On the Trinity, or On the Faith against the Arians

Arian impiety asserts many things using indeed the same words with us, but not the same meanings (it confesses), when it is called to the confession of the divine faith. For it sounds forth God the Father and God the Son with the same words that we use, and all things made by God the Father through the Son, and the Son begotten before the ages. But although it agrees with us through these words, nevertheless by sacrilegious interpretations of the words it breaks away from the pious meanings of the Catholic Church, speaking of the Father in such a way that he did not truly beget; and likewise pronouncing the Son in such a way that he is son by adoption, not by nature, that is, as one assumed from elsewhere to the name of son, not truly begotten of God the Father.

For although it confesses that the Son was born before the ages, yet it attributes to him a beginning by saying, "There was when he was not." And thus also it says that all things were made through him, in such a way that it asserts him to have been substituted from nothing that existed, since it has presumed that he was not truly begotten of God the Father: and hence it is that it wishes to have this persuaded, that Christ is indeed God, but not true God, to whom a beginning is assigned; and that he is son in such a way that he is understood to have been made, not born. For if he was not truly born of the Father, but substituted out of nothing, on this account also it believes him mutable, because in its faith he is not truly God, not a true Son.

And in order to commend these impious notions among the ignorant or simple, it also brings forward, as it seems to itself, testimonies of the divine Scriptures, saying that it is proved from the person of Wisdom, "The Lord created me the beginning of his ways for his works." But that Christ is Wisdom the Apostle also confirms, saying, "Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God." It stands therefore, they say, that Christ, who is, on the Apostle's interpretation, Wisdom, is a creature: and now, he says, it follows that he is not true God, who is a creature: nor now a true Son, who was not begotten of God, but created: therefore he was, when he was not.

These are the weapons of wickedness set forth, against which we are provoked to advance, that the impiety of the opposing assertion may be exposed; not indeed, as we have said, by our own talent, but by the grace of God ever aiding pious endeavors. Do you, I ask, not be wearied by rude speech, but, intent upon the strength of the matters themselves, give your vote to the truth. This we do not write as a book, but as though we contended in fixed disputations with an adversary present. And first, against what they say, "There was when he was not," it must be met that he always was; and there must be opposed the testimony from the Gospel, John saying, "In the beginning was the Word." For as Christ is the Wisdom of God and the Power of God, so also he is the Word of God. When therefore he says, "In the beginning was the Word," how does Arian impiety say, "There was when he was not"?

"In the beginning," he says, "was the Word"; he did not say, "In the beginning the Word was made": and surely what was in the beginning must be believed to have always been. For if, as impiety supposes, the Son is a made thing, without doubt the divine Scripture would have declared this very thing, that he was made, at the beginning—from that very institution by which Moses too spoke, saying: "In the beginning God made heaven and earth." For if the Son of God too were a made thing, John would have said, "In the beginning the Word was made." But foreseeing—or rather the Holy Spirit through the evangelist foreseeing—that there would be men of impious mind who would say of the Son, "There was when he was not," he therefore began thus: "In the beginning was the Word"; for nothing is prior to him who is found before the beginning.

The divine Scriptures were published for this reason, that we might direct our faith according to their meaning, not that we might insert our own meanings into their sacred utterances. Let him see, if there are certain chapters which by their obscurity are thought to give occasion for ambiguity; certainly in this chapter there is no occasion for ambiguity. It is not permitted to the interpreter to think otherwise than is written; nor is there need that we now bring in our own meanings: it suffices, for the full understanding of the perceived faith, that we recite the divine words. "In the beginning," he says, "was the Word." Is there here any notion of time, any suspicion of ages, or any interval of a point or of some moment, that you should dare to say, "There was when he was not"? III.

"In the beginning was the Word"; and lest perhaps you understand "word" as the office of one speaking, there follows, "and the Word was with God": he did not say "the word which God spoke," but, "and the Word was with God": finally he himself interpreted what the Word is, saying, "and the Word was God." If in the beginning was the Word, and this very Word was with God, and the Word was God, the intention of impiety is confounded. For it is proved from this chapter that Christ the Son of God both always was, and always was inseparable from the Father, and always was God. For just as he is without beginning, when it is said, "In the beginning he was," so also when it is said, "he was with God," his inseparability from the Father without beginning is declared. But also when this Word is defined to be God, it is not ambiguous that he is believed to be God without beginning.

For that which he set forth first, saying "In the beginning," is to be referred to everything, that is, "In the beginning was the Word"; and when there follows, "and the Word was with God, and the Word was God," without doubt "in the beginning" is to be understood again. Finally he himself thus concludes, saying: "This one was in the beginning with God"; how then "was he when he was not," who always is? How "is he from things not existing," who is always with the Father? How is he a creature, who is always God, and indeed through whom all creation is? For there follows, "All things were made through him." How was he "made from things not existing," through whom all things were made? For if he himself also was made, how were all things made through him? For he cannot be his own author at the time he was being made, who was not yet.

And therefore he must be believed unmade, through whom all things were made; because it is vain and absurd that he himself, when he did not exist, should be said to have been made through himself. IV. Likewise Paul also teaches that Christ always was, and is God, and equal to the Father. For then indeed is he truly God, when he is equal to the Father: because he would not be said to be equal, if he were not held to be truly God. For it is an injury to the true God, if one who is not true God is said to be equal to him.

He sets it down thus in his Epistle: "For let this be your mind, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being constituted in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant." If Christ is truly man, when he takes the form of a servant, he is truly also God, when he is declared to be in the form of God: nor would he for any other reason say "equal," unless he had wished it to be understood that in the form of God he was true God.

And he who is true God, certainly always is; and of him who always is God, it cannot be said, "There was when he was not." But also that all things were made through him the Apostle Paul says, writing: "Because in him were all things created, whether in heaven or on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things were created through him and in him, and he is before all things." Therefore he himself always is, through whom and in whom all things were made. But also the Hymn-singer, singing, says: "All things in wisdom hast thou made." Yet he did not say that Wisdom herself was made: because the Apostle too, when he says, "and he is before all things," has denied that he was made.

For if he had wished him to be believed made, who did not exist, he would have set it thus: "and he too was made before all things"; but when he says "and he is before all things," he gave beginning to all things, of which he is prior—indeed also their maker: but he himself is without beginning, who is remembered to be before all things, not made, but existing. Likewise the Apostle: "One," he says, "God the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him: and one Lord our Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him": and here too, when he says that all things are through Christ, he most plainly distinguished the maker from the things made, nor can the nature of a made thing be understood in him who made all things.

But let us see whether Moses also taught this same thing which the apostles announced, that is, that all things were made by God through the Son. Among other things, when he relates the fabric of the world, he says: And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water, and let it divide between water and water: and it was so done. And God made the firmament, and God divided through the midst of the water. When he says, And God said, Let there be a firmament, the person of the Father is to be understood in the one speaking; but when he says, And God made, the person of the Son is to be understood in the one making.

For if you do not think it should be so understood, the apostolic assertion will be endangered, which says: One God the Father, from whom are all things and we in him: and one Lord our Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we through him: for unless you believe that the whole fabric of the world was made through the Son, indeed also all things invisible as well as visible, just as you receive in faith the voice of the Apostle saying: One Lord our Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and also that which we mentioned above, that in him all things were created, and also that saying, In wisdom hast thou made all things? But this too John pursued: All things were made through him: how are they all things, if you deny that it was said of the Son of God, and God made the firmament, and God divided through the midst of the water? Therefore Moses too brings in the Son as maker, not as made.

For if he had learned by the revelation of the Holy Spirit that the Son was made, among the other things which he described as made, he would have recorded that he himself too had first been made.

But he pursues the matter more explicitly further on, where now the inhabitant of the fabricated world is to be made: And God said, Let us make man according to our image and likeness. For it is not the mark of one person to say, let us make according to our image and likeness, but neither is it of a diverse deity. For the plurality of these words, that is, let us make, and our, signifies the persons of the Father and the Son. But that he says image in the singular, one deity, one power of both persons is manifested. If Christ is a creature, how is he associated with God as a partner in the work? For it is to him that it is said, let us make. If he is not truly the Son, how is his image one with the Father's? An adopted son does not have the image of the one adopting: he can indeed have the generosity, but he cannot have the nature of the image.

I know indeed that there are distinctions of images, which it would be long, and is not necessary, to pursue now. But what serves the cause I claim, saying: In this place there is no distinction of image, where one image of the Father and the Son is set forth. For he did not say, Let us make according to our images, but, according to our image. And lest perhaps, whoever you are, heretic, with a stupid mind you should presume that "let us make" could also have been said of one person, as though it were merely the affection of one thinking within himself, not a designation of persons; there follows: and God made man, according to the image of God he made him. Things set before us in the light—if anyone does not see them, he is blind: God, it says, made, according to the image of God he made.

Is it not most manifest that already then the Holy Spirit through Moses was treating the evangelical mysteries, saying God and God, yet not two gods, because there is one image of the Father and the Son? And oh, how providently all things have been set forth! Sacred Scripture proclaims God and God, so as to exclude Sabellius, who defends that the Father and the Son are one person: and lest it introduce two gods, among the words in which there is a plural signification of persons, it inserted one image. You will find this to be so, if you attend to the testimony saying, Let us make man according to our image. What are you doing, Arian impiety? If Christ is a creature, how is there one image of the creature and the creator?

But lest Arius again, under the occasion of persons, introduce diversities of natures, diversity of nature does not admit communion of one form. There are many sayings in the books of Moses by which the impious might be refuted concerning the Son, indeed also concerning the Father: for how does this impiety, which is exercised with profane spirit against the Son, not also tend against the Father, since they take from the Father what is truly the Father's, by taking from the Son what is truly the Son's? For how is he truly a father, who according to them did not beget? How is Christ truly a son, whom they deny was truly begotten of him?

But, as I have said, there are many sayings in the books of Moses by which this impiety of theirs might be refuted: but because we are not pursuing these things with the diligence of one writing a book, but as if hastening to jot down certain sums on a sheet, so that we may seem in some way to have obeyed your command, the other sayings must be passed over, especially because in divine utterances it is not the number of testimonies but the authority that must be sought; which is sufficient even if brought forward by a single utterance. Let it suffice meanwhile that from this one chapter Moses has agreed with the Gospels and the apostles. Moses proclaims God and God, as we have quoted the testimony above from Genesis; so too John announced God and God, saying: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

No one said two gods, although he said God and God: no one but has announced one image of the Father and the Son, and therefore the catholic faith knows how to say one God in its confession: yet not so that through the confession of one God the Son should be denied to be what God is: because as the Father is God, so also the Son is God: for if the Son is not God as the Father is God; how is there one image of them according to Moses? Or how, according to Paul, is Christ in the form of God, existing equal to God?

But John too, when he asserts that the Word, God, in the beginning was with God—not outside of God—through this inseparability of the Word of God from God seems to me to signify the same thing as is in the signification of image and form. For if through one image and the same form the inseparability of the Father and the Son is shown, why should it not be believed that, when John announces the inseparability of God and God through this, that he says, and the Word was with God, and this was in the beginning with God, he signified one image and the same form of the Father and the Son? Clearly this sense would seem ambiguous, if the same evangelist had not pursued this very point a little further below more openly, saying, and we saw his glory, glory as of the only-begotten from the Father: just as there is one image and the same form, so also the glory of the Son is no other than that which is the Father's.

Meanwhile, you who say that Christ is son by adoption, how do you understand his glory as of the only-begotten from the Father? For if you profess that there are several sons of God by adoption: and if Christ too is adoptive, how is he the only-begotten from the Father, when he would not be the only-begotten if there existed also other sons by adoption? But if he is truly the only-begotten from the Father precisely because he alone is truly begotten of the true Father, how is he asserted to be adoptive, since an adoptive son among several adoptive sons cannot have the property of being the only-begotten from the Father? But even if there are adoptive sons, of none of them is it said, and we saw his glory, glory as of the only-begotten from the Father.

