Against Five Heresies 6

I would like to pursue the Manichaean further, but I am beset by the hostile Arian, who trusts in his strength and glories in his power. When we were answering the others we did not keep silent about him either; but now, following his own order, let us see what darts he throws. Let the person of the powerful frighten no one: “All flesh is grass.” You see the grass grow daily, you see it flower: why are you afraid? Such fruits a deserted land bears. I do not accuse the farmers; I look for them. Where are you now, good farmers? What are you doing? Why are you idle? You see how many evils this land is full of: here thorns spring up, here thistles, here grass. Burn the thorns, root out the thistles, cut the grass, scatter good seed; let not the winter frighten you; and though iniquity abounds, yet let your love be fervent. Sow in winter what you may reap in summer. But to whom am I speaking? Where are you, fountains of tears? To what farmers am I talking? Some are dead, others put to flight: “the earth has been given into the hands of the wicked”; tribulation and distress have found us. Lord, give us help from tribulation, that the salvation of man may not be vain but true. What do you say, Arian? Answer my questions, I pray. I would not have you despise the little one: your great form does not help you, your great arms do not protect you; the blow of one stone pierces the helmeted brow. Tell me, then, what I ask you. Do you believe in God the Father almighty? “I believe,” he says. Do you believe in Jesus Christ his Son our Lord? “I believe,” he says. Do you believe that Jesus Christ, God and man, was born of the Holy Spirit from the virgin Mary? “I believe,” he says. You do well. I ask further: As the Father is God, so is the Son God? “Yes.” Is the Father one, the Son another? “Certainly.” Is the Son equal to the Father? “Equal, equal,” he says. What remains? See, he has answered everything I asked. In that he says he believes God the Father and God the Son, he is with me against the pagan. In that he believes that Christ, God and man, was born of the Holy Spirit from the virgin Mary, he is with me against the Jew and the Manichaean. In that he believes that the Father is one and the Son another, he is with me against the Sabellian. Come, if you are with me in everything, why do we quarrel? If we have one inheritance, let us possess it together; we are brothers: “Behold, how good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell in unity!” Why is there a new structure before the wall? Let us keep watch together to guard our inheritance. Our inheritance is splendid to us. We have the envious, we have enemies: they too want to possess it, not with us but against us. Let no one usurp anything for himself: this inheritance was left to us to be possessed undivided, not to be broken up into shares. Let us gather the fruit together, lest by dividing we lose it. Poverty makes me anxious; I beg you, do not gather outside, apart from me, lest you begin to scatter. For whoever does not gather with me scatters. I seem to have forgotten with whom I was dealing; but I have not forgotten: I am questioning the Arian, whom I long to see a Catholic. Someone says: “He has answered everything you wished, and nothing contrary is found in his answers: what more do you want?” Wait, brother, do not judge too easily; I still have something to ask. Do not quickly entrust yourself to him: the answer is clear, the poison hidden. What did you say, brother? Is the Son equal to the Father? “Equal,” you say. Come now, keep watch: now what was hidden will be revealed. How do you say the Son is equal to the Father? In operation, or in origin? In power, or in eternity? Or perhaps in both? “Far from it,” you say. “He is equal in operation and power, not in eternity: for how can the begotten be equal to the unbegotten?” There he is, the one who walked with me as a co-heir: the deceit that was hidden has appeared. He was thought to possess with me; he wants to divide. But I do not allow it; I resist outright. The laws require that the testator’s will be obeyed in all things: if anyone wishes to act against the testator’s will, let him lose the inheritance. But “are the laws silent amid arms”? Not at all: the toil and the fight are for this, that the laws may be served. I bring out the testament, I read the testator’s words: if there is anything to be divided, I find it there; if there is nothing to be divided, I answer you from the testament itself. Hear what the testament contains: “My peace I give you, my peace I leave you.” This is the inheritance. And who is the testator? Read the Testament, and you will find him. When the prophet spoke of the Lord, he said: “He shall be magnified to the ends of the earth, and he himself shall be peace.” “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men”: not to those who divide the holy unity, but “to men of good will.” He himself is the inheritance, he himself the testator, and you seek to divide him. Why do you divide the one? If you divide the one, you will have nothing whole. O Arian heresy, cruel and impious harlot, blush at Solomon’s judgment. A harlot, lest she lose the one living child, conceived