so-and-so is a dead man, they simply inferred “a man.”

And how can we pass over this one, which is no less remarkable than those already mentioned? “Is ‘Father,’” he says, “the name of a substance or of an activity?” They mean to bind us on both sides: if we say it is the name of a substance, we will agree that the Son is of another substance, since God has one substance and, as they say, the Father has occupied it already; if of an activity, we will clearly confess that the Son is a thing made, not begotten. For where there is one who acts, there is certainly also what is acted upon; and they will say they wonder how what is made can be the same as its maker. I too would be very much in awe of your division if one of the two had to be accepted, and it were not possible to escape both and give a truer third answer: that “Father,” most wise sirs, is the name neither of a substance nor of an activity, but of a relation, of how the Father stands to the Son or the Son to the Father. For as with us these names make known genuine kinship, so there too they signify the sameness of nature of the begotten with the begetter. But let the Father be a substance, for your sake: he will bring the Son with him, not estrange him, according to common notions and the force of these names. Let it be the name of an activity, if you like: even so you will not catch us. What that activity produced would be the very sameness of substance, even if the notion of an activity in this matter is otherwise absurd. Do you see how we escape your twists, even when you want to fight unfairly? But since we have learned how invincible you are in reasonings and twists, let us see your strength from the divine oracles, in case you choose to persuade us from there too.

For our part, we have grasped and proclaim the Godhead of the Son from great and lofty sayings. Which ones? These: “God,” “Word,” “the one in the beginning,” “the one with the beginning,” “the beginning.” “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”; and “With you is the beginning”; and “He who calls it the beginning from the generations.” Then, that he is the only-begotten Son: “The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” “Way,” “truth,” “life,” “light”: “I am the way and the truth and the life,” and “I am the light of the world.” “Wisdom,” “power”: “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” “Radiance,” “imprint,” “image,” “seal”: “Who is the radiance of his glory and the imprint of his hypostasis,” and “image of his goodness,” and “For him has God the Father sealed.” “Lord,” “King,” “He who is,” “the Almighty”: “The Lord rained fire from the Lord,” and “A sceptre of uprightness is the sceptre of your kingdom,” and “Who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” These are clearly said of the Son, and all others of the same force; none of them acquired, or added to the Son or the Spirit later, any more than to the Father himself. For perfection does not come by addition. There was never a time when he was without the Word, nor a time when he was not Father, nor a time when he was not true, or without wisdom, or without power, or lacking life or splendour or goodness.