Against Arius 1.42–1.52

We have said these things. If, then, the Father has life in himself, he is life, and his substance is life; and so too the Son. For he says: “I am the life.” The Father, then, is life, and the Son is life. All life, insofar as it is life, is motion, giving life to those that can receive life. And therefore this is the definition of soul and of life: to be that which is moved by itself. And if this is said to be its substance, much more is it so in God and the Word. What, then, have we said? The Father is life and substance, and self-moving substance, and the self-moving motion is nothing other than life itself: so he is both substance and life. But in motion understanding is understood in addition, as if it were something else, and yet not perfectly something else. And living itself, related to the other as by a mixture of each in the other, inasmuch as it is life and is motion, is one. Again, inasmuch as it is life, the other is one in it, and therefore it is the same substance. But whether “itself” or “the same”, it is necessarily homoousion and together, since the two are together; for neither ever was without the other. These, then, are one and one. That, then, which is to be life, and through itself to be motion, is the Father; and that which is to be moved, and through itself to be life, is the Son. For life is the cause of motion. The Father, then, is rather the principal life, having motion at rest in hiddenness and moving itself within; the Son is motion in manifestation, and therefore Son, because he proceeded from what is within; or rather, existing as motion, because he is in manifestation. In this way the Son is also life from the Father who is life, and so receives being life from the pre-principal principle: universal born from universal, whole from whole. And therefore he says: “The living Father sent me, and I live because of him.” If, then, the Father begets in life, and the Son is Son according to motion and is life according to motion, the Father giving life to the Son into motion, generation and life at once, and he himself is homoousion in himself; then Father and Son are always one, and the Son was born from eternity, and each is in the other, an inseparable separation, the Son in the Father and the Father in the Son. And above all the Son is action, since the Son is life with action; the Father, according to that which is being, is life, and according to being life, is action. The Father, then, remains, and remains impassible; the Son operates and leads into manifestation. And God operates within, action existing according to power; and both in the Father and in the Son, according to action, there is action.

Points of this kind must be referred back to all that we set out before: whether God and the Word, or light and effulgence, or silence and utterance, or other pairs by which these appear one and together homoousion, and an unbegotten generation. Where, then, is there room to say that the like is homoiousion? For what reason is it said? Always, and this is the whole mystery: one God, and Father and Son and Holy Spirit are one God. How, then, is the like one God? But the homoousion is necessarily one God. For if they are not together, they are necessarily two; and if the other is like, it is necessarily homoiousion, and so necessarily of another substance. These Arians, these Lucianists, these Eusebians, these Illyrians, rejecting some things, taking away some and changing some, are all heretics of differing opinion. Add to this: if Father and Son are homoiousion, how does the Saviour say: “I am the truth”? If what he said is true, then, since the Son is truth, the Father is lesser, like the truth, not the truth. How great a blasphemy that is! But if God is truth and the Son is truth, as the Son himself says, and says truly, then God is homoousion with the Son: not twofold, then, but always one truth. And far outside and far below is what is like the truth, since the likeness of truth may exist in the world, where there is also error and corruption and every passion. To be truth itself, then, is substance; for substance is not one thing and truth another. For what is simple, that is truth: God is simple, the Son simple; God is truth, the Son truth; and God and the Son are one truth. For truth is truth in itself. Likewise, if the Son is like the truth, then he leads to what is like it: to what does he lead? But if he is truth, he leads into truth. But he leads to God, and God is truth: he leads, then, into truth. But it is impossible for him to lead into truth if he himself is not truth. Both Father and Son, then, are truth, as is also said: “Whom the Father sends to me, he will come to me.” From all these things it is not only concluded, but a plain confession is made, that motion in God is without change. For generation there is not local, nor with passion or corruption or increase or diminution, nor with any change; for there, to move and to be moved are that very thing which being is, together and itself, simple, and in understanding one in one, as in power and action. Always, indeed, homoousion in that which is being; but according to acting from that which is being, Son and Father. But, as has been said, the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father.

