Against Five Heresies 1–5

I am a debtor, I confess, not under the compulsion of necessity but, what is stronger, of love. The collector cannot be as pressing in his demand as the debtor is devoted in his payment. But that I may fulfil what I promised, help me with your holy prayers, that almighty God may give grace to my words, and that I may satisfy your devout minds and ears. If those of you who were present then will be so good as to remember, we said there were five kinds of enemies, and to overcome them we asked for a truce, so that we could prepare the necessary arms. The promised day has dawned, and we too, with the Lord’s help, have come forward eagerly to the contest. Our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. He who gave the courage to fight will give the fighter victory. Let not the crowd of enemies nor the look of the warriors call us back; let not their shining arms, brittle as glass, terrify us. Goliath, great, strong, with terrible arms and protected by a huge crowd, David alone, a small boy and unarmed, laid low with a single blow of a stone, and threw the whole camp of the Philistines into confusion and flight. And what did the stone thrown by David’s hand against Goliath signify, but Christ, who was to come from the seed of David against the devil? Let us now advance to the attack and set out the five kinds of errors we mentioned. The pagans say: “Why do you abhor and reject us as worshipers of many gods? See, you too say that the God whom you preach as the one to be worshiped has a son, and you make up the story that he was born without the joining of the other sex.” The Jews say: “How do you worship one God, when you call Lord the man whom our fathers crucified, and force people to venerate and worship him with you as the Son of God?” The Manichaeans say that it is a phantasm when it is said that the Lord Christ could have been born from a woman’s womb. “For it is not fitting,” they say, “to believe that so great a majesty passed through the filth and squalor of a woman.” The Sabellians, who are also the Patripassians, say: “God the Father and the Son is one, since he who is the Father is himself also the Son. For if we say otherwise, we will be called worshipers of many gods.” The Arians say: “The Father is one, the Son another, but the Son is less. For how can the begotten be equal to the begetter?”

See, the questions of the errors have been set out, like enemy battle lines drawn up. Against these deadly lines, most holy brothers, take up the armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and stand perfect in all things. Gird your loins with truth; let no one tremble, no one be afraid. There is the breastplate of righteousness; there is the shield of faith, on which the fiery arrows of the wicked are caught and quenched. There is the helmet of salvation; there is the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Whoever of Christ’s faithful soldiers is armed with these arms will fear no one’s person, and will not be called back from the contest by the terror of the times. Come, brothers, the contest is at hand, the work is hot, the adversary presses on, he readies his darts and tries to throw them: let no one be afraid. Brothers, there are more with us than with them. With us is that great Moses, the friend of God, who, to defeat the enemy in battle, stretched out his hands to heaven, showing even then the figure of the cross of Christ; at God’s command, with one stroke of his rod, he turned the rolling waves of the swelling sea, with their winding curves, into dry plains for the people to cross. With us is Joshua, leader of the people of Israel after Moses, a most valiant warrior, whose very name points to the Savior: by his power and his confidence in God he stopped the day, so that it would not complete the bounds of its course, and commanded the night not to come on. He overcame, captured, humbled, and killed the kings of the nations, not one by one but all together. With us is David, strong of hand. What shall I say? Servant of God, chosen of God, friend of God, ancestor of God: he knew well not only “to spare the subdued and war down the proud,” but also to show virtues and keep patience. When he pursued his enemies he was not destructive, and when he conquered he was not impious. With us are more and more holy men, who foresaw and foretold all things to come. There is nothing, then, to frighten you: only wait, listen, and pray. Let your prayer for me be more intent and more abundant. Let us not delay longer, but follow through what we have set out.

