On the Synods preface–22

To my most beloved and most blessed brothers and fellow bishops of the province of First Germany and of Second Germany, of First Belgica and of Second Belgica, of First Lugdunensis and of Second Lugdunensis, of the province of Aquitania and of the province of Novempopulana, and to the laity and clergy of Toulouse in the Narbonensis, and to the bishops of the provinces of Britain: Hilary, servant of Christ, eternal greeting in God and our Lord.

I had resolved, dearest brothers, that during so long a silence on your part I would send you no letter of church discourse. For I had often informed you, from many cities of the Roman provinces, what faith and what zeal there was among our devout brothers the bishops of the East, and how much the devil, taking the occasion of the disturbances of the time, had hissed out with poisoned mouth and tongue the doctrine that brings death. And I feared that, amid so great a danger of disastrous impiety or error among so many bishops, your silence had been adopted out of despair of a polluted and defiled conscience (for, warned as often as you were, you could not be ignorant). So I thought that I too ought to keep silent toward you, mindful indeed of the Lord's saying, by which he commanded that those who remain disobedient after a first and a second meeting, even under the witness of the church, should be held as heathens and tax collectors.

But when I received the letter of your blessed faith, whose slowness and rarity I understand came about from the length and remoteness of my exile, I rejoiced in the Lord that you had remained uncontaminated and unharmed by every contagion of the detestable heresy; that you, sharers in my exile (into which Saturninus, fearing his own conscience, had thrust me after deceiving the emperor), by denying him communion to this very time, now for a full three years, hold fast with me in faith and spirit; and that the impiety of the faithless faith lately sent to you from the town of Sirmium you not only did not accept, but, once it was announced and made known to you, condemned. I understood that it was necessary and a duty of religion that I should now, as a bishop to bishops who are in communion with me in Christ, send a word of salvation and of faith; and that I, who before, through fear of what was uncertain, rejoiced only in my own conscience, that I was free of all these things, should now rejoice in the soundness of our common faith. O the unshaken steadfastness of your glorious conscience! O the house firm on the foundation of the faithful rock! O the unharmed and undisturbed constancy of an undefiled will! For it has remained, and even now remains, innocent, inviolate, and devout, since the profession made at the synod of Béziers, at which, with some of you as witnesses, I denounced the patrons of this heresy that was being forced upon us.

For you have awaited the glorious triumph of a holy and unchanging perseverance, by not yielding to the threats, powers, and wars of Saturninus. And when every struggle was set in motion to begin blasphemy against God, you, remaining faithful with me in Christ to this day, neither yielded before to the occasion of the heresy that was about to break out, nor have you now failed to break all its insolence in the conflict of its outbreak. For you have conquered, brothers, to the great rejoicing of the common faith; and the honor of your unharmed constancy has had a double glory: from the soundness of your conscience and from the authority of your example. For the report of your undisturbed and unshaken faith has moved certain bishops of the East, late indeed, to some shame for the heresy that had since been nursed and grown; and when they heard what had been most impiously written at Sirmium, they contradicted the audacity of the irreligious by certain decrees of their own judgments. And though they resisted not without some offense to the ears and some hurt to pious concern, yet they resisted so far as to compel those very men who at that time at Sirmium had agreed to the opinion of Potamius and Ossius, thinking and confirming the same, to profess ignorance and error, so that by subscribing again they condemned what they had done. This indeed they did in order to condemn something else beforehand.

But your unconquered faith still holds the conspicuous glory of its conscience. Content to do nothing deceitful, nothing ambiguous, nothing fearful, it persists securely in Christ in the profession of its freedom, abstaining from communion with those who keep in exile the bishops who contradict their blasphemies, and not joining itself, by the assent of deceitful pretense, to the guilt of an unjust judgment. For after great and grievous grief on the part of all of us over the things irreligiously done by the impious, the Lord's communion has been kept only among ourselves, ever since the church began to be troubled by these disturbances: bishops are exiled, priests are replaced, the people are terrified, the faith is endangered, the decrees of the Lord's teaching are fixed by human will and power. Your unharmed faith neither pretends not to know this nor professes that it can bear it, understanding that by the very assent of pretense it would not be free of the guilt of conscience.

And although in all that you have done and are doing you give witness to the constant freedom and security of your faith, yet you prove the ardor of a fervent spirit in this too: some of you, whose letters could be brought to me, have asked that the letter of my humble self should inform you what the Easterners have done since and are doing in their professions of faith. You add this burden too, out of the affection of love, on me, the least skilled and least learned of all, that I should tell you what I myself think about all their statements; though it is most difficult to set forth in speech the very sense of my own faith according to the feeling of inward understanding, still less is it easy to explain the meaning of what others say.