Does fear arise from this, that in saying these things we are, as it were, Patripassians? The serpent's doctrine differs greatly from the truth. For they say that God alone exists, whom we call Father, he alone existing and the maker of all things, and that he came not only into the world but also into flesh, and did all the other things that we say the Son did. But we say that the Father is Father and the Son Son, while saying that they are one; and therefore the Word, that which is one, saying not only “one” but “one and one”. One is impassible, the other suffered: how, then, are we Patripassians? For God neither proceeds from himself, nor is he action in manifestation, nor as it were in motion; for inward motion is, as it were, not motion. But the Word, who is in the power of motion, is rather motion and action; and is he not carried by his power into the making of the things that are? For insofar as he is Word, he is the cause of the things that are; and insofar as he is cause, he does not always remain in himself, he who is in that which is Word. And in this respect he is unalterable and unchangeable, but in the things that are, according to their kinds, which are one and another, by that very fact by which he is the universal Word, remaining the same in the Father. Where, then, are the passions? Neither in the Father nor in the Son, but in the things that, by their kind, cannot receive the whole power of the Word, which is universal, each existing and he distributing to each its own: to angels, powers, thrones, dominions, authorities, souls, sensible things, and the flesh itself. Passion, then, is in these, and in respect of these, not of the Word, that is, of the Son. According to the flesh, then, the Saviour suffered; but according to the spirit that he was, he was without passion. Hence our doctrine differs from that of the Patripassians. For to be Son is not passion, as has been said, nor is it passion to make anything or to speak; for all things are done by the divine power without passion, and these are rather its own, a substantial and divine motion, not passion. Next, the Patripassians were not so named for this, but for the cross: sacrilegious men saying that the Father was crucified, entangling the impassible in passion, and not understanding that there must necessarily be something impassible if there is something else that suffers. We, however, say that the Son too is impassible, but passible inasmuch as the Word became flesh. But mercy, anger, joy, sadness and other such things are not passions there, but nature and substance. If, then, the Spirit, benevolence itself, best in itself, is to some unto life and to others unto death, not changed in its own nature but by the matter and will of those who undergo it, the divinity, an unchangeable seal, is said to be affected or to suffer, as it ought or otherwise, according to those who receive it, since we judge divine things from our senses. For among sensible things, an animal, insofar as it is an animal, that is, a soul using a body or an animated body, is said to suffer according to sense; but in truth passions do not belong even to the soul alone by itself, much less to the spirit of the Word and of God. For the divine nature is impassible.

Let the Patripassians depart, then, since we speak of both Father and Son, and of the Son alone as passible, according to motion in matter. Let the Arians depart, since we say that the Son is Son by nature, begotten before all creation. Let those also depart who say that Christ is “from that which is”, because he was made by God, who is God existent: for we say that the Son is by nature, and that he is from the Father and in the Father. Let the disciples of Marcellus and Photinus depart; for we say that the Word himself was in the flesh, not that the Word is one thing and the man, in whom they say the Christ is, another, but that the Word himself put on flesh. For they say that there is God, and the Word, and the Spirit; and a fourth, the Son, that is, the man from Mary, whom the Word took up and governed as a minister, and for which man, they say, a throne was prepared. They have fallen away, then, from the Trinity. But if the Trinity alone remains, the man himself is the Word; and we have shown above that this Word is the Son. And “the Word became flesh” does not mean that the Word was corrupted and turned into flesh, but that the Word, through whom all things were made and who became all things, also became flesh, so that, being in the flesh, he might purchase the whole man by his passion and death, according to the passions of the body. For if the man from Mary was not himself the Word, why did he empty himself? And what is “taking the form of a servant”? And what, again, is “and the Word became flesh”? Let the Basilians depart too, the homoiousians. For we say homoousion, both in truth and according to the Synod at Nicaea. For thus Father and Son are both one, and always, and both together, and because they are homoousion. But those who say homoiousion, even if they confess that the Son has his substance from the Father, still say something else: that the Son is from God neither by generation nor by making, but by a striking together of these two, generation and making, as of a stone and iron, from which a flame is struck out. Those who say this are hidden Arians. First, they say that the Son of God is not by generation but by making, which is the doctrine of Arius; for what leaps out from a striking is a thing made, and is from nothing. For the flame is not from the iron or the stone, which is above all what mad Arius thinks. Even if a collision took place, there was when he was not; and if the Son was made by the striking together of making and generation, making and generation existed before the Son was; these come later. How, then, a striking? This too is Arius's. Then, how this collision? Of what things, and in what? Is there a clash of wills in God? Of passions or of differences, above all of contrary motions? And if the Father, who is without passion, underwent this, and the Son appeared to him not from his own substance (for from the collision of two wills or passions neither a will nor a passion came about, much less a substance from the Father's substance, but some substance outside, existing from nothing, of the Word in relation to the Father): to suspect such things is impious blasphemy.

