On the Reason of Faith

Contents

1. 1Nicetas opens by warning, with Paul, against curious questions that try to measure God instead of adoring him.
2. 2Nicetas passes over Sabellius, who confused the Father with the Son and Spirit, and Photinus, who made Christ a mere man, both already condemned.
3. 3Nicetas explains that Arius, prying into how God begets, denied both Father and Son, and that Nicaea confessed the Son born from the Father’s substance, “of one substance with the Father.”
4. 4Nicetas explains that “of one substance” does not mean the Father is divided or diminished but that he begot a perfect Son, distinct from him, who has all that the Father has and is to be honoured equally.
5. 5Nicetas argues that honouring the Son honours the Father, and that sayings like “the Father is greater than I” distinguish the Son from the Father without lessening his divinity.
6. 6Nicetas shows that Christ’s hunger, sleep, tears, sorrow and death prove his true body, while the feeding of the five thousand, the stilling of the storm, the raising of Lazarus and his power over his own life prove his divinity.
7. 7Nicetas concludes that Christ is both impassible as God and passible in the flesh, that the Father and Son share one kingdom, will and grace, and ends his short commentary with a prayer to the Trinity.