Against Arius 1.32–1.41

What likeness, then, is there here, made and begotten by counsel, as you say, for the generation of the Son? The Father moves himself; the Son begets himself; but the Son begets himself by the power of the Father, for he is his will. For if the will itself does not beget itself, it is not will; but since it is the will of God, it, being the begetting, is itself begotten in God. And therefore God is Father, the will is Son, each is one, or rather they are one, and only one, not by co-union but by simplicity: the will having proceeded into active power, yet not departing from its own substance and the same motion; for these three are one there: substance, motion, will. The Father is substance, and by that very fact motion and will; again the Son is motion and will, and by that very fact substance as well; and this is homoousion. Let us take as an example what I now say (for so it must be said now, since many say that the body is in the soul; but now, according to common usage, let the soul be in the body). The soul is in the human body; insofar as it is soul, it is substance, as matter or body is; for these are the two substances among the things of the world. And as matter has form, that is, species, as a body or something else has, so one thing, in a material way, is concreted into bulk. For something must be some quantity: whatever is material, then, is of some size. For matter is defined by quantity so as to subsist and become substance, existing now as something. In this way the soul too, being incorporeal substance, has a definition and an image: a vital power and an intellectual power; for it is two-powered and of a twin light: it gives life, giving life to living beings, and it has the intellect joined with it, and homoousion with it, and therefore all are homoousia. For since substance and motion are one and the same, the soul is so as subject, inasmuch as it lives and gives life; and inasmuch as it understands, it is also understanding, by one motion, since it is itself one, which is its form. For it is defined by motion, and exists as one existent, with a twofold power existing in one motion, of life and of understanding: these impassibly, two in action, in one motion, that is, in what is begotten. And the only-begotten son of the soul is itself life, itself intellect, and the first power with that whose being is life: for that by which it is, is what life is; for that being, to this very thing which is substance, is life, and is above life. For it does not give life to another, nor to itself: for it does not receive from another as another; for this belongs to its being: for it to be moved and to be motion; and what is motion, this is life; and what is life, this is understanding. I call these substantial: motions, life, understanding, meaning none of the sensible motions nor passage from place to place. These two, then, life and understanding, are homoousia with that which is being, that is, with the soul. These two are one motion, which is the first power of life; for life is the form of that which is being. For it defines the infinite to be, which is the first power of motion; the second power is motion itself; since what is defined and understood is grasped by life, understanding is innate and is substance, inasmuch as it is understanding and subsisting, and is drawn out by itself from the substance of life. These two are one, and one according to motion is the son, the only-begotten of the soul, suffering no passion insofar as it belongs to the soul. And the soul is, as it were, mother or father of the only-begotten son, the motion proceeding into a twofold power, which alone suffers. For motion is passion, and passion comes by motion; for in motion there are motion and rest; but for rest to be in motion is passion, and to be in motion from rest is passion; so too is motion. All passion, then, is by motion; and this is twofold, according to life and according to understanding. According to life there is passion because it still needs another thing to which it wishes to give life; and therefore, insofar as it shares in it, it suffers other passions even unto death. According to understanding, since this too needs what is intelligible in order that understanding may subsist, it incurs still more passions and weaknesses, and is rolled about among senseless things, and by imagination is led round into a false subsistence. While these things make their demands and these suffer, the soul remains according to substance, guarding in the seed of motion the power of life and understanding; and as that always remains, life and understanding are kindled, or rather the soul raises itself up, if the awakened soul rises again into the fountain of life, that is, into Christ, and into the fountain of understanding, that is, into the Holy Spirit.