I beg you by the Lord's mercy, since in this letter I shall speak to you, as you wished, about divine things and about the undefiled conscience of our faith, that no one should judge me by the opening of the letter before the discourse is complete. For it is unjust, before the reasoning of what is said has been learned to the end, to bring a prejudged verdict from the beginnings, whose purpose is still unknown; since one must judge not from what is begun for the purpose of learning, but from what is finished for the purpose of knowing. For my fear is not about you, as the Lord knows my mind, but about some who are all too cautious and wise in their own eyes, who do not understand that the blessed Apostle commanded them not to be wiser than they ought. I fear that they will not wish to learn all that I must explain in full at the end, since they avoid understanding the truth from what will be explained. But whoever undertakes to read and learn these things, let him grant himself and me the patience of the faithful, and examine everything to its completion. For perhaps this whole discourse of my faith will bring it about that secret heretics will not deceive as they wish, and complete catholics will obtain what they desire.

I therefore comply with the most impatient wish of Your Love, and I have sent you all the faiths that have been published at various times and places since the holy synod of Nicaea, with explanations added by me of all their meanings and even of their words. If anything is understood to be faulty in them, no one can attribute the fault of what is said to me, for I am, as you wished, the messenger, not the author. But if anything is found right and laid down from the apostolic teachings, no one doubts that the glory for it belongs not to the interpreter but to the author. I have, however, transmitted faithfully what was done; you, by the judgment of your faith, decide whether they are catholic or heretical.

It was indeed necessary to answer your letter, in which you had sent me in writing the Lord's communion of your faith; and some of you, summoned to the synod that was expected to be held in Bithynia, holding themselves with most firm constancy of faith within communion with me, abstained from the rest outside Gaul. And it was certainly worthy of the episcopal ministry and voice, in so great a fury of heretics, to share with you by letter some counsels of devout faith. For the word of God could not be exiled with our bodies, bound and detained, so as not to be able to be shared with you anywhere. But above all, when I learned that synods were to be assembled at Ancyra and Ariminum, and that two or one from each of the Gallic provinces were to come there, I thought that what is held between us and the Eastern bishops in mutual suspicion ought to be explained and published to you by me, who was confined in the regions of the East, though you already know it. My purpose was that, since you had condemned this heresy bursting out from Sirmium and they had judged it with an anathema, you might nevertheless know in the profession of what faith the very thing you had done had also been accomplished by the Eastern bishops; and that I might not allow you, whom I most wished to shine out as approved at the coming synods, while holding catholic views with one and the same sense of the apostolic faith, to differ at least somewhat from the purity of the catholic faith through not knowing the meaning of words.

I think it right and fitting, before I begin to discuss the suspicions and disagreements about words, to set out in words as clear as I can what the Eastern bishops said and decreed against the heresy written at Sirmium. Not that all this has not been published very plainly by others; but a word-for-word translation from Greek into Latin generally brings obscurity, since keeping the correspondence of words cannot preserve the same clarity for simple understanding.

For you remember that in that very blasphemy lately written at Sirmium the attempt and effort was this: that while the Father is proclaimed as the one and only God of all, the Son should be denied to be God; and while it is decreed that there be silence about homoousion and homoeusion, the decree was meant to confirm that the Son was born either from nothing, as a creature, or from another essence, as the creatures follow, and not as God from God the Father. Then further, in saying that the Father is greater in honor, dignity, glory, and majesty, the aim was that the Son should lack all those things in which the Father is greater. Finally, while his birth is asserted to be unknowable, by this decree of ignorance we were to be commanded not to know that he is from God; as though it could be commanded and decreed that someone should know what he is to be ignorant of, or be ignorant of what he knows. I have, though unwillingly, appended this pestilence of most impious blasphemy in full, so that the force and reasoning of the replies set against it by the Easterners might be known more completely; for it was their aim to oppose all the arts of the heretics according to the sense of their understanding. Copy of the blasphemy written at Sirmium by Ossius and Potamius.

