Against Arius 2.2–2.11

Come, then: we now confess that there is being in Christ. Let us ask in the same way whether this being is enousion or anousion. It has already been said above that what has being cannot be anousion. What, then? From where is this being: from the anousion or from the enousion, that is, from that which is being or from that which is non-being? God, as they say, is being; Christ likewise is being, but he began. This is true. But this being that began began from what in some way had been, as all divine things, and those arising from divine things, always are and have been in power; their procession is act, a manifestation from motion, and indeed a birth. For what of God is born, since God is unbegotten? Or is it credible, or right to say, that Christ, whom we call the Son of God, was born from nothing, he who is the Lord of majesty, and the rest that we have said above and in other books? This is what the most recent heresy says; and like it is the heresy that says either that Christ began from Mary, or that the Word did not himself put on flesh but took up a man so that the Word himself might govern him; and this is Marcellus, while the former is Photinus. Let us exclude, then, all who think these and similar things of Christ, and speak with those who say that Christ is the Son of God, and a Son born, since they confess him as only-begotten, that is, begotten, not made. That is too little, they add: the Son from the Father, God from God, true light from true light, and by consequence Spirit from Spirit, the Son in the Father and the Father in the Son. Yet they confess these things with no clear purpose, out of fear rather than for the truth. Some deny that substance should be named here; others name it, but want to call it like, not the same. They must first consider what the prophet Isaiah said: “There was no God before me, and after me there will be no God like me.” If Christ is the Son, Christ is certainly after God; and no one after God is like him: Christ, then, is not like God. Or, if he is not after God, he is certainly with God, for before God he is in no way: homoousion, then. And David says thus: “There is none like you.” Next, as we have taught by many arguments, substance insofar as it is substance, especially if it is of the same kind, when it is in two or more, is called the same substance, not a like substance. So the soul is substance; though there are many souls, insofar as they are souls they have one and the same substance; not that this substance went before and pre-existed, but that it always existed together with them; and so in other cases. How much more in God, since he himself is the origin of substance; with whom the Son, having received substance from the Father by a certain divine origin, is always with him and in him, as other and the same, of the same substance, with no diminution of the one or acquisition by the other, by a consubstantial, completing oneness: God and his power, who always was and always existed, that is, God and the Word, God and his form, Father and Son, God and Jesus Christ, God and his power and wisdom, homoousion. So homoousion is said as homoeides is said of things existing together in the same species, of the same time and age; but here, as “of the same age”, it signifies at once consubstantial and substance without composition or separation, always together, yet distinguished by powers and actions.

Here questions arise. First, that no mention of substance is made in the sacred Scriptures, and still less is homoousion read there. Second, that if this is so, the Father suffered with the Son. Third, that if this is so, the Father is not greater nor the Son less, nor is one sending and another sent. These, and others of this kind. First, then, let us look at the question of substance. Is there no substance in God or in Christ? Or is it only not read? If there is none, as we said above, either because he is not at all, or because he is wholly above substance, it is impious for us to say that God is not. For substance is what God is, what spirit is, what light is. For why do we add “and true light”? For in divine things and in God we shall take substance as we take bodies among material things, and the soul in bodily things. For substance there is this: to be above substance. All confess that God is, since he is the power of substance, and therefore above substance, and from this also substance; for being belongs to power. Certainly God is almighty, and he is all the things of which he is the origin or cause, that is, by power and in a certain way; hence it was said by Paul: “That God may be all in all.” He is, then, the existent and existing and substance, since he is all these; because he is the parent of all, he is all things in power. We need not hesitate, then, to speak of God's substance; for when proper words for the first or highest things fail us, we fit, though not fittingly, what among us can suit the understanding, so that here we rightly call that which is God's being “substance”. In the same way let us take Christ both to be substance and to be substance from his Father, since he himself is light from light, God from God, Spirit, the Word, through whom all things were made. And since he is so, he willed his substance to come even into the bodily mystery, of which the Apostle said: “And not according to Christ; for in him dwells all the fullness of divinity bodily,” that is, substantially. For God is power and the Word action, each in each: for power is what can be, and what is can be. Power itself, then, is action, and action itself is power. The Father, then, is action; the Son acts, and the Father acts. He is Father because power begets action, and the Son is action because action is from power. So the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, but both are in each, and therefore they are one. Yet they are two, because what each is more, that appears as other: the Father is more power, the Son action; and he is more action because action is outward. If this is so, both Father and Son are substance, and one substance, and substance from the Father, and substance together, and always and from eternity together, Father and Son, the same and together substance, that is, homoousion. Is it not read in the divine Scriptures? First, whoever denies this admits the thing but asks for the authority of Scripture. And how is it not unjust to refuse to admit a thing because our forebears left it out, by some chance perhaps or for some reason, when you are overcome by reason? But what do they deny is read: substance? Or the substance of God and of Christ? Or the word itself? The substance of God and of Christ has been read. Of God it is read in the prophet Jeremiah: “Who has stood in the substance of the Lord and seen his word? Who has given ear and heard?” And a little after: “And if they had stood in the substance and heard my words.” Substance is also read in the prophet David: “And my substance in the lower parts of the earth.” It is read in Paul to the Hebrews, of Christ: “Who is the imprint of his substance.” There are other examples too, but I think these are enough.