But of Christ alone it is said, and we saw his glory, glory as of the only-begotten from the Father: therefore he of whom this is said—which cannot be said of the adoptive—is not adoptive. And rightly he has one image with the Father, because he alone is the only-begotten from the Father. What wonder then, if in the image of the Son the image of the Father is signified? Therefore the Savior himself also said, He who sees me sees also the Father: I do not say this, as Sabellius does, as though he calls himself the Father, who is also the Son. For I confess that the Father is he who begot; and the Son is he who was born. But when he says, He who sees me sees also the Father, just as he does not show that the Father and the Son are one person, so he shows that there is one deity; since in the substance of the Father and the Son no diversity is found.

Again in this place too I will say, if the Son is a creature, how is it that he who sees the Son sees also the Father?

No one, in the sight of a creature, sees the Father: for from the inspection of a creature the creator can be seen; but the Father is not seen except from the inspection of the Son. If therefore Christ is a creature, and not truly the Son, the Father cannot be seen in the sight of a creature: and how does he say, He who sees me sees also the Father, unless because he is truly the Son born of God the Father? And therefore when you have seen the Son, it is necessary that you have also seen the Father. For without the Son there is no Father, just as neither is there a Son without the Father. Hence too he added, I am in the Father, and the Father in me: not by any sort of passive confusion; but because it follows that where the Father is, there the Son also is known to be; and where the Son is, there also you know the Father to exist.

There is also another sense of this saying, He who has seen me has seen also the Father: it is not said that he who had seen Jesus with bodily eyes in the body had seen the Father; otherwise the Lord's rebuke to Philip is absurd, when he says, So long a time am I with you, and you have not known me, Philip? For according to the body not only Philip saw Jesus, but also all the Jews who were opposed to him: yet it is not to be believed that, because they saw Jesus according to the body, they had thereby also seen the Father. What then is meant by, He who has seen me has seen also the Father?

Direct the gaze of your heart, and see, according to the sight of spiritual faith, that Christ the Son of God is not a creature, but the creator: perceive that he is truly God without beginning, eternal; and according to this, that he is God, invisible, inestimable, incorruptible, unchangeable, and in all things such as is also his Father who begot him: and thus, seeing the Son, there is no doubt that you have also seen the Father.

Take in this sense also that which he says, I am in the Father, and the Father in me. Since the Father is perfect, he begot a perfect Son; and since he is an invisible, incomprehensible, inestimable God and true light, the Son also was born such as he who begot him is: and therefore he says, I am in the Father, and the Father in me: for since all things that belong to the Father's power and deity are possessed in the Son, the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father: and therefore he had said beforehand: If you had known me, you would have known my Father also; and here it is shown that the substance of the Father and the Son is the same, in that the knowledge of both is one. But of creature and creator there is not one knowledge, because there is not one substance.

But of the Father and the Son there is one knowledge; therefore the Son is not a creature, but is creator, just as the Father is creator: and he is God, just as the Father is, yet we do not for this reason say two gods. This is the point at which, impious heretic, with diabolical fury you blaze up as if into the folly of this confession, when you hear God and God, and yet we do not say two gods. For, puffed up with worldly letters, you are incurably sick on this question; and you think you must force us to say two gods, when we confess God and God. Do not, unhappy man, gather up against Christ the Lord of all creation the artful arguments of Aristotle, you who profess yourself a Christian in whatever fashion, nor come as a calumniator with reckoning against the pious confession of the ineffable mystery concerning God, as if arriving as a circumscriber trained in earthly computation. Look rather into the divine books, and use divine words concerning the divine faith.

You have certainly read: And in your light we shall see light. What distance here is there of light from light? For distance could have been mentioned, had there been any, lest anyone should believe there was no distance of light from light: but if there is no distance, then there are not two lights, but one light, since in the light of the Father the light of the Son is recognized. This is the light of which Daniel also speaks, saying, And the light is with him: for this is not said of any creature, but of the splendor of God himself, who is the everlasting light. If the Father is everlasting light, without doubt the Son also is everlasting light. But if it is denied that the Son of God is everlasting light, how in the Father's everlasting light is the Son's light, which is not everlasting, seen? But in the praises of God this saying of the saints is not false: And in your light we shall see light.

Therefore the Son's light also is everlasting, which is not distant from the Father's everlasting light; and therefore, although the Son is light, and the Father is light, yet the light of the Father and the Son is one, because in the Father and the Son there is no discretion, no separation of light, just as there is none of the image according to Moses, nor of the form according to the apostle Paul.

But the mystery of inseparable unity consists in this, that both, that is, the Father and the Son, equally and undividedly, not according to a portion, are one God: and the mystery of plurality consists in this, that the Father is one, and the Son is one. This too is made manifest by that chapter which we read in the Gospel, the Savior himself saying, I and the Father are one. For "are" signifies a plurality of persons, because here is the Father, and here the Son: but "one" marks one and the same substance and deity in the Father and the Son, so that the Father and the Son are truly one God; since both, that is, the Father and the Son, are one according to deity, not one according to persons. I and the Father are one; by this one utterance both Sabellius is excluded, and Arius is refuted.

For Sabellius says that the Father himself is the one who is also the Son, in this manner, as if one person had two names, and he interprets "one" as having been said for this reason, that the singularity of one person might be believed. But Arius, on the contrary, looking to the fact that he said "are," understanding plurality in this expression, has introduced an impious plurality of gods, believing one God to be everlasting, and another to be a God who began to exist; one omnipotent, and another who is not omnipotent. But, oh the blindness in both! They have before their eyes what they might piously see, and they strive to quarrel impiously with careless offenses: let them at least lend their own senses to themselves, and they will perceive the truth of the pious faith.

Let Sabellius, from admiration of the powers which Christ wrought, believe that Christ is true God, and not one who at some time began, but one who has always existed, and can do all things: let Arius believe this, and not blaspheme against Christ, whom he confesses to be the Son. Likewise Arius denies that Christ is the Father: let Sabellius also deny this, and let him piously believe that Christ is truly God, not existing as the Father, but as the Son. I will speak still more openly. Let Sabellius overcome Arius on this point, that Christ is true God; and let Arius overcome Sabellius on this point, that Christ, under the confession of true God, is also truly the Son: and to me, a catholic, both have won, or rather both win along with me over the error of impiety, when they have understood along with me the truth of the sacred faith, which understands both the plurality of persons, and the unity of deity, in this pronouncement of the Lord saying, I and the Father are one.

But when the followers of Arius seek to overturn this divine pronouncement, and this pious understanding of the divine pronouncement, they interpret it in another way, and say: they are indeed one, but not in substance, not in deity, not in power, but in will: that is, because they have one and the same will, therefore he said, I and the Father are one. Tell me, most impious ones, is the Word of God substantive; and did he who gave to the tongue its speech not know how to speak, and was he ignorant of how to explain your lofty meaning in proper and fitting words, and was he unable to say, I and the Father will one thing, if indeed he wished a unity of will, and not of substance and deity, to be understood in this passage?

But now, I ask, Queen, may you remember what chapters you deigned to write out of the person of the heretics. The heretics themselves say: He who sent me, the Father, he gave me a commandment, what I should say and what I should speak: and, I came down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me, the Father. This is the artifice of the heretics, that they deny elsewhere what they confess elsewhere: so that when they see themselves vehemently constrained by the resolutions of the present questions, they may always elude by a serpentine slipperiness. Surely you say, heretics, that the Father gave a commandment to the Son, what he should say, what he should speak: and how, as if he did not know how to speak, you correct his words—nay now the Father's words; since what the Son says, what he speaks, he says and speaks according to the commandment which the Father gave him.

Do you not now understand that, while with a profane spirit you strive to exercise your madness against the deity of the Son, you burst forth raving even against the Father? The Son cries out, I and the Father are one: and you, like grammarians, correcting what you suppose to be an inefficacy of the Lord's pronouncement by a substitution of a different word, amend it, and say: This which he said, "are," must be understood as "will"; so that it should be understood as if it were said, I and the Father will one thing. But the Son cries out against you too, saying those things which he said to the Jews, sharers of your impiety: Why do you not understand my speech?

Let parables and allegories and enigmas have their place: yet in this passage it has been said most openly and fully, I and the Father are one: and how they are one, he declares elsewhere too, when he says: Believe me, that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: and lest he should seem to be claiming for himself what was not so, that he might show the truth of the statement, he had said beforehand: Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The words which I speak to you, I do not speak from myself: but the Father abiding in me, he himself speaks, and the works which I do, he himself does. But elsewhere also: As the Father taught me, these things I speak: and he who sent me is with me, and has not left me alone, because I always do the things that are pleasing to him.

Not that the Son was ignorant of what he had to say: for what is it that the wisdom of God would not know? But that he might soften the hardness of your untamed faith toward the pious understanding of the divine unity, by the authority of the Father as well, he says: The Father abiding in me, he himself speaks; or that saying, as the Father taught me, these things I speak. But as the works of the Son are the works of the Father, in that, the Son doing them, the Father abiding in him does them: so what the Son speaks, the Father abiding in him speaks nothing other than what the Son speaks; because neither does the Son speak anything other than what the Father, abiding in him, speaks. Therefore the speech of the Father and the Son is the same, just as the operation is the same; and therefore he was saying, otherwise believe because of the works themselves.

Which surely he did in like manner as the Father: so that finally, even by the authority of the works, it might be believed that the Son is in the Father, and the Father in the Son.

But how this is to be understood, that he says, I am in the Father and the Father in me, has already been explained above. But now I will say it more briefly. According to the indistinctness of substance is to be heard, I am in the Father and the Father in me. But also that which he says, I and the Father are one, according to the indistinctness of substance the Father and the Son are one. I do not wish, therefore, impious heretic, that you take away the indistinctness of substance of the Father and the Son, and importunely insert a unity of will, which elsewhere you impiously deny, saying: It is written, I came down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me, the Father.

You who, in this chapter, ignorant of the mystery of his statement, so impiously deny that there is one will of the Father and the Son; how am I to believe you, that you sincerely confess that one and the same will of the Father and the Son is signified in that which the Lord pronounced, saying, I and the Father are one? If you truly believe that the Father and the Son are one in will, I do not see how you can deny that they are one also in substance and divinity and power. For why should there not be one substance, one divinity and power, to whom there is one will? For if they have will equally, they have divinity equally. If they do not have divinity equally, neither do they have will equally.

For the will of God, and the will of anyone whatever who is not God, cannot be made equal: because the force of the will of him who is God is one thing, and the force of the will of him who is not God is another. The will of God is naturally good, is perfect, is unchangeable, ever remaining the same, and existing without beginning, and persevering without end. But the will of him who is not God, since it has a beginning, just as he himself who is not God, can also change, can also turn, just as he himself who is not God can: and therefore it is not truly good, because not naturally good, nor truly perfect, since it can turn and diminish; so that what it willed today, it may not will tomorrow, and what it did not will today, it may will tomorrow.

I will speak more openly by an example: that angel who is now the devil, before he became the devil, had a good will; but when he became the devil, by the movement of his own free will he lost his good will; and this indeed because he subsists from a making, and is not God by nature. This must also be understood of every rational creature: for although some of them have not declined, nor do decline from good will, yet they have it in their nature to be able to decline, because they are creatures, and not God. For the fact that they do not decline, they obtain from the perpetual observance of discipline, not from the truth of an unchangeable nature.

