On the Trinity

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–1.24 · 1.25–2.6 · 2.7–2.30 · 2.31–3.15 · 3.16–4.7 · 4.8–4.24 · 4.25–4.42 · 5.1–5.21 · 5.22–6.1 · 6.2–6.20 · 6.21–6.35 · 6.36–7.2 · 7.3–7.19 · 7.20–7.32 · 7.33–8.6 · 8.7–8.28 · 8.29–8.49 · 8.50–9.11 · 9.12–9.29 · 9.30–9.44 · 9.45–9.61 · 9.62–10.6 · 10.7–10.31 · 10.32–10.52 · 10.53–10.71 · 11.1–11.18 · 11.19–11.41 · 11.42–12.15 · 12.16–12.38 · 12.39–12.57

1. 1.1Hilary begins by asking what the true purpose of human life is, and rejects leisure and wealth as a life no higher than that of beasts.
2. 1.2Thoughtful people rejected a beastlike life and turned to virtue, believing that God did not give life merely to end in death.
3. 1.3The moral philosophers gave sound but ordinary precepts; Hilary longed instead to know God himself, the giver of life.
4. 1.4Pagan theologies contradict one another; reason shows that the divine must be one, eternal, and almighty.
5. 1.5In the books of Moses Hilary found God's name “I am who I am,” which fittingly expresses God's eternal being.
6. 1.6Isaiah and the Psalm show that God holds and fills all things, present everywhere and contained by nothing.
7. 1.7From the beauty of creation the mind infers that its Creator is supremely beautiful, beyond comprehension yet not beyond perception.
8. 1.8The mind rests in the conviction that God is too great to be understood but can be believed.
9. 1.9Reason suggests that God did not create man only to perish, and that piety looks for a reward of immortality.
10. 1.10The prologue of John's Gospel taught Hilary that the Word is God from God, became flesh, and makes believers sons of God.
11. 1.11The Son shares the Father's eternity and nature, and became true flesh so that believers might become sons of God.
12. 1.12Hilary received the mystery of the incarnation by faith, not by the measure of human reason, believing in order to understand.
13. 1.13Colossians 2 warns against philosophy and teaches that in Christ, fully God, believers are buried and raised in baptism and freed from the curse.
14. 1.14Secure in hope, Hilary regarded bodily life as training for immortality and preached this faith to others in his ministry.
15. 1.15Hilary introduces heretics who measure God's nature by their own weakness and set themselves up as judges of religion.
16. 1.16Hilary describes two errors: those who make the Son merely an extension of the Father, and those who call him a creature rather than born.
17. 1.17Against these errors Hilary will show from Scripture that Father and Son are one God, neither two gods nor one solitary person.
18. 1.18Hilary asks his readers to let Scripture's words, not their own presumptions, govern their understanding of God.
19. 1.19Comparisons from earthly things are aids to human weakness and never adequate descriptions of God.
20. 1.20Hilary explains that his books are ordered as a gradual ascent for the reader.
21. 1.21Book 2 will explain the names Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the baptismal formula.
22. 1.22Book 3 will explain the saying “I am in the Father, and the Father in me.”
23. 1.23Book 4 will answer the Arian creed and show from the Old Testament that Christ is God without denying that God is one.
24. 1.24Book 5 will show from the Prophets that Christ is true God by birth, without denying the one true God.
25. 1.25Book 6 will expose how the Arians condemned other heretics to cloak their own error, and prove from many witnesses that Christ is Son of God.
26. 1.26Book 7 will set Sabellius, Ebion, and the Arians against one another, each refuting the others, while the church confesses Christ as true God born before the ages and made man.
27. 1.27After the Old Testament proofs, Hilary will prove from the Gospels that the Son of God is true God by name, birth, nature, power, and his own words.
28. 1.28Book 8 will defend the unity of God against the Arian claim that Father and Son are one only in will.
29. 1.29Book 9 will answer the Arian use of texts such as “No one is good but God,” “the only true God,” “the Father is greater than I,” and the Son's not knowing the day.
30. 1.30Hilary resolves the seemingly contradictory sayings of Christ by distinguishing what belongs to his dispensation as man from what declares his divine nature.
31. 1.31Book 10 will answer the Arian use of Christ's sorrow, his prayer in Gethsemane, and his words on the cross.
32. 1.32Christ's words of fear and of confidence do not contradict each other; read together, they show a confident and willing Savior.
33. 1.33Book 11 will answer the Arian use of “my God and your God” and of the Son's final subjection in 1 Corinthians 15.
34. 1.34Book 12 will refute the Arian slogans “there was when he was not” and “he was made from nothing,” teaching an eternal birth of the Son.
35. 1.35Book 12 will also explain Proverbs 8:22, “The Lord created me,” distinguishing Wisdom's eternal birth from her being “created” for God's works.
36. 1.36The work ends by teaching about the Holy Spirit, who must not be counted among creatures.
37. 1.37Hilary prays to God the Father for the help of the Spirit to preach him truly as Father of the only-begotten Son.
38. 1.38Hilary prays for grace to confess the one unbegotten Father and the one Lord Jesus Christ, true God born from him.
39. 2.1The baptismal command names the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and contains everything needed for salvation.
40. 2.2Hilary regrets that heresy forces him to put into words what faith should hold in reverent silence.
41. 2.3Heresy lies in misreading Scripture; to deny that the Son shares the Father's substance is to deny that the Father is truly Father.
42. 2.4Hilary surveys the errors of Sabellius, Ebion, and the Arians of his day, and how they also corrupt the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.
43. 2.5Forced by the heretics to go beyond the words of the baptismal formula, Hilary will explain the nature behind the names Father, Son, and Spirit, praying for pardon.
44. 2.6The Father is self-existent, infinite, and eternal, beyond understanding, and is truly known only through the Son.
45. 2.7Every human description of the Father falls short; he is to be believed and adored rather than defined.
46. 2.8The Son is the true, perfect offspring of the unbegotten Father, not a part, an adoption, or a creature, and has all that the Father has.
47. 2.9The manner of the Son's birth is a secret even to angels; we do not understand even our own begetting, so we should not demand to understand God's.
48. 2.10Hilary sets out the Lord's sayings about the Father and the Son and invites the reader to press on into the mystery, knowing it cannot be fully reached.
49. 2.11The Son is God from God, one from one, differing from the Father in nothing; faith knows that this lies beyond comprehension.
50. 2.12Neither Greek philosophy nor Jewish learning can explain the Son's generation, and confessing his miracles is not enough, since heretics confess them too.
51. 2.13John the fisherman, unlearned, declares “In the beginning was the Word,” placing the Word beyond every beginning and all time.
52. 2.14John's “the Word was with God” shows that the Word, existing before time, is with the Father.
53. 2.15The Word of John 1 is not a spoken or mental word, for it is “with God” and “was God”: a living reality, not a sound.
54. 2.16“He was in the beginning with God” shows that the Word is eternal, truly God, and distinct from the Father without breaking God's unity.
55. 2.17Since all things, time included, were made through the Word, he is not bounded by time.
56. 2.18“Without him nothing was made” implies that the Word works together with another, the Father, and so is not alone.
57. 2.19Hilary raises a difficulty about “without him nothing was made” and answers from Paul that all things are through and in the Son.
58. 2.20What was made in the Word is life, for he was born as living God, perfect from the first; from this follow the sayings of his oneness with the Father.
59. 2.21John, who reclined on the Lord's breast, taught what human language cannot reach; believers should adore the Father and the Son as he did.
60. 2.22The catholic faith is a firm foundation and a universal remedy against all heresies: one unbegotten Father and one perfect, only-begotten Son, beyond time.
61. 2.23The Gospels answer Sabellius, Ebion, and the Arians alike; Peter's confession, “You are the Son of the living God,” is the rock of faith.
62. 2.24For our salvation the Son was born of the Virgin by his own divine power, taking human flesh so that all humanity might be sanctified in him.
63. 2.25The eternal God became a helpless infant for our sake; his humiliation is our exaltation.
64. 2.26The miracles surrounding Christ's conception show the divine dignity behind his lowly human beginning.
65. 2.27At Christ's birth angels, prophecy, a star, and the Magi bear witness that the wailing infant is God with us.
66. 2.28Throughout his life Christ was man by the flesh he took and God by the works he did.
67. 2.29The Holy Spirit exists, is given to believers, and belongs with the Father and the Son in the confession of faith, as Paul's letters show.
68. 2.30The words “holy spirit” are sometimes used of the Father or the Son, since each is spirit and holy.
69. 2.31Jesus' words “God is spirit” to the Samaritan woman teach that God is not confined to a place, and do not abolish the distinct name and gift of the Holy Spirit.
70. 2.32Paul's “the Lord is Spirit” distinguishes God's spiritual nature from the Spirit who belongs to him, the one Spirit who inspired the prophets and the apostles.
71. 2.33Christ promised the Spirit as Advocate to guide believers into all truth and enlighten their faith.
72. 2.34Paul describes the Spirit's work: making believers sons of God, enabling the confession of Jesus as Lord, and distributing gifts.
