Against Arius 3.10–4.1

Let us show that God is both knowledge and life; though Paul says these come from him: “O the depth,” he says, “of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” So it is said by the same apostle: “the manifold wisdom of God”. Hence also the secret of God; hence Christ is called wisdom; hence also this: “that you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, length, height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.” So God too is knowledge, and knowledge frees us, yet through Christ, because he is knowledge, and the door, and life, and the Word, the Word of all, through whom all things were made. We ought, then, both to know these things and to have love toward Christ. These and very many other texts show that God is knowledge, and Christ, and the Holy Spirit; and that they are also life is sufficiently proved even by one example, for in other books we have proved it more fully: “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given also to the Son to have life in himself.” Likewise he says: “As the living Father sent me, so I too live because of the Father.” These are each such, then, that all three are each. There is one substance, then: the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit; God, Word, Paraclete are one, as substantiality, vitality, blessedness; silence, but silence speaking with itself; Word; Word of the Word. For what is the Father's will but a silent Word? In this way, then, since the Father is Word and the Son Word, that is, the sounding and operating Word: if, I say, both Father and Son are Word, there is one substance. Next: “My judgment,” he says, “is just, because I do not seek to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.” There is one will, then, and hence one substance, because the will too is substance. That the Word itself is life is shown thus: “You do not want to come to me that you may have life.” Next, the whole mystery concerns this, which I explain: “All that has been given me by the Father I have with me.” Since motion is the same as being, and being is motion, and since by a certain understanding being is prior to being moved, but prior according to cause, therefore the Father gave the Son motion as well, which also has being. To be motion, then, is the Word; so he who is motion also has being; and being is life and knowledge. He has all things, then, because he has the Father's being; and so he fulfils the Father's will. And what will is this, if not that, since the Father is life, his life is motion? This is the will: to make other things live. This, then, is also the will of the Word, that is, of Christ. “What is,” he says, “the will of the Father who sent me? That of what he has given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life and rise on the last day.” To see Christ is to know God, the Son of God, life, and the God of life; and this is to have received the Holy Spirit. That the Word is what life is, is proved from this: “To whom shall we go? You have the word of life, and we believe and have known that you are the Christ, the Son of God.” The whole mystery is this: Christ the Son of God, Christ the Word, and the Word itself, the Word of eternal life. This Word, then, is life; and whoever hears and believes this certainly knows God, and so also has the Holy Spirit.

Here the full faith is pronounced, and by the disciples. Likewise he says to the Jews: “If you knew me, you would know my Father. You know neither me nor my Father.” And rightly. For although the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son, existence or substance in life and life in substance, yet since substance is invisible, it is not understood except in life. And Christ is rather life, though also substance: the Father, then, is known in the Son. From where? “Because you know neither me nor the Father; if you knew me, you would know the Father also.” What is this? You would know through me that he is; because I am also knowledge, which is the Holy Spirit. Likewise, to them, that he is Word and the Father is Word, and so one substance: “Likewise, he who sent me is true, and what I heard from him I speak.” The Father speaks to the Son, the Son to the world: because the Father acts through the Son, and the Son by the power of the Father's Word does all things; that is, the Word speaking with itself does all things through the Word speaking openly. And the Word speaking with itself is God with the Son, because the Father and the Son are one God. He also says: “Amen, amen, I say to you: if anyone keeps my word, he will not see death.” And again he himself: “For I know the Father and keep his word.” Each is Word, but as I have said. What and how great is that saying in John? “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my soul that I may take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself: I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” It is plain enough that Christ was never called a soul; nor was God called a soul. For God the Father is called Spirit; likewise the Son is called Word, called spirit, and without doubt God, since both are one God. These, then, Word and Spirit, are above the soul by their higher substance; the substance of the soul is far other and lower, since it was breathed in and begotten by God, and alone is truly called substance, because it stands under its own forms within it, in the same way as matter.

