Against Arius

Let us therefore cite the scriptures, and first the Gospel according to John: for he says how the λόγος both was in the beginning, and was with God, and how God was the λόγος. Does he speak of another's λόγος? Entirely of the Son. What then is the λόγος, if he is from no underlying subject? How does the λόγος have the power that all things are created through him, he who is from no underlying subject? For it is impossible that the seed of all things that exist should be something made from nothing. Then if he was in the beginning, how is he a beginning: according to what he is a beginning, he is without beginning: he who was in the beginning, was always. What boldness therefore? What blasphemy? To say he was not at some time, when John says so many times: The λόγος was in the beginning, was with God, the λόγος himself was God? He was in the beginning with God.

For although was has the signification of past time, it is frequently not without beginning; but here it must be taken as without beginning, since he said: In the beginning was. Which you also signify when you say before times, before ages: All things, he says, were made through him, and without him nothing was made. For without the λόγος, what is there that does not receive its being from him? For the λόγος alone, according as he is the λόγος, both for himself and for others, himself bestows upon all things that exist that which they are. And therefore he is indeed equal to the Father. For the primary cause is cause both for itself and for others, in power and in substance. Existing as cause. But the Father is prior to the cause. Whence the Son will differ in this, that he is moved and operates in manifestation, on account of the Father operating for us with great divinity in an unknowable manner. For the Father is above blessedness and therefore he himself rests.

For to operate, if it operates imperfection, is in the burden of motion: but this is blessedness, to operate perfectly according to what one is. IV. Hear therefore another point as well. What being is, the Father is: what operating is, the λόγος is: and prior is what being is; second is what operating is. Being itself has within itself an operation implanted within it: for if by motion, that is, by operation, what life or what intellect is there: therefore it is not being alone, but that which is first being, on account of which it belongs to it to rest, is being alone: in this manner also what operating is, which is second, since it operates not within but outwardly, is said to operate.

For when operation appears, it both is and is named operation, and is both estimated and is as a generation of itself: thus therefore that very thing which operating is, also has being itself, or rather does not have it: for operating itself is being; for simultaneously and simply, both being and operating is the nature of those things that are above, declaring and having obtained: according to what resting is, being itself and substance; but according to what being in motion is, action, operation: but this, being in motion, is the declaration of being according to action. And therefore there was the light which is true, which illuminates every man coming into the world.

The λόγος therefore is the light which is true; and therefore what was made, in him is life, and life is the light of men: and the λόγος himself, the true light, was in the world, and the world was made through him; who is the Son of God, concerning whom he says: No one has ever seen God: the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he himself declared concerning the λόγος.

He said all the above things and joined them concerning the Son, declaring no other Son than τὸν λόγον. The Son therefore was with God, and was in the beginning, and was himself God, and all things were made through him, and he is the only-begotten: and as it were proceeding from the Father, he was with the Father on account of what operating is; but on account of what being is, existing in the bosom of the Father, he declared the Father, having become the declaration of the Father according to what operating is. Which most of all the λόγος is: he himself the Son, he himself the light, he himself the life. That the Son is God, John says thus: And God was the λόγος. And again: No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven. That the Son is life: That whoever believes in him may not perish. And again: But may have hope, eternal life. That he is the Son: Whence he delivered his only-begotten Son.

He said Son, and his own, and only-begotten. What more for a true Son? That he himself is life: that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but have eternal life. That he himself the Son is Christ: For God did not send the Son to judge the world, but to save the world. That he is the light, he says of him: Because the light came into the world. John was not the true light, and therefore he says: I am not the Christ, but I have been sent. John therefore was sent. But Christ the Son, who comes from above, is above all. And again: Coming from heaven. He is said indeed to have been sent by God; for God sent the Son. But these two things, both coming and sent, signify both the Son in the Father and the Father in the Son; since Christ the life says to the Samaritan woman: You would have asked of him, and he would have given you living water.

And again: Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will not thirst for ever: but the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring and a welling up into eternal life. That Christ is the Saviour: And we know that this is the Saviour of the world. That he is the Son of God: My Father works until now. Who says this? Christ. What blasphemy on his part, to call Father one who is not Father? What anger of the Jews who heard God called Father, and were angry at him who said that he was the Son of God, when he was not the Son of God: for if he had not been, he would not have said so. But he said it, and a worshipper of God said it; therefore he said it in truth, and therefore the unbelief of the Jews is punished.

After these things, every response to the Jews declares both the Son Christ and the Father God: What the Father does, I also do: the Son does nothing of himself, unless he shall have seen the Father doing it: for the Father loves the Son: the Father raises from the dead, and the Son raises also.: The Father has life in himself, and the Son also has it. And all the rest that follows. That the Word is the Son, and the Son is Christ: And his word you will not have abiding in you, because him whom he sent, you yourselves do not believe. That the Son: My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. That Christ is not man from man: For the bread from God is that which descends from heaven. That he is life: And giving life to the world. And afterwards he says: I am the bread of life. That he is from God: No one has seen the Father, except him who is from the Father.

That the Father and Son are one in the other: As the living Father sent me. If the Son is life, and the Father is living, the Son is in the Father: for just as what is prior comes first, then the quality; so the living God is first, and so is life. For he who begot life is living: life lives from the living Father. For life did not come first and then God become living, but the living God is prior. So life exists, and so the living life exists. And therefore he then says: And I live because of the Father. Therefore the Father also is in him. That he is both bread and life: And he who receives me, that one shall live because of me. This is the bread descending from heaven: Not as your fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread shall live unto all ages.

Does a man say these things of himself, who is only a man? For if a man says these things, he blasphemes, and God does not hear sinners. But Christ says that God hears him: therefore he is neither a sinner nor a man. And it is said: Vain is hope in man. And it is said: But we hope in our God. Christ therefore is God, not of another substance: The living Father, and I live because of the Father. And: I am the bread of life: he who eats this shall live unto the age. All these things signify one substance: And therefore Jesus says that he is from above, he who says these things: If therefore you shall see the Son of man ascending where he was before? That God is spirit has been said: God is spirit.

And that the Son is a life-giving spirit, that this faith is perfect in Christ, Peter says: You have the word of eternal life: and we believe in you, Lord, because you are the Christ the Son of God. What is the word of eternal life? Because if anyone hears you, he shall live unto eternity. That he is from God: I know him, because I am from him. That Christ is the substance of the Father: I in the Father, and the Father in me. This is not through dignity alone, but through substance.

For if through dignity alone, how does he himself say: My Father is greater than I: and the Father sends, and the Son is sent? But again dignity is given to the Son by the Father: According to this therefore the Father is in the Son. Does the Son also give dignity to the Father, who does not possess substance? Therefore both the Father is in the Son, and the Son is in the Father.

But these things thus. And again, that Christ himself, who is the Son of the Father, is also himself the Holy Spirit: Jesus stood and cried out: If anyone thirsts, let him come and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, rivers of living water shall flow from his belly. That saying is indeed spoken of him who receives the spirit; who, receiving the spirit, becomes the belly, pouring forth rivers of living water. But Christ gives this spirit; he gives also the living water, as he himself says; scripture spoke that of the spirit. The belly therefore which receives the spirit, and the spirit itself is the belly, from which rivers of living water flow: as scripture says: But this he said of the spirit which those who believed in him were about to receive: for the spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified. But again the rivers are of the spirit, and the belly from which the rivers flow is Jesus; for Jesus is the spirit.

Already therefore Jesus is the belly from which the rivers of the spirit flow. For just as the Son is from the bosom of the Father and in the bosom; so the spirit is from the belly of the Son; the three therefore are consubstantial; and therefore in all things there is one God. That he is not from the world: I am the light of the world; for the world lives because of him, and shall live as long as it obeys him. That all three are spirit, he has already said: God is spirit. And when some said: Where is your Father? He said: You know neither me nor my Father: If you knew me, you could know my Father also. The Holy Spirit is manifestly spirit; but all these things are also the Father, and from the Father: they are therefore consubstantial. For the spirit is not as others: for those others are from God, not out of God: these three therefore are consubstantial.