73. 2.35The Spirit gives the mind the light of knowledge of God, as light enables the eye; he is to be sought and kept by faith and obedience.
74. 3.1Book 3 takes up the difficult saying “I am in the Father, and the Father in me,” which human reason cannot grasp unaided.
75. 3.2Hilary recalls that the Father is eternal, unchangeable, and self-sufficient, beyond all place and time.
76. 3.3The Father begot the Son from himself before all time, without division or change, giving him all that God is; the Son's bodily state was assumed for our salvation.
77. 3.4The whole Son is born from the whole Father and has all that the Father has; so each is in the other, one in power and nature.
78. 3.5The changing of water into wine at Cana shows a divine power whose working is incomprehensible though its effect is certain.
79. 3.6The feeding of the five thousand likewise shows a visible miracle whose manner cannot be understood, calling for faith in God's power.
80. 3.7Christ worked miracles not for display but to overcome human unbelief, since he who made all things needs no praise from us.
81. 3.8Worldly wise men argue that a son born from one parent must be a part, leaving neither perfect; Scripture condemns such wisdom.
82. 3.9The Son became man to witness to the Father, freely doing the Father's will, as his prayer in John 17 shows.
83. 3.10The Son's glorification at the hour of the passion is shown in the darkened sun, the quaking earth, and the split rocks.
84. 3.11The centurion's confession at the cross fulfils the prayer “glorify your Son” and shows that Christ is the true and proper Son of God.
85. 3.12The mutual glorification of Father and Son shows not weakness in the Son but the same divine power in both.
86. 3.13The Father, who cannot gain glory, is glorified when the Son makes him known and gives eternal life; all the Son's glory is the Father's.
87. 3.14Eternal life is knowing both the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he sent; the Son is joined to the Father, not separated from his true divinity.
88. 3.15The Father is glorified when the Son accomplishes his work on earth; all praise of Christ redounds to the Father.
89. 3.16The Son prays that the flesh he assumed may be raised into the eternal glory he always had with the Father.
90. 3.17The name of God was known, but not as Father of an only-begotten Son born with the fullness of divinity; this is what the Son revealed.
91. 3.18Christ's miracles, real but beyond explanation, teach us to accept his indescribable birth from the Father.
92. 3.19If the Virgin could bear a child without loss to herself, we should not think the Father's begetting of the Son impossible.
93. 3.20The risen Lord's bodily entry through shut doors is a fact beyond explanation; so too the Son's birth from the Father must be believed though not understood.
94. 3.21Human unbelief would overturn creation itself if it could; where it can, it attacks the truth of God's words.
95. 3.22The Son's chief work was to reveal God as Father; the Arian view of the Son as a creature empties the names Father and Son of meaning.
96. 3.23“I and the Father are one” and “the Father is in me” teach the same fullness of divinity in both; the Son, as image and likeness, is distinct but not unlike.
97. 3.24A created mind cannot fully understand its Creator; unbelief is the folly of measuring God by one's own weakness, as Paul teaches.
98. 3.25The cross seems foolish to Greeks and a stumbling block to Jews, yet God saves believers through it; what seems weak in God surpasses human wisdom.
99. 3.26We must acknowledge our own foolishness, refuse to confine God within natural laws, and believe about him only what he himself testifies.
100. 4.1Book 4 sets out to expose the Arian teaching, its arguments, and its misuse of Scripture.
101. 4.2Human language and comparisons are inadequate for God but necessary; they point from visible things to invisible ones.
102. 4.3The Arians teach that Christ is a son and god by adoption and appointment, a creature made from nothing, though the highest of creatures.
103. 4.4The Arians reject the term homoousion (“of one substance”) by claiming it implies Sabellianism, a prior shared matter, or a division of God.
104. 4.5The Arians place the Son's birth in time, claiming that to call him eternal would make him unbegotten.
105. 4.6The church rejects the errors the Arians attribute to the homoousion: it confesses one Father from whom, one Son through whom, the Son born from eternity of the Father's substance without loss to him.
106. 4.7Hilary will answer the Arians' proof texts one by one from the Gospels and the apostles.
107. 4.8Hilary lists the texts the Arians cite to reserve to the Father alone the titles one, wise, true, good, powerful, unchangeable, immortal, invisible, and unbegotten.
108. 4.9If the Father's attributes belonged to him “alone,” the Son would be false, foolish, bodily, evil, weak, and mortal; the Arian argument proves too much.
109. 4.10Whatever glory belongs to the Son honors the Father who begot him.
110. 4.11The Arians call the Son a perfect creature made from nothing, citing Proverbs 8:22, Hebrews, and “the Father is greater than I.”
111. 4.12The Arian creed (the letter of Arius to Alexander) confesses one unbegotten God and calls the Son a perfect creature made by God's will before the ages.
112. 4.13The Arian creed continues: the Son was not before he was born, is not co-eternal with the Father, and the Father as his principle rules over him.
113. 4.14God must be known from his own testimony; Hilary will interpret each Arian proof text from its context.
114. 4.15God is one, as Moses taught against idolatry; but this does not deny the Son's divinity, since he is God from God, and Moses himself will be shown to teach it.
115. 4.16In Genesis 1 God speaks and God makes: the Father commands and the Son, through whom all things were made, carries it out.
116. 4.17“Let us make man in our image” shows that God was not alone in creating, but spoke to another who shares his likeness.
117. 4.18Genesis says God made man “in the image of God,” distinguishing God and God while showing one shared image and nature.
118. 4.19God's words to Noah, “I made man in the image of God,” again distinguish God from God while showing one nature.
119. 4.20The Arians' own formula, all things from the Father and through the Son, matches the two persons in the creation of man.
120. 4.21Wisdom in Proverbs 8, whom even the Arians identify as Christ, says she was with God arranging creation and rejoicing in it.
121. 4.22Hilary will show that Moses, while preaching one God, speaks of God and God throughout his books.
122. 4.23The angel of the Lord who spoke to Hagar is also called Lord and God: he is the Son, “the angel of great counsel.”
123. 4.24The same one who spoke to Hagar as angel speaks to Abraham as God about Ishmael, showing that the angel is God born from God.
124. 4.25Hilary sets out the Genesis narratives of the three visitors to Abraham, Sodom, Isaac's birth, and Hagar in the desert.
125. 4.26The angel who spoke to Hagar is shown by her confession and by God's words to Abraham to be God himself.
126. 4.27The man whom Abraham worshipped promised Isaac's birth, and Scripture calls the one who fulfilled it Lord and God; he is also the judge of all the earth.
127. 4.28Lot addressed the two angels in the plural, while Abraham worshipped the one Lord; Scripture keeps the angels distinct from God.
128. 4.29“The Lord rained fire from the Lord” shows two persons sharing the one name, as the Father gave judgment to the Son.
129. 4.30God's command to Jacob to build an altar “to God who appeared to you” shows God speaking of God, two persons with one name.
130. 4.31The angel and the man who appeared to Abraham are God and Lord; God also came to Jacob as a man and wrestled with him.
131. 4.32The angel of the Lord in the burning bush speaks as the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
132. 4.33Moses' song calls the angels and sons of God to worship God, and his blessing of Joseph names him who appeared in the bush; the Son is God, distinct from the Father.
133. 4.34Moses, whom the Arians cite for the oneness of God, also teaches that the Son is God; the prophets come next.
134. 4.35“God, your God, has anointed you” distinguishes two persons, the Father and the Son, both named God, without a difference of nature.
135. 4.36“Before me there is no God, and after me there will be none” is spoken together with the chosen Servant, and does not deny that God was born from God.
136. 4.37In Hosea the Father promises to save Judah “in the Lord their God,” naming the Son God.
137. 4.38In Isaiah 45 God addresses the king he raised up as God; the Magi with their gifts fulfil the prophecy of Egypt's toil and the Sabaeans' merchandise.
138. 4.39The “men of stature in chains” are the apostles, Peter and Paul, whose preaching that God was in Christ fulfils Isaiah's prophecy.
139. 4.40Isaiah's “God is in you, and there is no God besides you” is said to the Son: God dwells in God because God is from God.
140. 4.41Those who oppose the Son will be put to shame; the Father himself says to the Son, “There is no God besides you,” so the Arian “honor” to the Father dishonors him.
141. 4.42A passage Hilary cites as Jeremiah (Baruch 3:35–37) speaks of God seen on earth among men: this is the Son, one God with the Father by unity of substance, not of person.
142. 5.1The Arian appeal to “one God” set a trap: to deny it was impious, but to affirm it seemed to deny the Son or to fall into Sabellianism.
143. 5.2Hilary answered by showing from Moses himself both that God is one and that there is God and God, deferring the question of unity.
144. 5.3Book 5 asks whether the Son is true God; truth is shown by nature and power, as true wheat proves itself by becoming bread.
145. 5.4The Son, through whom all things were made from nothing, has the nature and power of God and so is true God.
146. 5.5In creation God speaks and God makes; the Son who carries out the Father's word has the same power and nature and so is true God.
147. 5.6Hilary defers the Gospel texts such as “the Father is greater than I” and answers the Arians first from the Law and the Prophets.
148. 5.7“Let us make man” implies a partner in creation who is of one mind with God and able to do the work, not a false god.