We have spoken of the homoousion, and spoken sufficiently, for this was our purpose. But how, if he is homoousion, the Son is always with the Father and yet proceeds, descends, ascends, and is sent, and does what belongs to the Father's will; and how, being the image of God, he sits at God's right hand, and what the right hand is, and what sitting is; and what it means that all things were made through him, and how all things; and what it means that nothing was made without him; and how he too has a will, and does what he does by the Father's will; and how he is perfect, and from the perfect Father, yet as one imperfect also took a body, and now bears a body, and whether it is holy and spiritual, and like that of the men who will afterwards be saints; and how he is always one who is moved, and self-begotten, yet by the Father's power: all these define the homoousion. If anyone is worthy to understand, he will find in this book too that the faith is so; and with the permission of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord and of the Holy Spirit we say it, lest anyone, understanding blasphemously, call it my own doctrine; for all these things are both said in holy Scripture and are from it. We shall say above all this, from which many heresies are born: that the Gospels and the Apostle and the whole Old Scripture say everything about God, and about Jesus Christ, that is, about the Word incarnate; for he wrought the mystery of our salvation, he made us free, he redeemed us. In him we believe as our Saviour, according to the cross and the resurrection from the dead; and therefore Paul says: “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”

We confess, then, God the Father almighty. We confess the only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, God from God, true light from true light, the form of God, who has substance from God's substance, nature and generation; the Son consubstantial together with the Father, which the Greeks call homoousion; firstborn before the founding of the world, and firstborn before all creation, that is, before the substance of coming to be, of generation and of living again; the firstborn from the dead; the Word who is the universal Word of all things; the Word with God; the Word incarnate in the last times, conquering death and all sin by the cross; our Saviour, the judge of all; always substantial with the Father and homoousion; active power from the Father's power, both begetting and making all things, the substance of existence of all things, and their generation and revival; since he is eternal life and the power and wisdom of God; himself unalterable and unchangeable insofar as he is Word, and because he is always Word; but in creating all things, and above all in his action in matter, suffering impassibly. As a fountain of waters, unchangeable, impassible, beyond all motion, when it flows and comes into a river, is thought to suffer according to the channel and the kinds and qualities of the earth, while always keeping its power as water; and as a river waters the earth, feeling no diminution with respect to being water: so Christ is that river of which the prophet says, “Who waters and floods the whole earth.” But Christ, being whole, waters everything, visible and invisible; with the river of life he waters the substance of all things that are. In that he is life, he is Christ; in that he waters, the Holy Spirit; in that there is the power of vitality, the Father and God; but the whole is one God. We confess, then, also the Holy Spirit, who has all things from God the Father, the Word, that is, Jesus Christ, handing over to him all that Christ has from the Father. And in this manner we confess that these three are together, because they are one and one God, these homoousia, and always together, Father and Son and Holy Spirit; and that by an ineffable power and an unspeakable generation the Son of God is Jesus Christ, who is the Word and God, and image and form and imprint and refulgence of the Father, and the power and wisdom of God, through whom God appears and is declared in the power of all things, existing, remaining and doing all things according to the action of the Son, that is, Jesus Christ; whom, incarnate, crucified, risen from the dead, ascended into heaven, seated at the right hand of the Father, and to come as judge of the living and the dead, Father of all creation and Saviour, we always confess with voice and with all our heart. Amen. Grace and peace from God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ our Lord to him who confesses these things so, for all ages of ages.