no matter how and already born, would not allow her son to be divided; and do you divide your God-man? She, though a harlot, was yet devoted, because she was a mother; you are both a harlot and impious, because you are not a mother: what you bear you smother, what you do not bear you gather. How do you suckle another’s child, you who kill your own? Your heart has grown hard; hers trembled. What did she say? “Give her the child, and do not divide him.” He is my son, but I would rather rejoice that he lives whole with her than mourn him divided and dead. “He is my son,” she says; “but what use am I as a mother to the child if I take away the life I cannot give? I want to drive the cruel woman’s breasts away from the little one, but I am the more compelled to fear the judge’s sword. Give her my son: he was born mine; but let him go wholly to her, and let the love remain with me. Give her the whole child; let not the life of his limbs be taken away; let his wholeness not be divided, and my devotion is not taken from me.” What did she say? “Give her the child and do not divide him.” See, I too say: possess the whole, and do not divide God. “No,” he says; “but if you want peace without prejudice, divide the inheritance.” And how am I to divide it? “The Father is greater, the Son less”? O shares! O justice! O equality! One part is greater, the other less. I do not consent; I make no share, because I do not divide peace. For if peace is broken, it will no longer be peace. But how can peace be unimpaired with you, in whom faith is not whole? Therefore, since you do not want to possess with me and want to divide peace, you cannot obtain the inheritance. Finally, if in your mouth you strive not for peace but for perfidy, go, appeal to the judge; let us see what he will say to you. You have the ordinary judge; I would not have you bring me other and other powers from different quarters. I need not an armor-bearer but a lawgiver. “And where,” you say, “do I find him?” Where will you not find him? Hear the prophet saying: “The Lord is our judge, the Lord our lawgiver.” And do not think the judge one to be despised; hear what follows: “The Lord is our king, the Lord himself will save us.” See, you have the judge. If that is too little, our king too is before you. He is in heaven in such a way that he does not desert the earth. “Heaven and earth,” he says, “I fill.” “I am with you all days until the end of the age.” He is both with us and with the Father: for he neither left the Father when he came down to us, nor deserted us when he ascended to the Father. Appeal to him, say to him: “Lord, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” Hear the divine answer, hear the just judge; hear peace fleeing strife. What does he say? “Friend, who appointed me a judge or divider over you?” You want to divide peace, and you seek to have peace as your judge? “I will not be your judge; let me be peace. I do not know how to quarrel; I sit with those who agree, I flee those who quarrel. If, when you were an enemy of my Father, I reconciled you through myself, how then will you separate me from my Father? When you were far off, I came to bring you back; when you were wandering among mountains and woods, I sought you; I found you among stones and wood; you stumbled on stones and clung to them, because you worshiped wood and stones. And lest you be torn by the greedy mouth of wolves and beasts, I gathered you, carried you on my shoulders, and gave you back to my Father. I labored, I sweated, I put my head under the thorns, I offered my hands to the nails, a lance opened my side; I was torn by so many, I will not say insults, but harsh things; I shed my blood, I laid down my life, to join you to myself: and do you divide me?” Hear what is answered to the disciple who knew the Son and was seeking the Father. Philip said to the Lord: “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Was not he too separating the Son from the Father? “We know you already,” he means, “but we do not know your Father.” And what do you want? “Show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” And the Lord answered him (if you are willing to hear, Arian: you erred with the apostle; come back with the apostle; let his rebuke be your cure too). What does the Lord say? “Have I been with you so long, and you have not known me?” Philip, I came to bring you to my Father; do not separate me. Why do you seek someone else apart from me? “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father as well.” So great is the unity in us, so great the likeness, so great the love, that I am in the Father and the Father in me. I sense, Sabellian, what you are muttering: you are eager either to shut me in with the Arian or to call me away from the Arian. But in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, not of three gods but of one God, when I answer him I do not pass you by. What did the Lord say? “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father as well.” Did he say, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father,” or, “I am Son and Father at once”? But he said, “I am in the Father, and the Father in me,” and, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father