149. 5.8Man was made in an image common to the Father and the Son; a true God and a false one could not share one image.
150. 5.9Since all things are made through the Son, man made “in the image of God” is made in the image shared by the Father and the Son.
151. 5.10The Law names God and God and makes man in their common image, showing both to be true God.
152. 5.11“Angel” names an office, not a nature; the Son is called angel as sent by the Father, yet is true God by birth from him.
153. 5.12Hilary admits his zeal has run ahead to the confession of one true God in Father and Son, which he will treat fully later.
154. 5.13The angel who promised Ishmael a great nation did the work of God, and so is true God.
155. 5.14There is no such thing as a God who is not true God, any more than fire that is not true fire; if the Son is God, he is true God.
156. 5.15Abraham worshipped as God the man who spoke to him, to whom nothing is impossible; the Arians who deny him are not Abraham's children.
157. 5.16The Lord who rained fire from the Lord is the just judge of all the earth; by the Arians' own creed, the only just judge is true God.
158. 5.17The appearances of God in human form to the patriarchs foreshadowed the incarnation; the one seen as a man was true God.
159. 5.18The Arians cannot see God in Christ's birth and sufferings, yet only almighty God could become what he was not while remaining what he was.
160. 5.19Jacob wrestled with a man yet saw God face to face and sought his blessing; the one who blessed and renamed him is true God.
161. 5.20God, telling Jacob to honor the God who appeared to him at Bethel, shows two who share the one name and nature of God.
162. 5.21God is known only from his own revelation; Moses, learned as he was, knew God only when God spoke to him from the bush.
163. 5.22The angel in the bush is the God of the patriarchs and “He who is,” and so true God.
164. 5.23The God who gave the Law through a Mediator at Sinai, whose voice Israel could not bear, is true God, as Moses' whole witness shows.
165. 5.24Hilary sums up: the Law everywhere speaks of God and God, Lord and Lord, with no hint of a true and a false God.
166. 5.25The Arians cite “they will bless you, the true God” to deny the Son's true divinity; Hilary also confesses one true God, but in the nature of the Son as well.
167. 5.26The Arians have added “you” to Isaiah's “they will bless the true God,” making it address another; the text refers to the speaker himself.
168. 5.27Isaiah 65 foretells a time when “the true God” will be blessed; the new phrase anticipates the denial of the incarnate Son's true divinity.
169. 5.28Isaiah foretells that the name Israel will pass to God's chosen ones; Paul calls those who walk by Christ's rule the Israel of God.
170. 5.29The “new name” Isaiah foretells for God's servants is the name Christian, given by the Lord who speaks and judges.
171. 5.30Those who bear Christ's new name bless and swear by him as true God.
172. 5.31The context of Isaiah 65, God appearing to those who did not seek him and stretching out his hands to a rebellious people, shows that the true God spoken of is Christ.
173. 5.32Paul in Romans 10 applies these prophecies to Christ; no heretic is a better interpreter than the apostle caught up to the third heaven.
174. 5.33Isaiah, who said he had seen no God but this one, saw the glory of the only-begotten God, as John's Gospel confirms.
175. 5.34The God who was seen is the Son, true God; the Arian creed, by reserving every divine attribute to the Father alone, strips the Son of them.
176. 5.35Having shown the Son to be true God, Hilary turns to show that he is not a second God, but one God with the Father in nature, not person.
177. 5.36Paul's use of Deuteronomy 32 shows that “there is no God besides me” was spoken by the Son.
178. 5.37The Son is God from God and God in God by birth into the same nature; so “there is no God besides me” is true of him.
179. 5.38Isaiah's “God is in you, and there is no God besides you” confirms the undivided divinity of the Father and the Son.
180. 5.39The passage cited as Jeremiah (Baruch 3) shows no other God beside the Son; the church confesses one God, not a solitary one.
181. 6.1Hilary writes knowing that the Arian heresy has spread through the churches of almost every province, and that error shared by many is hard to correct.
182. 6.2As a bishop Hilary writes to win back many from the heresy, so that they may honor the Father by honoring the Son.
183. 6.3The heresy is deadlier than earthquakes, wars, and plagues, for God will deny those who deny him.
184. 6.4The Arian creed borrows pious language to introduce its impiety; Hilary sets it out again to answer it from the Gospels.
185. 6.5The Arian creed (letter of Arius to Alexander) is quoted again: the Son a perfect creature made by God's will before the ages.
186. 6.6The conclusion of the Arian creed is quoted again: the Son not co-eternal, the Father his principle and his God.
187. 6.7The Arian creed is a coiled serpent: it uses true names to slip in falsehood, never calling the Son God and condemning other heresies to disguise its own.
188. 6.8Having proved from the Law and Prophets that the Son is true God, Hilary now turns to the Gospels, first exposing how the Arians hide behind condemning other heretics.
189. 6.9By condemning Valentinus's “emanation,” the Arians aim to deny any true birth of the Son; but the church, rejecting Valentinus's aeons, confesses God truly born from God.
190. 6.10By condemning Mani's “part of the substance,” the Arians try to deny the one substance; but the church rejects any portion and confesses whole God from whole God.
191. 6.11By condemning Sabellius, the Arians aim to remove all unity between Father and Son; the church rejects Sabellian union but holds the unity of nature.
192. 6.12By condemning Hieracas's lamp divided in two, the Arians attack “light from light”; but God's nature is not material, and the Son is light from light by birth.
193. 6.13In rejecting “one who existed before and was afterward born,” the Arians prepare to deny the Son's true birth from God and to say he came from nothing.
194. 6.14The Arian phrase “he was not before he was born” is meant to make the Son come from nothing; but his birth is from the abiding God.
195. 6.15The Arian creed ends by claiming that birth from God's substance would make God bodily and divisible; Hilary hopes that those erring from ignorance will be corrected.
196. 6.16“From him,” “from the womb,” and “I came forth from the Father” are God's own words and show a true birth of the Son from the Father's nature, not from nothing.
197. 6.17The Arians correct God's own account of the Son's birth by claiming it makes God changeable; but God must be believed about himself.
198. 6.18For the Arians the Son is a creature: son by adoption, god in name only, as the Psalm calls men “gods.”
199. 6.19Hilary prays to the Father that he learned from Moses, the prophets, and the Gospels to worship God not as solitary but with his only-begotten Son.
200. 6.20Ironically Hilary asks God whether Moses, the prophets, and the apostles deceived him, since they taught him the faith he holds.
201. 6.21Hilary tells God he cannot unlearn the faith he received from Scripture: the Son, begotten by God's power, has all that is the Father's.
202. 6.22Hilary now proves from the Gospels that Christ is truly Son of God by nature, by the witness of the Father, himself, the apostles, believers, demons, Jews, and Gentiles.
203. 6.23At the baptism the Father's voice, “This is my beloved Son,” marks Christ as his own Son, unlike those called sons by adoption.
204. 6.24At the transfiguration the Father again declares “This is my beloved Son; hear him,” directing us to the Son's own testimony.
205. 6.25Christ, who constantly speaks of his own lowliness, also calls God “my Father” and himself the Son of God; to make these names adoptive is to accuse God of lying.
206. 6.26Christ's saying that all things are handed to him and that only Father and Son know each other shows that the names Father and Son express their nature.
207. 6.27The Father's witness at the baptism and transfiguration, together with the Son's works, show a true sonship, unlike the adopted sonship of the saints.
208. 6.28Christ alone knows the Father because he alone is “from him”; this unique knowledge shows a unique birth, not creation.
209. 6.29If the Son came from nothing, his origin would be known; that the impious do not know where he is from shows that he is born from the unknown Father.
210. 6.30“If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came forth from God”: love for the Father requires believing that the Son is born from him, not merely sent.
211. 6.31“I came forth from God” refers to the Son's birth, “I have come from the Father into the world” to his incarnation; the two must not be confused.
212. 6.32Hilary turns to the apostles' faith to show they understood “I came forth from God” as a true birth.
213. 6.33Though the apostles had seen Christ's miracles, they confessed only when he said he came forth from God, recognizing in his divine knowledge a divine birth.
214. 6.34The apostles' confession answered “I came forth from God,” not “I came from the Father into the world”: they now grasped his birth from God.
215. 6.35The Son's “coming forth” from God is a perfect, living birth without division or loss, not the beginning of a creature.
216. 6.36Peter's confession, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” revealed by the Father, recognized Christ's divine nature, not merely a title; on this confession the church is built.
217. 6.37Peter's confession of Christ as Son of God is the foundation of the church and the key of the kingdom; to call Christ a creature denies Peter's whole apostleship.
218. 6.38Peter was rebuked even for a lesser fault; had he called Christ a creature he would not have been blessed. A faith that calls Christ a creature is not the church's.
219. 6.39John's “the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father” excludes any idea of adoption.
220. 6.40God's love in giving his only-begotten Son would be cheap if the Son were a creature; the gift shows a true, proper Son.
221. 6.41John wrote so that we might believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; since salvation depends on confessing the Son, the name must be true.