But these things are by way of likeness. Using a more divine understanding of God, and of the Word, that is, the Son Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, let us take up their homoousion unity. First it must be asked whether God and God's being are the same, or something else. If the same, then it is both being and acting. But if God's being is one thing and God another, then God's being is pre-existential, existing in power toward that which is being, which truly is more that which is being; for power, pre-existing all things, is the principle and is before what is truly existent. But this they think is blessedly at rest, wholly and in every way; in motion only in that it is the cause for all things that require motion of any kind. And they say that this is conceived by a fore-knowing, since by itself it is nothing, but what pre-exists is grasped by conception. But Scripture and all understanding say that this God both is and that nothing is before him, he who is both that which is being and that which is operating. This God we confess and worship, the principle of all things that are; for the things that are exist by action; before action they are not yet. For we take God as active, as “in the beginning God made heaven and earth”, and made angels, man, and all things in the heavens and on earth. This, then, is the true God and the only God, because he is God both in power and in action, but in eternal things; as Christ is both in power and in action, but now outwardly and openly. God the Father, then, is the first action, the first existence and substance, and the principal existent, who begets his own being from himself by his action without beginning, always existing from himself, existing infinite, perfect in every way, almighty, unchangeable, existing always thus and in the same way, substantial in himself; the Word existing so that all things may be, not as something else or as another, but coexisting together in simplicity, and one by union. For what the Word is, that very thing is what being is, and by that very being he is the Word; for the Word himself is God: one, then, and homoousion. For God is not without action; God works, as has been said.

The substance of God is image, action, and is the Son, through whom God is understood and his being declared: “He who has seen me has seen the Father also.” And he is himself substance existing, having being, and from himself. But since that in which he is, is his cause, the Son himself is the image of him in whom he is, by an ineffable generation, and above all by an ungenerable generation, or rather by an ever-begetting generation, as Alexander also said. And it is said: always Father, always Son, existing together. So also, always consubstantial and coexisting, being one, the Son is in the Father; but when he operates, he proceeds; when he proceeds, the Father is in the Son. How do we say this? God and the Word are one and united, and therefore homoousion. But God, insofar as he is God, is the cause of that which is power for being, and of all things that are, for their being; the Word according to what he is. The Word is the Father's power to make subsist that very thing which is principal being, that which is being, both principle and perfection. For from that which is universal being, and above the universal, all universal being, and being according to genera and species, and individuals, have their being. If, then, the Word has being (for the Word is that very thing which is being to him, and is Word), then from that which is above universal being, it is being. But universal being is the Word; God is what is above universal being, the Son what is universal being; the Father, then, is above what is universal being. Homoousion, then, in that which is being, in relation to that which is being, and what is above the universal in relation to the universal. And this is also procession: for from what is above the universal the universal goes forth, and, to one who understands rightly, it both goes forth and remains; for the universal is not abandoned. So the universal subsists by itself and is within, in what is above the universal: it is connected, then, and unseparated. And this is called the effulgence of light, having all that belongs to the light, but not receiving it, nor born afterwards, but connatural, homoousios, always existing. Not, then, by local motion, nor by change: for the Father is unchangeable and the Son unchangeable, and always Father, always Son, whether the Son is believed to be in the Father as image and form of what being is, as has been said, or whether, in respect of procession, the Son is the effulgence of light. These things being so, and rather being one (for the effulgence is the splendour of the light, and has in itself the light from the Father, and is both in the light and outside), the Son, then, is in the Father; and because the splendour is joined to the light, the splendour is said rather to be toward the light, not in the light; even if it shines from the light, it is in the light; and this is what is signified by: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was toward God.” Homoousion, then, are both Son and Father, and always these, from eternity and to eternity.