That the Son is true: For I went forth from God, as from the bosom of the Father, and I come into the world. That before he was in the flesh, Christ existed: Abraham your father rejoiced that he might see my day: and he saw it and was glad. And again: Before Abraham, I am. That he is not a man: While I am in the world, I am the light of the world. But who gave sight to the blind man? A man? Impossible: and I, as the Son of God: Do you believe in the Son of God? He answered: Who is he, Lord, that I may believe in him? Jesus said to him: You have both seen him, and he who speaks with you, he it is. That they are of the same substance and power: I and the Father are one. And again: The Father in me, and I in him. IX. Whence it is said in Paul: Who, existing in the form of God, did not count it robbery to be equal to God.

These things therefore signify both that there is one substance and one power. For how can it be, I and the Father are one? And how, The Father in me, and I in the Father, if he had not received substance and power from the Father, begotten whole from the whole? And how, He did not count it robbery to be equal to the Father? For he did not say: He did not count himself equal, but, He did not count equality as robbery. He wills therefore to be inferior, not wishing to count equality as robbery. For in these matters it is a question of counting or not counting as robbery that equality which belongs to things that are equal. But we supposed that equality was said according to power.

First, that is not the dogma of Arius, that the Father is greater in dignity, power, glory, divinity, and action: for he said they are equal: and if they are equal according to this, it is impossible that they be equal according to this, if the substance also is not the same; for in God, power and substance and divinity and action are the very same thing: For all things are one, and one simple thing. To this is added: if the Son were of another substance, and especially if from nothing; what would that substance be, capable of receiving those divinities and powers? Equality is joined to its equal, and like to like. The Son therefore is equal to the Father, and therefore the Son is also in the Father, and the Father in the Son, and both are one. X. But these things now. But let us look at those words of John. The Saviour himself says: I am the resurrection, because he himself is life: But who is this?

Martha says: Because you are the Christ the Son of God, who has come into the world. That he is not Son in the way we are: For we are sons by adoption, he by nature. Also by a certain adoption is he Son and Christ, but according to the flesh: I have this day begotten you. For if this alone is meant, he has only a man as son: but saying Before Abraham I am, he declared that he was Son by nature first. Therefore the Photinian dogma is not true. Then we are not only Gentiles, but also those who are scattered are sons. Christ therefore is Son of God; we also are sons: but we through adoption, we through Jesus Christ, we as scattered sons: is Christ also Son in this way? Jesus therefore is Son by nature, we are sons by adoption. That he is Son by nature, he himself also often says: Father, I give you thanks that you have heard me. And: Father, save me from this hour.

And again: I proceeded from the mouth of the Father. These things are not, as we say, spoken according to God the Father: For God is not a liar, nor impious, calling himself Son and God Father when there was no such relationship at all: but on account of the body he took on suffering, that all things might be fulfilled in the mystery. That Christ also existed before he was in the body: And I have glorified, and I will glorify again: for in the mystery he humbled himself in the flesh. Therefore before this and after this Jesus was glorified. That on account of the mystery he is also portrayed as fearing, and asking for certain things: This voice came not for my sake, but for yours. In like manner I do these same things, not for my sake, but for yours.

That the Son of Man, Christ himself, is the light in the world, the Son of God: We have heard from the law that Christ abides forever; and how do you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is the Son of Man? Jesus said to them: Yet a little while the light is among you. And then: While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light. That he is consubstantial (ὁμοούσιος) with God: I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you have known me, you will know my Father also; and from now on you know him and have seen him. And again to Philip: He who has seen me has seen the Father also. Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?

And again these and such things, in which it is manifest that the Father also is according to what he is, and the Son is according to what he is, and therefore they are two. But because the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father, they are consubstantial (ὁμοούσιοι). One ought not therefore to say: two persons, one substance; but rather: two, Father and Son, from one substance; the Father giving to the Son from his own substance a substance in this, that he begot the Son, and from this both are consubstantial (ὁμοούσιοι). That he himself does and will do all things, because I am from the Father: And whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in me. That the Paraclete and Christ: If you love me and keep my commandments: and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete, that he may be with you forever.

But who is the other Paraclete: The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot see, because it does not see him. But the other Paraclete, that is, Christ, they saw; because he was in the flesh, they did not believe in him. That the power of Christ is the Paraclete: But you know him, because he abides with you. Therefore Christ gave him to them, for he said: He abides in you and is in you. XII. From these things, what appears? If God is Spirit, and Jesus is Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is Spirit, then three from one substance; therefore three consubstantial (ὁμοούσια). That the Holy Spirit is from Christ, just as Christ is from God, and therefore one is three: I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. And again he says: On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.

These things are according to the Spirit: that the Paraclete is from the Son: But the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things that I have said. It is manifest from these things that God is in Christ, and Christ is in the Holy Spirit; first the Paraclete is Christ, the Paraclete is the Holy Spirit. Then Christ who is God sent him; the things which Christ spoke, the Holy Spirit himself speaks. But Christ spoke in parables and performed signs: therefore all things were hidden, because he himself was in the flesh; just as he himself was within, so also the truth was within, in parables and signs. But the Holy Spirit teaches all things: for the Holy Spirit speaks to the spirit of men; he speaks what he himself is, and what he is he speaks in no figure. And therefore he himself will teach you. And what does he speak? Whatsoever I shall have said, said Christ. I shall have said is in the future tense.

Of what future? Not of what is now, but of what is after the ascent to the Father. And if this Paraclete, coming from God in the name of Christ, teaches those things which Jesus says: is he therefore Jesus himself, or is he another Jesus? Or is Jesus present in this other Paraclete, that is, the Holy Spirit, just as God is present in him? With these three existing in this series, the three are both one and consubstantial (ὁμοούσιον): since Christ says: I go and I come to you: from God another Paraclete will be given to you, who has whatever he has from me, and whatever the Father has, he has delivered all things to me. For the whole mystery is this: the Father is an inoperative operation, the Son is an operative operation, that is, what it is to regenerate; but the Holy Spirit is an operative operation in what it is to regenerate.

But these things have indeed been said also in other places. That the Word (λόγος), that is, Jesus or Christ, is both equal to the Father and inferior: I go to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. Likewise Paul says: He did not count it robbery to be equal to God. And what was said: I and the Father are one. And that the Father and the Son are both operation; and that he would not have said, the Father is greater than I, unless he had been equal: it also follows, if he is wholly from the whole, and light from light, and if all things that the Father has he gave to the Son: but all things include both substance and power and dignity, equal to the Father, yet the Father is greater: because he himself gave him all things, and is the cause for the Son himself that he exists and exists in this manner.

Moreover he is greater in this respect, that his action is unacted: for he is more blessed in that he is without burden, and impassible, and the fount of all things that exist, resting, perfect from himself, and needing nothing; but the Son, in order to exist, received, and in that which is to act, proceeding from action, coming into perfection, becomes fullness through movement. But because through him and in him and by him all things are begotten, he is always fullness and always a receptacle, by which reason he is both impassible and passible. Therefore he is both equal and unequal: the Father therefore is greater. That the Paraclete is from God and from Christ: When the Paraclete comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father. That the twofold power of the Word (τοῦ λόγου) toward God: one in the manifest, Christ in the flesh; the other in the hidden, the Holy Spirit.

Therefore when the Word, that is Christ, was present, the Word in the hidden, that is, the Holy Spirit, could not come: For if I do not depart, the Paraclete will not come to you. Therefore these two also are one from another: the Holy Spirit from the Son, just as the Son is from God by co-rational derivation, and the Holy Spirit from the Father. That all three are one: the Father is not a silent silence, but a voice in silence; the Son is now voice; the Paraclete is the voice of the voice: When the Spirit of truth comes, he will lead you into all truth: but he does not speak the truth from himself—for Christ is the truth—but whatsoever he shall hear, he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come: He will glorify me, because he will receive from what is mine and will declare it to you. Then he adds: All things that the Father has are mine.