Spirit, Word, intellect, wisdom, substance: are these all the same, or other than one another? And if the same, by some communion or by totality? If by some communion, what is first, what comes from another, and by what communion? If by totality, what then is the difference and what the communion? If they are wholly other than one another, is one in another as subject, another as accident, or in some other way? If, then, they are wholly other, they are both differently named and of another substance. But nothing is wholly of another substance; for the existent is the genus of the things that are, and is genus above all in that which is being. But since being is twofold, the existent itself is twofold: there is true being, and there is mere being. If, then, the existent, the truly existent and the merely existent, relate to all existents, and the merely existent to the merely existents, whether they are named synonymously or homonymously, they are not wholly other: by participation, then, in some communion all things that are relate to one another. For what is existent is opposed to what is not existent as a contrary by privation, with no participation in each other; and so it is not even “other”. If, then, the things that are, though different and other, are yet the same by some communion, then in this way they are both the same and other; and this in two ways: either other in identity, or the same in otherness. If the same in otherness, they tend more toward otherness; if other in identity, identity appears most. What agrees with these things must be considered from here.

Concerning God and the Word, that is, the Father and the Son, it has been said sufficiently, by God's permission, that the two are one. It has been said also of the Word, that is, of the Son and the Holy Spirit, that they are in one. If, then, the two are one, and the two are in one, that one in which the two are (since it is with that one, and from eternity always with him), and things that are together are the same with each other, then the two are one; these, then, must be the same. How this is, hear as I say it. Before all the things that truly are there was the One, or the One itself, before being one belonged to it. For that One must be spoken of and understood as having no image of otherness: one alone, one simple, one only by concession, one before all existence, before all existentiality, and above all before all lower things, before the existent itself; for this One is before the existent. Before all entity, then, substance and subsistence, and before all things more powerful still, is the One, without existence, without substance, without understanding. For it is above these: immense, invisible, wholly indiscernible, both to the things in it and to those after it, even to those from it; but discernible to itself alone, and defined by its own existence, not by act, so that it is not something other than itself by its consistence and by its knowledge of itself; impartible on every side, without figure, without quality and yet not lacking quality; a quality without quality, without colour, without species, without form, lacking all forms; nor is it the form itself by which all things are formed, both universal and particular, all things that are. First cause of all principles, principle of all understandings, pre-understanding of all powers, strength itself, swifter than motion, more stable than rest itself; for by an unspeakable motion it is rest, and by an ineffable rest it is supereminent motion. Denser than all continuity, loftier than all distance, more definite than every body and greater than every magnitude, purer than every incorporeal thing, more penetrating than all understanding and body, the most powerful of all, the power of powers, greater than every genus, every power, every species; existing as the whole of all things that are, greater than every whole, bodily and bodiless; more a part than every part by its unspeakable power; pure, existing before all the things that truly are.

This is God, this the Father: pre-understanding, pre-existing and pre-existence, guarding his blessedness and himself by an unmoved motion, and therefore needing no others; perfect above the perfect, triple-powered in oneness, perfect spirit and above spirit. For he does not breathe out, but is only spirit in that which is his being, spirit breathing into himself so as to be spirit; since he is spirit inseparable from himself, his own place and its inhabitant, remaining in himself, alone in the alone, existing everywhere and nowhere by his simplicity; being one, uniting three powers: all existence, all life, and blessedness. But all these are also one, and a simple one, and above all in the power of that which is being, that is, the power of existence, of life and of blessedness. For what is and exists is power, which is the power of existence, and is the power of life and blessedness itself through itself; and therefore it is also the Word of itself, and living and acting, having according to itself its own existence that is not yet existent, an indiscernible co-union of spirit: divinity, substantiality, blessedness, intellectuality, vitality, goodness, and universally all things in every way, the purely unbegotten pre-existent, a oneness of co-union that is no co-union. This One, then, existing, one One accordingly leapt forth: one in substance, one in motion; for motion is existence, since existence is motion. This One, then, is existentially one, but not as the Father is non-existentially one, who is existentially one only in power. For he has power, and rather has what is to be his in operation; and in truth he does not “have” it but is it; since power, an active co-acting, is all things without trouble, and truly in every way lacks nothing, being from this, that it is all things in power. For inasmuch as it is power, the action that is born has need, the oneness itself acting.