But among the Greeks the word used is hypostasis, not ousia. Let us see what the difference is. The Greeks call onta both the things in the eternal realm and those in the world and on earth. In the eternal realm, then, is God almighty, the cause of all, the fountain and origin of all things that are, that is, of all existents. What, then, do we ascribe to God? Being; or do we ascribe being to all things, or do we not? The reasoning is this: God is first being. But since being can be taken without its being plain what that being is, when it becomes comprehensible it is called on, that is, a certain form coming into knowledge; such being is now called on and hyparxis. Every hyparxis has being, but being is not at once hyparxis, nor on, except potentially, not manifestly, so as to be called on. For on is that being formed by a certain figure; pure being is understood as pure only when it is understood as already formed. For form gives rise to understanding, and plainly declares that form is one thing and what is formed another. What is formed is being; form is what makes being understood. Being, then, we ascribe to God, and form to Christ, because the Father is known through the Son, that is, through the form, the being; and this is what is said here: “He who has seen me has seen the Father also.” God, then, is hyparxis, and Christ is hyparxis; for hyparxis is being with form. And because they are always together, form is being and being itself is form; hence the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father. For there is being in the Father, which is power, which is prior to what is form; and again there is being in the Son, but this, his own being, he has from the Father, so that it is his to be form. One, then, is in the other, and both are one. God, then, is on, the Son is on; for that is being with form, since everything that is, is with form. This is called existence, substance and subsistence; for what is on both exists and is subject. And that being without any connection, which is simple and one: subsistence, then, is more manifest, and it is existence, and it is called substance. If, then, subsistence is said of God, substance is said of God all the more, because it signifies subject and the principal, which befits God. Yet let it not be subject as substance is in the world, but something more honoured and more ancient, as the fountain of the universe. But that which being is, which God provides to the things that are so that each one may be: being that has form, and the first being, alone true, are named homonymously; since that first being is pure, it is substance all the more. But since form too is being, and is itself substance, this is called hypostasis: for being already formed is substance, and being formed is God, what God is, and the Father; so too the Son, what the Word and the Son is. Subsistence, then, is properly said of both, and it is substance, since principal being with form is called substance. And this is also called substance; and therefore it is said that from one substance there are three subsistences, so that being itself subsists threefold: God himself, and Christ, that is, the Word, and the Holy Spirit. Hypostasis, then, is rightly ascribed to God, rightly to the Word, that is, to the Father and the Son. This the Latins call substance, because we said that it too can be called substance, namely that which being is, or more precisely formed being. Since these things are so, hypostasis is read, and this is ousia, as we have shown.

