Against Praxeas 18–24

But Scripture confuses them, so that they do not easily perceive this sharing of the Father's names in the Son, whenever it lays down that there is one only God; as if the same Scripture had not also put forward two gods and lords, as we showed above. “So,” they say, “since we find two and one, both are therefore one and the same, both Son and Father.” But Scripture is in no danger, so that you need to come to its rescue with your argument lest it seem to contradict itself. It has its reason both when it lays down one only God and when it shows two, Father and Son; and it is sufficient for itself. It is agreed that the Son is named by it. For without prejudice to the Son it can rightly have defined as one only God the one whose Son he is. For he who has a Son does not cease to be himself the only one, in his own name, that is, whenever he is named without the Son. And he is named without the Son when he is defined in the first place as the first person, who had to be set forth before the Son's name, since the Father is known first, and after the Father the Son is named. So there is “one God, the Father,” and “there is no other besides him.” In saying this he does not deny the Son, but another God; and the Son is not other than the Father. In fact, look at what follows declarations of this kind, and you will find that their definition generally concerns the makers and worshipers of idols, so that the oneness of the Godhead drives out the multitude of false gods, while still having the Son; who, as he is undivided and inseparate from the Father, is to be reckoned in the Father, even if not named. Indeed, if he had named him, he would have separated him, saying thus: “There is no other besides me, except my Son.” For he would have made even the Son another, by excepting him from the others. Suppose the sun said, “I am the sun, and there is no other besides me, except my ray”: would you not have noted the absurdity, as if the ray were not reckoned in the sun? So, that there is no other God besides himself is said because of idolatry … both of the nations and of Israel; also because of the heretics, who, as the nations make idols with their hands, so they themselves make them with words, that is, another God and another Christ. So even when he declared himself one, the Father was acting on behalf of the Son, so that Christ should not be believed to have come from another God, but from him who had said beforehand, “I am God, and there is no other besides me,” who shows himself to be the only one, but with the Son, with whom he “alone stretched out the heavens.”

If any seize on this saying of his too as an argument for singleness, “I stretched out the heavens alone,” he means alone with regard to the other powers, guarding in advance against the conjectures of the heretics who will have it that the world was built by angels and various powers, and who make the Creator himself either an angel or someone suborned for other external things, such as the works of the world, and even ignorant of them. Or if he stretched out the heavens alone in the sense in which these heretics perversely presume, as a single individual, then that Wisdom is not admitted who says, “When he prepared the heavens, I was present with him.” And Isaiah said, “Who has known the mind of the Lord, and who has been his counselor?”: none, that is, except Wisdom, who was present with him, yet in him, and fitted all things together with him, not ignorant of what he was doing. And by “except Wisdom” he means except the Son, who is the wisdom and power of God according to the apostle, and who alone knows the Father's mind. For “who knows the things that are in God, except the Spirit who is in him?” Not one outside him. There was, then, one who made God not alone, except alone apart from the others. Then the Gospel too would have to be rejected, which says that all things were made by God through the Word and without him nothing was made. And unless I am mistaken it is written elsewhere too: “By his Word the heavens were made firm, and all their power by his Spirit.” And the Word, the power and wisdom of God, will himself be the Son. So if all things were made through the Son, then in stretching out the heavens too through the Son he did not stretch them out alone, except in the sense in which he is alone apart from the others. And indeed he immediately speaks of the Son: “Who else has overthrown the signs of the ventriloquists and the divinations from the heart, turning the wise backward and making their counsel foolish, establishing the words of his Son?”; that is, by saying, “This is my beloved Son; hear him.” So by adding the Son he is himself the interpreter of how he stretched out the heavens alone: alone, that is, with the Son, as he is one with the Son. Accordingly, this will also be the Son's saying: “I stretched out the heavens alone”; because the heavens were made firm by the Word, because the heavens were prepared with Wisdom assisting in the Word, and all things were made through the Word, it is fitting that the Son also alone stretched out the heavens, since he alone ministered to the Father's work. It will be he too who says, “I am the first, and for what is to come, I am.” The Word was first of all things, of course: “In the beginning was the Word,” in which beginning he was put forth by the Father. But the Father, having no beginning, as put forth by no one, as unbegotten, cannot be seen as “first.” He who was always alone could have no order. So if they have thought that the Father and the Son must be believed to be the same in order to vindicate one God, his oneness is safe, since, though he is one, he also has a Son, who is equally included in the same Scriptures. If they do not want the Son to be reckoned second to the Father, lest the second should make two gods be spoken of, we have shown that two gods and two lords are also mentioned in Scripture; and yet, lest they be scandalized at that, we have given the reason why they are not called two gods or lords, but why the Father and the Son are two; and this not from separation of substance but from arrangement, since we declare the Son undivided and inseparate from the Father, other not in condition but in degree; who, though he is called God when named by himself, does not therefore make two gods but one, by the very fact that he has to be called God from the unity of the Father.