He says therefore: he will receive from what is mine, because there is one movement, that is, one acting action which is Christ and the Holy Spirit; and the first is to live, and from what it is to live comes to understand: to live indeed is Christ, to understand is the Spirit; therefore the Spirit receives from Christ, Christ himself from the Father, and therefore the Spirit also from the Father.

All things therefore are one, but from the Father. That Christ also proceeded from the Father, that is, that God sent him, that is, he proceeded from God, for he says: Because I proceeded from God: I proceeded from the Father. It must be understood that he also said: and I came forth. But what he placed first, from God I proceeded, signifies that God sent him. Believe therefore this first, that I came forth from God. But from God, and as what? From that God who is my Father: I came forth therefore from the Father and came into the world. The natural order of this speech is this: I proceeded from the Father, I came forth from God, I came into the world. But the order of effect and of speech is from men: because you have loved me and believed that I came forth from God; for this is first in faith.

But then I proceeded from the Father, expounding from higher things whose he was, he said, whence they also say: We believe that you came forth from the Father. But what did he leave above, God and Father? For he does not say: I am not alone, because the Father is with me; and it is not to be understood that the Father suffered: for it was not he himself, but his man. That he came for the resurrection of the flesh? Glorify the Son, that the Son may glorify you, as you have given him power over all flesh, that everything which you have given him, he may give them eternal life. Therefore Christ is not only man, but God in man. That this is to have life, to believe in the Lord and in his Son: But this is eternal life, that they may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

That he existed before the world: And now glorify me, Father, with yourself, with the glory which I had before the world existed. That men are from God, yet not out of God: I have manifested your name to the men whom you gave me. From this it is manifest that not all were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word: Now they have known that all things which you have given me are from you. And what wonder, if men are from God, if also the flesh, since he himself formed it? What then? Is Christ also in this way? By no means. This whole passage establishes that men are from God, but not all. Again also this: that Christ existed before the foundation of the world, that the Father delivered all things to the Son, and if he also gave him the name, for he says: I have kept them in your name, those whom you gave me.

We have, therefore, that Christ holds the name of the Father, and that he is life, and has the power to give life. That he himself is life, and the Father is life, is said: The living Father sent me. And this is the substance of God and of Christ—therefore ὁμοούσια. Then it was said that Christ is light, and God is the true light: for these things pertain to understanding—is the Holy Spirit anything different? Nothing. That light, moreover, is not substance: thus therefore ὁμοούσια. And all things that God has, the Son has—therefore ὁμοούσια. But of this matter later. That he was born: For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, that I might reign. That the Holy Spirit is from Christ: Christ breathed upon them and said: Receive the Holy Spirit. All these things are according to the Gospel of John. Let us also look at a few things according to Matthew; for I pass over similar ones.

That even Satan confesses Christ to be the Son of God, for he says: If you are the Son of God. And he says this three times: but in the second instance, confessing concerning the Son of God, he tempted him to see whether he himself were Christ, for he says: You are the Son of God, cast yourself down. For it is written: that he will give his angels charge over you. He confesses; he who says, over you, confesses the Son of God, and confesses this one. Then the demons confess again. Demons also went out from many, crying out and saying: You are the Son of God.

Hear, O Arian, hear, O Eusebius, and hear all of you, Arians, and especially you who say that Christ derives his being from him who is: but according to the understanding of the serpent—because the Father, who is ὃν, made Christ—therefore saying that the Son derives his being from that which is. Hear therefore: Satan, to whom he promised the kingdom of the world, calls him Son of God; he knows all things that are in the heights above, for he is from there. For what happened after the third temptation, that the devil departed, having confessed him to be the Son of God? That the demons also said he was the Son of God: What have we to do with you, Son of God, have you come? That one ought not to doubt concerning Christ: Blessed is he who is not scandalized in me.

That the Son has all things of the Father: All things have been delivered to me by the Father; no one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal him. What is the reason that only the Son knows the Father, or that the Father knows the Son?—unless because no one possesses his substance. For all things that are in glory, and in divinity, in power, in action itself, both know the Father and worship him. But because to know, that is, to understand the very God himself, is the very being that is his being, that is, his substance: therefore no one knows God except the Son, who has the same substance and has it from him. For in no other way could anyone see, as it was said: The Only-begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him. What is it to be God?

For being in the bosom and in the μήτρᾳ of substance, ὁμοούσιον, each of them, consisting both in substance and in divinity, each in the other, and each knows the other.

What then do you also say, Valentine? The first αἰών proceeded, and wishing to see the Father could not. John says that the Son is in the bosom of the Father and is always there. Therefore he not only sees the Father, but is also always in the Father. That it is a great sin to speak against the Holy Spirit: Every blasphemy and sin will be forgiven to men. And if anyone shall have spoken a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him: but whoever shall have spoken against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, neither in this age nor in the age to come. First it must be observed that the Holy Spirit is of God. For he said: By the Spirit of God I cast out demons. Then concerning the blasphemy and sin which the Jews committed, as he said, what kind it is against the Holy Spirit. First, that blasphemy and sin against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven to anyone.

Sin is to speak blasphemously with deliberate will. But this does not suffice. He said a second thing: even if someone unwillingly says any word whatsoever, which is not sin, it will not be left to him in any age. If therefore the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit has all things from the Son of God; one substance in three from the substance of the Father, ὁμοούσια: therefore three, that is, simultaneously οὐσία. For if the Spirit of the Father is substance; and the Son is Spirit, but the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Father—in what order is the Holy Spirit placed? For he both precedes, if he is the Spirit of the Father; and follows, if he has what he is from the Son.

And again the Son, insofar as he is Spirit, is one with the Father, and the Father is in the Son, and all are existing in one another: therefore they are ὁμοούσιοι, having one and the same substance, and always simultaneously ὁμοούσιοι, having their own subsistence according to action by divine disposition.

But these things which have been said in the Gospels again suffice for us. That Christ the Son of God, the Savior himself, says: How do they say that Christ is the son of David, and David himself says in the book of Psalms: The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand? David therefore calls him Lord, and how is he his son? In this he himself demonstrates that Christ, even before he was in my flesh, is the Spirit of God and is God. Let us therefore also look at the Apostle; for he says of Christ to the Romans: That Christ is God in the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God. Without doubt this is of Christ: for he himself will judge—because before God τὸ μὴ ὂν is nothing. Paul introduces an example from Genesis: Because I have made you a father of many nations before him in whom you believed, God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which are not as though they were.

That the Spirit of God is the Spirit of Christ, and the same is the Holy Spirit: But you are not in the flesh but in the spirit: if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you: but if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his. The power of the whole mystery is in baptism, its efficacy in the receiving of the Spirit. If this is so, it was said: you are in the Spirit—which the Holy Spirit gave to you. Who is this Spirit? He added: If indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Who is this? But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ. Therefore the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ are the same. In which it must also be observed that the Spirit of Christ is the same as Christ himself. For it follows: But if Christ is in you. Whence also the Spirit of God is God. Therefore one substance, because the same Spirit: but in three—therefore ὁμοούσιον.

Whence not a similar substance, because the same Spirit: nor yet on that account are the same passions also in the Father, because there is one Spirit: for passions are, as it were, only in the two, because they are now Spirits who have proceeded forth.

But these things more fully afterward: Because from him, and through him, and in him are all things. From him: is said, as of the Father: Through him: as of Christ: In him, as of the Holy Spirit. But elsewhere he says thus: In him, through him, unto him. That Christ is God: Of whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed through all ages of ages. To the Corinthians, first epistle: For if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of majesty. That Christ, just as God, is incomprehensible, or scarcely comprehensible, but also as it was said: What eye has not seen, what ear has not heard, and what has not ascended into the heart of man, which God has prepared for those who love him. Then he says that the Spirit understands these things: As the spirit of man knows the things that are in man, so also the things that are of God, the Spirit of God.