Now let us see whether, where we read it, hypostasis signifies something other than ousia. For many think that wealth and fortunes are signified by this word, hypostasis. But the prophet said: “If they had stood in the hypostasis of the Lord, they would have seen his Word.” What do we understand here by the hypostasis of the Lord but that which God is? And God is spirit, light, power, almighty, and the like. He who stands also understands; and he who understands does not go astray; so he stands. Understanding God, he understands and sees the Word, the Son of God. It is plain, then, that this is God's hypostasis, because when it is understood the Word too is understood; for they are together, and this is homoousion. And again he says: “For if they had stood in my hypostasis and heard my word.” Above he says “see”; here he has used the other, “hear”; both mean to understand. For he understands a thing who stands in the thing's substance, that is, in the thing's first fountain, so that he understands all that belongs to it. What next? When elsewhere, in David or in the Gospel, hypostasis is placed and read, is anything other than ousia understood? “My hypostasis,” says David, certainly of God, “my hypostasis in the lower parts of the earth.” For he says: let no one think that I am hidden; for I certainly am, and all that I am, my substance, is even in the lower parts of the earth; for God is everywhere, or the Spirit of God, which is God's substance.

I want now to look also at what is set out in the Gospel by parable and example. For a certain father of a family, speaking to his two sons, divided his hypostasis among them; here we certainly understand fortunes and patrimony. But if this must be referred to God, hypostasis here too will be all his power and might. One son consumes this, the one who departs from God: for he who goes abroad from God has neither the Spirit of God, nor light, nor Christ; he consumes the substance of God in himself. For this is God's hypostasis, as we said; and whether we call it riches here or patrimony makes no difference. For so it is said by the apostle Paul: “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” If, then, God's riches are wisdom and knowledge, and if wisdom and knowledge are God's power itself, and the power of God is Christ, and Christ is the Word, and the Word is truly Son, and the Son is in the Father: he himself, then, is the Father's riches; he himself is the hypostasis. It now makes no difference, then, whether we understand hypostasis as riches or as ousia, provided that what is signified is that by which God himself is. Hypostasis or ousia, then, is read of God; and this is understood of Christ also. It is said: “I am in the Father, and the Father in me.” This is said twice because the Son could be in the Father without the Father also being in the Son; it is said so that the fullness, the same one, might be in each. If the hypostasis is the same, then, they are homoousion. And it is the same, for Christ is God from God and light from light: homoousion, then. And if this is from eternity and always, necessarily together, then truly homoousion.

But this very homoousion is read. For all that we have said is read: I say this to you who already confess of God that he is light or spirit. You say, then, God from God, Spirit from invisible Spirit, and true light from true light, which are the hypostases of God. But when you call Christ God from God, light from light, and the like, where have you read this? Or are you permitted to speak so, from which homoousion is all the more proved, while we shall not be permitted to learn homoousion? But if you say “light from light” because God is called light and Christ is called light, and likewise the Father is called God and Christ is called God, that is indeed plain; yet “light from light” is not read of God; and still it was permitted to adopt it. Let it be permitted, then, to compose what is not read from what is read. You deny that homoousion is read; but if some things like it, or similarly named, are read, by the same right we ought to accept this term too. The ousia of God is light; this light is life; and that this life, this understanding, this being, is God and is Christ has been sufficiently shown: “The Father lives, and I live”; “The Father has life in himself, and has given to the Son to have life in himself”; “All that the Father has he has given to me.” By these and other texts we often prove that the same things are in the Father and in the Son, always and from eternity; and therefore it is called homoousion.