Add to this that God is life and Christ is life, and certainly life from himself, but in such a way that Christ has life from himself by the Father's gift: life, then, is higher than the soul. For life and vitality (zōē and zōotēs) are prior to the soul. These, then, God and the Word, Father and Son, are homoousia, since the one is Spirit and the other Spirit, the one life and the other life; likewise Word and Word, and the rest. The Spirit, then, has the power to take up a soul, to lay it down and to take it again. For life, life from itself, has the power to take up and to lay down that which it makes to live by its power and by participation in itself. For the soul was made according to the image of the image of God: “Let us make man according to our image and likeness.” It is lower, then, and arose or was made from God, and rather from the Word. It is never itself God or the Word, but it is indeed a word: not that Word who is the general or universal Son, the seed, origin and fountain of all things made through him. The soul is a word of that Word: how, or which, I remember having said, and shall say in its place. The universal, then, because it is spirit and life, not soul, has power from itself to lay down the soul and to take the soul again. God and the Word, then, either because they are life or because they are Spirit, live and always live, since they live from themselves. These, then, are homoousia. But the soul is homoiousios. When it is assumed by the divine, that is, by the Word (for not by God: for the Word is motion, and the soul is motion, and motion moved from itself; hence the soul is the image and likeness of the Word), when it is assumed, then, nothing is added to life, since the life of the soul is from life, that is, from the power of living. When the Spirit takes up a soul, then, it carries over, as it were, its power and actions into lower things, when it fills the world and the things of the world. So the Spirit, and above all the Word, the spirit that is life, has in its power both to take up the soul and to lay it down. When it takes it up, it is as it were born to the world, and its power converses with the world; when it lays it down, it withdraws from the world and does not operate in the world in the flesh, nor yet spiritually. This we call his death, and then he is said to be in hell, certainly not without a soul. Hence he asks that God not leave his soul in hell. So he leads it with himself from the underworld, because he was to return to the world and to his work in it; he takes back the soul, then, that is, his acts; he receives the world again. And because the Word, who is Spirit, performs full and whole acts in the world, with both soul and body, it had to be sanctified again, because it had taken these up again. He went, then, to the Spirit, and returned sanctified; he acted with the apostles; he acted after the Holy Spirit. Who, then, is the Holy Spirit? That is, the Word: for it is one motion; and therefore it is said: “And if I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come again.” For who came after Christ's departure but the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete?

That what I say is so (that the Father and the Son are one; likewise that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are one; and therefore that all are one), John declared in a connected reading; for he began from the Word: “I am,” he says, “the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” For who arrives at that which is being, and true being, which the Father is, except through life? For life which is true life, because it is eternal, is true being; for nothing changes and nothing is corrupted (these are the kinds of death); to be life is true life. “God lives,” it says. To be life, then, is God. And: “I live,” he says. Whoever comes to Christ comes to life, and so through life to God: God and the Word, then, are joined. Hence this: “He who has known me has known the Father also”; and: “He who has seen me has seen the Father also.” Hence also this: “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me?” Hence also this, said mystically: “And if you ask anything in my name, this I will do.” What is it to ask in Christ's name? For the soul to become eternal, to see the light of God, to come to see him, to have eternal life; not riches, not children, not honours, nothing of the world, but everything spiritual, and everything by which, united, we are joined to God and Christ. For this is that he may be glorified in the Son, that is, eternal life, which I will give to those who ask.