"Since there was thought to be some dispute about the faith, everything was carefully discussed and examined at Sirmium, in the presence of our most holy brothers and fellow bishops Valens, Ursacius, and Germinius. It is agreed that there is one God, almighty and Father, as is believed throughout the whole world, and his only Son Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, begotten from him before the ages. But two gods neither can nor ought to be proclaimed, because the Lord himself said: 'I go to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.' Therefore there is one God of all, as the Apostle taught: 'Is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not of the Gentiles also? Yes, of the Gentiles also. Since indeed there is one God, who justifies the circumcision by faith and the uncircumcision through faith.' And they agreed on the other points also, and could have no disagreement. But as for what moved some or many concerning substance, which in Greek is called ousia, that is (to make it understood more explicitly), homoousion, or what is called homoeusion: there ought to be no mention of it at all, and no one should proclaim it, for this cause and reason, that it is not contained in the divine Scriptures, and that it is above human knowledge, and that no one can declare the birth of the Son, of whom it is written: 'Who shall declare his generation?' For it is plain that only the Father knows how he begot his Son, and the Son how he was begotten by the Father. There is no doubt that the Father is greater. No one can doubt that the Father is greater than the Son in honor, dignity, glory, majesty, and in the very name of Father, as he himself testifies: 'He who sent me is greater than I.' And no one is ignorant that this is catholic: that there are two persons of the Father and the Son; the Father greater, the Son subjected together with all the things that the Father subjected to him; that the Father has no beginning, is invisible, immortal, impassible; but that the Son was born from the Father, God from God, light from light; whose generation, as was said before, no one knows but his Father. And that the Son of God himself, our Lord and God, as we read, took flesh or a body, that is, a man, from the womb of the Virgin Mary, as the angel foretold. And as all the Scriptures teach, and especially the teacher of the Gentiles himself, the Apostle, he took a man from the Virgin Mary, through whom he suffered with us. And this is the conclusion and confirmation of the whole faith, that the Trinity must always be kept, as we read in the Gospel: 'Go and baptize all nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.' The number of the Trinity is whole and perfect. And the Paraclete, the Spirit, is through the Son; who was sent and came according to the promise, to instruct, teach, and sanctify the apostles and all believers."

After so many and such great professions of impiety had been published, the Eastern bishops, gathered together, in turn drew up against them these definitions of their judgments. But since we must often name essence and substance, we must understand what essence means, lest, when about to speak of things, we do not know the thing the words mean. Essence is a thing that is, or that from which it is, and which subsists in that it abides. It may be called the essence, the nature, the kind, and the substance of each thing. But it is properly called essence because it always is. It is also substance for this reason: a thing that is must subsist in itself; and whatever subsists without doubt abides in a kind or nature or substance. When, therefore, we say that essence means nature or kind or substance, we understand that thing which subsists so as always to be in all these. Now, then, let us review the definitions of faith drawn up by the Easterners. I. "If anyone, hearing that the Son is the image of the invisible God, says that the image of God is the same as the invisible God, as though not confessing him truly Son, let him be anathema."

This excludes the assertion of those who would proclaim Father and Son in names only; since every image is of a form not differing from that of him to whom it is made like. For no one is an image to himself; an image must show him whose image it is. An image, then, is a likeness, imaged and undistinguished, of one thing to be made equal to another. There is therefore a Father, and there is a Son, because the Son is the image of the Father; and he who is an image, in order to be the image of a thing, must have in himself the form, nature, and essence of its author, insofar as he is its image. II. "And if anyone, hearing the Son say, 'For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son also to have life in himself,' says that he who received life from the Father, who also confesses, 'I live because of the Father,' is the same as he who gave it, let him be anathema."

The person of the one who receives is distinguished from that of the one who gives, so that the same one is not one and alone. For since he is under anathema who believes in a solitary and single being in professing the receiver and the giver, it cannot be understood that the one who gave received from himself, as one and the same. For he who lives and he through whom he lives are not one alone; for the one living for himself is one, the one professing that he lives through his author is another; and no one will profess that he who enjoys life and he through whom is the cause of living are one and the same. III. "And if anyone, hearing that the only-begotten Son is like the invisible God, does not say that the Son, who is the image of the invisible God, is like in essence, whose image he is understood to be even according to essence, as though not truly calling him Son, let him be anathema."