But where does this word come from? Hear the Gospel, hear Paul the apostle, hear the prayer of the offering: since God is life, and eternal life. We Christians, that is, we who believe in Christ, are taught in the Gospel how we ought to ask God the Father; and in that prayer, among many things we ask, we ask for bread, the bread that is life (for so it is said: “For this is the bread that came down from heaven”). This life of Christ and of God, that is, eternal life, he himself names epiousios bread: bread from the same ousia, that is, from the life of God, a consubstantial life. For how shall we be sons of God except by sharing in eternal life, which Christ brought from the Father and gave to us? This, then, is “Give us the epiousios bread”, that is, life from the same substance. For if what we receive is the body of Christ, and Christ himself is life, we ask for epiousios bread; for the riches dwell in Christ bodily. The Greek Gospel, then, has epiousios, which is named from substance, and certainly God's substance. The Latins, either not understanding or unable to express this, could not say it, and put only “daily”, not epiousios. So the word too is read, and substance in God; and it can be said in Greek, though in Latin it is not expressed; it is said in Greek because it is understood. So we who believe in Christ, because we hope for eternal life from him, because he himself is life, when we follow him and are with him and around him and around eternal life, are called a laos periousios. Hence the holy Apostle said in Greek in the letter to Titus: “that he might redeem us from all lawlessness and purify for himself a people periousios, zealous for good works.” The Latin translator, not understanding periousios (that is, “around” the one who is, around the life that Christ both has and gives), put “an abounding people”. What merit is there in a people being saved because it abounds? But this, again, is a great reason and as it were a necessity, that it is periousios. Hence the prayer of the offering, with the same understanding, beseeches him: “Save a people periousios, zealous for good works.” All these, then, are read, named from ousia; hence homoousion was composed of God and Christ, which is not foreign to reason, for it has the same root as the names above and is named in the same way. And this name excludes all heretics; it was therefore necessarily adopted by our forebears. It must be said, then, and always treated.

“But because it is not understood and causes scandal, it should be removed from the faith and from discussion, or at least put in Latin”: “it is not understood,” they say. Then it cannot be said in Latin either. If it is not understood, why do you fear it? For those who attack it nonetheless fear it. If you fear it, you are heretics: you wish to creep in once it is shut out. If you deny ousia in God, do you want homoousion removed for this reason, because it confesses ousia? Then you understand it, and fear it. But if Basil too says homoiousion, this name too is against you, and so you reject it as well, because once for all you deny ousia in God. And if you reject it because you understand it, Basil himself also understands, who wants homoiousion to be said, of whom we shall speak later. Homoousion is not a name that is not understood. “Let it be said in Latin,” they say. Because it is hard to say, you demand it; and if it is said, you will follow? A great wonder: a word makes you heretics, or rather the sound of a word, because it is said in Greek! Next, if I say it in Latin, since the church has Greeks, and since the whole Scripture of the Old and New Testaments is written in Greek and in Latin, what shall we answer when the Greeks ask us, if we do not set it down in Greek? Homoousion must necessarily be said; it must be set down, then. And what? Are there not in the Scriptures many names, Greek or Hebrew, either translated or untranslated? Such as “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani”; likewise “Golgotha” and “Emmanuel”; likewise “If anyone does not love our Lord Christ the Son, anathema.” There are six hundred others, either translated and yet set down, or untranslated and set down alone; or “anathema”, which is expressed neither in Latin nor in Greek, and yet is set down and used daily, as are “Alleluia” and “Amen”, which are said unchanged in every language. It is permitted, then, to set down homoousion in the same way. Certainly, when a word is to be removed, it is removed because it is obscure, or because it is contrary, or because it expresses less or more than it should, or because it is superfluous. This one is not obscure: for we have said what it signifies, and you fear it because you understand it, and Basil, because he understands it, changes it. Nor is it contrary: for we all now confess about substance (for God is substance, spirit, light, things said of God the Father and of Christ); this word homoousion, since it is said of substance, cannot be contrary. Suppose it expresses less or more: then it should be corrected rather than removed. And how is it superfluous? Because it has already been said? Where has it been said? Or because it is not useful, when it excludes heretics, above all the Arians? It was set by our forebears as a wall and bulwark. “But it was set down recently.” Because a poisoned band of heretics broke out recently; yet it was established according to the ancient faith. For even before this discussion, many bishops of the world, three hundred and fifteen, in the city of Nicaea, sending the faith they had decreed throughout the whole world, had thousands of bishops in agreement, of that time or of the following years. And it was approved by the emperor, the father of our emperor.