We say other things too. The Word is with God: that is agreed. What is the Word? Through whom are all things, and in whom are all things, and into whom are all things; and it is agreed that he is also Jesus. That the Word is the Son of God; and Jesus is the Son, of whom Paul says: “Who rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love.” Who, then, is this Son? He, it says, “in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our sins.” Who is he? He who was born of Mary. What next? Only this? Is it not rather that he is in the one who was from Mary? He existed even before he was from Mary. And what does Paul add? “Who is the image of God.” Is this said only of the one from Mary? No: for the image of God is image from eternity. If, then, we have hope in the Son, and he redeemed us by his blood, and he is the image of God, then the image is the Son of God. Do I say this? Not I alone, but Paul too; for how does he put it? “The firstborn of all creation.” Who is the firstborn? The Son. Which Son? The Son who is from Mary. Who is the Son from Mary? The firstborn of all creation. Who is the firstborn of all creation? He who is the image of God. For the firstborn, the image of God, must be before all creation. And who is the image? The Word. Which Word? He who was in the beginning; for how could God be without his image? And which Word? He who was with God, and through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. How is the image the Word, and the Word the Son, and the same the one from Mary? Or rather, the one who is in him who was from Mary. From these things it is plain: if the Son of God, who is the Son from Mary, redeemed us by his blood, and he is the image of God, he is the Son of God. For if he is the firstborn of all creation, he is necessarily Son; is he some other? Far from it: for he is the only-begotten Son of God. It is necessary, then, that the same one is the Son, and the image, and the one from Mary. For how is the Son the image of God, if he is not the firstborn of all creation? And how is he the image of God, if as Son from Mary he was born after all things were made? It is plain, then, that he himself is the firstborn. But what of that which was born of Mary? Is it not a creature? But if the Son of God, the image of God, was born before all creation, he himself is in the one who was born of Mary. It is plain, then, that he himself is the only-begotten.

After that, we must see how the same one is image, Son and Word. It is agreed that the image is the Son; for Paul said that the Son of God is the image of God. I say that he is the Word, of whom it was said: “In the beginning was the Word.” For Paul says how the Son is the firstborn of all creation: because in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and in him; and he is before all things, and all things hold together in him. You see what he said of the Son: that he is firstborn because all things were created from him, and through him, and in him. He says, then, three things, of which, as has been said, “all things through him” is always given by confession to the Word. If, then, Paul gave “through him” to the Son, and John, the first apostle and evangelist, gave that very “through him” to the Word, the sayings agree above all. What doubt will there be, then, so that the Son should not be the Word? And the other two that Paul gave to the Son: to whom do they more properly belong? Necessarily to the Word; for his power is the subsistence of all things that are. But if this too, “in him are all things”, as it was said that in him all things were created, and therefore all things are in him, since all things will become spiritual; and Paul signifies this too at the consummation of the world: “For when all things have been subjected to him, then he himself will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all.” What this is, and how, will be discussed later; for now, only how they become spiritual. It is true, then, that the Son of God is the one from Mary, and that he himself is the image and the Word, and that he himself is before the ages and all creation, and that all creation was created through him, and in him, and from him, and what follows from what has been said.

Who, then, is so senseless, who so sacrilegious as Arius? Who is so godless as not to see who Jesus is, and from where the only-begotten Son comes? That God and the Word are homoousion, that is, Father and Son, is plain from these texts: what Paul gave to the Son, he gave the same to the Father, these three, with the Father's dignity, in one, so that one divinity, substance and paternal power should appear. He said this of the Son to the Colossians; to the Romans he said the same of the Father: “For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counsellor? Or who has first given to him, that it should be repaid him? For from him and through him and in him are all things.” You see how he gave the same things, and gave them in the same way, to the Father and to the Son, toward the homoousion: first three and three; then the same both to the Father and to the Son. And “through whom are all things” is given to both Father and Son, since the Son is the Word, who is the active power of all things that are, in the things that are; and since the Father is in the Son, the Father too exists in him as active power; for at once the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son. There is one power, then, that is, one substance; for there power is substance, and power is not one thing and substance another. The same, then, belongs to both Father and Son. And “from whom are all things” is the Son himself too; this, then, is given to the Father as proper to him. “In whom are all things”, because the Word is also place: for he is, through himself, the receptacle of the things made and of the works. And since all things that are exist there, the fullness comes about; for Jesus too is father of all the works, of those made through himself. Father and Son, then, are one. But the works do not enter from outside: from where would they come? For there is nothing outside; in himself, then, are all things: he himself, then, is both receptacle and inhabitant. And since the Father is in the Son, the Father too is inhabitant. “In whom are all things”, then, is proper to the Son; the rest, and “in him”, I say is common: for at the consummation all things will be one. And therefore Paul says to the Corinthians: “One God the Father, from whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus, through whom are all things, and we through him.” Or, as others read, “into him”: Since in other places too it is put thus of the Father: from whom are all things, through whom are all things, in him are all things; and of the Son: in whom are all things, through whom are all things, into whom are all things. Paul, then, gave all things equally to the Son and to the Father; rightly. That the Father and the Son are homoousios, and therefore it is said: “Then he himself will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all.”