In respect, then, of that which we call being one, the One is life, which is infinite motion, the maker of other things, whether of those that truly are or of those that are, existing as the Word for the being of the things that are, moving all things from itself, always in motion, having motion in itself, or rather being motion itself. For so the divine Scripture says: “That the Father, God himself, gave it to be life in him.” This is the Son, the Word, who is with God, through whom all things were made; this is the Son and the whole sonship of the whole fatherhood, who always is Son, and from eternity: Son by a self-moved motion, power going forth as from an unmoved pre-existence, and not moved inasmuch as it was power. This motion never rests, rising from itself and hastening into every kind of motion, since it is infinite life; and in giving life it appeared as if outside. Necessarily, then, life was born; and life is the Son; life is motion, life from the living pre-existence, existence in constitution and the appearing of all wholes, which according to power is the Father, as a pre-understanding appears from the understanding of the things that truly are. This existence, then, is the life of all existence; and inasmuch as it is life, the motion received, as it were, a feminine power: this, that it desired to give life. But since, as has been shown, this motion, being one, is both life and wisdom, it was wholly turned into wisdom, and rather into the Father's existence, or rather was moved back into the Father's power; and life, given life by him, running back to the Father, was made male. For life is descent, wisdom ascent. And this too is Spirit. Both, then, are Spirit: two in one. And as life is the first existence, there was a necessity for it to enter into virginal power and to be made male, so that by the virgin's birth a man, the Son of God, should be begotten. For in the first motion (I mean the first coming into appearance) it fell away, as it were, from the power of the Father; and in its innate desire to give life, existing as life within but outside by motion, it ran back into itself; again turned into itself, it came into its Father's existence, made power and perfect into almighty power; it became perfect Spirit, its inclination turned toward higher things, that is, inward. So, according to the type, the order had to be this: when the Spirit is in the body, that is, in the Son, Christ, it should suffer, as it were, a diminution and be born of a virgin, and, by that very diminution, through its Father's power, that is, through a more divine and first existence, rise again and be renewed and return to the Father, that is, into the Father's existence and power.

How this is, I dare to say further, so that our subject may be made clear by a fuller exposition. Let us posit understanding. In this way God is the power of these three powers, existence, life, blessedness, that is, of being, living and understanding. That in each of these there are three is plain: that being is first, and that, in respect of being, second come living and understanding, without any union but simply as simplicity. And this is plain, as has been shown: that such being is manifestly God, as has been shown; a power able to provide being to all, not by giving a part of his own being, but providing to each the Father's effective power, so that its own being stands. And this he does through the ministering Word, that is, through the life that provides living to all; and then a thing subsists, receiving being in receiving life. If, then, God's being provides being to all, not from his own being, but through the ministry of what is being life, and being life itself is in what is God's, then being is one and the same for the one at rest, what is being for the Father, with what is being for life, by identity; it is motion from its own power, depending on the Father's power. And since every natural power is will, life willed to move itself, the motion being implanted by substance impassibly, upright toward what is. For natural will is not passion. In respect, then, of God's being, in which is the power of existence, the Father's substantiality according to power, by this very being he is also life. If, then, life moved itself, and motion is will, it is the Father's motion and the Father's will, since life is the Father's power. But if, in respect of being, life is motion, motion is proper to life. But since motion is carried from one thing to another, as from what is within to what is without, which is life, power, nature and will, and above all his existence, therefore it is called effulgence, or procession, or the manifestation of the uplifted spirit, working in giving life to the whole of entity. Of the life that exists within, then, inasmuch as motion is life itself, the offspring of what is the Father's being is life, inasmuch as it is motion. But since motion, inasmuch as it is motion, having no elevation of itself, proceeded from what is within to without, as sense from that which is intellect, receiving fountain-like and universal power, it is, according to motion, both within and without; for intellect is motion. So too life, inasmuch as it is motion: the Son became manifest motion from the Father's motion, which is hidden and which, according to the first power, is existence. Again, life, inasmuch as it is motion, proceeding from the Father's motion, is both within and without; for life is motion. Life, then, is both within and without: God lives, life itself lives; so God and life are one. These two, then, are in each, both other and the same: the Son in the Father and the Father in the Son.