But God Himself alone, without beginning, is good and perfect and unchangeable without beginning, having also a good and perfect and unchangeable will; not by institution, nor from the advancement of observance does He have a good and perfect and unchangeable will, but from the truth of an unchangeable nature, by which He is both good and perfect and unchangeable God. Let it be seen whether there is perhaps some heresy which rejects this meaning: you, however, Arian, agree with this especially, you who say that the very Son of God, whom you confess to be Lord of all creation, is vertible and mutable, because you proclaim him made by God out of nothing, yet not truly born of God. If this is your opinion, that every creature is vertible and mutable, and you say that Christ is a creature: therefore he too, according to you, existing from the condition of nature as vertible and mutable, does not have an unchangeable and inconvertible will. And how do you interpret that the Father and Son are one in will?

Since, according to you, the wills of the Father and the Son are diverse and contrary; because indeed one is unchangeable and inconvertible, but the other mutable and convertible, you are caught and exposed, deceitful heretic, in how you try to circumvent and capture simple souls. For, constrained and pressed by the testimony of the Lord's declaration saying, "I and the Father are one," so that from this saying, however you may fly away, which in clear words shows unity of deity in the Father and the Son, you have yielded to necessity, not to your own judgment, so as at least, in the present chapter, with the very tips of your lips, and, so to speak, on the mere surface of words, to insert a unity of will, whereby you might the more expressly and vividly and inwardly exclude the unity of deity.

For you take away the meaning of unity of substance, which is easily believed from the very simplicity of the words; and you interpret the meaning as unity of will; so that, because the aforementioned reasoning is not easily understood by all, you might in the meantime deceive the simple hearer, while you do this so that he may not understand the unity of divinity. For the catholic faith most sincerely and most truly believes also the unity of will in the Father and the Son, not with the lips (only) but with the whole heart, which also acknowledges the unity of substance and divinity. For as the Son is of unchangeable and inconvertible substance with the Father, so also the Son is of unchangeable and inconvertible will with the Father. And therefore there is one will of the Father and the Son, just as there is one power and one image, or rather, I might say, that the Son himself is the will of the Father.

For just as there is one image of the Father and the Son according to Moses, yet the Son himself is written by the Apostle to be the image of the invisible God; so also, though there is one will of the Father and the Son, it is (piously) defined that the will of the Father is the Son. (Just as he is) the image of the invisible God, so also understand concerning power. For the catholic faith says that there is one power of the Father and the Son; and yet the Apostle writes that Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. It is therefore piously said that the Son is the will of the Father, just as he himself is the wisdom of God. And yet if this meaning still troubles you, attend to what we say: certainly Christ is the wisdom of God. But what is the will of God, other than the wisdom of God?

For in God will is not one thing and wisdom another: in men indeed there can be will, yet this is not itself wisdom; because the will of man attains, through education and meditation and progress, to the wisdom possible for him. But the will of God does not attain to wisdom through education, through meditation, through progress, but itself, needing nothing, is naturally substantive wisdom. Whence Christ also, being the wisdom of God, is likewise the will of God; because in God will is not one thing and wisdom another.

David, striking Goliath's forehead with a single blow of a stone, laid low the strong enemy of great body. But it is not of our strength to conquer with one stone; for two reasons, I think: because we do not have such strength as David had; and these men present a forehead too much hardened by impudence into impieties: whence, although we have already cast many stones not in vain, yet still, by God's grace, we must repeat, and their shameless forehead, which is without the mark of the Lord, must be struck with frequent stones of testimonies; so that, even if their flesh does not shed blood, yet, gouged with many wounds, at least shame may blush with a flush of blood, if they are overwhelmed even by those things which you had written to be theirs. You say these are the words of the heretics: "Out of nothing," they say, "God made for himself a son.

If he made him out of nothing, he is a creature, and not a son." And what is it, that you call him son, whom you affirm to be a creature, when you say that he was made out of nothing? You cannot then call him both son and creature: for son consists from birth, but creature from making. Why do you bring forward contrary things? Choose one of the two: say either son truly a son, or creature truly a creature. If you call him son in such a way that you truly mean son, you have denied that he is a creature. And how do you say that he who you truly confess to be son was made out of nothing? But if you say that he is truly a creature, why do you name him son, when in him you deny the truth of that name?

But let us strike the impudence of his forehead with the living stones of the divine voice. You say that he is a creature: I say that he is a son: who among us shall pronounce on the truth of the profession? I suppose you would gladly have him judge, by whom—though we refuse it—you say Christ was made out of nothing. Let us hear then what he himself pronounces from the heavens. "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Did he say, "This is he whom I made out of nothing"? And observe that he said this first at that time when Jesus, as man, came to baptism: and, I suppose, for no other reason than that it could be believed that he who appeared corporeal was not the Son of God, and, among other men, he himself too, as man, though he had no sins of his own, came to baptism as a sinner.

Lest, therefore, when Jesus, in the assumed man, was completing the sacrament of baptism, he should not be believed to be truly the Son of God, the Father cries from heaven, "This is my beloved Son." John indeed had understood that he was his Lord, when, at his coming to baptism, he said: "I ought to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" But lest perhaps to others the testimony of John should not seem so great as to overcome the faith due to the flesh and lowliness in Christ, and to all things whatsoever that were done through his flesh; he than whom none is greater, he than whom none is a better witness, gives testimony from the heavens, saying: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." For to the degree that faith concerning the flesh of the Savior was manifest, to that same degree faith concerning the deity of the Savior ought also to have been manifest: for then he is true God, if he is also true Son.

His flesh indeed, or rather I should say the man, no one doubted, because it could not be doubted: but that which was in the man, and born together with the man, because it could not be seen through nature, lest it be uncertain, it is shown by the voice and, as it were, by the finger of the Father, saying: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased"; and meanwhile, with equal authority, faith in both substances, that is, of God and of man, is commended in Christ. For the Son of God himself sealed in himself the faith of man, through the conception and birth of the Virgin, through the wailing of infancy, through the cradle and swaddling clothes, through the very breasts of his mother, through the very nourishment of maternal milk, through the increments of bodily age, through this very fact that he came to be baptized.

See how, up to the point of baptism, he expressed in himself the reality of man, doing this the more emphatically, the more difficult it was to believe that God became man. And lest perhaps you think this was done under compulsion, and not that the Son of God became also the son of man of his own accord, hear the Apostle saying of him: "Who, being constituted in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant." If then he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, he was not compelled, but of his own accord became the son of man, existing in the form of God, equal to God. You have, then, the Son expressing in himself the faith of man.

Likewise let us see the faith of divinity expressed in him: and although sufficient has already been said above concerning the faith of his divinity, and although there are still many other more abundant proofs by which the faith of divinity appears; yet these I now pass over in silence: for it is enough for me if, meanwhile, the Father alone shows the faith of divinity in Christ, saying: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." What do you say, heretic? You believe, without doubt, Christ, that he made himself the son of man: what do you think of the Father? Is he truthful in your eyes, when he testifies that Christ is his Son? If you do not believe the Father, when he testifies that Christ is his Son, then Christ already has greater authority with you, whom you believe concerning the faith of man in himself; and the Father is less fit to be trusted, whose testimony about the Son you do not believe.

And how do you claim the Father to be a greater God, whose voice you value at almost nothing? Or how do you assert that Christ is a lesser God, in whom you trust so much, more than even in him whom you proclaim greater? Great indeed is this honor of yours which you pay to the Father, that you do not believe him when he professes concerning his own Son. Yet he again elsewhere professes that this one is his Son, when the Lord ascends the mountain with the apostles Peter and James and John, and his face shone like the sun. Let the divine testimony again strike the impudence of your forehead: "And behold," it says, "a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice from the cloud, saying: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: hear him".

Certainly Moses and Elijah were seen at the same time speaking with him, whom you cannot deny to have become sons of God by adoption: and how is it that the divine voice testifies of Christ alone, saying: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: hear him"? For if Christ too were a son by adoption, when he stood between two adopted sons, he would surely have said, "And this one too is my son," lest Christ alone be believed to be the Son: but when he said, "This is my beloved Son," he separated him from the sons of adoption, so that the property of true birth might be believed to be in Christ alone as Son.

But it did not suffice merely to profess that Christ was his Son; he added also what was owed to a true son, saying, "hear him." He shows a great, indeed an equal, authority in the Son, when the Son is to be heard in such a way that the Father too is to be heard: "Hear him," he says. Whatever, then, Christ has said, is to be heard. And let us see whether nowhere does he say that he is the Son of God, whether nowhere does he profess that he has God as Father. It is his own voice: "Every planting which my Father has not planted shall be rooted up." And again: "You have made my Father's house a house of merchandise." Elsewhere too: "And do you believe in the Son of God?" He would never presume to say, "My Father," "of my Father," "and do you believe in the Son of God," unless there were the confidence of nature, which claims the name of truth in the Father, from the consciousness of his own birth.

For why would he speak insolently, he who humbled himself, made obedient unto the death of the cross?

There are also very many other testimonies: but we are not now writing a book so as to pursue all of them, but for the sake of brevity we conclude with a few testimonies, so that that voice may be crushed which denies that Christ is the Son of God. Christ indeed says that he is also the son of man, when he says: And you shall see the Son of man. And, Whom do they say the Son of man is? For this is the sacrament of faith in Christ, that when you believe him to be the Son of God, you should also believe that he was made the son of man. For that he is the Son of God, he possesses naturally; but that he was made the son of man is what, as a benefit, he bestowed upon us: and therefore he who does not believe Christ to be the Son of God is impious; but he too who disdains to confess that Christ was made the son of man is ungrateful.

Yet you, heretic, believe that Christ was also made the son of man, and although the Saviour says this very thing of himself, you do not deny it. But when the Father has said, This is my Son, and when the Son has said, My Father; do you, hardening your heart like Pharaoh’s, not believe? It remains for your impudence, like a melancholic who does not perceive true things, to say that the Father and the Son have lied. I do not, he says, deny the Son; but I deny that he is a true Son: therefore Peter too merited that word of beatitude for this reason, because he did not believe Christ to be a true Son, although he confessed him to be the Son of the living God. Truly it would be a great sacrament of confessed faith in Peter’s conscience, that while with his lips he says, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God, yet in his heart he should hold that he is not the true Son of the living God.

I am a man: I hear words, I understand words, I cannot hear the silent interpretation of the heart. He said Christ is the Son of the living God: unless he also added “adoptive,” I understand nothing else than what he speaks. Let Christ see to it, since as Lord and God he looks upon the heart: but for me, who hear only with my ears, the confession of his heart ought also to have been made manifest through his voice, for whose sake Peter also is questioned: for Peter was not questioned for himself alone, but for all of us also; so that when he makes a good confession concerning Christ, we too might likewise learn to arrive at beatitude by a like confession. And meanwhile let us see whether Peter worthily obtains the proclamation of beatitude, believing in his heart that he is not the true Son but the adoptive one: whether this is a worthy revelation of the Father, and not rather of flesh and blood.

Very many indeed are sons of God by adoption: and not only Jeremiah, who was sanctified while still in his mother’s womb; nor John the Baptist alone, who as an infant leapt in the spirit in his mother’s womb: but neither Elijah alone, who has not yet undergone death, nor any of the number of the prophets, of whom one, as is related in the Gospel, was thought to be the Christ: but to this name of adoption, harlots and publicans have come as well, though by amendment. And lest anyone think I blaspheme, let him hear it said in the Gospel: Harlots and publicans will go before you into the kingdom of heaven, where there are none but sons of adoption.

Since therefore the grace of adoption is denied neither to blasphemers nor to the shameful, if they correct themselves: did the Father reveal this to Peter as a great sacrament, namely that he is indeed the Son of the living God, but rather by adoption and not by birth, and only in name, not also in the truth of the name? Clearly he who believes this is not that blessed man, but the most wretched of all men, having not only the understanding of flesh and blood, but even the spirit of the devil. But I beg you, my Queen, to consider that many things could be said on this point, which, hastening to what follows, I pass over; trusting that, given the occasion, as one of the wisest, you may perceive more than we speak; according to the saying of Solomon: Give an occasion to a wise man, and he will be wiser.