But we must still take pains to beat back their arguments, if they pick out anything from the Scriptures for their opinion, refusing to look at the rest, which itself keeps the rule, and that without prejudice to the oneness of the Godhead and the condition of the monarchy. For just as in the Old Testament they hold to nothing but “I am God, and there is no other besides me,” so in the Gospel they cling to the Lord's answer to Philip, “I and the Father are one,” and, “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” and, “I am in the Father and the Father in me.” To these three passages they want the whole instrument of both Testaments to give way, when the fewer ought to be understood according to the more. But this is the peculiarity of all heretics. For because there are only a few things they can find in the forest, they defend the few against the many and take up the later against the earlier. But the rule established for every matter from the beginning, in the earlier and the more numerous passages, lays down the law for the later ones too, and for the fewer.

See, then, how many passages even in the Gospel lay down the law for you before Philip's question and before any argument of yours. And first of all, John the evangelist's very preface shows at once what he was before who was to become flesh: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; he was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.” For if these words may not be taken otherwise than as they are written, then beyond doubt one is shown who was from the beginning, and another with whom he was; one the Word of God, another God (though the Word too is God, but as Son of God, not as Father); one through whom are all things, another from whom are all things. How we say “another” we have already often stated: in saying “another” we must mean “not the same,” but “not the same” not as though separated; other by arrangement, not by division. It was he, then, who was made flesh, not the one whose Word he was. His glory was seen as of the only-begotten from the Father, not as of the Father. It was the only-begotten who declared the bosom of the Father; the Father did not declare his own bosom. For it goes before: “No one has ever seen God.” He too is pointed out by John as the Lamb of God, not the one whose Lamb he is called. Certainly always the Son of God, but not the one whose Son he is. This Nathanael at once perceived about him, as Peter too did elsewhere: “You are the Son of God.” And he himself confirms that they perceived it rightly, answering Nathanael, “Because I said, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe?” and declaring Peter blessed, to whom flesh and blood had not revealed what he had perceived, but the Father who is in heaven. By this saying he established the distinction of both persons: of the Son on earth, whom Peter had recognized as the Son of God, and of the Father in heaven, who had revealed to Peter what he had recognized. When he went into the temple, he called it his Father's house, as the Son. When he speaks to Nicodemus: “For God so loved the world,” he says, “that he gave his only-begotten Son, that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” And again: “For God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him; he who believes in him is not judged; he who does not believe in him is already judged, because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God.” And John, when some asked him about Jesus, why he baptized, said: “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand; he who believes in the Son has eternal life; he who does not believe in the Son of God will not see God, but the wrath of God will remain on him.” Whom did he show to the Samaritan woman? If the Messiah, who is called Christ, then certainly he showed himself as the Son, not the Father, he who elsewhere too is called Christ, the Son of God, not the Father. Then to the disciples: “It is my food,” he says, “to do the will of him who sent me, and to complete his work.” And to the Jews about the healing of the paralytic: “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” “My Father” and “I,” says the Son. In fact, for this reason the Jews wanted all the more to kill him, not only because he broke the Sabbath but because he called God his Father, making himself equal to God. Then he said to them: “The Son can do nothing of himself, unless he sees the Father doing it; for whatever he does, the Son also does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he does, and he will show him greater works than these, so that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son also gives life to whom he will. For the Father does not judge, but has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may honor the Son as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent the Son. Amen, amen, I say to you: he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and does not come into judgment, but passes from death to life. Amen I say to you that the hour will come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and when they hear it they will live. For as the Father has eternal life in himself, so he has given the Son to have eternal life in himself, and has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man”: through the flesh, that is, as he is also Son of God through his Spirit. He adds further: “But I have a greater testimony than John's; for the works which the Father has given me to accomplish, these very works bear witness about me that the Father has sent me; and the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me.” And by adding, “You have never heard his voice or seen his form,” he confirms that in former times it was not the Father but the Son who was seen and heard. In fact he says, “I have come in my Father's