See the force of the speaker: for he leads to the homoousion. The Son subjects all things to the Father by his own power, as it seems, but as it is the Father's power; for he says: “He will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him.” To whom will he be subjected? To God. Who will be subjected? The Son, to whom God subjects all things. Both the Father and the Son, then, are action. Where, then, is substance? That in which action itself is, or rather action that is substance: homoousioi, then. Paul says this too: “when he has handed over the kingdom to God and the Father.” He himself, then, now reigns, and according to his own action Christ subjects all things and destroys the enmities and death itself; he himself, then, subjects them, as Paul says, “when he has abolished every power”. So he says that the Son does these things by his own power. He adds this too: “For he must reign.” God indeed is king of all; but since the Son too is homoousios, and moreover is the Word, that is, the power and wisdom of God, it is necessary that wisdom reign first, through which all things will be subjected. For by reasons all things both subsist and will be subjected, since it is said, and has been said, that the Word, that is, the Son, subjects all things. And therefore Paul added: “until he puts all his enemies under his feet.” Who? Whose? Plainly, because he is the Son of the Father. But since the Father is in the Son, the Father therefore subjected all things to the Son; and therefore it is above all the Son who has enemies, not the Father. And since it is both, that is, a good ambiguity of meaning, they are therefore homoousioi. “The last enemy to be abolished is death”: for if Jesus is life and eternal life, death will be abolished by life. Jesus, then, that is, the Son, subjects all things to the Father. But since he is homoousios with the Father, both the substance itself and the power itself (the Father being first being, and what is first being; and second, operating, living, understanding; since what is first is the cause for the two), it is necessary to say also that the Father subjects all things to the Son. He says, then, “when he has handed over the kingdom to God and the Father”: necessarily the Son; and “when he has abolished every principality and power”: necessarily the Son. He says again: “But when all things are subjected, it is plain that he is excepted who subjected all things to him.” This needs no small understanding.

But let us leave this now. What does he want us to understand: that God, who is the cause and all-powerful and the pre-principle of power, himself made all things, when the Son makes them? And if the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, he himself makes what the Son made, and what the Father makes the Son makes, without difference. So all things are ascribed either to the Father or to the Son, whether operations or rest: for in the one there is relation to the other, and there is nothing other, since in the one is the other. And therefore there is one only and nothing other; but both Father and Son are each their own subsistence, from one substance from the Father. And the Son, that is, the Word, is active power, which makes, which gives life, and which is intellectual. All things, then, he begets and makes justly according to life, and regenerates according to the knowledge of the truth and of God, which Jesus gives to all, since he is the Word of all things, both of intellectual beings and, universally, of all things that are. If, then, he begets, and he regenerates all things, he subjects all things, not only men but, as Paul says, every principality and every power. Does he do these things as man, or as the Word? For to subject belongs not only to the time from which he was the Son from Mary, but to the time before and after. For if the flood was made, if Sodom and Gomorrah were burned, if these and many such things were done, if at the first coming he triumphs over the enemies in himself, if at the second coming the last enemy, death, will be abolished, it is the Son, the Word, who does these things, but by the Father's power. When, then, the Spirit makes all things spiritual, then he himself also will be subjected to God, who subjects all things to him. For when all things have been abolished, the active power rests, and God will be in him according to being and according to rest, and in all others spiritually, according to his power and substance. And this is so that God may be all in all: not all things in each one, but God existing in all; and therefore God will be all, because all things will be full of God.