This is your doctrine, Arians, this your singular interpretation, this the secret mystery of your faith: By adoption, he says, Christ is the Son, and not a true Son. Let us also question John: he too may have learned the truth, whether because he was present when Peter’s confession was praised, or from the peculiar love of the Saviour, by which he was so close to him that he even reclined upon his breast. Let us see what he drew forth as he clung to his breast. No one has ever seen God, except the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father. No creature sees God according to what God is; and therefore he says: No one has ever seen God. But it follows, and he says: except the only-begotten Son: therefore the only-begotten Son is not a creature, since he sees God whom no creature has seen.

And lest perhaps you should believe him to be one of the adopted sons, he cut off the occasion for the impious sense, when he called him not only son, but also only-begotten son. This name has no companions: and although others are called sons, yet they are sons by adoption, not by nature. But Christ alone is the only-begotten Son, because he alone is the true Son, not by adoption, but by nature, not by title only, but also by kind: he alone, I say, is the true Son, who is also in the bosom of the Father. The adoptive sons are in the bosom of Abraham; but he who is the true Son and the only-begotten Son is in the bosom of the Father. Understand also in this the inseparable Son of the Father’s substance, in that he is said to be in the bosom of the Father.

Again we read: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. I do not see how the love of God toward the world is commended, if he who was given for the redemption of the world is not a true and only-begotten Son. The world is without doubt a creature; if Christ is a creature, what did he bestow upon the world, giving a creature for a creature? Every creature is reckoned in a condition of servitude: if Christ is a creature, he is a servant: how did he redeem to liberty, since a servant can by no right confer liberty? And yet Abraham, to commend the love he had toward God, offered up in holocaust his own true and only-begotten and most beloved son, when God himself had commanded this very thing be done in order to prove his love toward himself before all.

And do you say, impious one, that God, wishing to commend his love to the world, did not have a true Son to give, but resorted to necessity, after the manner of the barren, so that, because he did not have by nature a son truly begotten of himself, he gave instead one made out of nothing?

Say, impious one, did Abraham then commend love with greater virtue, offering his own and only-begotten son, than God, who did not have his own, nor gave a truly only-begotten son? And is it fitting that God should wish greatly to commend, and yet commend it less, when a man has commended it more? And that God, whom you proclaim greater, should be lesser than a man in commending love: for he commended love less, if he did not give a true and only-begotten Son for the love of the world; and Abraham commended it more, who offered his own and only-begotten son? But far be this impiety, that God should be lesser even in commending love, he who is in every way beyond estimation: for he gave a true and only-begotten Son, loving the world.

This indeed Paul, the vessel of election, pursues, wishing to commend to us the love of God, saying: Who spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all; when he says, His own Son, he expressed the propriety of truth in the name: and yet observe what expression he used, saying, Who spared not his own Son. You have read indeed that God said to Abraham, when he was willing to slay his son for the love of God: Lay not your hand upon the boy, do nothing to him: for now I know that you fear your God, and have not spared your beloved son for my sake.

And Paul says: Who spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all: the Apostle speaks from the voice of God, in order to commend love; he would have used the divine words improperly, if here too he were not speaking of a true Son: and yet who does not know that in the father Abraham and his son Isaac the image of the future truth had gone before? In God the Father and Christ his only-begotten Son the Apostle has shown the mystery of the preceding figure, sealing the truth with the very words by which the figure was first signified, saying: Who spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all. If then the figure was in Abraham, when he offered his son; but the truth was in God the Father, when he delivered up his Son: what do you say, teacher of impiety? Where ought the greater force to reside, in the figure, or in the truth? Without doubt, in the truth.

And how do you present the truth as lesser, but the figure as fuller? For the figure is fuller, where a true son is offered: and the truth is lesser, where, according to you, no true Son is delivered up. But plainly the truth is greater, and the figure is lesser. If you wish this to be proved, believe the true only-begotten Son of God; and you will understand that God did much more than Abraham, giving his only-begotten Son for the love of the world according to the Gospel, or, according to Paul, when he spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all.

For Abraham, though he offered his son, yet offered him for the love of God, to whom whatever you offer, you do not equal what he is worthy of; and he offered a son whom, after he was no longer able to have by nature, he nevertheless obtained through God against nature: he offered therefore to God what God had given him against the hope of nature, and he offered a son.

It bears upon the case, if I should say that he was lesser, and, apart from that present condition, was one day to die by the law of mortality: on the contrary, examine what God bestowed: he bestowed his own only-begotten Son, whom he did not obtain late by anyone’s favour, but always has, without beginning, born of himself by the propriety of nature, such as the Father himself is who begot him, invisible, inestimable, everlasting, impassible and immortal and omnipotent, as the Father himself is, and finally, in every respect, according to what God is, equal to him who begot him. You see what sort of Son the Father gave. Behold, God is already found to be inestimably superior in the Son: and now consider that he bestowed this same only-begotten Son for the love of the world: and weigh now what the world is; surely it is a creature: likewise weigh what God is: surely he is the creator: and now compare whom Abraham loved, and whom God loved. Abraham, indeed, loved God.

But recount how much God bestowed upon Abraham, and you will find that Abraham rendered to God a debt of love much less than he owed, though he rendered as much as he was able to render. But God loves the world though no favour was shown to him by it. You see that the love of God, which is bestowed with no debt owing, is far more commendable than that of Abraham, which is bestowed out of debt. But observe further the surpassing excellence of the love with which God loves the world, not only having created it though commended by no merit of righteousness, but even though it be a sinner and impious against himself. God therefore loved the world, guilty of sins and impieties, not because he loved the sins and impieties of the world, but he loved the world, that the world itself might be freed from sins and impieties.

And hear the Apostle, wonderfully commending the love of God through these words, when he writes to the Romans: For why did Christ, when we were still weak, die at the appointed time for the impious? For scarcely will anyone die for a righteous man. Though perhaps for a good man someone might dare to die. But God commends his love toward us: because when we were yet sinners, Christ died for us; much more now, being justified in his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.

I understand indeed that this testimony deserves to be discussed further: but now we briefly set forth what it contributes to the case at hand. The Apostle, by interpreting "the world" as the inhabitants of the world, shows that Christ died for the impious and for sinners, that he might commend his charity toward us who are in the world: and, he says, Christ dies for the impious and for sinners; since scarcely would anyone die for a just man, though perhaps someone might dare to die for a good man. Do you now understand how ineffably the love of God excels, where there is an expression of truth, and how much lesser is the love of Abraham where a figure was signified? I do not say this as though Abraham did not love greatly; indeed he loved God as much as he could, as much as no one born of woman can surpass.

But although he loved God greatly, and loved with his whole heart and with all the strength of his soul: yet by the ineffable superiority of divine love he is infinitely surpassed. For who could explain the love which God showed to the world, giving his only-begotten Son in such a way that a man should be born who is God; and that he who was born without beginning from the Father should have, according to the flesh, a beginning of nativity by human lot; and that he who, equal to God, existing always in the form of God, having taken the form of a servant, should become lesser—not only than the Father, but even than the angels, indeed even than men, and I know not whether not far below even in comparison to a worm; and finally, that according to the nature of the assumed soul, he should suffer sorrow even unto death, he who is wholly joy, not only to Abraham, who, desiring to see his day, saw it and rejoiced, but to all holy men.

He gave, therefore, to the world his only-begotten Son, that he who is true life, hanging upon the tree according to the flesh, might suffer the death of the cross, while his eternal and inviolable divinity, which is one with his Father, remained hidden for a time. Behold the love, that for the salvation of the world the Lord of majesty should be crucified on earth, who grants eternal life in heaven to those believing him to be the Son of God. O most blessed patriarch Abraham, whose greatest love toward God is submerged by nothing less than the inexplicable flood of divine love: and I know not whether God did not grant this whole thing to the impious world out of regard for your love and faith. For to you and to your seed God had promised that you should be heir of the world through the righteousness of faith, as the apostle Paul teaches.

But I am too slow, if I should wish to pursue this passage more fully: I will turn to you, heretic, admonishing you to consider how God, loving the world, gave his only-begotten Son, or, as the Apostle says, how he spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all. If you recognized the sacrament of this ineffable divine love, you would never compose impious questions against the Son of God; questions which anyone of pious mind understands to be resolved by what we have said above. But let us still look at the remaining part of the proposed testimony, that the impudence of your brow may be crushed all the more forcefully. For when he had said: For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, he continues, and says: That whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

I will say again, he is the only-begotten Son: how does whoever believes in him not perish, but have eternal life, since to believe in a creature is an offense to the Divinity? Look to the apostle Paul; consider what reproaches, what obscenities he reports concerning those who, as he himself says, changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator. If you believe thus, and thus worship, and serve the only-begotten Son of God, saying that he is a creature, those evils await you, wretch, with which those are punished who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator. Christ, he says, is the Son of God by adoption, and not a true Son. All the Gospels are read, and nowhere is it written that Christ is a Son by adoption, and not a true Son.

And it is well that John, that John who reclined upon the breast of the Lord, in giving the reason for writing the Gospel, said: Many other signs indeed did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: but these are written, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, you may have life eternal in his name. Is it necessary to explain this any more openly? Many, he says, and other signs did Jesus do: and although not all are written, because the infinite abundance of things could not be written; yet these very things were written for this purpose, that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and to arouse the faith of each, he showed also the reward, saying: that believing you may have eternal life in his name.

If he were truly the Son of God by adoption, and not by nature, if only by title, and not also what is meant in the understanding of the title; nowhere would he have explained this more than in the concluding part of his writing, lest faith, left in ambiguity, should lose eternal life through the uncertainty of belief. But the Evangelist, who was appointed for this purpose, that having the grace of the Holy Spirit he might set forth most clearly those things which pertain to the rewards of eternal life, did not close the Gospel in ambiguity, but expressed it most plainly: the Gospels were written, he says, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have eternal life in his name. Is there here, then, any suspicion of creaturehood in the Son of God, where he who believes that Christ is the Son of God possesses eternal life, and in no other way than in his name?

Who indeed is not a creature, but the creator, and not a Son by adoption, but a true Son of God: for in the name of a creature no one can obtain even temporal life, unless perhaps someone is said to grant it by not taking it away.

Out of nothing, he says, God made for himself a Son. Besides, there are many testimonies: let John, conspicuous for his love of Christ the Lord, speak. Writing in his Epistle, he says: Everyone who loves the Father loves him who was born of him: does he say, loves him whom God made out of nothing? But he would not have named the Father at all, unless he knew that a Son was born of him. And suppose now, that it must be understood as you, heretic, interpret it; namely, that he whom John says was born of the Father was made by him out of nothing: and I ask, was Christ alone, according to you, made out of nothing? Was not, to say nothing of other things, the world itself also made out of nothing? Therefore the world too must be loved by us, if the Father is to be loved. But the same John cries out: Do not love the world. Is John so foolish that he should proclaim things contrary to himself?

Far be it from us this impiety, to say that John speaks contradicting himself, he who spoke in the Holy Spirit. He knows the distinction between "made" and "begotten" already in the very beginning of his Gospel, as was explained above, when that opening passage was treated: and therefore he does not understand as a creature him whom he says was born of the Father; because he would not have used the singular, if he had wanted what was born of the Father to be understood as a created thing, knowing that many were made out of nothing; but using the singular, he applied it to the one true Son alone, saying that he was born of the Father, because he alone was born of the Father, while all others were made as by a founder. Do not, therefore, do violence to the divine words: why do you infer what he does not say? Why do you teach what he did not teach?