222. 6.42John's letters teach that love for the Father includes love for the one born from him, and that whoever denies the Son is antichrist and lacks the Father.
223. 6.43John, who lay on Jesus' breast, stood at the cross, ran to the tomb, and saw the Revelation, calls Christ the true Son; the Arians have no such authority for their teaching.
224. 6.44Paul calls Christ God's own Son, while distinguishing believers, who are sons by adoption through the Spirit.
225. 6.45In Romans 8:32 Paul says God did not spare his “own” (ἴδιος) Son, a word marking a true Son, unlike the adopted sons he has just described.
226. 6.46Denying the Son, whom the Father, the Son himself, Peter, John, and Paul proclaim, is not ignorance but hatred, preparing the way for the Antichrist.
227. 6.47Martha's confession, “You are the Christ, the Son of God,” shows that eternal life depends on this faith.
228. 6.48Christ asked the healed blind man, “Do you believe in the Son of God?”; faith in the Son, not merely in “Christ,” brings eternal life.
229. 6.49Even the demons cry out that Jesus is Son of the most high God; they say nothing of a creature or adoption.
230. 6.50The high priest's question shows that even unbelieving Jews held the Christ to be the Son of God; the Arians, who know he was born of Mary, deny it with less excuse.
231. 6.51The disciples in the boat confessed, “Truly he is the Son of God”; the Arian is shipwrecked by a storm of the mind.
232. 6.52The Roman centurion at the cross, seeing the signs at Christ's death, confessed, “Truly this was the Son of God.”
233. 7.1Book 7, the most important, faces a heresy that uses the church's own language, one God, Son of God, God unchangeable, to deny the Son's divine birth.
234. 7.2Having proved the Son a true Son, Hilary now proves from the Gospels that he is true God, neither solitary nor a second God.
235. 7.3Hilary writes amid danger from Sabellius, the Arians, and Photinus; the church must confess one God who is not solitary.
236. 7.4The truth shines through its opponents: the heresies refute one another, and the one church triumphs over them all.
237. 7.5Sabellius, seeing God's power in Christ, merges Father and Son; but “I and the Father are one” signifies two persons of one nature.
238. 7.6The Arians and Sabellius refute each other: Sabellius shows God in Christ's works, the Arians that the Son is distinct; the church holds both.
239. 7.7Photinus, Sabellius, and the Arians each refute part of the others' errors; the church holds the whole truth: the Son exists, is God by nature, and is the Creator before the ages.
240. 7.8Hilary has shown the heretics' confusion to guard against charges of preaching two gods or a solitary one; he now proves the Son is God by nature.
241. 7.9Christ is shown to be God by name, birth, nature, power, and profession; first by name, since “the Word was God” without qualification.
242. 7.10Moses was made a “god to Pharaoh” and men are called “gods,” but these names are granted; they are not names of nature.
243. 7.11The names Word, Wisdom, and Power express the Son's true birth from the Father, who is never without them; “the Word was God” signifies God's very being, not a granted title.
244. 7.12Thomas's confession, “My Lord and my God,” after the resurrection was a confession of Christ's divine nature, which Christ accepted and blessed.
245. 7.13The one name “God” for Father and Son expresses one nature, not two gods; the Son has the name by birth.
246. 7.14Birth transmits the parent's nature; the Son, born of God who is spirit, is God, not a creature that began or developed.
247. 7.15John 5:18 shows that Jesus, calling God his own Father, made himself equal to God; such equality comes from birth and excludes both solitude and difference.
248. 7.16John 5:19–23 confirms the Son's equality; the birth includes name, nature, power, and profession, so these cannot be treated separately.
249. 7.17“The Son can do nothing of himself but what he sees the Father doing” expresses not weakness but the Son's birth and his possession of the Father's power.
250. 7.18The Son does “the same things” as the Father, showing one nature, and does them “likewise,” showing his birth as a distinct person.
251. 7.19The Father “showing” the Son his works teaches us the Son's birth, not ignorance in the Son, who gives life to whom he wills.
252. 7.20The Father has given all judgment to the Son so that all may honor the Son as the Father; equal honor shows one nature, given by birth.
253. 7.21In John 5 the Son is shown to be Son, since he does nothing of himself; God, since he does all the Father does; one with the Father in honor; and distinct, since he is sent.
254. 7.22In John 10:27–30 the Son's hand and the Father's hand are one: the Son received the Father's power by birth, and “I and the Father are one.”
255. 7.23The Arians, unable to stone Christ like the Jews of John 10, attack him with words, denying that “I and the Father are one” means one nature.
256. 7.24Christ answered the charge of blasphemy from Psalm 82: if men are called gods, the one sanctified and sent by the Father may call himself Son of God.
257. 7.25“I and the Father are one” shows name, nature, and birth: two real persons, one nature, united by birth, not merged.
258. 7.26Christ asks to be believed Son of God because he does the Father's works; only a Son by nature can be equal to God without dishonoring him.
259. 7.27The works prove that “the Father is in me and I in him”: God is undivided life, and the Son born living from the living Father has life in himself.
260. 7.28Human birth only partly illustrates the divine: in God all is life and power, so the Son's birth involves no change or loss.
261. 7.29Fire kindled from fire, light from light, illustrates a birth without division or loss of nature.
262. 7.30These comparisons help the simple to see that the Son's birth is not unbelievable, without claiming to match God's nature.
263. 7.31Father and Son are in each other by a perfect birth, not by mixing: neither two gods nor one solitary person, but one God.
264. 7.32Since the Son is from and in the Father, the church's faith preaches one God whether it names the Father or the Son, neither two gods nor one solitary person.
265. 7.33John 14:6–11, “I am the way… he who has seen me has seen the Father,” reveals the whole faith; the way to the Father is through the Son.
266. 7.34Through the Son, already seen in the flesh, the Father who is in him is to be known; Jesus separates the time of seeing from that of knowing.
267. 7.35Philip's “Show us the Father” was not unbelief but a request to understand how the Father had been seen in the Son.
268. 7.36Christ's divine works should have revealed the Father's nature in him; hence his complaint that he was not known.
269. 7.37“He who has seen me has seen the Father” refers to spiritual sight: the Son is the living image of the living Father, of the same nature and power.
270. 7.38Only God's own words can express this: the Father is seen in the Son, so they are one nature but not one person.
271. 7.39The Father and the Son are in each other not as one person in two masks, nor by mixing, but by the birth of living God from living God.
272. 7.40“The words I speak I do not speak from myself; the Father who abides in me does his works” shows both the Son's distinct person and his unity of nature with the Father.
273. 7.41The mutual indwelling of Father and Son, unique to God, comes from a true birth: each is in the other, one God, not two gods.
274. 8.1Paul requires a bishop to join a blameless life with sound teaching able to refute those who contradict.
275. 8.2Hilary recalls what earlier books proved and sets his twofold aim: to teach the sound faith and to expose the heretics' arguments as absurd.
276. 8.3Hilary sets out the heretics' three questions and the argument by which they use the oneness of God to deny that Christ is God by nature.
277. 8.4Hilary recalls how Christ's own sayings about his unity with the Father exclude both two gods and a solitary God.
278. 8.5The heretics explain "I and the Father are one" as a unity of will, citing Acts 4:32, 1 Cor 3:8, and John 17:20–21.
279. 8.6Those who make the Son a creature are foolish, and must be refuted from their own proof-texts.
280. 8.7The believers of Acts 4:32 were one through one faith and one regeneration, a unity of nature, not mere agreement.
281. 8.8Galatians 3:27–28 shows that believers are one through one baptism into Christ, not merely by agreement.
282. 8.9Planter and waterer of 1 Cor 3:8 are one by sharing one baptism and one ministry, so by nature, not will only.
283. 8.10Using John 17:21 to reduce "I and the Father are one" to agreement of wills only exposes the heretics' folly.
284. 8.11Christ's prayer in John 17:21 speaks of a unity patterned on that of Father and Son, not of agreement of will.
285. 8.12John 17:21–22 grounds believers' unity in the glory the Son received from the Father and gave them, which is not mere will.
286. 8.13Because Christ took our flesh and we truly receive his flesh in the Eucharist, he is in us by nature, as the Father is in him.
287. 8.14John 6:55–56 teaches that receiving Christ's true flesh and blood makes Christ dwell in us and us in him.
288. 8.15John 14:19–20 shows a graded unity: the Son in the Father by nature, we in the Son through his birth, and he in us through the sacraments.
289. 8.16As the Son lives through the Father by nature, we live through the Son by receiving his flesh (John 6:56–57).
290. 8.17The heretics' appeal to our unity with God fails, since that unity is itself natural through the sacrament of Christ's flesh and blood.
291. 8.18Father and Son are one not by will or the dispensation but by birth and nature, as the Gospel sayings show.
292. 8.19Unanimity follows from unity of nature; John 15:26 shows the Son sending from the Father the Spirit who proceeds from the Father.
293. 8.20The Spirit, proceeding from the Father, receives from the Son because all that is the Father's is the Son's (John 16:12–15), which proves unity of nature.
294. 8.21Romans 8:9–11 calls the same indwelling Spirit both the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ.