Then he adds, most fully, about the Holy Spirit: what he is, from where he is, and that he is himself: “For if,” he says, “you love me, keep my commandments. And I will ask my Father, and he will give you another Paraclete, to be with you for all time.” What is a Paraclete, who supports and pleads for all the faithful and believing before the Father? Who is he? The Holy Spirit alone? Or is he also the same as Christ? For he himself said: God will give you another Paraclete. When he said “another”, he called himself another; when he said “Paraclete”, he declared a similar work, and in a way the same action. So the Spirit is Paraclete, and the Holy Spirit is another Paraclete, and he too is sent by the Father. Jesus, then, is the Holy Spirit: for Spirit is motion, and so motion is Spirit, because it is Spirit; for “it breathes where it wills.” And he himself now says, “the Spirit of truth”; and so his name is Holy Spirit. Christ too is Spirit, and God is Spirit: all, then, are Spirit. But God is Spirit substantially: for in him, in that which is substance, there is also motion; or rather he is substance itself, which is motion, but remaining in itself, as we have often said and shall often repeat so that it may be retained. But Jesus and the Holy Spirit are motion, truly moved motion; hence they work outwardly; but Jesus is the open Spirit, since he was also in the flesh, while the Holy Spirit is the hidden Jesus, Jesus pouring in understanding, no longer working signs or speaking in parables. That he himself is that Spirit, he teaches thus: “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.” And that he himself is hidden in the Holy Spirit he teaches thus: “The world will no longer see me, but you will see me, because I live and you will live.” This is also given to the Holy Spirit: “that the Spirit of truth may be with you for ever.” And of himself he said: “I am the truth.” Then he added: “whom the world cannot see.” And of himself he said: “The world will no longer see me.” Then he added: “because it neither sees him nor knows him.” But no one knew Christ either: “He came to his own, and the world did not know him.” He added: “You will know him, because he abides in you and is in you.” And he says of himself: “You will see me.” And since Christ is life, he added of himself: “Because I live, and you will live.” And since the Holy Spirit is understanding, and the world lacks both, he therefore added: “because he abides with you and is in you.” But how is the Holy Spirit either in them or already abiding, if he is still to come later, and had not already begun to be with them through Christ? They are joined, then, and from one, which is motion. This is declared more openly in what follows; for he says: “These things I have said to you while abiding with you. But the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all that I say.” “I,” he says, “abide in you.” For life has been given, and Christ no longer departs from them. They are, then, also by spiritual motion, which is Christ abiding in them; and the souls themselves in which the spirit abides and never departs. And yet it is said: “Now I go to the Father.”

What this is can easily be understood if it is taken as said of the mystery, the bodily mystery. For spiritually, since he is in the Father and the Father in him, where, or why, will he go? It is from the same mystery that the Spirit came to Christ like a dove, and that now the Spirit will be sent by the Father, and will be sent to the Father, Christ going and asking that he be sent. For life was called back from death: not life itself, which is the Word (for this life does not know death; rather it kills death), but the life that rose from death in men, which he certainly put on together with the body and took back from hell. For the sake of sanctifying this life, then, he had to go to the Father, but bodily and as soul, that is, to penetrate potentially and existentially into what the Father had been in himself: in this way, then, he went to the Father. Finally, no period of absence was announced; on the contrary, it is said that on the night following the Sabbath he appeared to Mary and would not be touched before he went to the Father; Mary told the disciples; and that same night he came to them showing his hands and side, certainly no longer forbidding them to touch him. Afterwards Thomas handled him and touched him, at his own urging, because Thomas despaired; which signifies that he had already been sanctified. How short, then, this time is! But “I go to the Father” is said because of the mystery: for since he is in the Father and the Father in him, where will he go? By the same mystery, then: “whom the Father sends you”; because the Father sends, Christ sends him. Finally he says thus: “The Father sends in my name”, that is, for me; or “in my name”, since Christ is spirit and is himself the Holy Spirit; or “in my name”, because the Holy Spirit himself will bear witness about Christ, for so it is said: “He bears witness about me.” Who is he? “He whom I send you from the Father.” All are joined, then: I send; I send from the Father; I send the Spirit of truth. The Word, then, that is, Jesus himself, is the middle who sends; for the principal and universal motion, which is living and is life, sends the motion of understanding, which, as he taught, is from life and is life itself; for to know what one is, this is to live, this is to be. And what is this being but to be from God's substance, which is to be Spirit? Hence we are made spiritual, having received the Spirit from Christ, and hence eternal life. This Trinity, then, is called Spirit. For it is said: “God is spirit.” Likewise it is said by Paul in Second Corinthians: “Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” Certainly these words are of Christ; but he himself is called the Holy Spirit, because he hallows the holy, that is, makes them holy; and certainly he is the Spirit of God. For he is called prudence, wisdom and knowledge of all things; for so it adds of him: “He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. Concerning sin,” he says, “because they do not believe in me”: either that Christ is life, or that he is the Son of God, sent by God, who forgives sins. “Concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father”: for so much was done in the mystery of the passion, because he kept and fulfilled faithfully the commandments, since he said, when he wished otherwise, “Your will be done.” And likewise because, leaving those whom he had instructed, he would no longer be seen as before, it belonged to righteousness, all these things having been done, to go to the Father, and not only to go to the Father but to be already with him; for this is why it is said, “He sits at the right hand of the Father.” “Concerning judgment, because the prince of this world has been judged”: for by the mystery of the cross all the powers opposed to Christ were triumphed over by Christ himself. “These things,” he says, “the Holy Spirit will teach.” Which is to be chosen? Does the Paraclete complete the mystery of salvation, and did Christ leave it uncompleted? Or is it because Christ himself is the same as the Holy Spirit, or because he himself sends him, or because the Spirit has all things of Christ? He has all things, and it is celebrated through Christ.