If you are a Christian, and if John is for you a true teacher, believe what he taught. Born of the Father, he says: if you believe this, if you love the Father, then by loving the Father you love the Son who was born of him: but if you do not believe that he was born of the Father, then you love neither the Father, nor him who was born of him: for you do not love in this way, when you deny that in the Father there is what belongs to the Father, that is, to beget, and deny that in the Son there is what belongs to the Son, that is, to be born. And hear now what name the blessed John has placed upon you, saying: This is the antichrist, who denies the Father and the Son. You indeed falsely apply to yourself the name of Christian; but by the truthful John you are rightly called antichrist for the merit of your sect.

I am lying, if you do not understand the creator in the word "Father," if you do not assert a creature in the name "Son." John names Father and Son: and you, under these names, interpret creator and creature. Rightly, therefore, are you called antichrist, who deny Father and Son under an impious interpretation.

But hear still further, whoever you are, insolent and obstinate against the Son, and glorying in the person of the Father: and understand, that you cannot have the Father, if you do not confess also the Son. The same John continues: He who denies the Son, has not the Father either: he who confesses the Son, has both the Son and the Father.

You see that everywhere John places the very names themselves, so that nothing else is understood than what is in the nature of the names: and yet, if the brow of your shamelessness can still endure the blows of stones, and if your obstinacy of hardness is so great, that when you hear "Father" and "Son," you still do not believe in a true Father nor a true Son; behold, the same John, who is beloved of the Lord, returning the favor of the Lord's love, crushes with a still stronger stone not merely your brow, but the very serpentine head of your impiety, writing at the end of his Epistle: We know that the Son of God has come, and was made incarnate for us, and suffered, and rising from the dead took us up, and gave us a good understanding, that we might know him who is true, and be in his true Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life, and our resurrection in him.

It cannot be explained how many stones and rocks of words he has heaped up against you in this one testimony. We know, he says, that the Son of God has come. There you have one confession concerning the Son, and a little further, after the mysteries of his incarnation and passion and resurrection, which indeed he underwent for us, there follows: and he gave us a good understanding: doubtless because he himself is the good giver, giving good understanding. We do not understand impiously, if we say this good understanding to be the Holy Spirit, who is also called the Spirit of understanding, in whom we know him who is true. For without the Holy Spirit the truth cannot be known: you have testimony in the Gospel, where the Holy Spirit himself is also promised as God, and it is said of him that he will bear witness of me; namely, through the apostles, or through whatever preachers of the Son of God, giving them understanding, by which the Spirit of understanding grants knowledge of the true one.

Whence also the apostle Paul, writing to the Corinthians, says: But we have not received the spirit of this world, but the spirit which is of God: that we may know the things that have been given to us by God. He gave, therefore, a good understanding, that is, the Holy Spirit, that we might know him who is true.

If you still do not understand from so many expressions already set forth, at least from what follows perceive that all suspicions of impious interpretation are excluded: "That we may be," he says, "in his true Son Jesus Christ." And still further he thickens the pious faith, saying: "This is the true God"; and he did not yet fall silent, but heaps up and amplifies, so that the impious sense, trusting in sophistic arguments, might be overwhelmed: for what follows he says, "And eternal life, and our resurrection in him." Where now are those impious sophisms of yours which you learned from the teaching of Aristotle your bishop, saying: "He is the Son, but he is not the true Son: he is God, but he is not the true God"? Behold, in one testimony the true name of Son is expressed in so many ways—indeed that he is also true God. For how is he not true God, who is the true Son?

Since not only from the name of true Son is he proved true God, but also through this, that he is eternal life. For eternal life has neither beginning nor end: therefore Christ is true God, having neither beginning nor end, being himself eternal life, which is without beginning and end. But also, since he is our resurrection, the power of true divinity is recognized in him; since he excludes death through the power of resurrection, by the example of the man he assumed, in whom he also deigned to be born of the Virgin; in whom we too have already risen, each of us to have his own particular resurrection according to the merit of faith and life, whether unto refreshment, or unto burning.

See to it, wretch, lest you still not believe him to be the true Son, and begin to have a resurrection unto the perpetual punishment of gehenna in the outer darkness; where there will be weeping of the eyes and gnashing of teeth; if indeed something even more foul does not yet remain for the impious against the Son. XIII. Enough, I think, has been proved, albeit by a very few testimonies, that he is the true Son of God, born of the Father, not made out of nothing. But I ask still, grant untiring patience, that we may prove this same thing even from the old Scripture with just one testimony. You say, heretic, that the Son was made out of nothing, though you have never read this anywhere: you deny what is written, that he was born of the Father. Tell me, whose words are these: "From the womb before the daystar I begot you"?

If you doubt, look back to the beginning of that Psalm, and read what is written: "The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet". The Savior himself used this testimony, when he wanted to be believed to be Lord, speaking to those who thought him only a man born of the seed of David, not also God as Son of God. But the apostle Paul also, believing this very thing, which the Holy Spirit had once spoken in David and afterward explained, says in his Epistle: "But to which of the angels did he ever say, Sit at my right hand"? Explaining this, that none of the angels is such as the Son is: for all the angels were made, but the Son alone was born, to whom he also says, "Sit at my right hand"; because he alone is the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father.

But now an exposition of the whole psalm is not necessary, but only this must be proved, that the Lord the Father says to the Son, "Lord, Sit at my right hand"; so that also what is said in what follows may be believed to have been spoken by none other than the Father, that is, "From the womb before the daystar I begot you." Has it not also been most truly proved by this testimony that the impious voice is buried of those who say that God made the Son out of nothing? For how out of nothing, when the Father himself cries out, "From the womb before the daystar I begot you"? And see that you do not think we understand that God consists of a composition of members or parts. Far be such impiety.

For God, whatever he is, is simple; he is wholly the same according to substance, not part and part, not member and member; but, as we have said, some simple thing, whatever it is, that is whole and perfect, and yet inestimable and inexplicable. Although therefore he is such that he does not subsist by members or parts, nevertheless divine Scripture, when it wishes to commend to us the true understanding of the Maker, speaks from things we know, saying that the heavens are the works of his hands, or every single creature: because among men truly and properly a work or a construction is understood as that which is made (by hands): finally, when something has been seen to be crafted by art, it is referred to the hands of the craftsman. Likewise, when we wish among ourselves to designate the nature of a son, we make mention of a womb: for no one is born of a true father except from a womb.

And God therefore, wishing to show that the Son was born of himself, said that he begot him from the womb, lest you, heretic, should slander that it was out of nothing. But just as when God is said to have made with his hands, it must be understood as is worthy of God; so also when he begot from the womb, let us not think otherwise than is worthy of God. This, however, must most certainly be confessed, that he is a true Creator in the meaning of "the works of his hands," and he is a true Father in the meaning of "the womb that begets," even though he has nothing of members in himself.

But because you Arians are accustomed to say that in God to make is the very same thing as to beget, I will opportunely refute this perversity of yours from the present occasion: for many indeed are the works of his hands, but one is the only-begotten Son of the womb: therefore to make is not the very same thing as to beget: and indeed all things were made through the Word, and in wisdom; but the Word or wisdom was not born through anyone, but from God: whence to make is not the very same thing as to beget. For unless there were a distinction between making and begetting, nothing would prevent one from saying, "My hands have begotten you," and "the heavens are the works of my womb." (But) just as an expression has much difference, so also do the things which the expression determines.

"From the womb," he says, "before the daystar I begot you." Now the Father says this to the Son, not because the Son was ignorant of it, but so that we might be able to know the property of the Father toward the Son, or of the Son toward the Father: therefore it is thus written, just as the only-begotten Son himself, being Wisdom, says: "Before all the hills he begot me." Whence also in this place he is said to have been begotten before the daystar. In the word "daystar" every brighter creature whatsoever is signified: whence when it is said, "begotten from the womb before the daystar," this is specially taught, that he was truly born of the Father, and not made: but what it says, "before the daystar," signifies before every creature, according to what is said, "And he himself before all."

Let us strike also at another of their blasphemies, by which, as you write, they say that the Son is not omnipotent. And this I will do briefly, lest by extending too far I should give trouble to the reader. Let them say: when is he not omnipotent, through whom, as they themselves also confess, all things were made? Let them give one work of the Father that the Son also did not do, so that they may prove the Son is not omnipotent: but since there is no work which does not belong to both Father and Son, without doubt the Son is omnipotent, doing whatever the omnipotent Father does. It suffices if we prove this very thing also by divine testimonies.

In the prophet Zechariah we read: "O, O, flee from the land of the North, says the Lord, for I will gather you from the four winds of heaven into Sion: be saved, you who dwell with the daughter of Babylon, for thus says the Lord Almighty: After glory he sent me over the nations that spoiled you; for he who touches you is as one who touches the pupil of his eye: for behold, I stretch out my hand over them; and they shall be a spoil to those who spoiled them: and you shall know that the Lord Almighty has sent me." If you pay attention to this passage, you will find that the omnipotent Son was sent by the omnipotent Father, to come to the aid of those held in captivity.

For consider the prophet saying: "Thus says the Lord Almighty": and let us hear, as the prophet reports, what the Lord Almighty says: "After glory," he says, "he sent me over the nations": without doubt it is the Son who says he was sent, after glory, over the nations, whom the prophet calls the Lord Almighty. This Son, therefore, being the Lord Almighty in the last testimony—"and you shall know that the Lord Almighty has sent me," as was said above—was sent by the omnipotent Father.

But also the apostle John in the Apocalypse says this: "Amen, the faithful witness, the beginning of the creation of God, who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Lord God Almighty." And Solomon among other things says of Wisdom, which is indeed Christ the Son of God: "For she is the brightness of eternal light, and a spotless mirror; the Lord Almighty is his name." Likewise: "He is the one who redeemed them, the Lord Almighty is his name." Likewise in Maccabees: "For not yet the judgment of the Almighty and all-possessing God, of majesty, and the image of his goodness, and though it be one, it can do all things." How is he not omnipotent, since he can do all things? For also above he had said of the same Wisdom, "having all power": therefore he is omnipotent, having all power. But Solomon still further says of the same Wisdom: "And remaining in herself, she remains".

And elsewhere Solomon says: "For your almighty hand is not powerless." Likewise he himself: "Your almighty word, leaping down from the royal throne."

Acknowledge his omnipotence, when he renews all things: acknowledge meanwhile also that he is unchangeable, since in himself he remains unchanged while renewing all things: that is, although he renews all things, he himself nevertheless remains unchangeable; which is proper to none but omnipotent God. But that the Son is truly unchangeable and the founder of all things is also proved by these verses of the Psalmist: In the beginning thou, Lord, didst found the earth, and the heavens are the works of thy hands: they shall perish, but thou shalt endure, and they shall all grow old as a garment: and as a covering thou shalt change them, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail. This was interpreted by Paul as written of the Son of God, writing to the Hebrews.

You have therefore, through these chapters, the Son both omnipotent and unchangeable, and the founder of all things, as also the artificer of all things, according to Solomon's saying: For wisdom, the artificer of all things, taught me. But lest you understand two omnipotent beings, this must be guarded against: for although both the Father is omnipotent and the Son, yet there is one omnipotent, just as there is one God: because the omnipotence of the Father and the Son is the same, just as the deity is the same, according to what was expressed above as far as strength allowed and the constraint of time permitted. But this will also be explained further below by the testimony of the prophet Isaiah: Egypt has grown weary, and the trade of the Ethiopians, and the tall men of Saba shall pass over to thee, and shall be thy servants, and shall follow after thee bound in chains, and shall worship thee, and shall make supplication to thee: because God is in thee, and there is no God besides thee.

