Against Arius 2.12–3.9

What if it is even read, and one of these two is set down most openly, so that it was not invented by me but has already been proved by sacred reading? The hymnist David, in the book of Psalms, which is called the key of all mysteries, sings thus to God: “For with you is the fountain of life, and in your light we shall see light.” Do we think it is said to God, or to Christ, or to both? It is rightly said to either, for the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son. But if it is said to God the Father, it will be like this: “If they had stood in my substance and heard my word”; and if to the Son, like this: “He who sees me sees the Father also.” So, “in your light we shall see light”. There is light, then: in your light we shall see light. Nor must one doubt that the other formula follows too, since what is of the same kind is both real and proved by reading. If this is so, let us gather everything together: homoousion will now appear both understood in Greek and pronounced in Latin. We believe in God the Father almighty, and in his only-begotten Son. Let it be so; enough of this now. Isaiah says: “Egypt has laboured, and the merchandise of the Ethiopians and the Sabaeans; men of lofty stature will walk in you and will be your servants, and, bound in fetters, they will follow behind and worship you and pray to you, because God is in you, and there is no God besides you.” Jesus Christ our Lord, God from God, light from light, consubstantial, substantial together; and so with the rest that are joined to the creeds. Thus the faith is unfolded and complete, full, both from the same substance and in the same substance and always together; if it pleases, let it be held so in Latin. But if it pleases that the one Greek word remain, which with great expressiveness and great brevity includes both, let it stand concerning God and our Lord; and let homoousion be held more and more, written, spoken, treated, and preached in all the churches. For this is the faith of Nicaea, this the faith of the apostles, this the catholic faith. By it the Arians, by it all heretics are overcome. Peace to those who think so, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The divine Word, or Intellect, uses the heavenly soul as a seat and as a body; and the sensory Intellect, or Word, uses the sensory soul, as it is itself sensory in a body, and so in any kind of body. But all this is as image, as has been asserted and proved elsewhere: since among the divine things themselves the Word is the image of God, so then with the rest; so with all the divine things. For as the Word of God is image, so the soul is the image of the Word, and everything of this kind there; the rest are images. But in the sensory nature they should be called not images but rather likenesses and semblances. For such is the progression of things that the effulgence of light is the image of light; hence the substance is the same in the highest and eternal things, because the image of light is light. For as from Spirit there is only Spirit, and from the true, the true, and from God, God, so too from substance, substance: for Spirit and the true and God are substance. And everything that is, for each thing, its own being is substance. But this being of which we speak must be understood one way in that which is being, and another in that which is being so, so that the one belongs to substance, the other to quality. But this is so in sensible things and in the world. In divine and eternal things these two are one: for everything there is simple, and God is this: what light is, what the best is, what existence is, what life is, what understanding is; but of this we have spoken elsewhere. All things there, then, are substantially simple, not compounded, one together with number; or rather not one in number, but one before number, that is, before the one that is in number, that is, plainly simple, alone, without the imagination of any other. Hence what is born from there is an image, not a splitting nor an outpouring, but a shining forth; not an extension but an appearing; not a sprouting of power, but rather the action of power. For where is action, or from where, but in power and from power? And when or where is power, but with action and in action? So neither is one in the other, nor at any time like it, because always the same. And because light is declared by its effulgence, or power by its action, therefore: “He who sees me sees the Father also.” And because no one sees power itself alone: “No one has ever seen God.” And since power is life at rest and understanding at rest, while this life and understanding in act is action, whoever sees God must die: because God's life and understanding are in himself, not in act; and all act is outward, and this is our living, to live outwardly. To see God, then, is death: “No one,” it says, “has ever seen and lived”; for like is seen by like. We must leave behind, then, the outward life, leave behind understanding, if we wish to see God; and this, for us, is death.