If he says these things of Christ, it appears from these that it is not easy to know the generation of the Son. For neither does nous, mind grasp the Son of God, nor can it know the manner of his generation. But if it concerns his presence, even this is above the eye, above hearing, above νοῦν. But if, as some understand, he says these things about what God has prepared for those who love him: much more wonderful is the generation, and scarcely comprehensible. If these things are thus without understanding, what could you say from them—that Christ is from things that are not, or that Christ is of similar substance? These are comprehensible and defined things. But indeed to be ὁμοούσιον is not only incomprehensible, but also has many contradictions. For if ὁμοούσιος and he himself is also unbegotten: if ὁμοούσιος, how is one different, how is the Father one and the Son another? If ὁμοούσιος, how did one suffer and the other not? For from this come the Patripassians.

But since the Spirit who dwells in us searches all things by the will of God, and even the things of God, the manner of the divine generation will be found, according to which both ὁμοούσιος will be made manifest, and those objections will be done away with: For we have received not the spirit of the world, but of God. That the same Spirit is God and Christ, and the Holy Spirit, and the same one Spirit: Wherefore I make known to you, that no one speaking in the Spirit of God says, Anathema to Jesus. And no one can say Lord Jesus, except in the Holy Spirit. Now there are diversities of graces, but the same Spirit; and there are diversities of ministries, but the same Lord, and there are diversities of operations, but the same God, who works all things in all. If therefore no one in the Spirit says Anathema to Jesus, the Spirit is both of God and of the Holy Spirit.

Concerning which he says the same thing: And no one can say Lord Jesus, except in the Holy Spirit. Moreover he says further that diversities of graces are from the Spirit, graces indeed from God, but diversities from the Spirit; for the Holy Spirit is another existence in action, ὁμοούσιον in substance, since the Holy Spirit is as it were also the ministry of the Lord: for he himself distributes ministries, working in the operation of life, and he himself is in his own substance according to the operation of life. But in substance ὁμοούσιος. That operations are from God as well as the Spirit. Now operations are many, but in all things the same God. God differs in this, that he himself makes the diversities of operations, yet himself working all things in all; for since he himself is the cause of operation, he makes the diversities of operations, and he himself, God, since he is Spirit according to substance, being ὁμοούσιον with action, therefore all three are ὁμοούσια in action and ὁμοούσια in substance.

That all three are Spirit, and that the Spirit is from the Father: from the Father is substance.

That Christ is life, and that he is spirit, has been said: But the spirit gives life. And there again it says: But the Lord is spirit. That Christ is from God, not from those things which are not: That the illumination of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not shine upon them. If Christ is the image of God, Christ is from God. For an image is an imaginal image. But God is the imaginal; therefore Christ is the image. But the imaginal image is the Image, and what is imaginal is primary. The image, however, is secondary, and other in substance from that which is imaginal. But we do not understand image there as in sensible things.

For here we do not understand image as substance: for it is a kind of shadow in the air, or in water, a figure through some corporeal light of corporeal effluence by reflection, itself through itself nothing, and having no motion of its own, only the imaginal substance, having neither body, nor sense, nor understanding, and when that in which it has been figured is removed or disturbed, it is altogether nothing and nowhere. In another manner, therefore, we say that Christ is the image of God: to be first, and to be through himself; and to be that which is understanding; and we call him a living image, and life-giving, and the seed of all things that are: for he is the λόγος through whom all things are, and without him nothing. But all these things are also attributed to God: therefore God and the λόγος are ὁμοούσιοι. And why is the λόγος the image of God?

Because God is in hiddenness, for he is in potency; but the λόγος is in manifestation: for he is action; which action, having all things that are in potency, by life and knowledge according to motion produces and manifests all things: on account of which the action is the image of all things that are in potency, perfecting the form of each of those things that are in potency, and existing through itself, for from nothing there is no substance. For every being has an inseparable form; or rather the form itself is the substance: not that the form is prior to what it is to be, but that the form makes definite that which is the being of form. For what it is to be is the cause of the form's being in that which is being. And therefore what it is to be is the father. What is form, is the son.

Again, what it is to be itself bestows upon the form what it is to be: but the being of the form is the image of what it is to be. This is according to cause: the first what-it-is-to-be is ὁμοούσιον; therefore being belongs to both of them, and the second being is the image of the first being without time: I say first and second according to cause. Each is other from the other with respect to what it is to be as father and son. But because the causality does not run backward, therefore the father is father and the son is son. But in that which is being, both are together, and always both, ὁμοούσιον with respect to what it is to be, but with respect to what is potency and action, the father is potency, the son is action. The son therefore is born, having in action and potentially the being, just as the action itself has potentially the being in itself, which is to be potentially.

But that he has it, understand according to the intellect, for he does not have it, but he himself is it. For all things there are simple. But I have said according to the Gospel: whatsoever the father has, the same the son has. According to this reasoning both the father is in the son and the son is in the father, and both are ὁμοούσιον, and the son is the image of the father; for the very being of the two is ὁμοούσιον. But that each is other from the other, one is imaginal and the other image. And again, that each is other from the other, one is unbegotten, the other begotten; but these things are without time, because these things are in the beginning, and from eternity unto eternity. Neither therefore those who call Christ a man, nor those who say he is from nothing, nor those who say he is from some point in time, nor others of this kind have any place in this understanding.

But let us also consider this. Moses says the word of God: Let us make man according to our image and according to our likeness. God says these things, let us make: he says it to a co-worker, necessarily to Christ, and he says according to the image; therefore man is not the image of God, but according to the image: for Jesus alone is the image of God, but man is according to the image, that is, the image of the image. But he says according to our image. Therefore both the father and the son are one image. If the son is the image of the father, and the father himself is the image, they are ὁμοούσιοι by image. For the image itself is substance: for there being and acting are one and simple; and so also substance and form are.

But since substance is image, the father and son are ὁμοούσιοι, the father existing according to what it is to be, also as what it is to act: but the son existing according to what it is to act, also as what it is to be, each having that which it is, according to what it most is, what it is to be being more ancient than what it is to act. But the father is what it is to be, and most of all the father is what it is to be itself, in which action also inheres potentially. And again, as what it is to act is the younger, the son is younger, as younger than what it is to be, having the son in what it is to act from the first what it is to be. On account of which there is one father according to what it is to be, one son according to what it is to act, each existing simultaneously in both, as has been demonstrated: therefore ὁμοούσιοι.

Let us say therefore: Let us make man, and to the image—what is that? And what is to our? Then what is this; and according to likeness: for it was so said, signifying a difference both of image and of likeness. Although there is much question about what he meant when he said: Let us make man according to our image, it must now be conceded that it is about the soul of man, or about both, for whether about the soul alone, nothing else is understood except about the soul: for it alone is according to the image of God and according to the likeness. We say that the image of God is Christ, and that he is the λόγος himself. According to the image of God, therefore, we call the mind rational. For the soul is not the λόγος, but rational: and because Christ is wholly life: but the soul lives, because life has substance. The soul therefore is according to the image of God: but Christ is of God.

But what do we understand by this, according to likeness? Just as the λόγος is substance, as has been declared: because both to be the λόγος is itself being, and being itself; but the λόγος is to act, and is to be in motion, and because all that very being and acting is simple there, this is what it is to be, which is substance there; so also the soul, in that it is soul, this is what it is to be, and to be substance; but that it is self-moving is the image of substance: or rather it is itself the substance according to the form of substance, and therefore in the definition of the soul when we say, what is the soul? We say properly and substantially that it is that which moves itself. It is clear also from this that the image is substantial, or rather is the substance of the soul, that it moves itself. But this is the rational, to be rational according to the image of the λόγος.

Therefore it is one thing to be according to the image, which indeed belongs to substance; but another thing to be according to likeness, which is not substance, but a name in substance declarative of quality. But just as we have received God, so also the image, that is, Christ, as substance: but perfection we understand as signifying quality. And if like signifies quality necessarily, how do we say that the soul is rational, and perfectly rational according to the likeness of perfection in God? We say the soul is perfect according to the image, therefore now also in the world; but according to likeness afterward by faith in God and in Jesus Christ, such as it would have been if Adam had not sinned. In that therefore in which it is rational, it is according to reason according to the image; in that in which it is to be perfect, according to likeness. Therefore it is one thing to be the image, and another to be according to the image, and still more another to be according to likeness.

