On “By what authority do you do these things?”

The beginning of salvation for human beings is the fear of God, and the root of all the good things in us is the law of God; and there is neither law of God without fear, nor fear without law. For the law has fear as the servant of its commands, and fear has the law as the judge of what has been commanded. So the one who approaches the law, and the God who gave the law, with fear is enrolled as a citizen among the saints and written down among the holy; but the one who is reckless of the divine fear and approaches the divine law with arrogance is not only not counted worthy of grace but is even cast out of godliness. That is why those who approach the divine law with fear and longing are taught and enlightened in all uprightness, and are instructed in godliness by the truth itself; for they fall down before the very fountain of truth, saying: “Blessed are you, O Lord; teach me your statutes.” So the saints are this reverent, this God-loving, this ready to learn the truth from the truth itself; but the enemies of the truth, or rather the foes of their own life, preferring arrogance and conceit to simplicity, approach the teacher of godliness with the bearing of tyrants. This is exactly what the children of the Jews did, as you have just heard from the words of the Gospel. For when our Lord Jesus, the king of the saints, was spending time in the temple, they came to him in the temple itself, not with the fear that was fitting, not as servants to a master, not as human beings to God, not even as disciples to a teacher. Enemies of the truth and hunters of wickedness, displaying their own malice, they tried to circumscribe the wisdom that is above the world with human reasonings. “For the priests and the elders of the people,” it says, “came to Jesus in the temple, saying: By what authority do you do these things? And who gave you this authority?” O fearless heart! What it dares! What it utters! To what arrogance it rises! O the folly of the wicked! O the forbearance of the Savior! The clay utters such things, and the potter bears it; the thing formed exalts itself against its maker, and the benefactor who answers to no one forbears. They demand an account from God the Word, and pry into his authority, the summit of sovereignty. Let us too say, fittingly, the words of the wise man: O man, “why are earth and ashes arrogant?” You question God, you demand an account from him for his own works, and you dare to say to the authority above the world: “By what authority do you do these things?” Why do you question him at all, instead of examining the power of the deeds themselves? Examine it carefully yourself in the hidden council chamber of your soul: consider the nature of the deeds, and see whether what is happening belongs to human thought, or whether what the Lord accomplishes belongs to divine sovereignty. Ask the laws of nature, the limits of authority, and the sequence of reasoning: what authority can raise the dead, that of human beings or of God? Who can cleanse lepers, drive away diseases, and chase off every weakness of soul and body by a word alone? Then: who can fashion eyes out of clay, God or a human being? Why do you not question the nature of the deeds itself, instead of boldly prying into the worker, saying, “By what authority do you do these things?” For I repeat again the words of those who dare everything so easily, who demand an account from the Word of God and try to circumscribe by reasonings the one who “catches the wise in their craftiness.” O folly! They bring a test of words to God the Word, by whom every art of words is easily caught, and every well-practised web of reasoning. For what can a human word do against God the Word? What can sophisticated wickedness do against wisdom above the world? “By what authority do you do these things?” Ask the paralytic by what authority he is raised up to health; question the miracles, and do not pry into the authority of the miracle-worker. Divine grace does not answer you, for it judges those who ask wickedly unworthy of an answer. For such is the Word of God: when he sees a crooked and perverse soul, he shakes it off as unworthy of grace, and though it often strives hard to learn, it does not obtain truth from the truth. The Jews ask many times, and do not learn even once, because they ask wickedly. The Savior’s silence so tormented their souls with pain that that wicked council said: “How long will you keep our soul in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” But not even after this word does he answer them; for those who asked wickedly were unworthy of an answer. What then does the Savior say to them? “I told you, and you did not listen; why do you want to hear it again? The works that I do, these bear witness about me.” Do you see that he wants the works to be questioned, and not the authority to be pried into? The Jews ask, “If you are the Christ, tell us plainly; how long will you keep our soul in suspense?” and he gives no solution to the uncertainty; for they were asking not in order to learn, but in order to accuse. And the high priest Caiaphas, worthy of that assembly, came to such madness as to say: “I adjure you by the living God, tell us whether you are the Son of the Blessed.” But the Savior, teaching us to receive words with reverence, answers the oath but gave no solution to what was in doubt. “Tell us,” he says, “whether you are the Son of the Blessed.” The Lord says to him: “You have said so”; and he honored the oath by confessing, and did not satisfy the malice, having undone its craftiness. The Jews sought wickedly and did not obtain an answer, and very rightly so: “for crooked reasonings separate from God.” He did not entrust his wisdom to those who wickedly pry into his wisdom. “For wisdom will not enter a soul that devises evil.”