Since this life and understanding is the Word, who is Christ, through Christ we too are: “all things are through him.” The Word, then, is both life and understanding. Why? Because all these are motion and addition. We, then, if we are in Christ the Lord, see through Christ, that is, through the true life, that is, through the true image. And because it is true, it is of the same substance, because power is also in action: there, then, we see God; hence the saying: “He who sees me sees God.” Because action is from power, the Son is from the Father, and the Word from the Spirit; and because Spirit is from Spirit, God is from God: from substance, then, the same substance, as we taught above. God is power, that is, the first universal being of existence, which has with itself, that is, in itself, life and understanding; or rather it is being itself, which life and understanding are by an inner motion turned into itself. There is, then, motion in God, and from this also action; hence it is said: “Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of himself unless he sees the Father doing it; for whatever he does, the Son does likewise.” Similarly, then, the Father too makes and acts, but within; so that, needing nothing from outside, he is always full, always whole, always blessed. But since life and understanding are motions, and all life gives life, and all that is given life is outside, and likewise what understanding understands is outside while that which understands is inside, life too, drawn from understanding, understands either by shining or by illuminating. Hence from God and from the same substance there is substance and life and understanding; and likewise motion, when it is within, in itself, is the same as substance; when it looks out from there so as to stand forth outwardly, that is, to operate and act, this is the birth, this the nativity. And because the motion is one, the Son is only-begotten; and the motion is one, whether it is called life or understanding, for life must be motion. For all life gives life; hence life is motion, which, whether existing in itself and turned in on itself, is itself substance to itself, or looks outward, when it is more properly called motion. For inner motion is rest, or moved rest, and resting motion. For God must be the parent of both, I mean of rest and of motion, and substance itself, because by union and a certain form he is the fountain of both; he is himself simple and one, always one and alone, and, as we said above, whole. When he is taken and understood as resting motion, this is God, and he is the Father, always and from eternity Father, because he is always motion and substance, and in substance, or rather substance itself. And when he looks outward (and to look outward is to be motion or movement, which is the very same as to see himself, to understand himself, and to will to know himself), when he sees himself, he becomes twofold and is understood as seer and seen: he himself who sees, he himself what is seen, because he sees himself. This, then, is looking outward, begotten or existing outside, so as to understand what he is. If, then, he is outside, and if he is begotten, he is Son; and if Son, only-begotten, because he alone is all act, all and universal, and is one motion; and motion is the same as substance. Father and Son, then, are one and the same substance: consubstantial, that is, homoousion.

The Son, then, is all things, as the Father is all things. But because substance is potentially prior to act and motion (I said “prior” with respect to force and cause, because substance is the cause of motion, for all motion is in substance), necessarily the Father is the begetter; and likewise necessarily all that the Father has, the Son also has: “All that the Father has,” he says, “he has given me.” And likewise: “As the Father has life from himself, so he has given to the Son to have life from himself.” As the Father, then, so the Son is life, and life from himself. For he is life itself, which is to itself and to others the power of living, not life from elsewhere. He is, then, motion, and principal motion, and one motion, and self-moved motion, and only-begotten motion: this is the Word; for he is life, through whom all things live. And because he is life, he is the one through whom all things were made, and into whom all things were made, because all things, purified, return into eternal life. And all things were made in him, because the things that were made are life in him: for there is nothing that is, to which its own being belongs, except from that by which it is given life to be what it is. In Christ, then, all things were made, because Christ is the Word. And life did not begin, because it is always from itself to itself; hence it never ceases, and is always infinite, and through all and in all, from the divine and supercelestial things down to the celestial things and all the heavens, the ether, the air, moist and earthly things, and all that springs from the earth, and all the rest. So our body and flesh too have something living, and all matter is animated, so that the world might exist, from which living things burst forth at God's command. In flesh, then, there is life, that is, the Word, and Christ is in life: therefore the Word became flesh. Hence it is no wonder that in the mystery he took flesh, to help both flesh and man; but when he took flesh, he took the universal logos of flesh. For this reason the power over all flesh triumphed in the flesh, and for this reason he helped all flesh, as it is said in Isaiah: “All flesh will see the salvation of God”; and in the book of Psalms: “To you all flesh will come.” Likewise he took the universal logos of the soul: for it is plain that he had a soul, since the same Saviour said: “My soul is sorrowful unto death”; and likewise in the Psalm: “You will not leave my soul in hell.” That he took the universal logos of the soul is plain from Ezekiel: “All souls are mine: as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son.” The universal logos of the soul is also shown from this, that he is angry, when he curses the fig tree, and says: “It will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah on that day than for you”; and so in many places. Likewise he desires, when he says: “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me”; and there too he reasons: “but rather let your will be done.” These and many others show the universal logos of the soul. The whole man, then, was assumed, assumed and set free: for in him were all universals, universal flesh, universal soul; and they were lifted onto the cross and purified through the saving God, the Word, the universal of all universals; for through him all things were made, who is Jesus Christ, God and Saviour and our Lord. Amen.