name, and you have not received me.” So the Son was always in the name of God, the King, the Lord Almighty, and the Most High. And to those who asked what they ought to do, he answered, “That you believe in him whom God has sent.” He declares too that he is the bread which the Father gave from heaven; that all that the Father gives him comes to him, and he will not cast it out, because he had come down from heaven not to do his own will but the Father's; and that the Father's will is that whoever sees the Son and believes in him should obtain life and resurrection; that no one can come to him unless the Father draws him; and that everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to him; adding here too, “not that anyone has seen the Father,” to show that it is the Father's Word through which they are taught. And when many went away from him, and he offered his apostles the chance to go away too, if they wished, what did Simon Peter answer? “To whom shall we go? You have the words of life, and we believe that you are the Christ.” That he was the Father, or the Father's?

And whose teaching does he call it, at which they marveled? His own or the Father's? Likewise, when they were debating among themselves whether he was the Christ (not, surely, the Father, but the Son), he says, “You know me, and where I am from; and I have not come of myself, but he who sent me is true, whom you do not know; I know him, because I am with him.” He did not say, “because I am he, and I sent myself,” but, “he sent me.” Likewise when the Pharisees had sent men to seize him: “A little while longer,” he says, “I am with you, and I go to him who sent me.” And when he denies that he is alone (“but I,” he says, “and the Father who sent me”), does he not show two, as much two as inseparate? Indeed, this was the whole of what he was teaching: that there are two, inseparate. For, citing the law that confirms the testimony of two men, he adds: “I bear witness about myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness about me.” But if he were one, being the same both Son and Father, he would not use the support of the law, which requires faith in the testimony not of one but of two. Likewise, asked where his Father was, answering that neither he nor his Father was known to them, he spoke of two who were unknown; and that if they had known him, they would have known the Father; not as though he himself were Father and Son, but because, by reason of their inseparability, neither can be recognized or unknown without the other. And Scripture, interpreting from outside, notes that they did not understand what he had said about the Father (“He who sent me,” he says, “is true, and what I have heard from him, that I speak to the world”), though they ought to have recognized that the Father's words were in the Son, since they read in Jeremiah, “And the Lord said to me, ‘Behold, I have put my words in your mouth,’” and in Isaiah, “The Lord gives me the tongue of instruction, to know when I ought to speak a word”; as he himself says again: “Then you will know that I am he, and that I speak nothing of myself, but as the Father taught me, so I speak; because he who sent me is with me”: and this also to testify that the two are inseparable. Likewise, in the dispute with the Jews, reproaching them for wanting to kill him, he says: “I speak what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have seen with your father”; and, “Now you want to kill a man who has told you the truth, which he heard from God”; and, “If God were your Father, you would have loved me; for I came forth from God and have come.” (And yet we do not separate them, although he said he came forth, as some seize on the occasion of this saying; for he came forth from the Father as a ray from the sun, a stream from a spring, a shoot from a seed.) And: “I do not have a demon, but I honor my Father”; and, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing; it is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say that he is your God, and you do not know him; but I know him. And if I were to say, ‘I do not know him,’ I would be a liar like you; but I know him and keep his word.” And when he adds, “Abraham saw my day and was glad,” he certainly shows that it was the Son, not the Father, who was seen by Abraham in former times. Likewise, over the blind man, he says that he must do the works of the Father; and after restoring his sight he says to him, “Do you believe in the Son of God?” And when the man asked who he was, by pointing to himself he certainly pointed to the Son, in whom he had said one must believe. Then he declares that he is known by the Father and the Father by him, and that he is loved by the Father because he lays down his life, since he had received this commandment from the Father. And when asked by the Jews whether he was the Christ (that is, of God; for to this day the Jews hope for the Christ of God, not for the Father himself, since it was never written that the Christ who is to come is the Father), he says, “I tell you, and you do not believe; the works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me.” What testimony? That he was the very one they were asking about, that is, the Christ of God. Also, of his sheep … that no one would snatch them out of his hand, “for what the Father,” he says, “has given me is greater than all; and I and the Father are one.” Here, then, these fools, or rather blind men, want to take their stand, not seeing, first, that “I and the Father” signifies two; next, at the end, that “are” is not from one person, since it is said in the plural; then, that he says “we are one thing” (unum), not “we are one person” (unus). For if he had said “we are one person,” he might have helped their opinion; for unus seems to signify the singular number. Further, when