For thou art God, and we knew it not, God of Israel, the Saviour. All who are adversaries to him shall be ashamed and confounded, and shall go with confusion. Observe, that it is said to the Son: and they shall be thy servants, and shall follow after thee bound in chains, and shall worship thee, and shall make supplication to thee. Therefore from this also the Son is shown to be true God, since he is worshipped. For it belongs to God to be worshipped: since elsewhere too the Apostle teaches that it is written of the Son of God: And let all the angels of God worship him: namely because he is truly God and Lord. But in the present testimony of Isaiah, just as he himself is God, so also God is in him: for it says, Because God is in thee, and there is no God besides thee.

And when it had said that God is in God, it goes on and says: For thou art God, and we knew it not, God of Israel, the Saviour. Therefore, since God is in God, and there is no God besides him in whom God is, and he himself is God, the Saviour of Israel; the unity of divinity is shown in the Father and the Son, as also of omnipotence, and whatsoever belongs entirely to the divine substance: the Son differing from the Father only in this, that the one is Father and the other Son; that is, that the one begot, and the other was born; yet not because he was born does he have anything less than what is in God the Father, being the image of the invisible God, and the brightness of glory, and the character of his substance. Those who do not believe this concerning the Son of God will bear the sentence of Isaiah, who says: They shall be ashamed and confounded, all who are adversaries to him, and shall go with confusion.

But Jeremiah also expresses concerning the deity of the Son, saying: This is our God, and none other shall be reckoned beside him: who found out every way of prudence, and gave it to Jacob his servant, and to Israel his beloved: afterward he was seen upon earth, and conversed with men. It is certainly not God the Father, but the Son made man, who was seen upon earth, and conversed with men, exercising in himself the nature of man without sin for our salvation; of whom we also read: And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us: and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only-begotten of the Father.

If therefore the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, born of a virgin, God with us; where now, heretic, do you gain ground? If you object the infirmities of the assumed flesh, if you describe the useful struggles of the human soul which he had taken along with the flesh, as if profitable to us; when it is established that, according as he is God and the Son of God, he is in every respect impassible like the Father. For this reason we have set forth beforehand those things which belong to his deity, so that now if anything of humility and infirmity is read concerning Christ, it may not be believed that his deity was violated, but that it may be proved to be the carrying out of the nature of the man assumed, and of the teaching which he delivered. For it would be pointless for him not to have willed to be born a man, even though of a virgin, and yet not to mark in himself the infirm nature of man.

It would be pointless to give precepts by which men should live, and yet, since he once deigned to be man, to have run through it all without observing the precepts himself. If he, having been made man, had not been willing to undergo the infirmity of man, who would believe that he had been made man from the womb of our origin, even though without the embrace of a man? Since even today there are those who deny that he bore our bodily nature, even after he had undergone the infirmity of the flesh. If he, having been made man, had not kept the discipline which he had come to teach, he would not have given a good example of teaching. For which of the disciples would try to keep what the master himself, having been made man, had not kept; since today whoever keeps it by his example is helped to keep it?

You see that he had both to suffer infirmities, that he might be proved to have been born man; and, being made man, had to observe whatever he had taught, that he might invite others; or rather, I should say, that he might raise up others: for our flesh has now learned to be relieved by his flesh. For if he had not been willing to suffer the infirmities of man, to what purpose was he born of a virgin as man? And if he did not wish to observe the precepts, because he was Lord; to what purpose did he take the form of a servant, which is subject to precepts and obedience? But indeed this is the whole mystery of the man assumed by God, that what was not kept in Adam because of disobedience, should be kept in Christ the man through obedience.

This very thing the Apostle Paul, among the other things he treats divinely, asserts: For as by the disobedience of one man many were made sinners, so also by the obedience of one many are made righteous. (For as by the contempt of one man many were made sinners, so also by the mystery of obedience in Christ, which he supplies not out of infirmity, but out of the goodness of his deity, unto the saving discipline of man, many are saved.)

Let us now consider also the mystery of the passion. The whole Adam had sinned; the whole Adam had been expelled from paradise: he who came to save the whole had to assume the whole that had been expelled. But he would not appear to have taken up in himself the whole that had been expelled, unless he had assumed him through the substance of flesh and soul: for this is what the whole man is by nature. And this could then be proved, if he sustained the very infirmities of his flesh and soul, though without the vice of sins; so that he might truly be thought to have assumed no other substance of flesh and soul: so that, when he frees in himself the man from infirmities and passions, we might believe that those also who follow in his footsteps have been freed. But let the teacher of the Gentiles, the Apostle, more vividly support this sense, writing as a mystic: For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all are made alive.

But let Isaiah better describe the nature of the man assumed in him: Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? We have declared him before him as a child, as a root out of a thirsty ground: he has no comeliness nor beauty of form: and we saw him, and he had no comeliness nor beauty: but his form was without honor, failing beyond other men: a man placed in affliction, and knowing how to bear infirmity, for his face was turned away: he was despised and not esteemed. He bears our sins, and grieves for us: and we esteemed him to be in sorrow, and in affliction, and in evil: but he was wounded for our iniquities, and was made infirm for our sins: the discipline of our peace was upon him: by his stripe we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray: man has wandered from his own way, and the Lord delivered him up for our sins; and he, because he was evilly treated, opened not his mouth. As a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer, so he opened not his mouth: in his humiliation his judgment was taken away. Who shall declare his generation? For his life shall be taken away from the earth: for the iniquities of my people was he brought to death; and I will give the wicked for his burial, and the rich for his death. Because he did no iniquity, neither was guile found in his mouth.

It is sufficient that it be proved by this testimony, that he went through the whole nature of man in himself, yet without sin of his own, though he bore our sins. But lest he should be believed to be merely man, he inserted, and said: Who shall declare his generation? Namely that generation whereby he was begotten of God the Father, which is without beginning: and therefore of it he says, Who shall declare his generation? Not as though it were unknowable, but as inexplicable, he says this. For we Catholics all know that he was born of God the Father, but ineffably: and therefore he says, Who shall declare his generation? But this generation, whereby he is born of the virgin according to the flesh, the Gospel relates, describing also its times. But the beginning of the divine generation, as we have said, cannot be investigated, just as neither can the divinity which is his together with the Father: and therefore it says, Who shall declare his generation?

If therefore we have received this in the mystery of faith, that we should believe Christ to be God and man; God indeed, of God, without beginning only; but man, because born of the virgin in time: let us not calumniate his divinity, when for our healing he carries out the things of man, having in himself the assumed nature of man; since neither is he to be denied to be man, when he exerts the natural power of his own divinity, having taken to himself the form of a servant.

If therefore he both prays to the Father, and says that he does nothing of himself, except what he has seen the Father doing; not to say anything else now, certainly it is the measure of human loftiness that the Teacher imposes; that man might learn all the more to defer to God, in proportion as the true Son deferred, who had no cause of his own for subjection, who also gave the form of prayer, that we should ask not so much that our will be done, but the will of the Father who is in heaven. And therefore, that he might fulfill what he had taught, he says: I came not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

But also that he became lesser, that he grows, that he progresses, that he hungers, that he thirsts, that he labors, that he weeps, that he grieves, that he is sorrowful, and finally that he dies: this must be referred to the nature of the man assumed, which he exercised mystically for the mystery of our salvation, under the understanding which was related above in the testimony of Isaiah. Under this mystery of faith not only are those chapters resolved concerning which you have deigned to inquire, but also all the questions which impious heretics contrive against the divinity of the Son.

Receive now also these questions, which you had proposed as the stronger ones from the opposing side, specifically resolved. The heretics say, you tell me, in order to depreciate the perpetual and perfect deity of the Son in all things, "The Father is greater than I." But it must be asked, when did the Son say this: was it not when that which is written was fulfilled in him: "Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, thou hast crowned him with glory and honour"? How he was made lower, the apostle Paul, who was acquainted with the third heaven, explains: "We see," he says, "Jesus made a little lower than the angels on account of the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour, that by the grace of God he might taste death for all". "For all," he says, not for himself: therefore he who tasted death for all, what wonder if he was also made lower for all?

For he tasted death for all, not for himself, because, though he was made man for all who were placed under the guilt of sin, he himself was held bound by no sin of his own. And see how this very fact, that he was made lower on account of the suffering of death, and that by the grace of God he tasted death for all, is interpreted by the most wise Paul, in what follows, as pertaining to the beauty of the work: "For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the author of their salvation perfect through sufferings". You see how beautiful, how fitting a thing the mystery of our salvation is shown to be in that, as Son, he is shown to have been made lower. How then do you reproach as darkening his divinity that which he carries out for its adornment? "The Father is greater than I": this he said after the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.

And see that you do not believe him to be changeable, as though the Word ceased to be, after it was made flesh; but the Word, ever remaining God, was also made flesh. For although he said, "And the Word was made flesh," he wished to speak more emphatically, lest anyone should not believe that he had true flesh in him. Since even after so emphatic a statement, there are not lacking those who say that he had a merely apparent flesh. But that it may be clear that the Word was made flesh, not by a change of the divine substance, but by the assumption of human flesh, attend to what follows: "And dwelt among us." Therefore the Word was not cut off by change, in that through the flesh assumed it dwelt among us: for dwelling proves the perseverance of the Word.

I have inserted this so that no one should believe the Son of God to be changeable, when he reads: "And the Word was made flesh." The Son therefore says, "The Father is greater than I," after the Word was made flesh, and took up the office of a minister. For he came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. "The Father is greater than I." What do you say, O deity? How do you say that the Father is greater than you? Surely you and the Father have one image, according to Moses, and the same form, according to the apostle Paul, who also taught me that you are "the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his substance". But you yourself also taught, saying: "He who has seen me, has seen the Father; and I am in the Father and the Father in me.

I and the Father are one." But also, "whatsoever things the Father does, you likewise do"; for these are your words: "For whatsoever things he does, these the Son likewise does: and as the Father raises the dead and gives life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will, and that they may honour the Son, even as they honour the Father." Since therefore the same image is yours, the same form and the same substance, the same unity of nature, the same power, the same freedom of will, the same honour, and altogether all things that are the Father's are yours, because what is yours is the Father's; how do you say, "The Father is greater than I," when in all things that pertain to deity, you are such as the Father is? Let the apostle Paul speak, in whom Christ was speaking, according to what he himself says: "Or do you seek a proof of Christ speaking in me?" What does the Apostle say?

"Who, though he was constituted in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal with God." Therefore, according to this, that he is in the form of God and equal to God, the Father is not greater. And how the Father is greater, what follows shows: "But," he says, "he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant".

See that here too you do not understand a cutting off of divinity, when you hear, "he emptied himself": attend to what follows, "taking the form of a servant." Therefore he who is said to have taken the form of a servant is shown to remain in his own state. But although the divine status remains and perseveres in him, nevertheless "he emptied himself," namely by the concealment of his divinity, "taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and found in fashion as a man. He humbled himself, being made obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." Now such a one, if he says, "The Father is greater than I," does not attack the equality of divinity, but designates the mystery of humanity through this, that he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.

Now such a one, if he says, "The Father who sent me gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak"; and, "I came down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me"—he shows that he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and found in fashion as a man: "he humbled himself, being made obedient unto death"—and yet what diminution of his divinity is there in these things, if, in order to cut off arrogance among men, he himself, arrogating nothing to himself, should speak thus? I lie, if the apostle Paul did not set forth this very testimony for this purpose, that he might provoke each one to humility by the example of the Saviour. You will find this to be so, if you read more attentively that same Epistle which he writes to the Philippians.

But the heretics also are unwilling that "The Father is greater than I" should be said on account of the mystery of the emptied God through the taking of the servile form. Let us also say that the Father is greater, only in respect of the mystery of generation: for indeed some catholics have followed this pious sense, saying that the Father and the Son are of the same substance, and therefore that, according to substance, neither is greater than the other. For such as the Father is as God, such also is God the Son: for he begot nothing less from himself than he himself is: for being perfect, he begot one perfect. If therefore, as God, the Son is equal to God; yet, as Son, he is said to be less than the Father: that is, because the Son is from the Father, and being fullness, he begot fullness; but the Father begot the Son, and therefore he did not say, "God is greater than I," but, "The Father is greater than I."