The Word, then, of the things that are, and can be, and could have been, is as it were the seed and power of existing, the wisdom and power of all substances from God for all actions; God by the power and act of the Father, by which the Son himself is one God with the Father. For since these existences are living and understanding, let us notice these three, to be, to live, to understand: that they are three in such a way that they are always one, and in that which is being. But by “that which is being” I mean what being is there. In this being, then, living and understanding are all substantially, and one in subsistence. For living itself is what being is; nor is it in God as in us, where what lives is one thing and the life that makes it live another. For if we posit and accept that he himself is life and exists, and that what is power to him is his being, it will become clear that we must take being and living as one and the same; and this reasoning and force is the same as understanding for him. This very understanding, then, is what his being is, and that being is what understanding is: this understanding itself is intelligence. Being, then, is the being of life and of understanding, that is, what life and understanding are: one, then, is what life is, and the same being is what understanding is. And if these are one singly and in pairs, it follows that living itself is what understanding is: for if being is living, and being is understanding, living and understanding become one, since being is one for them. Add to this that being itself is nothing other than living: for what does not live loses its being, so that as long as anything is, this is also its living; hence being dies together with life. But when we speak of eternal things, we take living otherwise: as this very knowing that you live; and knowing is understanding. Knowing, then, is understanding, and knowing that you live is living: understanding, then, will be the same as living. And if it is so, that living and understanding are one, and since what is living and understanding is one being, these are one in substance and three in subsistence. For since they have their own force and meaning, and are as they are said to be, they are necessarily three, and yet one, since everything that is singly one is three; and this the Greeks say thus: “from one ousia there are three hypostases”. This being so, being is as a foundation for the rest: for living and understanding, as second and later, seem as it were to be in that which is being by a certain nature, or to have come forth in some way from that which is being, and in that which is their own being they have kept that first and fountain-like being. For it has been proved that being is never without living and understanding, nor are living and understanding without that which is being.

Let this be an example for understanding the matter. Let us posit sight, or vision, existing potentially by itself, by its own force and nature, that is, its being, having the power of sight for seeing, which will be its seeing; and likewise having the power, in seeing, to distinguish each of the things seen, which is its understanding. These are in power; they are said to be, and remain, nothing other than being; and as they are at rest and turned into themselves only so as to be, only the vision operates, or the existence of sight, and so they are to be counted only as being. But when the same vision begins to use the operation of seeing, as it were by a progression of itself (I say “as it were”, for it does not progress nor go out from itself, but acts by the intention and vigour of its own power, which is also to live), then, as it performs the office of living toward all the things that are in its way, or that it has seen in its way by meeting them, this is the life of vision itself, which by its operating motion shows that vision lives, only in that it sees with the pure sense of seeing, not distinguishing or judging what it sees. We take this by estimation, so as to suppose seeing alone without understanding. But since seeing, which is living for vision, is not seeing unless it grasps and comprehends what it has seen, it is at once also judging what it has seen. In seeing, then, there is judging; for if it has seen, however it has seen, it has not failed to judge that very thing, or that it has seen. So, as we say, in seeing there is judging, and in being vision there is seeing. Not compounded, then, and rather simple in what they are, they are nothing but one: vision, seeing, discerning; and in this way in discerning there is seeing, and in seeing there is being vision; and, to speak truly, it is not “in”, but by that which vision is, seeing and discerning are in it. So in each are all, or each one is all, one.