he calls two of the masculine gender “one” with a neuter word, which does not concern singleness but unity, likeness, conjunction, the love of the Father, who loves the Son, and the obedience of the Son, who obeys the Father's will, by saying “I and the Father are one” he shows that there are two, whom he makes equal and joins together. So he adds too that he had shown them many works from the Father, none of which deserved stoning. And lest they should think that they ought to stone him because he wanted himself to be understood as God himself, that is, the Father, since he had said, “I and the Father are one,” showing himself God as Son of God, not as God himself, he says: “If it is written in the law, ‘I said, you are gods,’ and Scripture cannot be broken, do you say of him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You blaspheme,’ because he said, ‘I am the Son of God’? If I do not do the works of my Father, do not believe me; but if I do them, and you will not believe me, believe at least for the works' sake; and know that I am in the Father and the Father in me.” It is through the works, then, that the Father will be in the Son and the Son in the Father; and so through the works we understand that the Father and the Son are one. So thoroughly did he persist in impressing all this, that two should still be believed in one power; since otherwise the Son could not be believed in unless two were believed in.

After this, Martha, confessing him to be the Son of God, erred no more than Peter and Nathanael; though even if she had erred, she would at once have learned. For see: when he was about to raise her brother from the dead, the Lord, looking up to heaven and to the Father, said, “Father” (the Son, of course), “I thank you that you always hear me; I said it because of these crowds standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.” And in the trouble of his soul: “And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour; but for this purpose I came to this hour; but, Father, glorify your name,” in which the Son was: “I have come,” he says, “in my Father's name.” Then (though the Son's voice to the Father had been enough), see, the Father answers from heaven, for good measure: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” How many persons do you see, most perverse Praxeas, if not as many as there are voices? You have the Son on earth; you have the Father in heaven. This is not separation but divine arrangement. We know, indeed, that God is even within the abysses and is present everywhere, but by power and authority, and the Son, as inseparable, is with him everywhere. Yet in the economy itself the Father willed that the Son should be held to be on earth and himself in heaven, whither the Son himself too looked up when he prayed and made requests of the Father, whither he taught us too, lifted up, to pray: “Our Father, who are in heaven,” though he is also everywhere. The Father willed this to be his seat: “heaven” … “is my throne.” … He made the Son a little lower than the angels by sending him down to earth, yet intending to crown him with glory and honor by taking him back into heaven. This he was already granting him by saying, “I have glorified, and I will glorify.” The Son makes his request from earth, the Father promises from heaven. Why do you make both Father and Son liars? If either the Father spoke from heaven to the Son when he himself was the Son on earth, or the Son prayed to the Father when he himself was the Father in heaven, how could it be that the Son should make a request of himself by asking the Father, if the Son was the Father; or again that the Father should make a promise to himself by promising the Son, if the Father was the Son? Even if we spoke of two divided, as you keep alleging, it would be more tolerable to preach two divided than one God who turns his coat. So the Lord then declared to these people: “This voice has come not for my sake but for yours,” that these too might believe in both Father and Son, each in his own names and persons and places. But further, Jesus cries out and says: “He who believes in me does not believe in me but in him who sent me” (since it is through the Son that one believes in the Father, and the Father is the Son's authority for believing); “and he who beholds me beholds him who sent me.” How? Because, of course, “I have not spoken of myself, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a command, what to say and what to speak” (for “the Lord gives me the tongue of instruction, to know when I ought to speak a word”); “what I speak, I speak as the Father told me.” How these things were said, John the evangelist, so dear a disciple, certainly knew better than Praxeas; and so he says of his own understanding: “Now before the feast of the Passover, Jesus, knowing that all things had been given him by the Father, and that he had come forth from God and was going to God.” But Praxeas will have it that the Father himself came forth from himself and went away to himself, so that the devil put into Judas' heart the betrayal not of the Son but of the Father himself. That turns out well neither for the devil nor for the heretic, since the devil did not even work the betrayal in the Son for his own good. For it was the Son of God who was betrayed, who was in the Son of Man, as Scripture adds: “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.” Which God? Certainly not the Father, but the Father's Word, who was in the Son of Man, that is, in the flesh; in which, although Jesus had already been glorified before (by power and word), “and God,” he says, “will glorify him in himself”: that is, the Father will glorify the Son, whom he has in himself, even though sent down to earth, and was soon to glorify him through the resurrection, when death had been overcome.