And yet let us see what the Spirit is to do. He is to give knowledge of the things that were done, and to instil knowledge, having as it were the force of testimony, and rather of judgment, either to repentance or to punishment. “Concerning sin,” he says, “that they did not believe in me”: so that the world may now know its punishment. “Concerning righteousness, that I go to the Father.” And this can concern the sin that those committed unjustly who lifted him onto the cross because he said he was the Son of God. And now he goes to the Father, which will likewise be the lot of all, if they believe in God and do God's commands, that they too may go to the Father; for they are justified, since “Abraham believed, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness.” Next, “concerning judgment,” he says, “that the prince of the world has been judged.” These things, as is seen, pertain not to salvation, which has already been completed by Christ, but to the knowledge of the things that were done. For the Father is speaking silence, Christ the voice, the Paraclete the voice of the voice. The Holy Spirit, then, in this act is another Paraclete; in the mystery of salvation he is a co-worker, like Christ; in the Spirit of sanctification he is what God is. If, then, in this way too Christ is what Spirit is, God is, in the mystery of eternal life, Christ, and in sanctification, the Holy Spirit. And God sanctifies, as it is said: “Sanctify them in the truth”, the Son says to the Father; so the Father sanctifies. Likewise Christ sanctifies, as it is said: “And for them I sanctify myself, that they too may be sanctified in the truth.” Likewise the Holy Spirit sanctifies, for baptizing too belongs to sanctification. It is said, then, in the Acts of the Apostles: “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized in the Holy Spirit”: because he poured himself over them for knowledge. For they had already been sanctified by baptism, God and Christ having been invoked; for to the Holy Spirit it is said thus: “Sanctify them in the truth.” And Christ is the truth; the Paraclete too is the Spirit of truth. So everyone who is baptized both declares that he believes and receives the faith of the truth, that is, the Holy Spirit, and becomes holier by the Holy Spirit. And therefore it is said in the Acts of the Apostles: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you”: not for sanctification but for knowledge, and for the things that Christ promised in the Gospel about the Holy Spirit, that is, the Paraclete. First, that he should bear witness about Christ; for so he says: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem.” Luke too speaks of this: the Spirit had not yet been sent, and yet he already speaks of witness. And Paul, in all his letters, what else does he do but bear witness about Christ? And after Christ's departure he alone saw Christ, and to him alone Christ appeared. So the Spirit was present through Christ, and Christ through the Holy Spirit. Likewise John and Peter bear witness: “What we heard, what we saw, what we touched.” And in the Acts of the Apostles both Peter himself and Luke, who wrote of them, say this of David: “Being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn to him with an oath that one from the fruit of his loins would sit on his throne, he foresaw and spoke of the resurrection of Christ, that he was not left in hell, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of this we are all witnesses.” When do they say these things? “When a sound had come from heaven, and the Spirit was borne as with a mighty force, and it filled the whole house, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in various tongues.” Then the apostles speak of the sin of the world, that it did not believe in Christ, in Acts thus: “As you know, this man, delivered up by the decreed counsel and foreknowledge of God, you fixed to the cross by wicked hands and killed; and God raised him up.” Likewise in the Acts of the Apostles, Peter relates that David did not ascend into heaven, but said: “The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand.” Paul too said this: “Who rose, who is at the right hand of God.” They taught, then, that after the resurrection he went to the Father. And the same apostle soon added: “Who also intercedes with the Father.” If, then, Christ intercedes, he too is a Paraclete. Likewise in Acts there is testimony that he went to the Father: “While they watched, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their eyes; and as they gazed at him going into heaven,” and the rest.