And while they, though they asked many times, did not find what they sought, a certain woman who came to the Lord guilelessly and with genuine faith, not testing the incomprehensible power but approaching the Lord in simplicity, and saying to him in plain words but with genuine faith, “We know that when the Messiah comes, who is called Christ, he will tell us all things,” immediately heard from him who loves simplicity: “I who speak to you am he.” She had not yet asked, and immediately she learned; she had not yet sown the word of faith, and immediately she reaped the fruit of godliness. For God is holy, and rests upon the simple and the holy; when he sees the simplicity of the one who approaches, he too unfolds the benefit of his own wisdom; when he sees a soul perverted by wickedness, he withholds the benefit and does not admit it to his teaching. Hear him saying through Moses: “If you walk toward me upright, I too will walk toward you upright; but if you are crooked, I too will deal with you in crooked anger”; not that the divine nature bends its own uprightness, but that what comes from the truth does not come straight to the wicked. “By what authority do you do these things? Or who gave you this authority?” And the Savior said to them — pay attention here to how the Lord of all lays down for us a rule and canon of teaching. And what is it? He wants us not to answer every question of wicked heretics, Jews or Greeks, or any others cut off from godliness. For it is possible, it is often possible, to ask things that are not worthy of an answer; and against these worthless questionings one must by all means reply with a just counter-question. That is why the Lord says to them: “I too will ask you one question; if you tell me, I too will answer you. The baptism of John,” he says, “where was it from? From heaven, or from human beings?” See, I pray, the fountain of wisdom refuting the lie by a question; see the Word of God overturning wickedness by syllogisms; and observe how wickedness is consumed by its own arrows, and by its own … “of John, where was it from? From heaven, or from human beings?” They tested the force of the saying among themselves and said: “If we say, From heaven, he will say to us, Why then did you not believe?” Wickedness knows its own slipperiness; it knows that it is destroyed by the very things it puts forward. Since they had not obeyed John, they were afraid to say that he was from God, lest the refutation follow at their heels. “But if we say, From human beings, we fear the crowd, that we may be stoned.” For the people’s prejudice in favor of the righteous man will bring an inescapable penalty upon us. “For all the people held John to be a prophet.” So they were unwilling to say the truth, that he was from God, for they had shaken off the truth of God; and they did not dare to tell a lie, for they had fear as the judge of their shamelessness, and that not divine fear but human. And indeed it is so: many people, who often have no fear of God, are slaves to human fear. “They feared the people.” Would that they had feared God, and not the people; for the one is godliness, the other ungodliness. “They say to him, We do not know.” See how wickedness lurks in its den in the wicked; see how ungodliness proclaims its own absurdity. For just as a viper, or one of the … quietly peeps out of its hole and will not come out entirely, so the Jews too, living with the den of wickedness, do not bring their mind out into the light. That is why the Lord says to them: “Neither do I tell you.” See how silence punished the absurd question; see how he did not satisfy the wickedness, but left them standing in the middle of their syllogisms. And what once happened to Balaam’s ass, which could not turn aside to the right or to the left because of the angel who stood against it, happened to the wickedness of the Jews: it dared to look neither to the right, to the truth, because of its denial of the Savior, nor to the left, to the lie, because of its fear of the people. So we too, brothers, receiving this rule from the Lord, must not give everything in answer to the questions of the heretics. When a heretic asks wickedly, undo his absurd question by a just counter-question. A heretic often asks: “Do you know God, or do you not know him?” If you say, “I know him,” he immediately adds: “Then do you know what you worship?” “Yes,” says the godly man; for who would put up with saying, “What I do not know, I worship”? Again he adds: “Then do you know the essence of God?” If you say, “I do not know,” he immediately objects: “Then you do not know what you worship.” See, I pray, the crooked words; see the many coils of the wicked serpents! Do you see? But one must not be troubled. For this, brothers, one must know: that there are many ways of knowing. One can know that God is, not how he is. For even among us human beings there are many roads to knowledge. I know that this man lives in this city, but I do not also know what trade he follows; I know another man who follows this trade, but I do not also know where his family comes from. For “I know in part,” and in part I am ignorant. And certainly, neither does partial knowledge bring in complete knowledge, nor does not knowing in every respect abolish partial knowledge. What then? I know of God that he is, that he is good, that he is immortal, that he is incorruptible, that he is beyond conception, that he is incomprehensible, incorporeal, unchangeable. All this I know, and knowing it I worship. But how he is I do not know, nor was I taught to pry into how he is, but that he is. For I find no teacher greater than the Apostle, able to set before me a better godliness; and he, using a clear voice, teaches somewhere thus: “For the one who comes to God must believe that he is”—not how he is, but “that he is, and that he becomes a rewarder of those who seek him.” So what I know, I worship. I did not learn to pry into the essence of God; I learned to believe, brothers—to believe, not to pry. Read again your confession, heretic, the one agreed in the hidden and awesome mystery. When you came to be baptized, what did you say? Were you seeking, prying, searching, or believing? You came in another way, and you were counted worthy of that grace under other terms. If indeed you were counted worthy and now think such things, you have broken the covenant: at the awesome and dread mysteries you brought faith, but once outside the mysteries you circumscribe the faith, …