Among the other things put forward by the heretics, in order namely that the Son of God should be believed to be a created thing, you have also set this forth from the person of the opposing party, which we read in the Acts of the Apostles, blessed Peter saying: "Let all the house of Israel therefore know most certainly, that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ." But the resolution of this question also is manifest according to the exposition above, in which we said that the Son of God was also made the Son of man. For although he cannot suffer, because the Son of God is the Word and Wisdom of God existing, since according to this he always remains impassible, just as his Father also; nevertheless, through this that he was made man, born of the Virgin Mary, he is passible: since he also endured death, and the death of the cross, remaining ever in himself, since as God he is inviolable, even while he dwells in man and is crucified.

This Jesus therefore, who is according to the flesh, God made both Lord and Christ. For according to this, that he is the only-begotten Son of God, who is the Word and Wisdom of God, he is no created thing at all, nor awaiting advancements, since he exists in all things perfect God, just as his Father also. But this Jesus, according to the flesh, was made Christ, when first that servile form which he had taken on account of Adam's sin was set free. For Adam fell from dominion into servitude by the commission of sin: "For whosoever commits sin is the servant of sin." But the Saviour renewed the dominion much more firmly, indeed even incorruptibly, in the man he had assumed, when in him he wiped away that very sin which, through Adam, had been the cause of abject servitude. But he was made truly Lord again, when believing peoples subjected themselves to his dominion.

For, provoked by the exhortations of sacred Scripture saying, "Serve the Lord in fear," each one, now recognizing in Christ a saving dominion, says: "Is not my soul subject to God?" To become his servant is a matter of the highest honour, and, as it were, a nobility surpassing the world. Therefore the Apostle too writes as his own glory: "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ." You see how he was made Lord, when even he who had persecuted him confesses him his Lord, as his highest glory.

Jesus, moreover, according to the flesh was made not only Lord, but also Christ. Now in the name "Christ" are contained the mysteries of king and priest. We read in the old Scripture that priests and kings among the Israelites were marked with the anointing of oil, and were therefore called "christs." For "Christ," which is said in Greek, is interpreted among the Latins as "anointed" or "smeared." But our Saviour was truly made Christ according to the flesh, being true King, true Priest also: both the same person, lest anything should be lacking in the Saviour. Hear him then made king, when he says: "But I am set as king by him upon Sion, his holy mountain." Hear also that he is priest, from the Father's testimony saying: "Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedech." Aaron was made priest first in the law from the anointing with chrism; and he did not say, "after the order of Aaron," lest the Saviour's priesthood should be believed capable of being held by succession.

For that priesthood which was in Aaron consisted by succession; but the priesthood of the Saviour is not transferred to another by succession, because he himself perpetually remains priest, according to what is written: "Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedech." The Saviour, therefore, according to the flesh, is both King and Priest, but not anointed bodily, but spiritually. For those among the Israelites, kings and priests anointed bodily with oil, were kings and priests; but not both in one, for each of them was either king or priest: for to Christ alone is due perfection in all things and fullness, who had also come to fulfill the law.

But although not each of them was both, still, anointed bodily with the royal or priestly oil, they were called "christs." But the Saviour, who is truly Christ, was anointed with the Holy Spirit, that it might be fulfilled which is written of him: "Therefore God, thy God, has anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows." For in this he was anointed more than his fellows of this name, when he was anointed with the oil of gladness, by which nothing else is signified than the Holy Spirit.

That this is true, we know from the Saviour himself. For when he had received the book of Isaiah, and had read, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for which cause he hath anointed me, he then said that the prophecy was fulfilled in the ears of his hearers. But Peter also, the chief of the Apostles, taught that that anointing whereby the Saviour is shown to be Christ, was the Holy Spirit, that is, the power of God, when in the Acts of the Apostles he spoke to that most faithful and merciful man (Cornelius), who was then a Centurion. For among other things he says: Beginning from Galilee after the baptism which John preached, Jesus of Nazareth, whom God anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing works of power and great deeds, and delivering all who were oppressed by the devil. You see that Peter also said that this Jesus, according to the flesh, was anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power.

Whence also Jesus himself, according to the flesh, was truly made Christ: who by the anointing of the Holy Spirit was made both king and priest forever. Now I have pursued these things for this reason, that it might clearly appear that Jesus the Son of God was not crucified, or made Lord and Christ, according to that which he is—the Word and Wisdom of God; but according to that which he assumed from Mary: although through the passion of the assumed man we say that even the only-begotten Son of God suffered; not that the only-begotten Son himself, as he is the Word and Wisdom of God, truly suffered, but because whatever of injury or of passion was inflicted upon the assumed man is, by a certain reasoning, referred wholly to that same only-begotten and impassible God. Whence also the apostle Paul, writing to the Corinthians, says: For if they had known it, that is, the princes of this world, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory.

If these things are manifest, it now appears in what sense it was said, Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly, that God hath made both Lord and Christ, this same Jesus whom ye crucified; whom the same Peter above named a man, saying: Ye men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by mighty works and wonders and signs; this same Jesus Christ, whom Paul also called a man, writing to Timothy: One God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Who also said in the Gospel: But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth. IV.

We say these things not on behalf of the impious Photinus, who wishes him to be a bare man without the incarnation of the Word of God, but we recite them against Arius the antichrist, who wishes that the only-begotten Son himself, who is the Word and Wisdom of God, was crucified as God, and not as man, and that he himself was made Lord and Christ. But even though they contend with the hardest obstinacy, saying that it is written of God the Word himself, that God made him both Lord and Christ; not even so do we fear, with the confidence of truth, lest perchance through what is written the Word of God should be believed to be a creature. For grant that the Word of God was made Lord and Christ; how does this prejudice his substance, whereby he is always the Word of God?

For observe that he did not say that the substance of the Word of God was made, but that this same Word, which is always the Son of God, was made Lord and Christ. For it is not the same thing, that which altogether was not, to come into being, and that which was, to become something. For God also becomes at times a helper and protector, yet not because he has become a helper and protector is he therefore to be believed to have become this—namely, that he is God. For Moses too, after he had felt the divine help and protection, said of God, who had helped and protected him against Pharaoh: He is become my helper and protector unto salvation; and you will find many very similar testimonies, which I, lest I prolong this too much, pass over.

If then, since God is a helper and protector, it is not believed that this—namely, that he is God—came into being, but rather this very thing, that he is designated as helper and protector: what is it, that when they say the Word of God was made Lord and Christ, we should think the substance of the Word of God was made? Is it because we read, And the Word was made flesh, that therefore the Word itself also must be believed to have been made? But it is most clearly expressed, that it is not so much the Word that was made, which was in the beginning with God; but that the same Word, which always was, was afterward made flesh, as a thing made; not that flesh was made this.

So then also, when it is said that the Word of God was made Lord and Christ, it is not to be understood that the substance of the Word of God was made; but that this same Word, which was always God, was made Lord and Christ.

Now he becomes the Lord of those who devote themselves to the purpose of serving him. And grant me pardon, most blessed Matthew, if I say that Christ God was not yet Lord to you, when you were still serving at the tax-office. But to all the Apostles also he was first made Lord then, when, having left all things, they chose rather to serve him. To the Gentiles themselves also he was then made Lord, when, the vain superstition of idols having been forsaken, the Gentiles themselves surrendered themselves to his dominion: for insofar as anyone is a servant of sin or of mammon, so far he cannot be a servant of God. When, therefore, one has renounced sin and mammon, doing justice and spurning the desire of possessing, then Jesus is made his Lord. By the same reasoning it is understood that he also becomes Christ: since, as was said above, kings and priests were designated by the name of Christ.

The Saviour, therefore, is made king of those who are no longer held bound under the kingdom of death; in whose mortal body sin has ceased to reign, after they have learned by the divine teaching, the Apostles instructing them: Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body. But also when he discharges for us the office of priest, he is most truly made Christ, standing forth always as our greatest defender and advocate, interceding also with the Father, as the sole most pure priest; that, the stain of sin having been expiated, we may be preserved by his divine propitiation. Through these things, therefore, in that Jesus was made Christ and Lord, nothing is so much conferred upon his divine substance, as it is provided for those upon whom the power of his kingdom and priesthood and dominion has been bestowed as a saving gift.

It does not seem absurd if you understand in a like manner that which he says: But I am set king by him upon Sion his holy hill: for although he is said to be set king, yet when he added, upon Sion his holy hill, it is shown that he does not speak of that kingdom of his which he had even before he was set king upon Sion his holy hill. For he is king before all ages of ages, containing (by his power all the creation which he founded; whence also he is approved to be omnipotent), in that he can contain all things that have been made.

Let us touch also upon that last question, which you added among the rest: The Lord, it says, created me the beginning of his ways for his works. The heretic says: You see that wisdom is a creature, which, indeed, according to the interpretation of the apostle Paul, is Christ. Therefore Christ, he says, who is wisdom, is not a true Son, but a creature, made a son by adoption. This is the poison of the Arians. But O how blind is impiety to see that which is pious! Already, as it is written, They have hated the wisdom of the Lord and have not embraced his word, they see nothing of its most sincere beauty: just as for bleary eyes there is no vision of the truth, since their sight reports otherwise than the truth of things is; but also for one whose own overflowing bitterness of gall has corrupted his proper sense of taste, if he tastes sweet honey, he defames the sweetness of the honey as bitter, not recognizing the evil of his own bitterness.

But, O wretched heretic, what can you see of the true light, since you grope blindly or walk in the ways of darkness, devising all things that are of impiety? Though that spiritual man cry out, inviting with the sweetest experience of the divine banquet: Taste and see how sweet the Lord is: yet to you, if you should taste, nothing sweet is perceived in the Lord, because, as it is written, the venom of asps is under your lips, because your mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Finally, though Solomon himself proclaimed boundless things concerning the wisdom of God, and pursued the subject so divinely that nothing else could be believed of it than what is in the nature of God: in all these things the heretic, being blind, believed he saw only this one thing, by which he might prove it to be a creature. But it is written, he says, The Lord created me the beginning of his ways for his works.

But we will not go further, nor will we adduce from the other books of Solomon those things which speak of the everlasting wisdom of God. It suffices now, if from this very passage whence he brought forward his testimony, the opposing side be overcome. II. You say, heretic, it is written: The Lord created me the beginning of his ways for his works: but observe, that this same wisdom nonetheless says: But before all the hills he begot me. How then does this same wisdom, in the same passage, say both that she was created and that she was begotten? Let us first see which is first: whether that she was begotten, or that she was created. But although he first said: The Lord created me the beginning of his ways for his works; yet, lest you should think her a creature, she recurs to that which is prior, saying in what follows: But before all the hills he begot me. See then, lest you think she was begotten afterward, because she first set forth that she was created.

For although in the order of the words it is placed first that she was created, and afterward that she was begotten; yet the sense determines this, that she was begotten before she was created, so that the sense of wisdom speaking is this: The Lord created me the beginning of his ways for his works. But lest anyone should think me, through this, to be a creature, or to have begun to exist only then, when he created me the beginning of his ways for his works, I add and say: But before all the hills he begot me; that you may know that I was begotten before I was created. For when she says: But before all the hills he begot me, she makes that which she is said to have been created to be later, so that that which is said to be begotten precedes and is prior.

If then she was so created, that she had already been begotten before; the impious sense is excluded, whereby he had said she was created, as though wisdom were then believed to have first come to exist, when she also reported herself as having been created by the Lord the beginning of his ways for his works. For behold, the sense makes it manifest that even before she was created, wisdom already existed, seeing that she is begotten before she is created.