295. 8.22Hilary asks whether "Spirit of God" signifies the nature itself or a thing belonging to the nature.
296. 8.23"Spirit of God" in Scripture can signify the Father or the Son, as Luke 4:18, Matt 12:18, and Matt 12:28 show.
297. 8.24God is not localized like a body; he is wholly present through what is his, which is nothing other than himself.
298. 8.25"Spirit of God" signifies the Father at Christ's anointing, the Son in casting out demons, and the Paraclete at Pentecost.
299. 8.26Since the one Spirit is both the Spirit of God and of Christ, the natures of Father and Son cannot differ.
300. 8.27John 14:23 and Paul's teaching show one indwelling Spirit of God and of Christ, so Christ is God, one Spirit with God.
301. 8.281 Cor 12:3 shows that calling Christ a creature, and Lord only by an adoptive name, is not speaking in the Holy Spirit.
302. 8.29Hilary quotes 1 Cor 12:4–10 and distinguishes four elements: Spirit, Lord, God, and the manifestation of the Spirit.
303. 8.30The manifestation of the Spirit promised in Acts 1 is seen in the profitable gifts of 1 Cor 12.
304. 8.31In 1 Cor 12:11 the one who works and divides the gifts is God, working through Christ, the gifts being given in the Holy Spirit.
305. 8.321 Cor 12:12 shows that the varied gifts come from the one Lord Christ, whose body all believers form, and one Spirit divides them.
306. 8.33The ministries and workings in the church are both God's and Christ's gifts, as 1 Cor 12:27–28 and Eph 4:7–12 show.
307. 8.34Paul's "one God the Father … and one Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor 8:6) states the church's faith in Father and Son without denying the Son's birth.
308. 8.35If "one God" excluded the Son from Godhead, "one Lord" would exclude the Father from lordship.
309. 8.36In 1 Cor 8:6 each is one God and one Lord, so that neither two gods nor a solitary God is taught.
310. 8.37Rom 9:5 shows that Paul calls Christ God over all, not a creature.
311. 8.38"From whom" and "through whom" in 1 Cor 8:6 and Rom 11:36 point to one nature working in Father and Son.
312. 8.39Paul's careful confession of one God the Father and one Lord Jesus Christ excludes both two gods and a solitary God.
313. 8.40The confession of one God the Father and one Lord Jesus Christ refutes Sabellius, Photinus, and those who call the Son a creature.
314. 8.41The one faith confesses Father and Son in each other by one inseparable nature, and Paul's teaching agrees with Christ's own words.
315. 8.42Hilary asks what John 6:27–29 means in saying that the Son of Man, who gives eternal food, was sealed by God the Father.
316. 8.43Christ's sayings in John 5 claim equality with the Father, and the life given to him is the same life the Father has.
317. 8.44The image of a seal shows that the Son bears the whole form of the Father, though the comparison falls short of the divine birth.
318. 8.45Phil 2:6–7 shows that he whom God sealed is God in the form of God, who emptied himself to take the form of a servant.
319. 8.46Since Jesus, after his humiliation, is confessed in the glory of God the Father, in the form of God he was in God's nature.
320. 8.47"Form of God" and "glory of God the Father" exclude both two gods and a solitary God.
321. 8.48Col 1:15 calls the Son the image of the invisible God, which cannot be a bodily, bounded likeness.
322. 8.49Christ is the image of the invisible God by the power of his works, as Col 1:15–20 describes, not by a visible shape.
323. 8.50Col 1:15–20 makes the Son the firstborn both of creation and from the dead, head of creation and of the church.
324. 8.51Creation and reconciliation in and through the Son, by God who was in Christ (2 Cor 5:18–19), show the Father's nature in him.
325. 8.52Christ's sayings that the Father speaks and works in him explain how they are one: whole from whole, by a perfect birth.
326. 8.53Col 2:8–9 contrasts the elements of the world with Christ, in whom the whole fullness of divinity dwells bodily.
327. 8.54The fullness that dwells bodily in Christ is the Father's divinity, present by generation, not by will or condescension.
328. 8.55"Bodily" fullness excludes both a single undistinguished God and a divinity of another nature in Christ.
329. 8.56The bodily fullness in Christ is the Father's whole divinity (Rom 1:20), present in the Son by a perfect birth.
330. 9.1Hilary recalls Book 8: the fullness of divinity dwelling bodily in Christ refutes a unity of will and proves natural unity.
331. 9.2Hilary lists the heretics' proof-texts: Mark 10:18, John 17:3, John 5:19, John 14:28, and Mark 13:32.
332. 9.3Saving faith confesses Christ as both true God and true man, the one Mediator who unites both natures.
333. 9.4God's being born as man, against nature, grounds the hope that man, whose nature tends to growth, may advance into God.
334. 9.5Christ spoke both as God and as man; the heretics take his human sayings as weakness of his divine nature.
335. 9.6Christ's sayings must be distinguished by the three times: God before the incarnation, God and man in the flesh, and wholly God and man after the resurrection.
336. 9.7Christ spoke and acted as man for our sake, yet did all by the power of his divine nature, according to a plan fixed before the world.
337. 9.8Col 2:8–10 teaches that we are filled in Christ, in whom the fullness of divinity dwells, and who is confessed in the Father's glory.
338. 9.9Col 2:11–12 describes the circumcision of Christ as dying and rising with him in baptism.
339. 9.10In Col 2:13–15 the same divine working raises Christ and is done by Christ, so Christ is both God who works and man who dies.
340. 9.11The one who stripped off the flesh and the flesh stripped off are one Christ: death belongs to the man, raising to God.
341. 9.12Christ raised himself (John 10:17–18; 2:19) and was raised by the Father, since he is the power and wisdom of God.
342. 9.13Paul's language in 2 Cor 13:4 and Rom 6:10–11 assigns death to Christ's human weakness and life to God's power.
343. 9.14The emptying of Phil 2:6–8 did not abolish the divine nature: one and the same Christ is in the form of God and took the form of a servant.
344. 9.15Turning to the heretics' texts, Hilary shows that in Mark 10:18 Christ cannot be rejecting the name "good," since he calls himself gentle and humble.
345. 9.16Christ rebuked the young man for treating him as a mere teacher of the law, not for calling him good.
346. 9.17By promising heavenly treasure and offering himself as guide, Christ showed himself good as God, while rejecting a merely human estimate.
347. 9.18Christ accepts the title Teacher when given in faith (John 13:13; Matt 23:10), so he rejected only the young man's view of him.
348. 9.19"Believe in God, believe also in me" (John 14:1) joins Christ to God in faith and nature, while excluding a solitary God.
349. 9.20In John 5:36–38 the Father's testimony is the Son's own works, showing that Father and Son work by one inseparable nature.
350. 9.21Unbelief in the Son is why the Father's voice, form, and word were not received, since the Father is heard and seen in the Son.
351. 9.22In John 5:40–44 Christ comes in the Father's name and gives life, while the one coming in his own name is the antichrist.
352. 9.23Rejecting Christ is failing to seek God's glory, since the Son is honoured as the Father (John 5:23) and God's glory is the Son's (John 11:4).
353. 9.24Christ's answer to the scribe on the greatest commandment (Mark 12:28–33) seems to exclude him from the one God, but the sequel shows otherwise.
354. 9.25Christ tells the scribe he is "not far" from the kingdom (Mark 12:34), since his faith, though good, lacked knowledge of the gospel mystery.
355. 9.26Christ's question about David's Lord (Mark 12:35–37; Ps 110:1) shows the scribe that the Son is Lord within the confession of one Lord.
356. 9.27Christ proves from David that he is Lord as Son of God, without breaking the confession of one Lord.
357. 9.28The heretics cite John 17:3 to deny that Christ is true God; Hilary agrees there are not two true gods but will show the Son is true God by birth.
358. 9.29Before John 17:3, Christ's sayings and the disciples' confession (John 16:30) show he came forth from God with God's nature.
359. 9.30"I came forth from God" (John 16:27–33) means birth, not estrangement: the Father remains with the Son, who has overcome the world.
360. 9.31In John 17:1–2 asking for glory and receiving power do not show weakness: they signify the birth by which the Son has all that is the Father's.
361. 9.32Since eternal life in John 17:3 requires knowing both the only true God and Jesus Christ, Christ cannot be separated from the true God.
362. 9.33In John 17:3 Christ uses no title of humility but only "Jesus Christ," placed beside the only true God as giver of eternal life.
363. 9.34As "one God the Father" does not stop Christ being the one Lord, so "the only true God" does not stop him being true God.
364. 9.35Since eternal life requires believing in Christ with the only true God, the heretic who calls him a creature believes what is not written.
365. 9.36Confessing the Father as the only true God includes confessing the Son, born with the same nature, as true God.
366. 9.37Unlike spring and stream or fire and heat, the Son is a true offspring subsisting by a perfect birth, of the same nature as the Father.
367. 9.38The incarnation changed the Son's condition, so the man he assumed had to be glorified into the unity of the Father's nature.
368. 9.39"Glorify me with yourself" (John 17:4–5) asks that the servant's form be glorified into the Father's own nature, which the Son had before the world.