What do you say, pagan? “God,” you say, “if he delighted in a son, needed a marriage; if he abhorred marriage, he is alone, without a son. For what could be found like God, to be joined to God and bear a son to God? Then, if, as you say, God has a son, you no longer worship one God.” What shall we do? We have caught a dart sent by the Philistine; what shall we send back? Whatever dart we send, though it reach him, it does no good. Why? Because he is hard. How hard? He is of stone: he worships idols; and it is written, “Let all who make them become like them, and all who trust in them.” He does not accept the holy Scriptures. Let us look, then, for a stone to strike him with, so that, struck, he may be shaken; shaken, broken; broken, turned to dust; turned to dust, rained on; rained on, sown; sown, may bear fruit, not to be burnt in the fire but stored in the barn. Hermes, who in Latin is called Mercury, wrote a book called Logos teleios, that is, “The Perfect Word”: a great name for this book, because he of whom it was written is great. For what is more perfect than the Word, who alone is free among the dead? Let us hear what Mercury says of the perfect Word: “The Lord,” he says, “and maker of all the gods made a second Lord.” And a little later, to show what he meant, he repeated it and said: “Since, then, he made him first, and alone and one, he seemed good to him and most full of all good things.” How full, let John the evangelist say: “From his fullness we have all received, grace for grace.” “He seemed good to him and most full of all good things.” And it continues: “He rejoiced.” In whom, or with whom, did he rejoice? Let the Wisdom of God, the Son of God, say: “I was the one in whom he delighted.” So “he rejoiced, and loved him greatly as his only-begotten.” He whom he first said was made, he afterwards called only-begotten. Again in another place he said: “The Son of the blessed God and of good will, whose name cannot be told by human mouth.” Were you looking, pagan, for God’s wife? Hear Mercury: brace your brow, and take, stone that you are, the stone: fall, that you may be raised; be broken, that you may be made firm; be destroyed, that you may be built up. Let the blow of the stone not split the skin of your brow, nor burst a vein, nor open the pit of a wound, but make the sign of the cross. You seek God’s wife? Let impure depravity be cast out of your heart, I beg you. The wife of God is good will. How God is Father and God is Son, and yet they are not two gods but one God, I ought not to dispute with you, because unless you believe you will by no means be able to understand. And yet Mercury confesses the Son of God as God. Struck by this stone, let the sacrilegious man cease to be of stone. Let us hear also what the Sibyl, their prophetess, says of the same: “God,” she says, “gave another to the sons of men to worship.” As is plain, in these sayings of Mercury and the Sibyl Sabellius too is judged. Mercury calls both the Father and the Son God, and the Sibyl speaks of another God. Sabellius says not another, because he asserts that the Father is the same as the Son. It is very good if with one blow we strike not one adversary only, but as many as our missile can reach once thrown. Again the Sibyl says: “Know that he is your Lord, the Son of God.” This verse rebukes both the pagan and the Jew. In another place she calls the Son of God symboulos, that is, counsel or counselor. And the prophet says, “His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, God strong and mighty.” Here the Arian is refuted, who, when he calls the Son of God less, says that God once did not have a son. And if he was without a son, he was without counsel. See into what dangers we are drawn. But since God was never without counsel, even though the Arian contradicts, the Father could never be without the Son. What are you doing, pagan? Open your ears; do not be like the deaf asp that stops its ear so as not to hear the voice of the charmer. I do not bring you authorities of mine; Mercury is yours, to whom you paid such honor and worship among the gods that you named a day after him. Hear him; let him convince you, let him overcome you, so that when he has conquered you, you may yield to him and believe me. Mercury said: “God loved his Only-begotten.” He said: “The Son of the blessed God and of good will.” And so as not to suffer the tedium of being asked his name, he added next: “whose name cannot be told by human mouth.” What, Mercury, do you say that the name of God’s Son cannot be told by men? Let it be told by you, whom men regard not as a man but as a god. But he speaks to his son, saying: “There is.” What? “The word of the ineffable Son, of wisdom, holy, holy.” Is this not “In the beginning was the Word”? Tell us, Hermes, has this word of wisdom a mother? It continues: “It is from the only God, the Lord, God who rules over all mortals.” And since it cannot be searched out by men, he adds: “It is above men.” So, since it is above men, (he means:) I cannot tell the name of God’s Son, because I am not a god; let men, as men, say what I am not; I acknowledge what I am. The word of wisdom is from God alone. Do not suppose there, then, pagan, or invent a human marriage: it is from God alone, and it is above men. The Sibyl rebukes you, saying: “Know that he is your Lord, the Son of God, God”: him, not another, not Mars, not Jupiter, not Mercury, but the one whom Mercury confesses. Why do you wonder, Christian, that these say such things of the Father and the Son? “The demons also believe, and tremble.” Indeed in the Gospel, as the Lord passes by, they say: “We know who you are, Son of God; you have come before the time to torment us.” Would that, as demons recognized the judge, so men might recognize the Savior!