But see what the enemy of the truth says: “Surely God did not give us reasoning for nothing? Surely we did not receive the mind’s power of judgment to no purpose? Faith must also be searched out by reasonings, and godliness must not be left unexamined.” Well said. But the boundary of the examination must be the divine oracles and the rules of godliness given us by him. But you overstep the rules; you do not keep in line with the divinely inspired Scriptures, but pry into divine things, do violence to the truth, and everywhere hasten to follow the unevenness of reasonings rather than to serve faith, as though you had grasped the experience of everything else, or had made trial of all the other things that are seen. Tell me, using the sequence of reasonings: how does the heaven stand, vaulted to so boundless a height and with nothing to support it across so great a span? How does it stand, by what is it carried, what are the foundations on which it is fixed? How in so long a time is its beauty not dissolved, its harmony not destroyed? Show me the columns that carry it, show me the base that lies beneath such masses. But why do I speak of heaven, and not of the earth on which I tread? First explain to me how the earth is set. That it is founded upon the waters I too have received, and you yourself confess. But how it is fixed upon the waters, explain. Do not simply follow the word, but give a reasoned account of what is asked: how are so many and such great mountains, hills and plains borne upon waters? Tell me how the sea is bounded; tell me how the sea that rages with such waves and is heaped up to a boundless height, as soon as it comes near the sand, breaks and reveres the boundary of the lawgiver. Explain, brother, how, when there is one earth, one mother, its shoots are different: where do bitter roots come from, where sweet ones, where the differences of fruits? One earth sprouting, one rain nourishing: where does the difference come from? Explain where the springs come forth from, and from what abysses; how is it possible to comprehend these things? But when we are at a loss about these things, we have one true and godly solution of our perplexities. For blessed David sang thus: “For the word of the Lord is upright, and all his works are done in faith.” The works cannot be comprehended without faith, and is it possible to find God without faith? The works without faith, and the Son by demonstration? “For the word of the Lord is upright, and all his works are done in faith.” But let us leave the enemies of the truth and return to the sound and safe … of the faith, and show the rule of godliness shining out from the truth itself. No one among the ancients is more trustworthy than Moses, no one among the new wiser than Paul. Search the old dispensation, and you will find no one greater than Moses; for … “… you, and you have found favor beyond all.” No one in the New is more perfect than Paul; for he is a vessel of … , and has Christ speaking in himself. Do not overstep the boundaries of Moses and of Paul. What did Moses find: a comprehension of the essence, or the glory of God? Moses, brothers, came to a longing for God, as a God-loving man, and did not know that he desired the impossible; yet he showed it by what he asked of God. For what does he say? “I beg you, Lord, if I have found favor before you, let me see you so as to know you; show yourself to me.” He was a brother of Philip, who said: “Show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” “Lord, you said, You have found favor before me; show yourself to me, that I may see you so as to know you.” For he had seen him in the bush, he had seen him from Mount Sinai, he had seen him appearing from various places and showing his appearance in various ways; but that blessed Moses longed to see the very stamp of his nature; being a man, he imagined human things about the power above the world. But God accepted the longing of his faithful servant, and persuades the human desire that longed for the impossible. For what does he say to him? “No one shall see my face and live.” The power of those who long does not contain the one longed for; mortal sight does not bear the immortal nature. Why then, O Master, do you leave the longing without consolation, and do not grant even a shadow of his desire to one who pictures so great a longing? Hence he says: “I will set you on the rock and cover you with my hand; and when my glory passes by, you will see my back parts, but my front parts you will not see.” “When it passes by”: he did not say “I,” but “my glory”; for it is not possible to go beyond the glory and find the essence. Moses found nothing more than glory, and did not see even this in full, but only the back; not because the divine nature is drawn with back and breast—for it is simple and uncompounded—but because God makes himself known in this way, not according to the dignity that befits him, but according to the capacity of those who are to enjoy the sight. Moses reached glory and did not go beyond glory. And do you, heretic, going beyond glory, pry into the essence of God? Let us come also to blessed Paul. Paul, in the New Dispensation, as if dizzy at the depths of the thought, cried out that great voice full of astonishment, saying thus: “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become his counselor? Or who has given first to him, and it will be repaid to him?” And the end of the passage: “For from him and through him and to him are all things; to him be the glory forever.” Do you see that when he came to the glory of God he did not overstep the boundary? And why do I speak of human beings? Go up in thought to the things above the world; question the heavens and say: “What can you announce to me about God? Heavens, describe to me what sort of being God is; tell me what God is in essence.” But the heavens do not answer when asked about impossible things. But if you do ask these things boldly, the divine word through the wonderful Jeremiah will … against you: “The heaven shuddered at this.” For the heaven truly shudders when it sees the divine nature pried into. And blessed David too will strike back, punishing the measureless curiosity, and will say: Did you not hear that “the heavens declare” not the nature of God, but “the glory of God”? Did he himself not cry out to you on the holy lyre, “The heavens declare the glory of God,” not the nature of God? They do not interpret an essence; they announce the glory of God. But do not suppose that the powers above the world know anything more. Ask the angels—ask them, I say, not because you are permitted to converse with the powers above, but because from Scripture you have the remedies that muzzle your boldness. Ask the angels; ask them when you see them dancing or singing hymns on earth. Say to them: “What new thing do you teach? What strange thing do you announce?” And at once the divine choir will answer you through the divine Gospels: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will among men.” Angels came to earth, and did not overstep the boundaries of glory; and heretics did not shrink from overstepping them. But perhaps the highest powers, those above the angels—I mean those of the archangels? These are distinct natures. Ask the cherubim, the royal throne: … the cherubim, as it were a sapphire throne, and on the throne one seated, as it were the likeness of a Son of man. And a voice came from the cherubim, sounding like many waters: “Blessed be the glory of the Lord from his place.”