as well.” The insertion of one syllable, “et” (“as well”), distinguishes the Father and distinguishes the Son, and shows that you have neither Father nor Son. Tell me, Arian: do you call the Father God? “Certainly.” And the Son? “Him too I confess as God.” How do you know? “Because, when it was foretold that he would come in the flesh, the prophet said of him: Say, you faint-hearted, be strong; do not fear; behold, our God will bring the vengeance of recompense; God himself will come and save us.” Acknowledge it, then, in what you say you acknowledge, if you do not oppose the prophet. What then do you say of the Father? “He is God.” And the Son? “He is God.” Is the Son coeternal with the Father? “No.” Then, according to you, there was a time when the Son was not. If there was a time when the Son was not, then there was a time which the Son did not make. If there was a time which the Son did not make, not all things were made through him: for there was already a time when the Son was not. If there was a time when the Son was not, John the evangelist ought not to have said, “In the beginning was the Word,” but, “In the beginning was time.” John says, “All things were made through him”; but the Arian contradicts. Tell me, Arian: how do you know that there was a time when the Son was not? Or will you perhaps say, “And how does John know that in the beginning was the Word?” Because he reclined on the Lord’s breast, and drew from there what he drank at Christ’s banquet: that in the beginning was the Word. Yet tell me: when in the beginning was the Word, or when John reclined on the Lord’s breast and learned from the Word of the Lord that the Word was in the beginning and the Word was God, where was Arius? I do not know whether you dare to say he was there. For it is known and read at what time he was born, and how deservedly he was condemned. It is known too how he lived and how he died; and so you do not dare to say of Arius, as of the Word, “He both was and is”: for Arius neither was then nor is now. But that the Arian may be shut out on every point, hear what is said through Solomon: “The Lord made the regions and the uninhabited bounds under heaven. When he prepared the heaven, I was present with him.” And a little later: “I was with him ordering all things; I was there when he made the strong foundations of the earth; I was the one in whom he delighted.” But you say: “The question is about time: whether the Son was before there was time.” Hear him saying through the prophet: “From time,” he says. What is “from time”? Is it from when time began to be? Not so, impious Arian, not so; but: “From time, before it was made, I was there.” See, before time was made, he was there. Look now for when he was not, who was before the times. “In the beginning was the Word.” The Greeks say it better: Logos, for it means both word and reason. You see, then, that he always was, of whom you dare to say, “He was not.” Or if you say that God was at some time without word or without reason, you will be an adversary not only of the Son but also of the Father. “I,” he says, “came forth from the mouth of the Most High.” Who says this? The Word. And what is this Word? Let John say: “The Word was God.” So the Word, and he whose Word it was, are not two, but one. “No,” you say, “because a word is later than him whose word it is; whence it appears that the Son is less than the Father.” So you deny that the Son of God is God. “I do not deny it,” you say. “I call the Father God, and the Son God; but the Father greater, the Son less.” For how long is the Father greater, the Son less? Tell me, since I see you want to trample on eternity: by how many years does God the Father precede his Son? Where did you read the birthday of the Son of God? Of the Son of God, I say; I do not say of the Son of God and man. Where then did you read his birthday? With what astrologer did you look up and work out the horoscope of the Creator of the stars? What times, what hours, what moments, what numbers, what minutes of moments of the birth of him who made all things have you collected? Let it rest, I beg you, let it rest, this heresy of yours, not religion but superstition: on the beginning of Christ calculation fails. For when eternity is heard to be without beginning, no age is sought in it. If the Father is God and the Son God, the Father greater, the Son less, then there is no longer one God, but two gods. If there are two gods, what is it that the Lord says through the prophet: “Before me no god was formed, and after me there shall be none”? What do you say, Arian? To whom do you assign these words? If they are the Father’s, then in saying “Before me no god was formed, and after me there shall be none,” either he himself will not be Father, or the Son will not be God. For if he said only “Before me no god was formed,” and did not add “and after me there shall be none,” you would be free to apply these words to the Father alone. But since he goes on to say “after me there shall be none,” then according to you, as I said, he denies both that he is Father and that the Son is God. Again, if these words are the Son’s, he denies that his Father is either God or Father. For if he did