What does the Jew say? “We have one God; besides him we know no other. But the one you call Christ our fathers killed, not as God but as a man.” This is just what I said: Would that, as demons recognized the judge, so men might recognize the Savior! See, demons saw and trembled; men saw and killed. Demons confessed; men persecuted. What unhappiness, and how great a misery, to be found inferior even to demons! Yet men believe, demons perish; men are saved, demons are punished. But this change is the grace of the right hand of the Most High, not the presumption of a man trusting in his own strength. Against this Jew, however, I do not labor: his own books fight against him, the Law and the Prophets fight; and either, defeated and humbled, he will be saved, or, proud and stubborn, he will be punished. The Lord said to Moses: “Behold, I send my angel to go before you, guard you on the way, and bring you into the place I have prepared. Heed him and hear his voice, and do not think him one to be despised.” You heard “angel”: recognize the Lord, “and do not think him one to be despised.” Hear further what you should fear: “And do not think him one to be despised,” he says. Why? “For he will not pardon you when you sin, and my name is in him.” Who is he so great, to whom God gave both his power and his name? “The Lord of hosts, he is the king of glory.” And how do we prove that when “angel” is said, God must be understood? You have it in the book called Genesis: “Two angels came to Sodom in the evening,” it says, “while Lot sat before the gates of the city; and when he saw them, he rose and went to meet them.” Why say more? He received them and served them as strangers. By his custom of hospitality he was freed from the danger of the city, escaped the temporal fire, and won an eternal reward. Learn, Christians, to show hospitality without distinction, lest perhaps the one to whom you shut your house and deny kindness be Christ himself. Let us not wander further from the matter in hand. The angels came to Lot and said, see and note that angels are said to speak, what did the angels say? “Save your life; do not look behind you.” For no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God. “Nor stay anywhere in all the region round about”: do not cling to earthly pleasures; “but save yourself on the mountain”: let God be your hope, lest you too perish with the Sodomites. “And Lot said to them.” See a man who sees: not blind, like the Jews and the Sabellians; not bleary-eyed, like the Arians; but with sound eyes, like Catholic Christians. He saw angels and understood the Lord. What did he say to the angels? “And Lot said to them: My Lord, since your servant has found favor before you, and you have magnified your mercy which you have shown me in saving my life.” A great thing: when I want to strike the Jew, Moses, that most valiant man, brandished and threw the spear of his word so that it passed through the Jew to the Sabellian and struck the Arian. What are you doing, holy Lot? You see angels, not one but two, and you say, “My Lord.” You address one, you entreat one: are you not afraid of seeming to wrong the other? “Far from it,” he says. “Go away, Jews; go away, Sabellians, for you do not see; go away, Arians, for you see too little. I see; and because I see what I see, I neither despise nor err. I see two; I see them equal. I entreat one and wrong neither, because I do not divide the Father from the Son. And so that you may understand that I am not mistaken when I entreat two as one, see whether two or one answers my prayers.” He asked to have refuge in a small, nearby city and to live. He is answered. Let us see how many answer. The words of the book follow: “And he said to him”: the answer is in the singular. Follow further, let us see: “Behold, I have accepted your prayers in this too, that I will not overthrow the city for which you have spoken. Hurry and be saved there; for I can do nothing until you enter there.” Do you see, Jew, that he is called an angel and is God? Do you hear, Arian, two, Father and Son, and one speaking? Yet the Father is not the same as the Son, against the Sabellians, but there are Father and Son. Do you hear what was said: “I have accepted your prayers”? Do you hear what he says: “I will not overthrow the city”? Do you hear: “I can do nothing”? Let the Jew read “angel” and understand God; let the Sabellian read that two came; let the Arian read that one answered: and let them not despise it but flee their error, lest they come to the fire. But to show more fully that the one called an angel must be understood as God, let us recite what follows in this reading: “Then,” it says, “the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulphur and fire from the Lord out of heaven.” What is “the Lord from the Lord,” if not the Son from the Father? As in another place too: “The Lord said to my Lord,” that is, the Father to his Son, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet.” Again in Exodus: “The angel of the Lord,” it says, “appeared to Moses in a flame of fire from the bush, and he saw that the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. And Moses said: I will go over and see this great sight, why the bush is not consumed. And when the Lord saw that he came near to see, the Lord called him from the bush.” See, the angel himself is the Lord himself. And it continues: “Moses, Moses.” And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” The Lord said to him, “Do not come near here unless you take the sandals off your feet; for the place where you stand is holy ground.” Hear further what he said to him: “I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.” So let the Jew so hear “angel” as to understand the Lord and fear God; let the Sabellian so confess the Father as not to deny the Son; let the Arian so confess Father and Son as not to diminish the Son. Joshua the son of Nun too, as the book written under his name says, when he was fighting against the enemy and stood ready for battle, saw a man standing before him holding a drawn sword; and he went to him and said: “Are you ours, or our adversaries’?” He answered: “No, but I am the prince of the army of the Lord, and now I have come.” And Joshua fell on his face to the ground and worshiped. Now, Jew, follow your leader. He sees, he asks, and he worships. Sight is shared: for both what is recognized and what is not recognized are seen. So sight is shared, the question shows ignorance, the worship shows faith. Whom does he see? A man. Who is this man? He whose coming against the hostile nations was foretold, desired, and awaited. [“And he is a man,” it says, “and who shall know him?”] Who is the prince of the army of the Lord? Is it not he who, asked in the Gospel who he was, answered, “The beginning, who also speak to you”? Why are you troubled, Joshua? “Why have the nations raged, and the peoples devised vain things against the Lord and against his Christ?” You see an armed man: do not fear. I come not against you but for you; for I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. What is it, Joshua, that you see, ask, and worship? Hear: “I see a man; I ask the one I see; I hear one I do not see; I worship not what I see but what I believe: for faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of God.” What, then, do you seek? “Attend and follow. I see a man, but what I understand is fairer than the sons of men. Something flashes upon me, and something bright shines as from a hiding place. I go to him, because he has come to me: I will search out what I see, this great sight. He whom I see is both man and not man. Indeed he is man, because of the Manichaean, and more than man, because of the Jew.” Go on, my Joshua, my leader, go on. Why, unless because when you seek me, you win me? “See, I come, I find a man: within I perceive something; it is obscure, I do not yet see. Moses’ face is unveiled, but a veil hinders the gaze; the truth is hidden. I do not recognize what it is; I must ask. Tell me, you man: are you ours or our adversaries’? If he is the adversaries’, he is both man and enemy; if he is ours, he is both man and Savior. He comes after me, but he was before me. If he is Jesus, he is also Savior.” Let Jesus question Jesus, the earlier question the later, yet the lesser the greater; let the one who wanes question the one who grows; let the figure question the truth, or rather let the figure understand the truth, so that the day may dawn and the darkness of time be taken away. “See, I come; I know that a spirit does not have flesh and bones; I touch flesh; I look, I behold an armed man. Still the mystery is hidden. I question the man, I hear the Word; I take away the veil, I worship God.” In that Joshua saw and did not recognize, he signified the raging nation of the Jews, which, had it recognized him when it saw him, would never have crucified the Lord of glory; but in that he believed by hearing and worshiped, he signified this people of whom it is written, “A people I did not know served me; at the hearing of the ear it obeyed me.” Hear further, you who deny that God begot a Son; hear what the Father says through the prophet Isaiah: “Shall I, who make others give birth, not give birth myself? says the Lord. Shall I, who grant generation to others, remain barren? says the Lord your God,” to whom it was said, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you.” Why do you goad me, Arian, and laugh when you hear “today”? With God there is never a tomorrow, never a yesterday, but always today: there the year does not roll on in the circles of months, nor does the month pass with days following and departing; hours do not change, times and moments do not vary, where the day is neither closed by an end nor begun by a beginning. Let the Jew hear further what the Lord says through the prophet; let the Arian hear; let all hear who say that the Son of God either does not exist or is less. “I,” he says, “am God, and there is no other.” And what of the Son, Lord, if you alone are God? Hear further; why do you hurry? “By myself I have sworn.” Where there is an oath, there is no doubt. “By myself I have sworn: a word of righteousness shall go out from my mouth.” See, you have the Son: “A word of righteousness shall go out from my mouth and shall not return.” What is “shall not return”? So that the Sabellian may not say that the Son is the same as the Father, the word that has gone out shall not return: because the Father is the Father, the Son is the Son. Let the shameless talkativeness of the heretics be silent for a little; let the Lord complete his sentence, and either no one will oppose the Son of God, or whoever stands as his adversary will be put to shame. “A word of righteousness,” he says, “shall go out from my mouth and shall not return; for to me every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess.” And what of the Son? Hear, then, what is said in the Lord: “Mine are the highest righteousness and dominion.” Go on, then; and what after that? “To him they shall come, and all who resist him shall be put to shame.” Go now, all of you, pagans, heretics, Jews; oppose and resist the Son of God: to him you will come, and all of you who resist him will be put to shame.