Do you see the reverence of the cherubim too? … to glory, and did not overstep the boundary. “Blessed be the glory of the Lord.” And how? “From his place”: to show you that he dwells in the heavenly places too, and that his dignity lies far higher than the heavenly and invisible powers. They do not speak as those who draw near, but as those who stand far off from the divine dignity: “Blessed be the glory of the Lord from his place.” Not that he has a place, for he circumscribes every place; but it calls the dignity that surrounds him the place of God. Have you seen the voice of the cherubim? “Blessed be the glory of the Lord.” And it announced nothing more. For you, who stand around him, ought to know the proclamations of God; for “the seraphim stood around him.” What then can be learned from you? Do not hold it back. But they too will say: “Even though we excel in dignity, we recognize the boundaries of our nature, and do not leap over the measures of knowledge; we do not pry into the one who created us, we do not meddle with the one who honored us. We know the incomprehensible nature: that it is not subject to inquiry, it does not serve sequences of reasoning; the glory of the one who is worshipped surpasses all angelic order, all thought above the world, and every power above the heavens together. That is why we too do not overstep the boundaries.” The cherubim did not overstep them, but with all reverence chant that heavenly hymn: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” Are you not shamed by Paul and Moses, who do not overstep glory? Heaven will shame you, announcing glory. But heaven does not persuade you? Angels will shame you. But you despise angels? Fear the cherubim. But do you overstep even these in your daring? Let the seraphim bring you to your senses. But you are persuaded neither by examples above the world nor by examples on earth? Then become a stranger to the sacred choirs; banish yourself from the divine courts. For you cannot pry into God and be numbered among the faithful. And why do I speak about God? Do you not know that it is a fearful thing to be reckless and to search out the nature of God? If you wish to pry even into the works of God, God does not count you worthy of his intimacy, but casts you far off as one reckless of impossible things. Moses, so great and so eminent a man, the worker of so many miracles, who became mediator between God and human beings, for whom the sea was divided, who brought down the manna from heaven: this man, because he dared to measure one of the things commanded by God by human reasoning, and did not yield to the divine power, received an inexorable penalty. For when he reached the rock, he said to the people: “O stubborn and disobedient people, shall I be able to give you water from this rock?” And what did God say to him? “Because you did not glorify me before the congregation, you shall not enter the land that I swore.” Pay careful attention to me here: “Because you did not glorify me.” For what was it to glorify? To say: “God can do all things.” For it is a sin against God to examine by reasonings what he does, and not to yield to the divine power, which works above all its own works. David defends Moses, who stumbled not in mind but in tongue. For the sins of the righteous are on the lips, but the wrongdoings of the ungodly are in the mind. And just as the ungodly man is cut off in mind, yet seems somehow to draw near to God with his lips—“For this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me”—so the godly man, though his heart is strong, often slips with his tongue. That is why David defends Moses, a prophet speaking for a prophet: “And they provoked him at the water of contradiction, and Moses was ill-treated because of them”—not because of himself. What does “because of them” mean? He did not show unbelief by his own judgment; but, troubled by the people’s contradiction, he no longer found his reasoning clear, as happens in confusion. I have said this about the things brought forward by the workshop of injustice. Where did you hear of “unbegotten” and “begotten”? Where did you hear those frenzied and fantastic dialectics? The things of the Spirit were struck out, and the things of the devil brought in instead. If you seek these things, why do you inscribe Paul as your teacher? If you pry into these things, why do you pride yourself on having Peter? Deny the faith, then, and bring in inquiry. “But I do not depart from Scripture,” he says; “God forbid.” An enemy and … a disciple and an introducer of reasonings? Explain to me, you slave of reasoning, how the Savior came in when the doors were shut. What need is there to busy oneself with the other things? For they often bring harm both to those who speak and to those who hear. I do not say: “Explain the invisible nature: how the Father begot, what is the manner of the divine begetting.” I ask about the dispensation.