“But we want this to be said in Latin.” Nor will this be denied you: you who deny substance in God, though you have been defeated by Basil; and you, Basil, who confess substance. Both of you, in your own words, confess homoousion. For you call God, and the same God light, and the same spirit. Whoever says these things speaks of God's substance. For whoever says Father, or almighty, or good, or infinite and the like, speaks not of substance but of quality. Likewise you call the Son Word, light, spirit; and these signify substance. Again, when you say God, you say God from God, true light from true light: you remove the argument of Basil's fear, that there might be a higher substance from which the two come. For if he is God from God and light from light, the Father's substance is certainly the Son's: because God the Father is himself substance, and from this substance the Son is Word, light, spirit. For when he is called Son, likewise Saviour, likewise Jesus Christ, it is said according to quality, not according to substance. So the rest are given to the Father or to the Son: you confess substance, then. And you others, believe Basil at least, who says the same things of God and of Christ: he confesses God as light, spirit, Word and substance. “But homoousion is not in these.” That is so, if you do not understand “the same substance” in homoousion. But if, when a word is compounded, sameness in two or more is signified (homoeides, of the same species; homēlix, of the same age; homōnymos, of the same name; concord, homonoia, of the same heart, the same thought), then consubstantial means what is of the same substance. But if homou, “together”, is understood, homoousion will be in Latin “consubstantial together”, not from anything else, but by God's power from eternity. For if “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God”, since a beginning has nothing before it (for if it had, it would cease to be a beginning), God is from eternity and the Word from eternity. Both, then, are together, and always together; nor was one ever without the other, nor was the Son ever from what is not. Here, then, Arius is excluded, who put forth “once he was not”; and his opinion was also that the Son is “from things that are not”, that is, from nothing. Homoousion signifies being together and substance; against both sacrileges the force of this word, homoousion, stands. For if homoousion means “of the same substance”, like homoeides, as we taught above, what was said, that Christ is from nothing, is excluded; for if God and the Word are the same substance, God and the Word are not only not from nothing, but not even from a like substance. But if homoousion is understood from this, that it is substance together, that is, the being together of substances, then God and the Word are together, and from eternity always together, Father and Son.

From this is excluded what was said: “There was when he was not.” If this is so, by this one word, homoousios, all the poison of the Arian doctrine is killed. O learned bishops! O holy men! O you who confirmed the faith by the Spirit! O word, truly a word of God, by which God and the Word are shown to be together from eternity, always and the same substance! Homoousion, then, has been said in Latin; hence it must necessarily be set down and treated in Greek too. But let us now add something more, by which homoousion expressed in Latin may be approved through your own confession and through divine reading. Divine reading says: the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father. And lest that be too little for faith, our Lord Jesus Christ himself says: “I am in the Father and the Father in me.” What, then? Are these names in each other? Or powers, or substances, or wisdoms and powers? The Father, insofar as he is Father, cannot be in the Son; likewise the Son cannot be in the Father; but that by which each has the power of substance, this is in the other. Hence the one is in the other: one is rendered even while each subsists; yet one, because the same thing is understood and named in both. So the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, but in this way. If this is so, let us look at the rest. You say, and rightly say: Jesus Christ our Lord, God from God and light from light. It is close to this to say likewise: let us say, then, and truly say, God in God, light in light. This is not said in reverse, because it is one word for two. For Father and Son are two words, and therefore they can be turned about, so that the Father is said to be in the Son and the Son in the Father. But when one name is said of two, God in God, it is said in the same way when said of the other; the same reasoning holds when light in light is said. By the necessity of the one name, then, it is said once; but because of the two, Father and Son, it is understood and heard twice. Let us say, then: Jesus the Son of God, God from God, light from light. Let us say also: God in God, light in light. For if, as we all confess, the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son, and the Father is God and light, yet so that the Son is from the Father, then it is necessary and true to say: God in God and light in light. Is that hard? But it must necessarily be confessed that it is so, and stands so.