Let us say other things too: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of God.” Paul calls Christ Jesus power and might, for the gospel says this of him too: Christ, then, is the wisdom and power of God. What, then, are the wisdom and power of God? Are they not God himself? For it is not as in bodies or bodily things, where the eye is one thing and sight another; or as in fire, where the fire is one thing and its light another. For the eye and the fire need something else: the eye needs another light, that sight may be from it and in it; and fire needs air, that light may come from it. But the power of sight has in itself sight, which exists outwardly when the power of sight operates; and sight is begotten from the power of sight, and is itself only-begotten, for nothing else is begotten from it; and sight is toward the power of sight, not only within, though within in power, and more outwardly in action, and therefore toward the power, being sight. Sight, then, is homoousion with the power of sight, and they are one whole. And the power rests, but sight is in motion; through sight all visible things come to be, and passions concern sight, while the power of sight is impassible and begets sight without passion. So, then, the power and wisdom of God are God himself, the whole, because it is simple and one, and of one and the same substance, and together from eternity and always, and from the Father, who is their begetter. Wisdom, then, and the power of operation; for it is this power he now means, since he joined wisdom and power. Of these, then, God is the potency, and therefore the Father, because they are from him; for he begets them into action, and impassibly, because power and action and God, and God's power and wisdom, are homoousia. And these, being active and caring for the things outside, are toward God, always giving wisdom, always giving life, not to God, but to all creation made through them by God; and if there is any passion, the passion is in the action. In this way, whether Jesus is Word, or light, or refulgence, or form, or image, or power and wisdom, or imprint, or life, the Word and God the Father, the Son, the Spirit and Christ will appear homoousia.

Let us bring in the same points once more. If we call Christ life, how is he homoousios with God? John says: “What was made, in him was life.” And again: “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son to have life in himself.” What could be so together? What so much the same? The Father has life in himself; the Son too has life in himself. What is it to have life in oneself? To be life to oneself, not to receive life from another but from oneself, and to give it to others. Someone says that he is of like substance, yet not homoousion. That has already been answered: “like” is not said of substance; for it does not hold of a thing insofar as it is substance. Rather, if it is of the same substance, it is called the same in substance, not like; for “like” goes by qualities. Fire is a substance, and air is the same in substance, for both are matter; but in qualities they are like or unlike, by the notion of their powers, and like in other respects. Say the same of earth and water, in weight and density or other such things; in these it also happens that whatever things are like are the same things that are unlike, by one quality and another. For the like is not the same, nor is the same one; the same is twin, and these are one not in substance but in number. We are now inquiring about substance, which in God or in the Son is either itself, or the same, or in a certain way both itself and the same. How, then, is it “itself”, when the Son comes and does such great things in heaven and on earth and enters into flesh? How is Jesus the Son, which implies the Father; how are there three substances, God, the Word, the Holy Spirit? For one ought not to say, nor is it right to say, that there is one substance and three persons. For if this very substance both did all things and suffered, then we too are Patripassians: far from it. What then? It is the same, not itself. But if so, either there were two with a substance pre-existing, or the one became the same by a division from it or by the loss of a part of it. But the Son was born neither by a sending off nor by diminution; the Father is perfect, always perfect and always Father; the Son is perfect, always perfect, and Son from eternity and to eternity. How, then, is it the same? For in two, what things are the same? But Father and Son are one; and he who is Father is Father, and he who is Son is Son; and Father and Son are not the same, nor is the Son the same as the Father whose Son he is. So they are not one in that sense: the substance is neither simply itself nor simply the same. It remains, then, that in a certain way it is both itself and the same. For it is not right to say that the Father and the Son are of different substance, since we shall say that it is itself, whether we say God and the Word; or God and the power and wisdom of God; or being and life; or being and understanding, or intelligence; or being, life and understanding; or Father and Son; or light and effulgence; or God and imprint; or God and form and image; or substance and species (as there, not as here); or substance and motion; or power and action; or silence and utterance: it must be confessed to be substance itself. For when we call God being and the Son life, how do we separate life from that which is being, whether in the Father or in the Son? For the Father has life in himself, and so does the Son, except that the Son received from the Father what he has. Father and Son, then, have arisen from themselves, powerful from themselves for life. Understand that I use “have” in this way, as the Gospel does: “for the Father has life in himself”. To “have”, then, is not as something else; it is the thing itself, though in our understanding.