not say “Before me no god was formed,” but only “after me there shall be none,” perhaps it could be said that the Son spoke it. But now, when he says, “Before me no god was formed, and after me there shall be none,” he says that his Father is neither God nor Father. Again, if these words are the Father’s, who says, and to whom, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you”? Or is God, far be it, to be convicted of lying? But if they are the Son’s words, who says, and of whom, “My Father is working until now”? Or is he perhaps to be judged both insulting and ungrateful to the Father? But would it be said to an ungrateful one, “Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession”? Or did the prophet perhaps not know what he was saying, or want to deceive; or, to say something milder of the prophet, are we to believe that he imagined two people talking together, the Father and the Son, and that when the Father said, “Before me no god was formed,” the Son added, “And after me there shall be none”? Is what we are doing a mime and a joke, or something divine? O crime! O grief! Spare us, spare us, heretical impiety. Since you do not grasp God, you provoke us too to blasphemy. The holy Church does not teach this. The Father is Father, the Son is Son; the one was never not Father, and the other was never not Son: both eternal, they neither began to be nor cease. What the Father speaks, the Son speaks, because he is the Word of the Father; and what the Son speaks, the Father speaks, because he is the Father of the Word. The Word himself says: “The words that I speak, I do not speak from myself.” Grant to the Creator, I pray, what he himself has granted to the creature, and in what is created, if you can, grasp the Creator. See, fire and brightness are two: one is from the other, and neither is without the other: the fire is father, the brightness son. If the brightness could, it would say: “That I shine, I do not shine from myself; but he who sent me gave me to shine.” For fire sends out brightness. And as the Son says of God the Father, “The Father is with me,” so the brightness could say, “The fire is with me.” Put out the fire, and the brightness will appear nowhere. If, then, fire and brightness, father and son, the one a father without a wife, the other a son without a mother, cannot be divided from each other; and if, though one is from the other, the beginning of the one still cannot be without the other; and if this power has been granted by the Creator to the creature: what can the Creator himself do? Let the pagan come, let the Sabellian come, let the Arian come: let them contemplate a lamp, and see in it what they cannot see in God. I do no wrong if, wishing to show in some measure the power of so great a Creator, I bring forward so small a likeness of fire or of a lamp. For it is written, “Your word is a lamp to my feet, Lord, and a light to my paths.” And it is said of God, “A consuming fire.” Come, then, consider the lamp carefully, and remove your foolish darkness. Let the pagan look, and learn there that Father and Son are without marriage, and how the Son was born: if you are not blind, see it there; look for something between the fire and its brightness. If there is nothing between, there is no marriage. Do not try to search out something between, lest you suffer a great burning. Let the Sabellian come and see two in one, fire and brightness. Can the brightness not rightly say, “I am in the fire, and the fire in me,” as the Son says, “I am in the Father, and the Father in me”? Let the Arian come too, and let him see one from the other, yet the one unable to be born without the other: neither of them is earlier, neither later; father and son, brightness and fire, are of the same age; fire cannot be without brightness, nor brightness without fire. Or, if you like, put out your hand and divide one from the other: show me fire without brightness, or brightness without fire. Far be it, far be it: you will only be able to burn yourself; you will not be able to separate one from the other. For as fire and brightness are one from the other, and yet one cannot be without the other, so God the Father and God the Son are one from the other, and yet one cannot be without the other. They have no rising, which does not exist, but one eternity and substance. Fire and brightness are temporal; but the Father and the Son, God, are eternal. “Are,” I say, because they are Father and Son; “God,” I say, because they are one. Duality in the offspring, unity in the deity. The birth of the one makes another, but the divinity shows them to be one. When I say “Son,” he is another; when I say “God,” he is one. He is another person, because he is the Son; he is not another thing, because he is God. Blush, Arians. Pilate’s executioners did not dare to tear the tunic of a man already condemned and hanging on the cross; and do you try to divide the love of God, who sits in heaven, or rather to divide God himself, who is love? Try, then; try as much as you can: you have already plunged into hell; for that tunic you will never tear. Again the Lord says through the prophet: “There is no God besides me; a just God and a Savior, there is none but me.”