Three things have now been spoken of: the testimony to Christ, sin, and righteousness; now judgment. So Paul spoke through the Holy Spirit to the Romans: “And the God of peace will swiftly crush Satan under your feet.” Likewise to the Ephesians: “He who ascended on high led captivity captive.” Likewise in the Apocalypse he himself said: “And I have the keys of death and of hell.” Likewise there: “And war arose in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon.” And the whole passage shows the devil judged. Since, then, it has been shown that these three powers, by common and proper act and by the same substance, make up a unity and a deity, it is not without reason that they are referred back to these two, to the Son and the Father. For since the Father is himself, as it were, twofold, existence and action, that is, substance and motion, but inward motion, self-begotten motion, and this substance is motion, necessarily the Son too, since he is motion, self-begotten motion, is the same substance. For these are one with each other without conjunction, and simple without doubling, each by its own proper turning of existence, but by force and power; because neither is ever without the other, they are one and the same, different only in act: the one outside falls into passions, while the other, inward, always remains and is eternal, as original and substantial, and therefore is always Father; and by the same reasoning there is always the Son. Paul, in all his letters: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.” Likewise: “Not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and through God the Father.” Likewise in the Gospel: “I and the Father are one; I am in the Father and the Father in me.”

We too always use “Father and Son” reverently, and rightly, according to the reasoning above; for the Son is motion, as we taught above, and this motion is life and knowledge, or wisdom. Certainly Paul expressed most fully what we wanted to be understood: “I give thanks,” he says, “to my God always for you in Christ Jesus, that you have been enriched in him in every word and in all knowledge.” We have said that Christ is the Word, that is, life, and the Holy Spirit knowledge; so they are one: “For in Christ,” he says, “you have been enriched.” This being so, if God and Christ are one, and Christ and the Spirit are one, the three are rightly one, by power and substance. Yet the first two are one in a different way: so that the Father is actual existence, that is, substantiality, and the Son existential act; while the other two are two in such a way that Christ and the Holy Spirit are two in one, that is, in motion, and so two that the two are one; but the first two are two as one. So, when there are two in one, and when two are one, the Trinity exists as one. For why should I recount many things about the Holy Spirit, who has been treated at length? From him Christ is conceived in the flesh; by him Christ in the flesh is sanctified in baptism; he is in Christ, who is in the flesh; he is given to the apostles by Christ in the flesh, that they may baptize in God and in Christ and in the Holy Spirit; he is the one whom Christ in the flesh promises will come, with a certain distinction in acting. The same is both Christ and the Holy Spirit; and because he is Spirit, he is also God; because Christ is what Spirit is, he is therefore God. Hence Father and Son and Spirit are not only one but also one God.

Are “he lives” and “life” one, or the same, or other? One. And why are there two names for the same thing, and how? Since it is one thing to be in act and another to be action itself, they are other. But how other? Since in what lives there is life, and what is life must live: for what lives does not lack life, nor, being life, does it fail to live. Each, then, is in the other, and from this there are two in either one; and if they are two, they are not purely two, since each is in the other, and the same in both: the same, then. But the same is in two, and is other than itself: it is, then, both the same and other in either of these. But if it is the same, each is the same and one with itself; for whichever exists as other with the other, neither is a twin. If, then, each, by the very fact that it is, is also the other, each will be one with itself; and when each is one with itself, it is the same one in the other; and when it is the same one, each is truly one. For they differ in nothing, neither in the power of existing nor in time; perhaps in cause, and in this one is prior to the other.