We have spoken not a little of the Son of God according to his divinity, and as far as we could we have not spared the adversaries who resisted; now I wish to come to his incarnation, and the impure Manichaean stands in the way. Why? Because he does not want the Son of God to be called also the son of man. And where is what is written: “Drop down dew, you heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the Just One; let the earth be opened and bud forth the Savior, and let righteousness spring up together; I the Lord have created him”? Again: “For to us a little child is born, and to us a son is given; and the government is upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, mighty God, Father of the age to come, Prince of peace”? Again: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive in her womb and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel”? Someone says: “You had arranged to fight with the Manichaean, not with the Jew. Against the Manichaean new weapons are needed, not old ones. Why? Because he accepts the New Testament, not the Old.” But I, who have taken up the fight against both, need weapons from every side; especially since these new ones were forged from the old: so those are not to be thrown away, and these are to be carried. For different adversaries fall to different weapons. So this order must be kept, that in speaking of the Gospel I am not silent about the Prophets. “But I,” says the Manichaean, “accept neither Moses nor the Prophets.” What do you say of the apostle Paul, who at the opening of his letter to the Romans wrote: “Paul, servant of Jesus Christ, called an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was made for him from the seed of David according to the flesh”? Do you hear that the Gospel would not be shown forth through the apostles unless it had first been promised through the prophets? Do you hear that the Son of God according to his divinity was made son of man from the seed of David according to the flesh? For in what are the Prophets contrary to the Gospel? The prophet said: “Drop down dew, you heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the Just One”: let the angel come and preach the word. “Let the earth be opened”: let Mary hear; “and bud forth the Savior”: let her bear Jesus. The prophet said: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive in her womb and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel.” The evangelist too, in saying this, followed it and explained it, saying, “God with us.” In vain, Manichaean, do you try to oppose the Prophets. See, the Apostle says, “Concerning his Son, who was made for him from the seed of David according to the flesh.” What the prophets foresaw and foretold, the apostles saw and preached. He who was, was made. What was he? What was he made? He was the Word; he was made flesh. He was God; he was made man. He was Son of God; he was made son of man. He took up humanity without losing divinity; made lowly, he remained exalted; born a man, he did not cease to be God; born a little child, he was hidden as great. Let whoever gladly embraces God born not shudder at the virgin’s childbirth. God, the creator of man, the son of man, says to you: “What is it that disturbs you in my birth? I was not conceived by the desire of lust. I made the mother of whom I was to be born; I prepared and cleansed the way for my journey. She whom you despise, Manichaean, is my mother; but she was made by my hand. If I could be defiled when I made her, I could be defiled when I was born of her. As her virginity was not corrupted by my passage, so my majesty was not stained there. If the sun’s ray can dry up the filth of sewers and cannot be defiled by them, how much more can the brightness of the eternal light, which incurs no defilement, cleanse wherever it shines, while it cannot itself be polluted?” Fool, whence filth in a virgin mother, where there was no intercourse with a human father? Whence filth in her who suffered neither lust in conceiving nor pain in giving birth? Whence filth in a house which no dweller had approached? Her maker and lord alone came to her; he put on the garment he did not have, and left her closed as he found her. As he alone was born free among the dead, so the modesty of this mother, of whom he was born, alone is intact. Eve, disobedient, deserved punishment; Mary, by obeying, obtained grace: the one was cursed for tasting the forbidden fruit, the other was blessed for believing the angel; the one brought us death, the other bore us life. What are you doing, Manichaean? You oppress the Christian; you do not defend Christ. Let unclean vanity be silent, because clean truth has been born.