But this catholic sense will be still more commended, if the very words themselves, as far as is possible for us, be examined, whereby wisdom refers to herself either as begotten or as created. The Lord, it says, created me the beginning of his ways for his works. Observe, that when he had said: The Lord created me, he did not keep silence, lest she should be thought truly a creature, but he continues, explaining what it is that she was created, and for what cause she was created. For he says, created me the beginning of his ways: and when there follows, for his works, it is plain that he shows also the causes why she was created the beginning of the ways of the Lord. Wisdom, therefore, was not created as though she did not exist, in order that she might exist; but although she always existed substantially, then she was created, according to the dispensation, the beginning of the ways of the Lord, and was created for the works of the Lord.

Wisdom, therefore, was created the beginning of the ways of the Lord, and was created for the works of the Lord: yet not because she did not exist substantially before, was wisdom therefore created. But indeed, when she says that she was begotten before all the hills, she does not say that she was begotten for any created purpose; rather, existing always as the eternal offspring of the Father, she says that she was, for certain causes, made the beginning of the ways of the Lord, that is, for the works of the Lord. Therefore from this also it is manifest that wisdom is not a creature, which was created for another purpose, that is, for the works of the Lord; whereas she herself is begotten, not for a work, but of the Father, as we have said, existing as his eternal offspring.

But this too must be attended to, that it is one thing to say that wisdom is created, and another to say that it is a creature. For although it is read that wisdom was created, nowhere however is it read that it is a creature. For not everything that has been created must already be called a creature, although every creature is created: just as not everything that has been made must be asserted to be a "making," although every making is made. If this seems obscure, I will make it clear by an example. We read that a certain man rejoiced, and said to God: But I will sing of thy power, I will extol in the morning thy mercy, because thou art become my helper and my refuge in the day of my tribulation. Behold, God is made a helper and refuge; yet God is not a making: and this is what I said: Not everything that has been made must be called a making.

For God, who is not a making, who always exists, was made a helper and refuge in the day of tribulation to man; so that, in that He was made a helper and refuge to man in the day of tribulation, it might seem to pertain to what "was made"; yet not because He was made a helper and refuge to man, is God also to be believed to be a making, whose divine substance is everlasting. Likewise also, if wisdom is said to be created, it is not yet a creature, since it always exists: but though it always exists, it is created with reference to something, so as to be of profit, not so as to be called a creature, as though made, which had not been before. For the wisdom of God was inseparable from God: and this same everlasting offspring of God was created as the beginning of the ways of the Lord.

But let me set it forth still more plainly. Surely the wisdom of God is that very thing which is also written to be the Word, as has been shown above. And is it because it is written of the Word of God: And the Word was made flesh, that we therefore also assert the Word to be a making, as though it then first began to be, when it was made flesh? But it is well, because it has been most clearly shown that all things were made through the Word, and that in the last times this same Word was made flesh. The Word of God, therefore, is not a making, although it is said to have been made flesh: so also, although wisdom is said to have been created as the beginning of the ways and in his works, it is nevertheless not a creature; for it is agreed that it exists before every creature, since indeed all things were made in wisdom.

I add this also, that not everything that is said to be created must be understood as though it comes into being in substance. For instance, a certain man, seeing his heart infected with certain filth, pours forth a prayer to the Lord, saying: Create in me a clean heart, O God: he was surely not praying that the substance of a heart be made in him, but that this very heart existing in him, which was filthy to him, be created clean. Not everything that is said to be created must at once be understood as coming into being according to substance: since indeed the heart which already was, that very heart, he was praying, be created clean by the Lord. Therefore also when wisdom is said to be created, it is not so much its substance—as though it did not exist—that was made; but wisdom itself, existing, as has often been said, was created as the beginning of the ways in his works.

Therefore, that wisdom was created, understand with reference to the mystery either of things to be created or of the human dispensation, which, when the wisdom of God graciously assumes it, is said to be created: but that it says it was begotten, is so that you may recognize nothing less of divinity in it than He has who begot it. For it is exceedingly impious to believe that God was ever without His wisdom. Whence, because wisdom was truly begotten of God, existing according to substance what the begetter is; and this wisdom itself is Christ: therefore Christ, who is wisdom, is not a son by adoption, but a true Son, being the offspring of God, and not a making.

1. All the questions which you had written concerning the Father and the Son, I think, as the grace of God has granted, have been resolved: whether, however, this be true in your judgment, your religious prudence will judge: although I confess that, owing both to the constraint of time, and the haste of the matter, and the very dry eloquence of my narrow discourse, I have rather touched their main points than pursued their fullness; because I had not begun to write a book, as I said before, but so that a kind of summary sketch, as it were, concerning the faith might be signified; lest, being provoked to this by your wondrous benevolence, you should believe me faithless, if I kept silence. But now something must be confessed concerning the Holy Spirit, even if briefly: lest, if we say nothing specifically about Him, we be believed likewise to blaspheme, as do those who say He is a creature.

We marvel, however, at the madness of these men, that they think impiously concerning Him whom they confess to be the Holy Spirit. For if He is the Holy Spirit, how is He a creature? For He is not holy in the way that the rest are, who have come to the name of "holy" by faith and by conduct pleasing to God and by the sealing of the Holy Spirit Himself: but He Himself is naturally always holy in such a way that He sanctifies others, not, however, in such a way that He Himself, as one who did not have it before, received holiness from without. The Spirit possesses this name of "holy" as the Father and the Son possess it: He possesses it, however, not as being either the Father or the Son, but as the Spirit of God.

But if He is called the Spirit of God, not as an angel of God, nor as a man of God, whose nature is inestimably separate from the divine substance; but He is Spirit of God in such a way as to be of the same substance with the Father and the Son: because there is one holiness of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit: since indeed the same Holy Spirit is so truly and naturally holy, that this is naturally and truly a name for Him. For attend to the words of the Savior saying: Going therefore now, teach ye all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. For as it is the true name of the Father, and the true name of the Son; so it is the true name of the Holy Spirit. And how the true name of the Father is so called, we shall be able to know, if we consider how the true God is so called.

Many are called gods, but are not truly gods; and I say nothing now of Satan and the demons and their like, who by impious usurpation are called gods. Men too have indeed been called gods according to this testimony: I have said: you are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High: but how they are not truly gods, the following words make manifest, which run thus: But you shall die like men, and shall fall like one of the princes. If therefore, wherever any holy ones are called gods, this comes to them, living piously and with justice, from the grace of God, especially since the Holy Spirit dwells in them; from which name indeed they fall, if they do not persevere in walking in the ways of the Lord: no one, therefore, of creatures is truly God, because no one is naturally God. But God alone is naturally truly God, existing thus without beginning and without end. Through this understanding of the true God let us now also understand the true name of Father.

Among men, one is thereupon called a father, from the fact that he has begotten a son: but although he has begotten a son of himself, yet he is not properly truly a father, to whom this name has come, and this itself granted by God: and he is indeed called father only for as long as his son lives. For as he obtained the name of father by the son born of him, so too by the death of the son he loses the name of father. But God alone is properly truly Father, who without beginning and end is Father. For He did not at some point begin to be what He is as Father; but He is always Father, always having a Son begotten of Himself; just as He is also always truly God, persevering without beginning and end. Therefore, as He alone holds the name of true God, who alone, without beginning and end, is called Father; so let us understand also the true name of the Son of God.

For among men, he who is a son began to be what he is as son, and by the death of the father loses this name. And often too he passes from the name of son into the name of father, when he has begotten a son: therefore the name of son in a creature is not proper and true, since he both began to be a son, and can fail to have this name either at the father's death, or when he himself is transferred into the name of father, even before the condition of death occurs. But the Son of God alone is truly Son, existing thus without beginning, without end, always having the Father, and never Himself, since He is the only-begotten, receiving the name of father by begetting. Whence the proper and true name of son is in the Son of God alone, having this naturally, just as He is also naturally truly God.

If, then, we have recognized how the proper and true name of Father is, and how the proper and true name of Son is; it follows that we understand likewise how the proper and true name of the Holy Spirit is. III. Namely, since this very thing, the Holy Spirit, exists naturally, without beginning, without end; for never would the name of the Holy Spirit be joined, with equal authority of name, to the true names of the Father and the Son, if the proper and true name of the Holy Spirit were not likewise proved. If, therefore, this name is proper and true and natural to Him, without beginning and end; then the Holy Spirit is not a creature, who has thus the proper and true name of Holy Spirit, as no creature can have.

But also, when the Lord commands that the nations be baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; it is most plain that the Holy Spirit is not a creature, both from that very fellowship which He has together with the Father and the Son; and because the Lord would never command that anyone be baptized in the name of a creature: for much would be derogated from the divine power, if along with the confession of the divine name an equal confession of a creature were placed. And it is well that He set one name, saying: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; that one principal authority might be believed of the indivisible and perfect Trinity. For how could the Holy Spirit be believed to be separate from the principal authority, when we read it written of Him in the fiftieth Psalm: And confirm me with thy principal spirit?

Therefore by this also it is shown that there is one principality of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit: since indeed He is found a partner with the Father and the Son in every act of creation. Take meanwhile even one testimony: By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and all the power of them by the spirit of his mouth. And by this, therefore, it is shown that the Holy Spirit is not a creature: since He too, together with the Father and the Son, is proved to be a creator. I would say fully both God and Lord, the Holy Spirit, taught by the greater men of the Church, who themselves also, having been instructed first by the apostolic men in the testimonies of the divine Scriptures, handed them down to their posterity.

I would pursue myself also each of those testimonies one by one, were it not that even from those things briefly touched upon above, the divinity of the Holy Spirit shines forth to a faithful soul: especially since even now my purpose is not so much a disputation concerning the Holy Spirit, as that a pious confession concerning His divine name be signified. This, however, I will add for the sake of a brief proof of His divinity, that God is proved to be the Holy Spirit through this very fact, by which it is shown that He is not a creature. For everything that exists is either divinity or creature: but the Holy Spirit, existing thus, without beginning and end, is not a creature: therefore the Holy Spirit is a thing of divinity, because He is the incorruptible and unchangeable and everlasting Spirit of God. There is, therefore, one divinity of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, just as there is one holiness of the same perfect and inseparable Trinity.

But here let us make an end: for the more one is intent on speaking about the faith from the sacred Scriptures, the more will not be lacking for him to say. Of this, however, I do not doubt, that if perchance some eloquent person reads these very words, he will find the deficiency of an unpolished style; yet not, if he is faithful, an error of pious confession, which indeed, granted in us by the grace of God, we desire, with the help of Him who granted it, to maintain even unto death, free from the stain of communion with heretics and prevaricators, because, with God as witness, we fear to be found sharers in their condemnation.

Let him look to it who thinks he cannot become guilty by association with them, having confidence in his own conscience, because he claims that he holds the faith whole, in such a way that he himself has never proved a betrayer of that faith: nevertheless I, in the cause of God, am compelled to fear more cautiously; since indeed we read this precaution given even concerning such men: "A heretical man, after one admonition, avoid, knowing that such a one is perverted, and sins, and is condemned by his own judgment." But we also read of the punishment of transgressors, as Isaiah says: "And all flesh shall come into my sight to worship in Jerusalem, saith the Lord God. And the saints shall go forth, and shall see the bodies of the men who have transgressed against me.

Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched: and they shall be a spectacle unto all flesh." But the Apostle also says: "Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers"; for elsewhere too the same Apostle, after describing evils, says: "Not only they who do such things, but also they who consent to those who do them." And there are many other divine testimonies by which fellowship with the aforesaid is forbidden. But these things I have set forth, though briefly, lest anyone believe that it is out of vain superstition that we are unwilling to communicate with such men, whom he perceives to be reproved by the divine sentence. May the Divinity grant that you be found safe and blessed in the faith of His name, even in the kingdom of the heavens, together with all your dear ones.