A nature undistinguished and not unlike is confirmed. For since the only-begotten Son of God is also the image of the invisible God, he must by form and nature be of like essence. Or how is nature distinguished between Son and Father, of a kind not differing, when the Son subsists by a nature begotten in him in the things proper to the Father, namely glory, power, might, invisibility, and essence? And so in these equal goods of divinity he is understood neither to be less, though he is the Son, nor the other to excel, though he is the Father, since the Son is made like the Father in form and is not unlike in kind; for the likeness of a Son begotten from the substance of the Father does not admit difference of substance, and the Son and image of the invisible God embraces in himself the whole form of the Father's divinity, such and as great as it is. And this is truly to be a Son: to have reproduced in himself the truth of the Father's form by the perfect likeness of a nature imaged in him. IV. "And if anyone, hearing this, 'For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son also to have life in himself,' does not say that the Son is like the Father even according to essence, though he testifies that he has it just as he said, let him be anathema. For it is plain that since the life understood in the Father signifies substance, and the life of the Only-begotten, which is begotten from the Father, is understood as essence, it thus signifies the likeness of essence to essence."

With such a confession of his origin is joined the perfect birth of an undivided nature. For what is life in each, that is signified in each as essence. And in the life that is begotten from life, that is, the essence that is born from essence, since it is not born unlike (because it is life from life), it holds in itself a nature not unlike its origin; for there is no discrepancy in the likeness of the essence born and the essence begetting, that is, of the life which is possessed and which was given (given, that is, by the Father to the Son). For what God begot from himself, out of the likeness of his own nature, he did not abandon, in whom the likeness is unbegotten, the property of his natural substance. For he has nothing other than what he gave; and as he has life, so he gave life to be had. And thus, what is born from essence, as life from life, like itself according to essence, admits no difference or unlikeness between the essence of the one born and the one begetting. V. "If anyone, hearing from the same speaker 'he founded' or 'created me' and 'he begot me', does not understand this 'he begot me' rather from likeness of essence, but says that 'he begot me' and 'he founded me' are the same, as though not saying that the perfect Son from God is signified as Son by two names (but, through the two names, that is, 'he founded me' and 'he begot', saying only a making and in no way a Son), as Wisdom set forth a devout understanding from the two: let him be anathema."

Against those who say that the Son of God is a creature or a thing made, it is opposed by the reasoning appended. For the profane presumption of the heretics' impiety comes from this: they say they have read, "The Lord founded" or "created me"; and this itself seems to be understood as a making or creation. But withdrawing the following sentence, from which the former takes its meaning, they seize from the first the authority for their impiety, so as to call him a creature, because Wisdom said she was created. But if she was created, how could she also be born? For every birth, of whatever kind, consists in its own nature from the begetting nature; but creation takes its beginning from the power of the creator, since a Creator is able to make a creature out of nothing. Wisdom, then, who said she was created, said in the same passage, following, that she was also begotten: referring creation to the unchangeable nature of the parent, which, beyond the form and custom of human birth, without any diminution or change of itself, created from itself what it begot. For the work of one who creates involves no suffering, whether of mingling or of birth. For what is created out of nothing begins at some time to be. And he who creates makes by his power what he founds; and creation is a work of power, not the birth of a nature from a begetting nature. But birth is the perfect issue of a lawful origin and a true nature; for the begotten nature took its nature from the begetting nature. But because the Son of God was not begotten after the pattern of bodily childbirth, but was born perfect God from perfect God, therefore Wisdom says that she was created, excluding from her begetting every nature of bodily suffering.

But to show that the nature in him is not of creation but of birth, she added "begotten", so that by confessing herself both created and begotten she might give a complete understanding of her birth: by "creation" signifying the unchangeable nature of the Father, and showing that the substance of her own nature begotten from God the Father is lawful and proper to it. And so the language of creation and of begetting has brought the understanding of a perfect birth: the one being without change, the other in the property of nature. And both become one, and the one is perfect in both: since the Son, born from God and without change in God, is so born from the Father as to be created; and the Father, unchangeable in himself and natural to the Son, so founds the Son as to beget him. The heresy, therefore, that dares to profess that the Son of God is a creature is condemned, because the following profession of natural begetting extinguishes the impious opinion of a creature made from nothing, since the impassible perfection of the Godhead has been shown by it. VI. "And if anyone, conceding in the Son the likeness of the Father according to essence, as the Son himself reveals by what he says, 'For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son also to have life in himself', and according to working by what he teaches, 'For whatever the Father does, the Son also does likewise', yet grants only a likeness according to working, and defrauds the Son of the likeness according to essence, which is the most principal point of our faith, as though defrauding himself of the knowledge of eternal life, which is in the Father and the Son: let him be anathema."