369. 9.40John 13:31–32 shows the Son of Man glorified, God glorified in him, and God glorifying him in himself.
370. 9.41God glorifying in himself the Son glorified as man (John 13:32) shows that the Son is taken back into the glory of the Father's own nature.
371. 9.42Phil 2:11 confesses Jesus in the glory of God the Father, so the Son glorified in the only true God is not outside him.
372. 9.43Hilary turns to John 5:19, "The Son can do nothing of himself," which answered two charges of the Jews.
373. 9.44In John 5:16–19 Christ answers the charge of sabbath-breaking and of making himself equal to God: the Father works in the Son's work.
374. 9.45"Cannot do of himself" in John 5:19 refers to the Father's authority working in the Son, not weakness; the Son does all the Father does and shares his honour.
375. 9.46John 5:19 answers the sabbath charge, while "whatever the Father does" proves equality, so no weakness remains.
376. 9.47John 8:28–29 sets "I do nothing of myself" beside "I always do what pleases him," a puzzle for the heretics.
377. 9.48The Son acts through himself yet not of himself, because the Father abides in him: this is unity of nature.
378. 9.49Doing the will of the one who sent him (John 6:37–47) shows not lack of freedom but that the Father is heard and teaches in the Son.
379. 9.50The Son gives life to whom he wills (John 5:21) and wills what the Father wills, so his freedom and his unity with the Father coincide.
380. 9.51"The Father is greater than I" (John 14:28) must be read within the dispensation in which the Son, still God, emptied himself and took the form of a servant.
381. 9.52In the same discourse (John 14:9–11) Christ declared that the Father is seen in him and known through his works, by unity of nature.
382. 9.53"The Father is greater than I" (John 14:28) honours the Father as unbegotten source of the Son's birth without denying equality of nature.
383. 9.54The Father is greater as giver of the name above every name (Phil 2:9–11), yet the gift is equality, being confessed in the Father's glory.
384. 9.55Christ's sinless obedience (John 14:30–31) and the vine image (John 15) show that the Father is greater as the one who restores the Son's former glory.
385. 9.56The Father is greater as Father and as glorifier of the incarnate Son, while the Son, glorified in the Father, is not less.
386. 9.57The Son's birth is from the unbegotten God and beyond any beginning, so he always is, though born.
387. 9.58The heretics use Mark 13:32 on the Son's not knowing the day and hour to deny his perfect divinity.
388. 9.59It is incredible that Christ, through whom and in whom all things are and who knows hearts, should be ignorant of the day of his own coming.
389. 9.60Ignorance of the day would make the Son imperfect and the Father envious, both of which are impious.
390. 9.61God is love and wholly Father, so the Son has all that is the Father's, including the divine foreknowledge of the future.
391. 9.62Col 2:2–3 places all treasures of knowledge in Christ, hidden but present, so his not knowing is a dispensation, not ignorance.
392. 9.63God's not knowing at Sodom (Gen 18:20–21) is a matter of the time for acting, not ignorance.
393. 9.64"Now I know" to Abraham (Gen 22:12) marks the time of testimony, not the beginning of God's knowledge.
394. 9.65Christ's "I do not know you" to evildoers and foolish virgins (Matt 7:23; 25:12) is a refusal of the will, not ignorance.
395. 9.66Christ's questions about things he knew (the woman, the disciples' dispute, Lazarus's tomb) belong to the dispensation of his humanity, not ignorance.
396. 9.67The knowledge of the day is hidden in Christ so that believers will keep watch (Col 2:3; Matt 24:43–46).
397. 9.68Hilary states the objection that the Son, as weaker, could know human hearts but not penetrate the Father's thoughts.
398. 9.69As the Spirit searches the depths of God (1 Cor 2:10–11), the Son, one with the Father, is not shut out from the Father's knowledge.
399. 9.70Christ's sayings cannot mean a mere unity of will, and even that unity would be impossible between one who knows and one who does not.
400. 9.71"Only the Father knows" means the Father does not keep the day hidden from the Son, while the Son keeps silent about it.
401. 9.72God, being simple and almighty, has no speech after silence or change; the Son shares this omnipotence (John 5:19).
402. 9.73The Son's not knowing and the Father's knowing are ways of speaking to us; "All that is the Father's is mine" (John 16:15) refers to one divine nature.
403. 9.74Having all that is the Father's, the Son knows and wills as the Father does; the will is distinguished only to signify the birth.
404. 9.75After the resurrection Christ does not say he is ignorant of the times, but that knowing them is not for the apostles (Acts 1:6–7).
405. 10.1Contradiction arises when the will goes before reason and seeks teaching to suit its preferences instead of willing what is true.
406. 10.2Paul foretold teachers heaped up for itching ears (2 Tim 4:3–4) and departure from the faith through deceiving spirits (1 Tim 4:1–2).
407. 10.3Hilary sees Paul's prophecy fulfilled in his own day, when teachers who preach the Son as a creature are welcomed and sound teaching is exiled.
408. 10.4Though exiled, Hilary will speak through his books, rejoicing that the apostle's prophecy is fulfilled in the exile of sound teachers.
409. 10.5Hilary's earlier books leave no excuse but impiety; the heretics falsely accuse him of teaching a solitary God who became man.
410. 10.6Hilary has taught a timeless birth: the Son is not two gods nor a solitary God, but the living image in whom the Father works, speaks, and is seen.
411. 10.7The incarnation did not weaken God's nature but raised man toward God, as the name Emmanuel and the prayer of John 17:5 show.
412. 10.8Even on the heretics' reading, not knowing the hour would not dishonour the Son; Hilary now turns to their remaining arguments.
413. 10.9The heretics cite Christ's sorrow, prayer about the cup, cry of desolation, and commending of his spirit to deny his divine impassibility.
414. 10.10Christ, who urged his disciples to martyrdom and not to fear those who kill the body, cannot have feared death.
415. 10.11Christ died by his own power, giving up his spirit (John 10:18; 19:30), so he could not fear death.
416. 10.12Neither Christ's body, raised in three days, nor his Spirit, which could not fear the underworld, gave cause for fear of death.
417. 10.13Hilary turns to whether Christ feared the pains of the cross, asking what kind of body he had.
418. 10.14Bodies feel pain through the soul that animates them, as shown by dead tissue, nail clippings, and drugged surgery.
419. 10.15The Word himself took flesh from the Virgin and gave it a soul, so the nature of his body and soul came from his own power, not human conception.
420. 10.16John 3:13 shows the Word made flesh came down from heaven, is Son of Man, and remains in heaven at once.
421. 10.171 Cor 15:47 shows the second man born of the Virgin yet from heaven, conceived by the Spirit.
422. 10.18Calling himself the living bread from heaven (John 6:51, 53), Christ shows that his flesh, born of the Virgin, has a heavenly origin.
423. 10.19The one Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, is wholly and truly man and wholly and truly God.
424. 10.20Hilary rejects the view that Christ took Adam's sinful soul and flesh from Mary: every soul is God's work.
425. 10.21Some make the Word a mere uttered word that dwelt in Jesus as in a prophet; Hilary preaches the subsisting Word who became true man.
426. 10.22Christ took his soul as well as his body from God; one and the same Christ, truly God and truly man, was born, died, rose, and is in heaven.
427. 10.23Hilary holds that Christ truly suffered the blows of the passion, but his body, conceived of the Spirit and able to walk on water, did not have the nature to feel pain.
428. 10.24Christ's weeping, thirst, and hunger were real habits of a true body, yet not the needs of a body overcome by suffering.
429. 10.25Christ had a true body born of the Virgin, but in the likeness of sinful flesh, free from its defects (Phil 2:7–8; Rom 8:3).
430. 10.26Before treating the sayings, Hilary will examine the events of the passion to see whether they show fear or bodily weakness in Christ.
431. 10.27Christ rebuked Peter for shrinking from the passion and made the arresting soldiers fall back, so he did not fear it.
432. 10.28He who restored the servant's ear by a touch at his arrest cannot have feared the pain of nails.
433. 10.29Christ's sorrow cannot be fear of the passion, which he said would glorify him (John 13:31).
434. 10.30Christ, who said he would drink the cup the Father gave him (John 18:11), did not pray from fear to escape suffering.
435. 10.31The cry of desolation must be read with Christ's promise to be seen at the right hand of power (Matt 26:64).
436. 10.32The passion shows no fear, weakness, pain, or shame in Christ: he willed to suffer, overawed his captors, and healed the ear.
437. 10.33The cross, through which Christ sits at God's right hand, is no shame, and none of the marks of fear, weakness, or pain apply to him.
438. 10.34Christ's commending of his spirit was not fear of the underworld, since he promised the thief paradise that very day (Luke 23:42–43, 46).
439. 10.35Christ's body, a true body conceived of the Spirit, had the form of ours without its weakness, so the passion did not bring it pain.
440. 10.36"Sorrowful even to death" (Matt 26:38) makes death the end of Christ's sorrow, not its cause.
441. 10.37Christ's sorrow and prayer in Gethsemane were for his disciples, who would be offended and needed to watch and pray (Matt 26:31–41).
442. 10.38"If it is possible" refers to men's weakness under trial; Christ prayed that Peter's faith would not fail (Luke 22:31–32).