There were certainly some who did not understand even then, since Thomas too was unbelieving for a while. “Lord,” he says, “we do not know where you are going; and how can we know the way?” And Jesus: “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known the Father also; but from now on you know him and have seen him.” And now we come to Philip, who, roused by the hope of seeing the Father, and not understanding how he had heard that the Father was seen, says, “Show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” And the Lord: “O Philip, have I been with you so long, and you have not known me?” As whom does he say he ought to have been known by them (for this alone needs to be discussed): as the Father, or as the Son? If as the Father, let Praxeas teach how Christ, having lived with them so long, could ever have been, I do not say understood, but even supposed to be the Father. For us all the Scriptures, old and new, define Christ as the Son of God. This was preached in former times; this was declared by Christ himself, and indeed by the Father himself, openly acknowledging the Son from heaven and glorifying the Son: “This is my Son,” and, “I have glorified, and I will glorify”; this the disciples believed, this the Jews did not believe. Wishing this to be believed by them, he named the Father every hour, set the Father before himself, and honored the Father. If this is so, then it was not the Father who had lived with them so long that they had not known, but the Son; and the Lord, reproaching them for not knowing the one they had not known, certainly wanted that one to be recognized whom he had reproached them for not recognizing so long, that is, the Son. And now it can be seen how it was said, “He who sees me sees the Father also”: in the same way, namely, as above, “I and the Father are one” (why? “because I came forth from God and have come”); and, “I am the way; no one comes to the Father except through me”; and, “No one comes to me unless the Father draws him”; and, “All things have been handed over to me by the Father”; and, “As the Father gives life, so does the Son”; and, “If you have known me, you have known the Father also.” For by these sayings he had shown himself to be the Father's vicar, through whom the Father might be both seen in deeds and heard in words and known in the Son, who carries out the Father's deeds and words; because the Father is invisible, as Philip too had learned in the law and ought to have remembered: “No one shall see God and live.” And so he is rebuked for desiring to see the Father as if he were visible, and is taught that he becomes visible in the Son from his mighty works, not from a presentation of his person. In fact, if he wanted the Father to be understood as the same as the Son, by saying, “He who sees me sees the Father,” how is it that he adds, “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me?” He should have added, “Do you not believe that I am the Father?” Or why did he press the point, if he did not make plain what he wanted understood, namely that he was the Son? Rather, by saying, “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me?” he pressed it so that he should not be thought to be the Father because he had said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father also,” which he never wanted to be thought, he who always professed that he was the Son and had come from the Father. So he both made plain the conjunction of the two persons, so that the Father should not be desired separately, as if visible to sight, and so that the Son should be held as the representative of the Father; and he nonetheless explained this too, how the Father was in the Son and the Son in the Father: “The words,” he says, “that I speak to you are not mine” (because they are the Father's, of course); “but the Father, abiding in me, does the works.” So through the mighty works and the words of teaching, the Father, abiding in the Son, is seen through those things through which he abides, and through him in whom he abides; and from this very fact the individuality of each person appears, when he says, “I am in the Father, and the Father in me.” And so: “Believe,” he says. What? “That I am the Father”? I do not think that is written, but: “that I am in the Father and the Father in me; or else believe for the works' sake”: the works, that is, through which the Father was seen in the Son, not by sight but by understanding.