When the heretics are shut in by the authorities of the Scriptures, they usually grant the Son only this, that he is like the Father in power alone, but they take from him the likeness of nature: foolish and impious, not understanding that there is no likeness of power except from likeness of nature. For an inferior nature never attains the power of a nature higher and stronger than itself. Or what will those who assert this profess about God the almighty Father, if the power of an inferior nature is made equal to his power? For it cannot be denied that the Son is able to do the same, since he said, "Whatever the Father does, the Son also does likewise." But likeness of nature follows on likeness of power, when he says, "As the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son also to have life in himself." In "life" there is the meaning of nature and essence; and as it is had, so it is taught to have been given to be had. The likeness of life therefore holds the likeness of power; for the likeness of power cannot belong to an unlike nature. And so likeness of essence must follow on likeness of power; because as the Son does the same things the Father does, so, as the Father has life, so he has given life to the Son to be had. The rashness of an impious profession is therefore condemned, which, confessing likeness of power, has dared to proclaim unlikeness of nature; since the principal faith of our hope is to confess the substance of divinity in the Father and the Son as not differing. VII. "And if anyone, professing that he believes in the Father and the Son, says that the Father is the father of one unlike himself in essence but like in working, as though speaking profane and novel words against the essence of the Son and destroying his being truly Son of God: let him be anathema."

By confused and mingled words the heretics very often evade the truth and catch the ears of the unwary by the sound of common terms, proclaiming Father and Son in names only, and not also in the truth of a natural and genuine essence; for they know that God is called the Father of all created things, and they remember that all the saints are named sons of God. On this pattern they confess Father and Son according to names common to the universe, so that they are called Father and Son rather than are. For they are called so, but are not, if in them there is a distinct nature of different essence; since the truth of the name of Father can be acquired only from the offspring of his own nature. The Father, then, cannot be called the father of a substance foreign to and unlike himself, because a perfect birth does not have a discordant difference from the original substance. All this impiety is therefore rejected, which speaks of the Father not as the father of a Son begotten from himself according to his own nature. For God will not be called Father on account of having a creation like his power and working, but if he has begotten a nature of an essence not unlike and not foreign to himself; for natural birth does not admit difference from the Father's nature. And for this reason they are anathema who assert that the Father is the father of a nature unlike himself, so that something other than God is born from God, and who think that the essence of the Father degenerated from itself in the Son by begetting. For they destroy, as far as in them lies, that very unbegettable and unchangeable essence of the Father, who have dared to thrust upon him, in the birth of his Only-begotten, the unlikeness of a degenerated natural essence. VIII. "And if anyone, understanding that the Son is like in essence to him whose Son he is understood to be, says that the Son is the same as the Father, or a part of the Father, or that the incorporeal Son subsists from the incorporeal Father by emanation or some passion, as bodily sons do: let him be anathema."

In all points there is a guard against the faults of each perversity, and no occasion for deceit is admitted. For many of the heretics say that the Son is like the Father according to the Godhead for this reason: that by the property of likeness they may confirm that the Father is the same as the Son, since an undistinguished likeness seems to admit an occasion for a single and solitary being. For what does not differ in kind seems to remain in a unity of nature.

But birth does not admit this fable, because a union has no birth. For what is born has a father of its birth. Nor, because the divinity of the one born is undistinguished from that of the one begetting, is the same one therefore both begetter and begotten; since begetter and born cannot but be one and another, and again, born and begetter cannot be unlike. He is anathema, then, who will proclaim likeness of nature in the Father and the Son so as to abolish the personal meaning of the Son; because, though one does not differ from the other in anything, through their mutual likeness, yet likeness itself, not admitting union, confesses Father and Son through this, that the Son is the unchangeable likeness of the Father. For the Son is not a part of the Father, so that one could be called both born and begetter. Nor is he an emanation, so that by a continuous flow, through a bodily and undivided going forth, the flow itself, retained in its source, should be to itself, in a connected series and stream, both source and flow. But it is a perfect birth, abiding with likeness of nature: not begun bodily by bodily conception and childbirth, but the incorporeal Son subsisting from the incorporeal Father according to the likeness of the same nature. IX. "And if anyone, because the Father is never understood to be the Son and the Son is never understood to be the Father, says that the Son is other than the Father, because the Father is one and the Son another, according to what was said, 'There is another who bears witness to me, the Father who sent me', and on account of this property of the person of the Father and the Son, to be devoutly understood in the church, fearing lest the Son and the Father should ever be understood to be the same, does not say that he is like the Father even according to essence: let him be anathema."