443. 10.39Christ's sorrow lasted until his death, after which the signs at the cross would confirm the apostles' shaken faith (Matt 26:42).
444. 10.40Luke's account of the strengthening angel explains why Christ, after praying, let the disciples sleep (Matt 26:45; Luke 22:43–44).
445. 10.41Hilary notes that many manuscripts lack Luke's angel and bloody sweat; even if genuine, they concern us, and the bloody sweat proves a real body.
446. 10.42John 17:11–12 shows the content of Christ's prayer: that the Father would keep the disciples, and none of them was lost (John 18:9).
447. 10.43Taken together, the four Gospels show that Christ's Gethsemane prayer was for the protection of his apostles.
448. 10.44Christ's body, begun by the Spirit and the power of the Most High, was outside the evils of earthly bodies, which themselves can sometimes rise above pain.
449. 10.45The three youths in the furnace (Dan 3) neither feared nor felt the fire; much less did Christ fear the cross.
450. 10.46Daniel, the apostles, Paul, and the martyrs overcame fear and pain by faith; still less can weakness be ascribed to the Lord of glory.
451. 10.47Christ suffered our weaknesses by the power of his own nature, bearing our sins without sin (Isa 53:4–5; 2 Cor 5:20–21).
452. 10.48Paul presents Christ's death as a triumph (Col 2:13–15), and every event of the passion pairs suffering with divine power.
453. 10.49The cry of desolation (Matt 27:46) cannot mean fear of death in one who hastened to the death that would glorify him.
454. 10.50Hilary describes two errors: that the Word turned into Christ's soul, or that the Word dwelt in a mere man as in a prophet.
455. 10.51On either error, the cry of desolation would mean weakness in the Word or a mere man abandoned by a withdrawn power of God.
456. 10.52The church's faith knows Christ's birth without a beginning and his dispensation without division: one undivided Jesus Christ, wholly God and wholly man.
457. 10.53Like the sun, divine mysteries must be received within our capacity; reaching beyond it loses even what we could grasp (1 Tim 1:3–4).
458. 10.54The incarnation, the Son of Man ascending where he was before and in heaven while on earth, surpasses human reason (John 6:62; 3:13; 1:14).
459. 10.55Christ truly wept over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41; Matt 23:37), yet it is a mystery what in him wept.
460. 10.56Christ wept for Lazarus though his death was for God's glory and Christ would raise him (John 11:4, 14–15, 35).
461. 10.57Christ said he lays down his life and takes it again (John 10:17–18): neither the body nor God the Word can be the one who does so.
462. 10.58God has no soul in a bodily sense; Scripture's language of God's "soul" is figurative, like his hands and eyes (Isa 1:14; Luke 24:39).
463. 10.59Neither God, who does not die, nor the body, which is raised by God, can be the one who lays down and takes up the soul; yet Christ speaks of his burial (John 2:19; Matt 26:12).
464. 10.60The one Christ who cried out as forsaken also promised paradise and commended his spirit to the Father.
465. 10.61Hilary challenges those who divide Christ or make him a mere man to explain who complained, who commended his spirit, and who was in paradise.
466. 10.62One and the same Christ dies as man and reigns as God, so the cry of desolation cannot be set against his promise of paradise.
467. 10.63Christ wept and died not for himself but for us; the one who died and the one who reigns are not different.
468. 10.64Paul preaches the one crucified Christ as God's power and wisdom, and the Lord of glory as the one crucified (1 Cor 1:22–24; 2:2, 7–8).
469. 10.65Paul's confession in Rom 8:33–34 and Eph 4:9–10 shows one Christ who died, rose, descended, ascended, and intercedes, undivided God and man.
470. 10.662 Cor 13:4 shows one Christ crucified in weakness and living by God's power.
471. 10.67Paul's "according to the Scriptures" (1 Cor 15:3–4) sets the limit of faith: Christ's birth, tears, hunger, suffering, and death are to be confessed as Scripture presents them.
472. 10.68Romans 10:6–9 forbids anxious questions and makes salvation the confession of Jesus as Lord, as Abraham's faith was reckoned as righteousness.
473. 10.69Christ needed no one to bring him down from heaven or up from the dead; he descended and rose by his own freedom (Rom 10:6–7).
474. 10.70Salvation is the simple confession that Jesus is Lord and belief that God raised him (Rom 10:8–9), not curious questioning.
475. 10.71Like his prayer at Lazarus's tomb and the voice from heaven, Christ's cry on the cross was for our instruction, not from weakness.
476. 11.1Eph 4:4–6 joins one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father: each is one by his own property, not by a single undistinguished person.
477. 11.2Faith is not one if Christ is preached as weak, created, or God and Son only in name; such preaching proclaims another Christ.
478. 11.3All creation bears witness to Christ, but faith must confess him as he truly is, the one Lord beside the one God the Father.
479. 11.4The new teachers praise the Father as "alone" good, powerful, and immortal so as to exclude the Son and deny his natural birth.
480. 11.5As image and form of the invisible God (Col 1:15; Phil 2:6), the Son must have all the Father's perfections, or he is no true image.
481. 11.6The heretics turn the incarnation into an insult to the divinity, but Christ did all things as God and was perfect man.
482. 11.7Hilary now turns to the heretics' texts about Christ after the resurrection, explaining each from its own context.
483. 11.8The heretics cite John 20:17 and 1 Cor 15:27–28 to argue that the Son is a creature subject to the Father.
484. 11.91 Tim 3:16 calls the incarnation the great mystery of piety, manifested in the flesh and taken up in glory, not a weakness of divinity.
485. 11.10The heretics argue from John 20:17 and Ps 45:7 that the Son shares our creaturely servitude and has God as his God.
486. 11.11Being born God means having the Father's nature; so the Father is both God of the Son's birth and Father of his nature.
487. 11.12Christ's sayings pair acknowledgment of the Father as source with claims of equal nature, honour, and power (John 14:9–10; 10:29–30; 5:19, 22–23; 14:28).
488. 11.13The Father became Lord over the Son only in the form of a servant he took up, since there is no lord where there is no servant.
489. 11.14Christ spoke John 20:17 as a servant to servants, so the Father is his Father and God in the same way as ours only in his human nature.
490. 11.15Christ's "brothers" in John 20:17 are his through the flesh, as Ps 22:6, 22 and Paul's "firstborn among many brothers" show.
491. 11.16God is the Son's Father both by eternal birth and, since the Word became flesh, as Father of all flesh; the shared Father and God of John 20:17 belong to the latter.
492. 11.17Eph 1:17 distinguishes the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, his God as man, from the Father of glory, his Father as God; the Greek articles make this clear.
493. 11.18The anointing of Ps 45:7 concerns Christ's assumed humanity, anointed at his baptism with the Spirit (Acts 4:27; 10:37–38).
494. 11.19The anointing of Ps 45:7, given for a merit and later in time, applies to Christ's assumed humanity, not to God the Word born in the beginning.
495. 11.20Christ is our brother and fellow in the flesh, sharing our Father and God as man, while remaining true God from God.
496. 11.21Some take the subjection, handing over of the kingdom, and end in 1 Cor 15:24–28 as loss of the Son's divinity or rule.
497. 11.22Hilary quotes 1 Cor 15:21–28 in full.
498. 11.23Paul, who heard things unspeakable, warns Timothy to understand, trusting God to give understanding (2 Tim 2:7); so must we.
499. 11.24Following Phil 3:15–16, Hilary invites those who have understood 1 Cor 15 otherwise to accept a better understanding as God reveals it.
500. 11.25Hilary names the three points in dispute: the end, the handing over of the kingdom, and the subjection.
501. 11.26In Paul's order the kingdom is handed over, then the Son is subjected, and the end is that God may be all in all.
502. 11.27Hilary asks whether the end means failure, handing over means loss, and subjection means weakness.
503. 11.28"End" in Scripture means completion, not ceasing to exist: Christ is the end of the law as its fulfilment (Rom 10:4; Matt 5:17).
504. 11.29Handing over the kingdom is no loss, just as the Father lost nothing in handing all things to the Son (Matt 11:27; 28:18).
505. 11.30Since the Son already obeys the Father (John 6:38; Phil 2:8), the future subjection of 1 Cor 15:28 is not a new obedience but part of the dispensation.
506. 11.31Eph 1:19–22 speaks of all things already subjected to Christ, since what is future is already secure in him, though still to be worked out in time.
507. 11.32Making the hostile powers void, as with the devil's destruction (Matt 25:41), differs from subjection, which is obedience.
508. 11.33As the Father draws people to the Son and the Son leads them to the Father (John 6:44; 14:6), so the Son subjects his enemies and God subjects them to him.
509. 11.34The enemies to be subjected include Israel, now hardened but beloved, who will be delivered (Rom 11:25–28).
510. 11.35The defeat of death is the resurrection (1 Cor 15:53–55); subjection also means our transformation into the likeness of Christ's glorious body (Phil 3:21).
511. 11.36As we are subjected to the glory of Christ's body, so he, reigning in that body, will be subjected to the Father (1 Cor 15:27–28).