Lift yourself up, then, and rise, my spirit, and by the power with which you have been breathed into me by God, recognize that to understand God is difficult, yet not hopeless. For this is why he willed to be known, this is why he established the world and his divine works: so that we might discern him through all these. The Word, certainly, who is his Son, who is image, who is form, has given through himself a passage for understanding the Father. In what nature, then, in what genus, in what force, in what power do we place God, understand him, judge of him? Or by what image in the understanding do we reach him and are carried toward him? And when we say that he is intelligible, it is certainly by God's breathing that there is soul in us, and from him a part is in us, which is the greatest in us: we reach him, then, by that by which we come from there and depend on him. Certainly after the Saviour's coming, when we saw God himself in the Saviour, when we were taught and instructed by him, when we received from him the Holy Spirit, the teacher of understanding, what else will so great a teacher of understanding give us than to know God, to recognize God, to confess God? Our forebears too asked what God was, or who God was; and they were answered by him who is always in his bosom: “You see me and you seek my Father? I have been with you so long: he who has seen me has seen the Father also; I am in the Father and the Father in me.” What, then, do we say? That God is Spirit, and the Spirit of life: for it is said that the Father is life, and likewise that Christ is Spirit. And he again said of himself: “I am the life”; and: “As the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son to have life from himself.” In the same way the Holy Spirit is Spirit, and certainly he too is life. For Christ received all things from the Father: “And all things,” he says, “I have given him”; and likewise: “What he has is mine.” He has life, then, and life from himself. Why so? Because where there is life, there is life that is from itself; and if this is so, there is understanding that it is life, and what it is to live, and what that being is which life is. All, then, are joined, and all are one and one substance, and truly homoousia, either “together”, which is homou, or the same substance.

The Father, then, is being; for this is the principle for the others, and first for the imagining of the second. This is God; he, with the two others, is God; he is one God, because what living and understanding are is the very thing that being is; and to these two, what living and understanding are comes from that which is being. Let no one, then, separate the Holy Spirit, nor suspect by profane blasphemy that he is some sort of thing, since he too is from the Father, since he too is the Son, who is from the Father. For after that which is being, that is, existence or substance (or, if you climb higher out of a certain fear because the names are familiar, and say existentiality or substantiality, that is, hyparxotēs, ousiotēs, ontotēs), that which I call being for all these, remaining in itself, giving life by its own motion from itself, by its power by which all things are given life and made powerful, full, absolute, above all perfections, is divine perfection in every way. This is God above intellect, above truth, almighty power, and therefore not form; but intellect and truth are form, yet not as a form inhering inseparably in another, but as joined inseparably to declare the power of God the Father, the same substance, or image, or form. That first thing, then, which we called being, which God is, is also called silence, and rest and cessation. If this is so, there is a progression of power, which is not indeed a progression but an appearing; and if it is a progression, it is one that does not leave behind that from which it progresses, but a progression with connection, or rather an appearing: for there was nothing outside into which a progression could be made. For God is everywhere, and all things are God. The progression of power, then, came forth as act: act, if God is silence, is called Word; if cessation, motion; if essence, life. As we taught, in that which is being and living, in that which is silence there is a silent Word, and in that which is rest or cessation there is a hidden motion or a hidden action. Necessarily, then, from this cessation motion was born and action was born, or the Word from silence, or life from essence. So this essence, silence, cessation is the Father, that is, God the Father. But life, Word, motion or action is the Son, the only Son, because it is nothing other than one, whether life or Word or motion or action; and rather all these are motion or action. For all those are active: life and Word thrive by motion and operate by motion; and universal motion, which is the principal motion, arises from itself. For what is motion, unless it is motion from itself to itself? For if it is moved by another, what is moved by another is something other than motion; and if that which moves this something is not motion, it cannot move, for it will have nothing from which to move. But if motion is born from motion, then motion is born from itself. And this is what is meant by: “The Father gave him life, that he too might be life.”