What blasphemy therefore is it to say that the Father and the Son are ὁμοούσιον: since the Son is image according to substance, not according to likeness? But now thus.

Let us go on to other things. That in Christ there is creation, but not one only. For there are three creations: one indeed when all things were created through Christ; the second is our creation in Christ according to baptism, but in Christ, and another transformation takes place in Christ. Whence it was said: if any one is a new creation in Christ; because before Christ was in the flesh: Who knew not sin, for us he made sin. What was the time in which he knew not sin? Before he was in the flesh, to the Ephesians.

That before Christ was in the flesh: Blessed be the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus, according as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world. That Christ existed before he was in the flesh: Because you were at that time without Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel. That Christ is God: Having no hope, and without God. That is, without Christ. That it is the spirit who gathers all things together: Eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. One body, and one spirit. One Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God and father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all. To the Galatians, that Christ is God: Paul an apostle, not from men, nor through man, but through Jesus Christ, and God the father.

And again: The gospel which was preached by me is not according to man; for I did not receive it from man, but through a revelation of Jesus Christ. To the Philippians, that Christ is Spirit (Philipp. I, 19): And in the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. That the son is ὁμοούσιος and equal to the father: For let this mind be in you which was also in Christ, who, existing in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of man, and found in figure as a man. First, let the Photinians, and those before him, who call Jesus a man and made solely from man, recognize the impious blasphemy against Christ, who existed in the form of God. When existing? Before he came into a body: for he said that he emptied himself and took the form of a servant: he existed therefore also before he became man. And what was he?

The λόγος of God, the form of God. What is this, existing equal to God? It is of his very substance and power: for he said he was equal. For equal is declarative both of magnitude and of quantity: but the magnitude of substance is the magnitude of mass, for quality has no magnitude, nor does it have from substance what it is to be. But only the quantum of substance is quantum in magnitude. And therefore the blessed Paul, declaring the substance of God, calls all things quantitative: That you may know the height, the length, the breadth, the depth of God.

22. According to these things therefore Christ exists equal to God

For he did not say "similar to God," which does not signify substance, but something else in substance, toward likeness according to accident, just as man is according to likeness to God, while the substance of God is one thing and the substance of man another. From this it is impious to say that man is equal to God. If therefore Christ is the form of God, and form is substance—for form and image are the same thing—and the form and image of God is the λόγος, and the λόγος is always toward God, the λόγος is ὁμοούσιος with God, toward whom and in the beginning the λόγος always is. That image and substance are the same, and that what is called ὁμοούσιον is simultaneously with substance, is made clear from the following. For the Apostle said: He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. Did he take only the form of man, and not also the substance of man?

For he put on flesh as well, and was in the flesh, and suffered in the flesh, and this is the mystery, and this is what is salvific for us. If therefore he emptied himself, and Christ emptied himself, then Christ existed even before he was in the flesh. And if he existed before that, since he emptied himself, he himself put on flesh. For why did he empty himself, if, as you say, O Marcellus, or Photinus, he assumed a man as though he were a fourth thing? For it would have been necessary for the λόγος who existed to remain, to assume a man, and in some manner to breathe spirit into his actions. But he said, he emptied himself. Rightly so: he who was about to put on man. What then is it, he emptied himself? That the universal λόγος should not be universal in that which is the being of the λόγος, of flesh, and should become flesh. He did not therefore assume a man, but was made man.

Form therefore is substance, together with the substance in which the form is; therefore ὁμοούσιος with the form of the principal substance, and potentially prior, because that substance furnishes the form its being, and its being in substance, and its always being together: for without the one the other does not exist. According therefore to the fact that form is from substance, the form which is of the substance is substance; this is the Son of God. That form is substance, and that substance is always with form—always the Father, always the Son toward the Father, that is, the λόγος toward God, and this always. But since this form is substance, which is image, and is the λόγος, whom we say is the Son of God, inasmuch as the λόγος is of all things that exist, he is the λόγος. For the universal λόγος is the Son of God, by whose power all things come forth and proceed into generation and subsist.

His power therefore, proceeding and existing simultaneously with the Father, makes and generates all things, and this very power, in that it precedes him—which indeed is called action—itself suffers whatever it suffers, according to the matters and substances to which it furnishes what is proper for their being, while the universal λόγος who is always toward the Father and ὁμοούσιος remains unchangeable and impassible. And therefore it is said of the Son that he is both impassible and passible, but the passion is in the procession, and most of all at the furthest point of the procession, that is, when he was in the flesh: for those things are not called passions—generation from the Father, the first movement, and being the creator of all things—for since these are substantial, or rather are substances themselves: for the λόγοι of existing things are according to the power of their substance: they are therefore not passions.

But enough of these things. And again, what do the Photinians say? If the Son is ὁμοούσιος with the Father, how did God from Mary have a son born as man? And what do the Arians say? If the Son is ὁμοούσιος and the λόγος, and the Son is substance simultaneously with the Father? For it is impious to say: There was a time when he was not. And this is impious: that he is from things that do not exist. And those again are impious who say that the Son is ὁμοούσιος with the Father. For substance, insofar as it is substance, is not other, so as to be similar to another: for it is the same in two, and is not similar, but is itself. But when it is other, it is not called similar in respect of being substance, but according to some quality. It is therefore impossible and incongruous for anything to be ὁμοούσιον.

Furthermore, what is similar, which exists in otherness, either exists in the same substance divided into two parts, or in another: for to the extent that it is capable of being dissimilar, to that extent it is capable of being similar; but substance, insofar as it is substance, does not admit of being similar or dissimilar: but insofar as it is receptive, it is said to be similar or dissimilar in quality, while the substance remains in its own power or existence, either the same or diverse. But what of that substance, whether of God or of the λόγος—is it receptive of dissimilarity, so as to be said to be similar? But that is impossible; therefore not similar either, therefore not ὁμοούσιον. Let us consider this also: whether substance is similar in the same genus, as of man or of animal—for man is similar to man, and animal to animal—or in another genus, as stone to man, or statue to horse. How then do they say these two things are ὁμοούσια?

If in the same genus, as in animal, the substance is more prior; but if in the substance itself, either divided or born from another higher substance; but either way it is either subaltern, with one subject to the other, or divided—and division yields neither equals nor unequals, but has each as perfect, two perfects, and a perfect from a perfect. Not therefore in similarity itself, since similarity too is something; if that is so, it must necessarily be in another genus. Whence then, or is it something else? From nothing therefore: or two principles—but neither of these holds: since there is one principle, and the cause of all things that exist. The Father according to the λόγος, who was in the beginning, and therefore always was: he was not therefore from nothing. But if that too holds, then neither in the fact of being another genus is there similarity.

But how does he say that Jesus did not consider it robbery to be equal to God, but that he did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped? For those things which are equal by nature are not equal through their own divinity, but those which have been made equal by fortune are equal as by robbery. Great confidence therefore, and truly natural divinity, with respect to being equal, not to consider it robbery to be equal to God.

But enough of these things. And again, what does he say to the Colossians: that Jesus is first before all things. For his generation is twofold: one indeed in divinity and sonship, hidden, divine, and to be understood by faith; the other, coming into flesh and bearing flesh. That first generation is the manifestation of power from God alone; but this latter is rather an assumption of flesh, not a generation. If therefore he is prior, the Savior is not from man; if it is a generation, he is not a fabrication; if moreover the generation is from God, he is not from nothing; if Jesus is the image of God, he is ὁμοούσιος: for image is substance with substance, of which and in which the image is. And that image is substance, generated from the substance in which it is or subsists, for the declaration of the inner power: hence the Father who is within, hence the Son who is without.