Tell me how the Savior came in when the doors were shut, how the body came in. The nature of the body denies it, … the Gospels. If I follow faith, the truth does not lie. How did he come in when the doors were shut? For it was not a bodiless nature, nor one that cuts through all bodies; but there was the body together with the bodiless nature, and this was the instrument of the bodiless nature. For the Savior had this human body. Indeed the disciples, looking at the strangeness of the miracle, thought that it was a spirit, since the thing before them overcame the nature of the body. But he … says to those who doubted: “Touch me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” How did he come in? Did the planks dissolve like air? Or was the body made fine, and so passed through the thickness of the wood? But neither can you say, nor am I able to explain; Scripture has handed down to me none of these things; I do not pry; I follow what it proclaimed, even if I do not wish to. That he came in, I believe; how, I do not pry into. Do not suppose … of the doors he came in. It did not say, “He came in when the door was thinned or dissolved,” but, “when they were shut.” It proclaimed what happened; it did not show what the manner of what happened was. Peter went out of prison; but the gates were opened for him, and Scripture marked it, saying: “The iron gate opened for them of its own accord.” It did not say, “It received Peter passing through it of its own accord,” for his body was human and of human dough. But the body of Christ was human, because of its kinship with us, and divine, both because of its union with God the Word and because of the strange childbirth of the virgin. How did he come in when the doors were shut? How did he go up when the heavens were shut? O the absurdity of those who say these things! But what does the objector say? “We do not find faith safe everywhere; we have found it slipping too. One must not believe without examination, but with careful examination.” And many of those outside agree with them. For the opinions of the heretics and of the Greeks are sisters: the one are the inventions of demons, and the other the teachings of demons. Some of those who attack the faith say that its lack of reasoning is harmful, and that unless examined reasoning is joined to faith, it brings no gain anywhere to the one who believes. “From what point,” he says, “do you want to examine the nature of faith? Do you want to begin from the creation itself? Look at the one you call the first-formed man: I find him fallen through faith.” See the words of the wicked demon, who dares to attempt everything easily: what he dares, what he utters, what he proposes! “You say,” he says, “that the serpent said to him: In the day you eat, you will be like gods, knowing good and evil. He believed the serpent; believing, he perished. So faith is the beginning of evils.” This is what those enemies of the truth say to us, who do not know the true definition of faith or what they are proposing. Do we say that everyone who believes everything has faith and is proclaimed faithful? No: not the one who believes anyone whatever is faithful, but the one who truly believes God. Did you show that he perished by believing God? He fell by believing the devil; he slipped by disbelieving God. Why do you twist the words? As Jeremiah says: “Hear me, you who hate judgment, who twist everything that is straight.” Rather you ought to have said: “Unbelief is the beginning of evils.” For if he had believed God when he said, “In the day you eat, you shall surely die,” he would not have slipped, but would have had faith, a faith safe for salvation. Never slander the name of faith. For not the one who believes everything is faithful, but the one who believes God: he alone both is and is called faithful. Leave off inquiries and embrace faith. Faith enlightens all things, faith sanctifies all things, faith makes one worthy of the Holy Spirit; for Stephen was “full of faith and power.” If faith had not shone first, power would not have followed the saint. Where there is faith, there is power too; where there is unbelief, there is weakness too. Faith is the beginning of good things; faith is the fountain of good things. Let us take up the weapon of salvation. Why are you a slave to words, and flee the truth? Why do you bring forward what not even the nature of the angels dares to search out? Why do I say the nature of the angels? What not even demons dare. You do not want to follow Peter? You do not want to follow Paul? Not the angels? Not the cherubim? Not the seraphim? Then become at least a disciple of the demons. The demons saw the Savior and said to him: “Ah, what have we to do with you, Son of God?” The demons confess the Son, and you, heretic, blaspheme? The demons make him equal, and you construct inequality? “And what am I to do,” says the heretic, “when the Lord says: That they may know you, the only true God? He said ‘only’; he proclaimed the Father only as the true God. I keep in line with the truth proclaimed by God.” You follow the sound of the word “only,” and are a slave to the expression? Keep the boundaries for me, then, in the things being examined. God says through the prophet: “I am the first, and I am after these things, and there is no other besides me. There is no righteous one and savior apart from me. Turn to me, and you will be saved, from the ends of the earth. I am God, and there is no other. By myself I swear.” “I am the first, and I am after these things.” And he added: “And there is no other besides me.” Do you see how he shows a nature that stands alone, having nothing in common with another nature cut off from it? And God says this: “I am, and there is no other”—he who says through the prophet: “I alone stretched out the heaven.” Pay attention to “alone,” since you bring forward “the only true God.” “I alone stretched out the heaven”; and here likewise, “I am, and there is no other; by myself I swear.” Pay attention also to the sovereignty and the power of the speaker: that he said, “There is no other,” and “I alone am,” and this, “I swore by myself”; and he indicates that there is no one greater than himself who speaks. So the Apostle too says: “Since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself.” So the one who says, “By myself I swear, truly righteousness shall go out of my mouth; my words shall not be turned back,” has no one greater. And what do you swear? “That to me every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess” the true God. Who says these things, heretic, the Father or the Son? For me, the believer, and for every godly person, there is the dignity of the Father and the sovereignty of the Son. For keep this observed: that many of the things we say are proclaimed in controversy, not as dogma. For me and for every believer the dogma of godliness stands firm, that where the Father alone speaks, the Son and the Holy Spirit are included with him. Where the Son speaks, there is the sovereignty of the Father; where the Father exercises sovereignty, there is the authority of the Son; where the Holy Spirit works, there is the working of the Father. The glory of the holy Trinity is not cut apart, because the dogma of the truth is not cut apart. Do not confess one kingdom …