It is motion, then, and one motion, and motion from itself. And since in part it is hidden, from there this appearing motion is motion from the Father. And because it is motion from motion, it is motion from itself, and one motion; hence the only Son. This is the universal Word in all things, through whom all things were made. This is life for all, because all the things that were made live. This is also Jesus Christ, because he will save all things to life. One motion, then, and one Son, the only Son, because there is one life, a single life, and alone eternal. The Son, then, is homoousios with the Father: for the Father is life and the Son is life, which is ousia; likewise the Father is motion and the Son is motion, which is ousia, for there is nothing accidental there. So the Father too is Word, though a silent Word, yet Word, and the Son is Word, and this is ousia. For whatever either is or acts and operates is ousia, and where there is more ousia, there is the Word. For the Word is not, as here, air that sounds, but, as here, something that acts. One Son, then, because one motion; one life, because there is one sole life, which is eternal. For it is not a life that at some time dies. And it never dies if it knows itself. But it cannot know itself unless it knows God, God who is life and true life and the fountain of life. If this is so, when God is known it will know all things, because all things are from God, and God is in all, and God is all. John cries out: “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Knowledge is life. Further, whether life or knowledge, it is one motion, the same motion bringing about life, and through life knowledge, and through knowledge life: the same motion, then, fulfilling two offices, life and knowledge. The Word is motion, and the Word is Son. The Son, then, is one inasmuch as he is Son, but twofold inasmuch as he is Word. For he himself is life, he himself knowledge, working by both for the salvation of souls through the mystery of the cross: by life, because we had to be freed from death; and by the mystery of knowledge through the Holy Spirit, because it was he above all who was given, and who taught all, and bore witness about Christ. And this is to bring about knowledge as life, and from this to know God, which is to become true life; and this is to bear witness about Christ. So Christ is the Son of God, that is, the Word, and the Son is life; and because this is also motion and knowledge, he is Son by the work by which he is life, existing as Jesus; but by the work by which he is knowledge, the Holy Spirit too exists, so that there are two existences, of Christ and of the Holy Spirit, in one motion, which is the Son. Hence Jesus is from the Father: “I came forth from the mouth of the Most High”; and the Holy Spirit too is from the Father, because one motion brought both forth into existence. And because the Father gave the Son all that he has, therefore the Son too, who is motion, gave all things to the Holy Spirit: “for all that he has he has from me,” he says. For because he too is motion, he has from motion; for it is not that the Son gave to him, but “he has from what is mine,” he says. For in the first place motion is life, and life itself is knowledge and understanding: so whatever knowledge has, it has from life. This is the supreme Trinity, this the supreme Oneness: “All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will receive from what is mine and declare it to you.”

This, then, will make it sufficiently clear that being, which is the Father, and life, which is the Son, and knowledge, which is the Holy Spirit, are one, and are one substance and three subsistences; for from that which is being (which substance is motion, because motion too, as we taught, is substance itself) it is strong with a twofold power, of vitality and of wisdom and understanding, in such a way that in all and in each there are three. The Holy Spirit, then, is knowledge and wisdom. That this is so the sacred readings prove: “Who has known the mind of God, except the Spirit alone?” “The Spirit himself bears witness to our spirit.” Who is a witness without knowledge? And knowledge itself, because it is wisdom, teaches us that we are sons of God. Likewise: “Who searches the hearts? Who knows the mind of the Spirit?” Likewise, how are both joined in knowledge? “I speak the truth in Christ.” Where there is truth, there is knowledge, because Christ is truth; and so there is also knowledge, which is the Holy Spirit. And likewise: “I do not lie, my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit.” For what else is conscience but knowledge with another? Here it is ours with the Spirit; so the Spirit is knowledge. And Christ is knowledge, because he is truth; so both Christ and the Spirit are knowledge. But Christ is life. What if the Spirit is life? For it is one motion, as I said, and the same life that is knowledge. For what is taught in Christ is taught by God; and when I say “taught”, I mean by knowledge, which, whether from Christ or from the Spirit, is one and the same. For what does Paul say, when he declares both to be the same? “But the mind of the Spirit is life.” For error, folly and ignorance seethe and rebel and fight within themselves; and this is the mind of the flesh, which is folly, and because it does not know God, it is death. The mind of the Spirit, then, is life and peace: so these are now joined and are one.