Again, that the Son is the λόγος, is substance hastening into action—for the λόγος is life, and the λόγος is intelligence—he proceeded into the substance of intelligible and material things, and therefore the action of the λόγος himself, on account of the weakness of those receiving him, is also passible, or rather is called passible: for the blessed Paul says of Christ: Who delivered us from the power of darkness, and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love; in whom we have redemption and remission of sins: who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn before every creature.

Because in him all things were created, which are in heaven and which are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were established through him and in him, and he is before all things, and all things consist in him: he is the head of the body, the Church, which is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he himself might be preeminent: because in him it pleased all fullness to dwell, and through him to reconcile and restore all things to himself, making peace through the blood of his cross, whether things on earth or things in heaven. The whole mystery is stated in this exposition: that he is ὁμοούσιον, he declares from the fact that he is the image of the invisible God; that the Son is firstborn, that he said he was not created, before every creature—for if he too had been created, he would not have said, before every creature; and he properly said firstborn, which pertains to the Son.

Let us therefore join the sense: firstborn before every creature. Therefore he is here begotten as Son; that is creature, as what has been created: not however that he afterwards begot another, but that he is firstborn before every creature. But every creature includes both those in heaven and those on earth, visible and invisible. The Son therefore is without creature; therefore the Son by nature and by generation. That Christ is the λόγος, and that the λόγος is the cause of all things that exist, to the end that they may exist; and therefore it is said that all things were founded in him and through him: for the λόγος is both the cause of being for things that exist, and is the receptacle of those things that are in him. That moreover all things are in him—the receptacle itself is filled with all things that exist, and is itself also the fullness: and therefore, all things through him, and all things unto him, and all things in him.

If therefore the Son was from nothing, how can these things be so? Without faith therefore it is impossible for such things to be so. And again, if he is not ὁμοούσιον, how are both the Father fullness and the Son? For all things together are fullness; and is the fullness ὁμοούσιον as with souls and other created things? Altogether impossible. For indeed ὁμοούσιον, as has been said, exists in otherness: for another substance cannot be called similar in substance unless it is not in that substance itself, but if there is another substance of that power, and all things that exist have their being from it, it is impossible for the whole to be one: but now, since God the Father and the Son the λόγος exist as ὁμοούσιον, because through the λόγος all things are called into one, and all things are from God, and God is all in all, while the Father exists without passion, as has been shown in the same place.

That Jesus is the λόγος, who is also the life-giving spirit of all things that exist, the fount of eternal life, coming according to the mystery into flesh, and in the death of sinners conquered death, and raised the dead to eternal life. That God is the power of that fontal eternal life itself, and therefore the Son is the λόγος, the fount of eternal life, existing as paternal power, the firstborn from the dead, and therefore all things converted to him will become one, that is, spiritual things: therefore the Son of God is ὁμοούσιος, because he is the fount of eternal life, just as the Father is his power, and because through the Son himself all things will become one, since all things are through him.

That Jesus, that is the λόγος, is also a seed, and as it were the element of all things that exist, and most of all now in the ἐνέργεια and manifestation of things that exist, because in him all the fullness of divinity dwells bodily, that is, in operation substantially: for in the Father all things dwell potentially. And therefore Jesus the λόγος is the image of God the Father, this very thing that he is, he is power, now being this, namely to be action: for everything that goes forth into action is both the image of what exists potentially, and what exists in action is the son of what exists potentially; from these the Son and Father are ὁμοούσιον.

That all things are from Jesus, and therefore all things are from God—all things I say, whatsoever exist—and not holding the head Christ, from whom the whole body, supplied and brought forth through its joints and connections, grows with the increase of God; for all things are one, even if the things that exist are different: for the body of the whole universe is not like a heap, which heap is made a body by the mere contact of grains with one another, but most of all in that its parts are mutually interlocked with one another, as a chain holds a body together: for the chain is God, Jesus the Spirit, nous, mind the soul, angels, and then all corporeal things supplied. Therefore the fullness has indeed been produced.

If therefore all things are one, inasmuch as they are in substance, much more are God and the Son, not only consubstantiated in substance but consubstantiated together. For all beings are consubstantiated in Jesus, that is, ἐν τῷ λόγῳ, as it is said: All things are founded in him: yet these are not ὁμοούσια. For that first being which is God is not as it were an οὐσία, nor is the image, which is the Son, as it were a substance, but only the being of both of these together, which is the being of divinity for the sake of causation, is the being for those things which exist: therefore God and λόγος alone are ὁμοούσια. In the first letter to Timothy: For indeed it is confidently a great mystery of godliness, which was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, appeared to Angels, was preached among the Gentiles, was believed in the world, was received in glory.

This is not about the first generation but about the second: for this is the great mystery, that God emptied himself, though he was in the form of God; then that he suffered, first by being in the flesh, and by having the lot of human generation, and by being lifted up on the cross. But these wondrous things would not have come to pass if those things had been either from man alone, or from nothing, or from God according to a created work. For what did he empty, if he did not exist before he was in the flesh? And what was it that he said was equal to God? But how equal, one who would have been a created work from nothing? Therefore it is a great mystery, that he was manifested in the flesh. He existed therefore before he was in the flesh, but he said manifested in the flesh: for he existed intelligibly and intellectually; but then he was manifested sensibly and in the flesh.

For the power of τοῦ λόγου according to his own substance is of life, always substance, according to which he is life, and gives life, and restores life, and does not permit those things which he gives life to remain in death. In the first movement therefore he brought all things into life, and this is the descent of τοῦ λόγου, because going forth from the Father, he gave his own proper life by paternal power to those who are in the heavens, and to Angels, or thrones, or glories, and such things as these: for he is the λόγος of all things, through whom all things were made. And again, because there could be no giving of life unless there were matter for the power of giving life, dead matter of nature was made, which, having been given life, sent forth its own forces by divine vivification, and corrupted man, but the λόγος, perfect life, fulfilled the mystery, and appeared in matter, that is in the flesh and in the darkness.

For how was it possible for that which had existed to appear, unless it appeared in the flesh, that is, in sense? The λόγος therefore, having effected all things, and being in all things, both begot all things, saved them, and reigned, existing as eternal life in the spirit: Therefore he was justified, he appeared to Angels, coming therefore he was preached among the Gentiles. He existed therefore before he came: He was believed in the world, for thus also Isaiah declares in prophecy: Egypt has labored, and the merchandise of the Ethiopians and of the Sabaeans; Men of the Most High shall walk in thee, and shall be thy servants, and shall follow behind thee bound in manacles, and shall worship thee and shall pray to thee, because God is in thee, and there is no God outside thee: for thou art God, and we knew it not, the God of Israel.

Preached therefore in the world, received in the glory of divinity both from the beginning, and at the beginning, and afterward, and always from eternity, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Consider also this, regarding ὁμοούσιον, how the Spirit says to Isaiah: God is in thee, and there is no God outside thee: which he says to the Son, our Lord, manifest is God in thee, that is, what was said: The Father is in me. But the other, and there is no God outside thee; in this word he foretells all heresies. To this, what do all the Jews say? And those who say that Jesus is a man? And those who say he is from nothing? And there was a time when he was not? For God was and always one God. For if Jesus is the λόγος and the λόγος is always with God; and the λόγος is one God; and there is no other, therefore God is ὁμοούσιον. And again if the λόγος is God who is being, and of this God, and of that which is being, the power and wisdom is Jesus, that is the λόγος, one God, and there is no other.

Therefore the unity of λόγος and God, and being itself, and the being of λόγος, subsisting simultaneously in the same being, and therefore ὁμοούσιον. But what it is for the λόγος to be, that is, to be life and nous, mind: for these are the power and wisdom of God, which is the Savior Jesus, is a going forth and a generation, and a procession into substance as sonship, and an effulgence and refulgence into action. But this was not when it was not, but always was: therefore the Father is always, the Son is always.

And the Father only Father, and the Son only Son: but with respect to the Father, because that which is being, which is God and Father, is the cause to τῷ λόγῳ for that which is his being, but not conversely; and it is proper to him who is the first being to be at rest; but it is proper to τοῦ λόγου to move and to act, and not to be moved locally, nor by translation into a place, but by a movement which is better and more divine than that of the soul, which by its own movement both gives life and begets intelligences, subsisting in itself, and not severed from its own power in operation.