Since I am training against the enemy, I have said these things so that none of those who love to slander may say: “See how he said that everything belongs to the Son, and ‘The Son speaks,’ and showed the prophecy to be foreign to the Father and the Son’s own.” For me the boundary of the faith stands unshaken. What is being exercised is a contest. Here I show the Son speaking; and when I persuade you, then I persuade myself that the Father speaks, the Son proclaims, the Holy Spirit gives the oracle. “I am first, and I am after these things, and besides me there is no God. By myself I swear.” Who is it that says, “I am, and there is no other,” and, “Righteousness from my mouth,” and, “My words shall not be turned back; for to me every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess the true God”? How did you take the saying? To whom do you apply the name? But neither should you declare what you do not know, nor do I promise what I do not understand. Let us follow a spiritual teacher who can set us in line with godliness. So do not listen to me; listen with me. I know Paul as the teacher of the church’s doctrines. When I say Paul, I proclaim Christ; for it was he who spoke in Paul, as it is said: “Since you seek proof of the Christ who speaks in me.” This prophecy of Isaiah, then, which was quoted before—“I am, and there is no other,” and, “By myself I swear that to me every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess the true God”—Paul refers to Christ. And where do you find this proof? Writing to the Romans he says: “But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? Why do you judge one another? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. For it is written: As I live, says the Lord, to me every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess the true God.” He is the one who says, “I am, and there is no other; by myself I swear that to me every knee shall bow.” If, then, Paul refers the prophecy to Christ, and the one speaking in the prophet is Christ, and Christ says, “I alone am, and there is no other,” does he then cast the Father out of the Godhead? No, he does not cast him out, just as indeed he does not; for the glory is undivided. So it has been clearly demonstrated that, just as the Son, when he says, “I alone am,” does not cast out the Father, so too, when he says of the Father, “That they may know you, the only true God,” he does not separate himself from the truth. And not only does he heal this, but from the testimony itself it is shown that Christ is true God; for it adds: “And every tongue shall confess the true God.” So the one who says, “I alone,” and, “I am true,” is the Son. Why then quarrel about words, when the truth agrees? Why then did he say, “You, the only true God”? Be taught, and do not fight. The Savior is the teacher of the world, the corrector of the inhabited earth, who raises what has fallen, turns back what has strayed, and renews what has grown old. Since he knew that his word would go forth and prevail over all that is under heaven, for the correction of the error of the Greeks and the refutation of the unbelief of the Jews, he brings forth a two-edged word: so that by calling God “the true” and “only” one he might publicly brand the many falsely named gods, and by adding, “and Jesus Christ whom you have sent,” he might refute those who deny the dispensation. He proclaims the only true God, not separating himself, but abolishing the instruments of error. And that you may learn, brother, that he is both true God and the Son of the true God: John the Evangelist, in whom this is written—for in the Gospel according to John it stands, “That they may know you, the only true God”—that same herald who proclaimed these things, writes in his own Epistle (the first Epistle is among those read in the church, not among the apocryphal; for the Fathers exclude the second and third from the canon, but all have agreed with one voice that the first Epistle is John’s). What that saint proclaims in his theology in the Epistle, then, we must attend to: “We know,” he says, “that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know the true one; and we are in the true one, in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.” This man, brothers, both said the one and proclaimed the other. If you will, let us reason further about “alone,” and contend. Let many arrows be sent against the unbeliever—arrows, not to wound bodies but to correct minds. Let words be sent to the faithful, but arrows to the unbelievers: “The arrows of the mighty one, sharpened; peoples shall fall beneath you, in the heart of the enemies.” Blessed Jeremiah says, then—or rather Baruch his disciple, as Elisha was Elijah’s: “He who prepared the earth for all time filled it with cattle and four-footed beasts; he sends forth the light, and it goes; he called it, and it obeyed him with trembling. The stars shone in their watches and rejoiced.” “He called them,” it says, the stars, “and they said, Here we are”; and they shone with gladness for the one who made them. And after so much theology it says: “This is our God; no other shall be reckoned beside him.” Pay careful attention to how he shuts out the other: “No other shall be reckoned beside him. He found out the whole way of knowledge and gave it to Jacob his servant and to Israel whom he loved. After this he appeared on earth and lived among human beings.” This is our God, beside whom “no other shall be reckoned”: he “appeared on earth and lived among human beings after this.” Do you see the truth made secure? See how it gives no entrance to error, so that a Jew may not slander the truth and say that God appeared to Moses; for God appeared on the mountain. Beside him there is no other; and yet he does not cast the Father out of the divine dignity. If the Father is called “alone,” does he banish the Son from fellowship in the dignity? When God says that he is one and alone, whether Father or Son, he does not deny the kinship of his own nature. The Father does not cast out the Son, nor does the Son set aside the Father; but when such things are said, the word is directed against the error of idols. Why do you construct blasphemy against the Only-begotten? God does not give his glory to idols; does he then not give it even to the one begotten of him? He does give it, not [only] by grace, but also by fellowship of nature. And where is the proof that Christ receives the glory of the Father? For he said: “My glory I will not give to another.”