512. 11.37The transfiguration (Matt 16:28–17:2) showed the apostles the glory of Christ's body coming in his kingdom.
513. 11.38Matt 13:40–43 shows Christ reigning until the stumbling blocks are removed, and the righteous then shining in the Father's kingdom.
514. 11.39Christ hands over the kingdom by presenting to the Father the redeemed, glorified like him, who are themselves the kingdom (Matt 25:34; Luke 17:21).
515. 11.40Christ reigns in his glorified body until all enemies are subdued; then his humanity, not cast off but glorified, will be wholly taken into God, so that God is all in all.
516. 11.41Hilary will confirm from the Lord's own words in the Gospels what he has drawn from Paul.
517. 11.42John 13:31–32 distinguishes the Son of Man's glory at the resurrection from the later glory in which God glorifies him in himself, the final subjection.
518. 11.43If Christ will glorify us, he can glorify his own humanity into God; the heretics wrongly read 1 Cor 15:28 as the Father gaining perfection through the Son's subjection.
519. 11.44God, being perfect fullness, cannot advance or become fuller; the heretics' reading would make him forever lacking.
520. 11.45Paul's doxology in Rom 11:33–36 confesses that God's depth cannot be searched out by human minds; only the Son knows the Father.
521. 11.46Human sense grasps only what is visible or later than itself, so it cannot comprehend what is eternal and prior to it.
522. 11.47Since all things are from, through, and in God and he does not change (Rom 11:35–36; Mal 3:6), the Son's subjection cannot make God more perfect.
523. 11.48The Son's being God all in all is a mystery, not a necessity; his self-emptying in the form of a servant cost his power nothing.
524. 11.49God being all in all is the advance of the humanity Christ took up, and through it we are renewed as the image of our Creator (Col 3:9–10).
525. 12.1In his final book Hilary faces the heretics' strongest text, Prov 8:22, "The Lord created me the beginning of his ways."
526. 12.2The faith confesses Christ not as a creature or something made but as the true Son, born and not adopted.
527. 12.3Solomon and Paul speak by one Spirit, and Paul condemns serving the creature (Rom 1:25); so Prov 8:22 cannot call us to worship a created Christ.
528. 12.4Scripture calls God, and so Christ through whom all was made, Creator (Gen 14:19; 1 Pet 4:19); the maker does not bear the name of what he made.
529. 12.5If Christ were a creature, he would share creation's subjection to vanity and corruption and its waiting for liberty (Rom 8:19–21), which is absurd.
530. 12.6If the one in the form of God were a creature, God's nature itself would be creaturely; Christ's self-emptying (Phil 2:6–7) was an act of divine power, not loss.
531. 12.7The Son, in the form of God, receives equal honour with the Father (John 5:23), which would be impossible for a creature.
532. 12.8"From the womb I begot you" (Ps 110:3 LXX) uses a human image to signify a true birth from God, not creation.
533. 12.9As God's hands, eyes, and heart signify his working, knowledge, and will, so "womb" signifies a true spiritual birth.
534. 12.10"From the womb" shows a true birth from God himself, as hand, eye, and heart show God's real acts without bodily parts.
535. 12.11Disciples must not presume above their Master, who never called himself a creature but always the Son born of the Father.
536. 12.12Things made, like heaven and earth or a painting or house, are works, not sons; only one born of a father is his son.
537. 12.13We are God's sons by adoption, made and acquired, not begotten; Scripture never calls them "my own" begotten sons (Isa 1:2).
538. 12.14Calling Israel "my firstborn son" (Exod 4:22) does not weaken "my beloved Son," since Israel was a people made, though said to be born (Ps 22:31).
539. 12.15Israel is God's son by adoption, not by birth; the only-begotten God was always and only Son, never not existing.
540. 12.16Every human birth and creature begins after not existing, both in time and in cause, back to Adam formed from earth made from nothing.
541. 12.17The Son, preceded by no time and born from him who is, was neither born from nothing nor non-existent before his birth.
542. 12.18The heretics argue that if the Son always was he cannot have been born, and if born he began, so "he was not before he was born."
543. 12.19Hilary warns that the syllogism "nothing exists before it is born" lures simple believers into conceding the heretical conclusion.
544. 12.20Following Col 2:8 and 2 Cor 10:4–5, believers must not only avoid but refute philosophical sophistries, since faith needs instruction to stand firm.
545. 12.21Born is not the same as unborn, yet birth from an eternal Father is eternal; there is no interval between the Father's begetting and the Son's birth.
546. 12.22An objector repeats that whatever is born once did not exist.
547. 12.23A human father begins to be father in time, but God is always Father, so the Son is always Son and never was not.
548. 12.24As "He who is" (Exod 3:14) belongs to God, the Gospels give the Son the same eternal "was" and "is" (John 1:1, 9, 18; Rom 9:5).
549. 12.25Born of the eternal Father before eternal times, the Son is eternal and born; "not to have been" belongs to time and cannot apply to him.
550. 12.26The Son was born before eternal times, beyond human sense, so "he was not before he was born" is human reasoning applied where it cannot reach.
551. 12.27Human knowledge measures things by prior time, but God's birth is before eternal times (Titus 1:2), so the Son never began after anything.
552. 12.28One born before eternal times always is, so the idea that he once was not before his birth cannot even be conceived.
553. 12.29The objector replies that, if the Son was not non-existent before birth, then he who already was was born.
554. 12.30Hilary has never said the Son existed and then was born; being eternally born excludes both non-existence before birth and existence before birth.
555. 12.31Since the Son's birth is beyond time and sense, neither "he was before he was born" nor "he was not" can be said of him.
556. 12.32The Son was born and always is; if he were not always Son, the Father would not always have been Father.
557. 12.33The heretics even ascribe a beginning in time to the Father's act of begetting.
558. 12.34God was always Father: Paul places the Son before eternal times, Wisdom before the ages (Prov 8:23, 27), and David before sun and moon (Ps 72:17, 5).
559. 12.35The heretics oppose the eternal birth with Wisdom's words, "The Lord created me for the beginning of his ways" (Prov 8:22).
560. 12.36Prov 8:22–23 distinguishes Wisdom's creation "for the beginning of his ways" in time from her founding before the ages; it is a text against the Jews' denial of Christ's pre-existence.
561. 12.37Wisdom was begotten before earth, mountains, and hills (Prov 8:25), but such temporal comparisons cannot by themselves express eternity.
562. 12.38Wisdom's presence at the preparing of heaven and earth (Prov 8:26–30) is not merely being earlier than created things, which would still be in time.
563. 12.39God's preparation of creation is eternal, nothing being new to him (Ps 33:6); Wisdom, present at that preparing, is co-eternal with it.
564. 12.40God did not plan creation piece by piece; its preparation is co-eternal with him, though Genesis sets out its execution in order.
565. 12.41Christ reveals only his birth, and that birth from the eternal Father must be eternal.
566. 12.42Creation "for the beginning of his ways" is not the same as birth before all things: birth is before every cause, creation for a cause in time.
567. 12.43Wisdom was not created as a tool for making the world: Prov 8:30 presents the Father as maker, with Wisdom present at his eternal preparing and setting creation in order.
568. 12.44The context of Prov 8 shows that "created for the beginning of his ways" belongs to the things "from the age" Wisdom promised to recount: a dispensation in time, not her birth.
569. 12.45Christ, Wisdom, is the Way to the Father (John 14:6); he was "created" for God's ways when he took a visible creaturely form in the dispensation.
570. 12.46In Old Testament appearances the Son took created forms, walking in Eden, as angel to Hagar, man to Abraham and Jacob, and fire to Moses.
571. 12.47Christ's appearances to Joshua, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and others in created forms were the "creation" for God's ways, distinct from his eternal birth.
572. 12.48Paul calls Christ's birth in the flesh "made of a woman" (Gal 4:4) and the new man "created according to God" (Eph 4:21–24); this refers to his humanity.
573. 12.49Wisdom's "begotten before all things," "founded before the ages," and "created from the ages" are distinct, so creation cannot be confused with her birth.
574. 12.50Paul's "made of a woman" marks the virgin birth; the heretics instead substitute creation for birth to deny that the Son subsists by natural birth from God.
575. 12.51Faith distinguishes Christ's creation in time from his eternal birth from God; it is enough to know the Father and the Son born of him.
576. 12.52Hilary prays that he will always confess God as eternal Father, never without his Word, Wisdom, and Power, the only-begotten Son.
577. 12.53As Hilary confesses God in heaven, sea, earth, and his own mind without understanding them, he will not presume to grasp the Son's origin.
578. 12.54The Son is truly Son, begotten in the unity of the Father's nature, second from the Father yet never separate, so the Father is eternally Father.
579. 12.55Hilary will not call the Holy Spirit a creature either: the Spirit who searches God's depths and intercedes for us (1 Cor 2:10; Rom 8:26) is God's own.
580. 12.56As the Spirit's working in rebirth is beyond knowing (John 3:7–8), Hilary will say of the Spirit only what Scripture says: that he is God's Spirit, not created.
581. 12.57Hilary closes with a prayer to keep to death the baptismal faith in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.