But these things. And again: For there are also other things in Holy Scripture, that Jesus is God, that he is before the ages: that he is Son, and Son by nature, and Son in the flesh, and most especially called Son in the flesh, because then he saved all beings, and then conquered the enmities of divinity, and all death, and that he himself suffered according to movement; but the Father not according to cessation. If these things are so, only this remains: how the Son is to be understood as ὁμοούσιον, or ὁμοιούσιον, to the Father: for this dogma has now been awakened, and indeed long ago tossed about in rumors, that one ought not to say ὁμοούσιον, but rather ὁμοιούσιον: now this dogma has been discovered. But they dare also to say this, that it is ancient—I do not say how ancient: for it is enough for me that it was given not from an age, nor from the presence of Jesus, but anciently, before a hundred years, I grant, and more. Where did it lie hidden?

Where did it sleep for eleven years before now? When in the city of Nicaea the faith was confirmed by more than 300 Bishops, excluding the Arians, in which synod the lights of the whole Church of the whole world were present. An ancient dogma therefore which had fled: if it did not exist, it stands convicted, and has now begun: if it did exist, it was either silenced by contention, or put to flight by the judgment of knowledge and truth: perhaps then you, as patron of the dogma, were not only alive but were a bishop: you were silent, and your associates and disciples and fellow-teachers were silent, and for the whole time afterward, until the Emperor was at Rome, you were present and heard many contrary things, being a table-companion of those men whom you now anathematize: angered perhaps because they wrote the faith without you. Or were you sent as a delegate under compulsion from your masters in defense of a betrayal?

But what difference does it make, whether thirty, or seventy, or more, and whether the same faith was established more often for the destruction of other αἱρέσεις? Since it is one, and beginning from one, and has operated until now. But you write these things and say: such as Paul of Samosata, and Marcellus, and Photinus, and now Valens and Ursacius, and others of this kind found in heresy have been destroyed. Were they saying ὁμοούσιον? No. But how were they blaspheming? Samosatenus as Arius: from nothing, and that there was a time when he was not, that the Son is a created work, and altogether in every way unlike the Father. What of Marcellus and Photinus? That Jesus is only a man from man, and that the Triad is outside Jesus. And now Valens and Ursacius are the remnants of Arius. Their own blasphemy therefore, on account of which they were cast out. But then you conquered them for this reason, that you say ὁμοούσιον, for they did not say ὁμοούσιον, and thus they were conquered.

Let us therefore consider also this which you say, and how you say it: the Africans and all the Orientals think thus; why therefore do you write to them, that they should cast ὁμοούσιον out of the holy Church? They say therefore this: It was not necessary to write to them: if it was necessary to write, it was necessary also to persuade them, not only by command, but by reasons and by the holy scriptures: for you ought not only to destroy ὁμοούσιον, but also to establish ὁμοιούσιον. But now, above and below in the overturning of ὁμοούσιον, you say nothing other than that those who say this are necessarily compelled to confess that substance pre-exists, and that thus the Father and Son are expelled. First, it is not necessary. For God is both substance and the cause of substance, and pre-exists all things which are, and all existentiality, and all essentiality: for from him are all things, both those which exist and their names.

From this God therefore, who is the principle of substance, the Son who is ὁμοούσιος is substance in him and with him. Indeed as his form who is, and as image and character, without which God is neither understood nor ascends to understanding: not however that he is not what simple God is: and not that these things are as it were something other, which are in himself, or as accidents, but that this very thing is the being of God: and thus to be ὁμοούσιον is what being is, and the Father is what being is. But that the Son is thus being—for God is what being is, and thus being is the λόγος—and this is what he always signifies when he says: I and the Father are one. And: The Father is in me, and I am in the Father. And: He who has seen me has seen the Father also, for they are ὁμοούσια. What therefore does he mean when he says: substance pre-exists, it is ὁμοούσιον?

But what if it is ὁμοούσιον, it is not necessary to understand thus that a substance pre-exists from which these two similar substances were made? And according to your reasoning, you yourself fall into the very same thing which you fear in ὁμοούσιον. Or is it permitted to you alone to understand ὁμοούσιον as the Father giving substance to the Son; but for us there is no such conception of ὁμοούσιον, that the Father is the cause for the Son to exist, that God is substance, and you yourself confess ὁμοούσιον: for you say that both the Father and the Son exist. Who is like to whom? According to dignity, and the dignity of names, is the Son like the Father? But yet also the Father like the Son: for thus all relative things are, if this is likeness, and we say ὁμοούσιον, we say that the Son is like the Father; and how shall we receive the saying of Isaiah: for he says: Before me there was no other God, and after me there shall be none like me.

What then is the λόγος? Before God, or after God, or with God? If before God, then God is not unbegotten, nor is God the Father, nor the principle of principles. If after God, οὐκ ὅμοιος, but a similar, other God. But if you say that this is impious—not only in power, dignity, and deity, but also in substance: (what is it to be similar in substance? From that very substance itself, according to what that same substance is, it is the same, not similar: for similarity is produced by quality, which similarity is a similarity in colour, bearing, affection, virtue, and form. But Jesus, that is, the λόγος, is the image of God, not a likeness. He is called the image of God, for God is not the image, but God by image and substance is God—not as two, for there is one substance and one image, whence one God, and one λόγος, and one Father, one Son, and these are one: for this one and that one are one, not two; and therefore simultaneously, and in substance, that which is the other one, and therefore this is not another one, but rather and solely one. But these things aside.) And again, what do we say substance is, as the wise men and the ancients have defined it?

That which is a subject, that which is something, that which is not in another; and they give a distinction between existence and substance, and they say that existence and existentiality is a pre-existing subsistence without accidents, in the pure and sole things themselves which are in that which is solely to be what subsists; but substance is the subject together with all those things which are accidents, existing in it separably, yet in usage receiving both existence and substance, wherever in the same manner we use these names to signify that something is. Let it be so then, whether in eternal things or in worldly things: for it is permitted to speak either of existence, or of substance, or of what is truly to be substance: there is motion there, and not simply motion, but the first motion, which is itself both genus and rest, and therefore is itself substance. But these things belong to a longer and different inquiry.

Now however we confess that there is substance there, which has according to its proper meaning this: to be something that is ὄν; against those who say that the name of substance is not found in the holy scriptures. Indeed perhaps not "substance" itself, but things named from substance are there, for from what else is ἐπιούσιον derived than from substance: Give us our ἐπιούσιον bread, our daily bread? Because Jesus is life, and his body is life, but the body is bread, as it was said: Give us bread from heaven. ἐπιούσιον signifies from that very substance, or in that very substance, that is, the bread of life. So again also Paul in the Epistle to Titus: A people περιούσιον, around substance, that is, a people subsisting around life, as is also said in the oblation: Cleanse for yourself a people living around you, zealous of good works, coming around your substance. It seems to me that the same is signified in the prophet Jeremiah, where he says (acc.

To LXX): For who has stood in the substance of the Lord, and has seen his word? Who has given ear and heard? And a little after he says: And if they had stood in the substance—but in substance they write "substance," not "insubstance." But if anyone understands the meaning correctly, he finds nothing other than this: If anyone has stood in that which belongs to God's being, that is, in substance, which in that very substance the Son is ὁμοούσιος, he immediately sees his λόγον; for we ought to make the mind, τὸν νοῦν, stand inwardly in something that goes no further, in the substance of God, that is, in substance, and immediately we comprehend both God and the λόγος, for they are ὁμοούσιον, and both together are one.