Hear how the Savior himself, speaking to the apostles, says: “When the Son of Man comes in the glory of his Father,” though the other had said before, “My glory I will not give to another.” Search the saying, and you will find the sense. He did not say, “My glory I will not give to my Son,” but, “I will not give it to another.” And “another” is what is foreign to kinship and cut off from the nature; but the Son is not another, for “I and the Father are one.” It has been demonstrated, then, … God, does not abolish the Son’s being true God. Do not throw the word out as a slander, as if the sense had been left hanging, as some of the brothers felt about the cup. For as though the sense had received no solution, so they brought charges: “He left the examination,” they say, “suspended and hanging.” But what more was there to say, brothers? What was needed for proof beyond what had been said? For first there was, “If it is possible, let the cup pass from me”; and against what the wording suggests—for the wording seems somehow to place the one who entreats under another’s authority—we set that saying of the Lord, truly full of all divine sovereignty and displaying the dignity of the speaker: “I have authority to lay down my life, and I have authority to take it again”; and we said that “I have” is proper to the Godhead, whereas “If it is possible, let this cup pass from me” was said in the person of the flesh, not in the person of the Godhead; and upon these we set the Master’s own testimony as a seal, for which reason he said, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” And we pointed out that it is the height of absurdity, when the Lord himself ascribes it to the flesh, for us to fasten the lowliness of the saying on the sovereignty of the Godhead. And we also presented the Lord’s purpose, why he said, “Let the cup pass from me”: not that he refused death to escape the dispensation of the cross, but that he used this saying because those unacquainted with the dispensation would be scandalized at the cross. And again the testimony followed this sense: “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” Others slandered us as if we had said: “if it is possible to fulfill the dispensation by another manner of death.” But this neither was said nor will be said. I did not say, “by another death”; I said, “that the dispensation be fulfilled in another manner,” that is, without death. For I interpreted the cup; and “otherwise” meant “without death.” And this happened, not because the Lord truly refused death for the world, but because he was confirming the weakness of the flesh: that it was truly flesh that was afraid, that was troubled. For “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” He ascribed the words of weakness to the flesh; he did not wound the sovereignty of the Godhead. Why do you slander what I do not say? Why do you misrepresent what I do not proclaim? I said “another manner”: not of death, but of the dispensation. For it was not said, “If it is possible, let this cup be exchanged.” The weakness belongs to the flesh, the suffering to the incarnation. He utters the words of weakness to show that he has put on this nature, which is afraid of death. And so that you would not again be a slave to the wording, I brought in that further point too, by way of abundance: what reason would there be for the apostles to trample on death nobly, while the Lord of the apostles fears and trembles at the experience of death? And I will say this now too, brothers: Paul is bold not only to be bound but also to die for the name of Christ, and does the Lord of Paul refuse death? Paul’s heart is not crushed, and is Christ’s soul troubled? For “now,” he says, “my soul is troubled.” All this I spoke to you before witnesses. But does this not persuade you? Does “If it is possible” still scandalize you? “Yes,” he says. Let us join battle, brothers, with the contentious man; let us contend by the power of the truth to raise up those who have fallen through the weakness of unbelief. “If Christ had authority, he would not have said, If it is possible, let it pass.” Then accuse God too, for using in the law a certain expression far removed from his authority. For he says to Moses, when he spoke from Mount Sinai in that great and fearful appearance, when all the people trembled, hearing the voice of the living God—he who has authority over all and governs all things in all, God who gives all things, says to Moses: “Who will grant that their heart be so in them, that they fear me and keep my commandments all their days, that it may be well with them and with their children?” God says: “Who will give this people a heart?” And who, O Master, is stronger than you, that he should give it? Are you not the one who gives all things, especially the things that lead to godliness? If you were not the one who gives a good heart to those who love you, if you are not the one who gives, how does David pray to you, “Create a clean heart in me, O God”? The prophets ask from you a clean heart and the other good gifts, and the … purity of heart; and you, using a human expression, say, “Who will give this people a heart?” And who gives more than you? But even if you, being good, spoke thus, blessed Moses did not follow your wording; he proclaimed your dignity, showed your sovereignty, made known your power. He says to the people in Deuteronomy: “The Lord God has given you a heart to know, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, to this day.”

Do you see that the same one gives heart and eyes and ears and all things? How then did the one who gives all things say, “Who will give this people such a heart?” And again, if he was not the one who gives a heart, how did he say through Ezekiel: “And I will tear out of them the heart of stone, and I will give them a heart of flesh, and I will write my law on their hearts”? So just as there God himself, who is able to give a good heart, says, “Who will give?”, so also the Only-begotten of the Father, who fills the inhabited earth with authority and says with sovereignty, “I have authority to lay down my life, and I have authority to take it again,” answers again in human fashion, speaking in the person of the weakness of the flesh: “If it is possible, let the cup pass from me.” So do not misrepresent what is not said, but keep in line with what is proclaimed; do not slander the teaching when you do not grasp its sense. I know where you slip into slander from; I know where you get this disease. The affliction is human; the disease is envy. For just as the eye, if it is clean, sees and distinguishes everything rightly, but if smoke gets in and spoils the beauty of sight, or dust falls in, it dulls the sight, and it does not see well as it saw rightly before: so now too each of the hearers, as long as he has a clean eye of faith, a clean eyelid of love, sees rightly and purely; but if the smoke of blasphemy gets into what is said, or the dust of envy steals into the soul, it clouds the sight and destroys the purity of the mind, and he hears what he did not hear, and what he did hear he does not understand well. Hence the divine Scripture, foreseeing the stumbling blocks of those who would stumble in mind at the sacred writings, has one of the prophets cry out somewhere, after he had completed the divine proclamation: “Who is wise, and will understand these things? And who is understanding, and will know them? For the ways of the Lord are straight, and the righteous will walk in them.” So, brother, do not snatch words away into stumbling blocks. The word is bare, the truth is bare. Not one, not a second, not a tenth, not a hundredth was the hearer; it is a boundless multitude, a countless multitude. The church is a sea of godliness, not full of waves, but brimming with faith. The ship of teaching does not suffer shipwreck among us; it is not battered, not tossed, not storm-driven, but it comes to anchor as in a calm harbor in the souls of those who love the Lord. But so much for this. One must consider this, however: that the saints of God fall under slanders. What is surprising, then, if we, who are cheap and lowly and, so to speak, nothing, are slandered? Or have you not heard how David says: “Deliver me from the slander of men”? The holy apostles of the Savior were slandered too, as blessed Paul also said: “And not, as we are slandered, and as some say that we say, Let us do evil that good may come.” I am not grieved to be slandered along with the saints, even though I am unworthy of the saints. I have all of you as judges, and before all of you our common father, who judges not by prejudice but by understanding. He knows our thoughts, he recognizes our words too, for it was from him that we were taught these things. We put it to you: if anything was lacking in what was said, he would have corrected what was said; but he raised no objection. For if he had corrected it, it would have been not from hatred but from love; for “whom the Father loves, he reproves,” and the one he does not correct he turns away from. But this wonderful father both accepts what is said well and applies correction to what is in error. For this is proper to a father: to award the prize to what is said well and proclaimed with faith. His verdict, then, suffices instead of all others, and before his again that of the all-holy God. Let us hold fast to godliness; let us keep the faith unshaken. Believe the truth, and do not speak against the truth. Do not set the faith aside; do not pry into the divine nature; do not subject the immortal dignity to mortal reasonings. The road of reasonings is slippery; the understanding of the confession of the faith is safe and firm. True wisdom is faith. Hear what the divine oracle says: “For even if one is perfect among the sons of men, if the wisdom from you is absent, he will be reckoned as nothing.” Flee disputes, and do not prefer words to faith. Have Paul as your teacher, inscribe Peter as your guide; follow their faith. Hear Peter saying: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Follow Paul, who clearly hymns the Son of God, saying in one place that God has spoken to us in his Son, “through whom he also made the ages; who, being the radiance of his glory and the exact imprint of his substance, upholds all things by the word of his power”; and proclaiming again in another place, in the passage about the Jews: “Whose are the fathers, from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all, blessed forever and ever. Amen.”