But consider. Let us suppose that the substance of God is said to be that which is to be, and that the being of τοῦ Ἰησοῦ is God—both piety and confession say so: what then is the substance of God? If substance is spoken of in worldly things, as animal, as man, it is necessary to say that in eternal things the substance is God, but you see that God himself, according to what we say, is either light, or spirit, or being itself, or the power of that which is to be, or universal intelligence, or the power of universal intelligence, or of universal life or action, or of other such things—in which he is the fountain of all those things which truly are, or which are. But the scriptures say that God is light, that he is spirit: and these signify substance, for they are not accidents; to what does being itself first happen as an accident, if this is an accident? But to nothing: for it is impossible that there be anything beyond being itself.

Therefore substance, according to what being is—light and spirit—which is simple and uncompounded, and there both the same light and spirit: but there is an image of light and spirit, not by the necessity of nature, but by the will of the greatness of the Father: for he himself circumscribed himself. And therefore it is said, you understand yourself, but also intelligible to the Son; the Son therefore in the Father is image, and form, and λόγος, and the will of the Father—according to what is the will of the Father, to another according to what is the will of the Father, the Son. For every will is an offspring; according to what is universal will, he is the only-begotten, for the λόγος of the whole fullness leapt forth at once from the power of God: that power, existing as λόγος, begot the λόγος, that is, brought it forth into manifestation and operation.

Thus therefore by the will of the Father, the will appeared—the λόγος himself, the Son: therefore the will of God is the λόγος with him who always is, and toward him that very will is sonship: the Father therefore is he whose will it is, but the Son is the will, and the will itself is the λόγος: therefore the λόγος is the Son. For the λόγος is not some kind of speech, but a power for creating something, conversing with those things which are to have being according to ὀντότητα—the proper substance to each according to its own virtue—and the λόγος himself is the form which is the knowledge of God: for through the λόγος alone does knowledge come about.

For which reason it was said that the λόγος is toward God, and the λόγος is the word, light from light, or spirit from spirit, and substance from substance—not first and second according to time, but according to what one is the cause to another, that it may be a power: always together, for the radiance of light is not cut off, but is always in the light, and existing as light itself the λόγος works all things, existing as λόγος, moving from itself, and always moving, having abundance: that of the Father being omnipotent.

What likeness then is there here, what likeness by counsel so that it may come to be and be generated, as you say, for the generation of the Son? The Father moving from itself, the Son generating himself from itself; but the Son generating himself from itself is the power of the Father: for the Son is will, for if the will itself is not self-generating, it is not will either: but since it is the will of God, indeed that very will which is generating is generated in God. And therefore God is the Father, the Son is the will, each is one, or rather both are one, and solely one—not by knowledge, but by simplicity: for the will having proceeded into active power, yet not departing from its own substance and the same motion: for these three are one there—substance, motion, will. The Father is substance, and according to that same thing, motion and will: again the Son is motion and will, and according to that same thing also substance, and this is ὁμοούσιος.

Let us take for the sake of example what I am now saying: for it is now necessary to speak thus, since many say that the body is in the soul, but now according to common usage of speech let the soul be in the body. The soul is in the human body; in that which it is as soul, it is substance, just as either matter or body. For these are the two substances in worldly things. And just as matter has form, that is, appearance, as body is, or something else; one thing indeed is concretely massed ὑλικῶς. For it is necessary that something be a certain quantity: however much therefore that which is material is—for matter is thus defined by quantity, so that it subsists and becomes substance, now existing as something.

In this manner also the soul, being an incorporeal substance, has definition and image: vital power and intellectual power, for it is of twofold power and of twin light: for it both vivifies by giving life to living beings, and has the mind τὸν νοῦν commingled with it, and ὁμοούσιον, and therefore all things are ὁμοούσια: for since substance and motion are simultaneously the same thing, the soul as subject, according to what it lives and vivifies, and according to what it understands, and intelligence is one motion—so that being itself one, which is its species, for it is defined by motion, and exists as one ὄν, with twofold power existing in one motion: of life and of intelligence—impassibly indeed these things, in action two, in one motion, that is, what is generated, and the only-begotten Son of the soul is itself life, itself existing as nous, mind, and the first power together with what it is for it to be life: for what it is, that is what life is: for that being is to this very thing what substance is, and life is, and is above life; for it does not vivify another, nor itself: for it does not receive this from another as though it were another, for this very thing of its being is for it to be moved, and to be motion; and what is motion, this is life; and what is life, this is intelligence.

For I call these substantial—motions, life, intelligence—naming none of the motions of sensible things, nor transition into place: these two therefore, life and intelligence, are ὁμοούσια with that which is being, that is, with the soul. These two are one motion, which indeed is the first power of life, for life is the form of being. For it defines the infinite being, which is the first power of motion, but the second power is motion itself; since what is defined is also comprehended by intelligence from life, the innate intelligence and substance being, according to what it is intelligence both subsisting and led forth through itself from the substance of life.

These two are one, and one according to motion; the Son is the only-begotten of the soul, the soul suffering nothing of passion according to what belongs to the soul: but this is either the mother or the father of the only-begotten Son, with the motion proceeding into twofold power, which alone suffers: for motion is passion, and passion is by motion, for in motion there is both motion and rest: but to be at rest in motion is passion, and to be in motion from rest is passion, therefore also motion: therefore all passion is by motion. But this is twofold, according to life and intelligence: according to life indeed passion, because it still needs another which it wishes to vivify, and therefore according to what it is a participant of it, it also suffers other passions even unto death.

But according to intelligence, because this too is in need of that which is intelligible, so that intelligence may subsist; it incurs rather more passions and weaknesses, and is rolled about in insensible things, and is led around through phantasy into false subsistence. These things therefore existing, these things suffering, the soul remains according to substance, preserving in the seed of motion the power of life and intelligence, by which ever remaining, life and intelligence are kindled—or rather it raises up—if the soul, raised up, rises again into the fountainhead of life, that is, into Christ, and into the fountainhead of intelligence, that is, into the Holy Spirit.

But these things are as in a likeness. For concerning God, and concerning the λόγος, that is, the Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, employing a more divine understanding, let us take up the ὁμοούσιον unity of these. First it must be inquired whether God and the being of God are the same, or something different. If the same, then he is both being and acting; but if the being of God is one thing and God's being God is another, then the being of God is pre-existent, inasmuch as it exists in potency toward that which truly is being, which is more truly that which being is: for potency, pre-existing all things, is both principle and prior to what is truly ὄν. But this they reckon to be blessed, to be altogether and in every way in rest: only in motion insofar as it is the cause for all things existing in whatever kind of motion.

And they say this is grasped by foreknowledge, which is itself nothing through itself, but by conception that which pre-exists is received. But Scripture, and all understanding, says that this God both is, and that before him there is nothing, who is both that which being is and that which acting is. This God we confess and worship, the principle of all things that are: for things that are, are by action; for before action they are not yet; for we receive God as active, as in the beginning God made heaven and earth, and made Angels, man, and all things in the heavens and on earth. This therefore is the true God and the only God, because he is God both in potency and in action, but in the eternal: as Christ is both in potency and in action, but now outwardly and openly.

The Father therefore is God, the first action, and the first existence and substance, and the principal τὸ ὄν, who by his own action from himself begets himself without beginning, always existing from himself, existing infinite, in every way perfect, omnipotent, immutable, always existing thus and in the same manner, substantial in himself: existing as λόγος to the end that all things might be, not as something else or as another, but coexisting simultaneously in simplicity, and by union is one: for that which the λόγος is, is itself that which being is, and by that very being, he is λόγος: for the λόγος himself is God, therefore one and ὁμοούσιον: for God is not without action, but God acts, as has been said. XXXIV. But the substance of God is an image, and an action, and a son, through which he is understood, and that he exists is declared: He who has seen me has seen the Father also. And this substance itself existing, having being, and from itself.

But since the cause for it is that in which it is, the image itself is his son, in whom it is by ineffable generation, and by a most unbegotten generation, or rather by an ever-generating generation: which Alexander also said. And he is called always Father, always Son coexisting simultaneously. Therefore also always consubstantial coexisting, existing as one, the Son is in the Father; but when he acts, he proceeds: when he proceeds, the Father is in the Son. But how do we say this? God and λόγος are one and united, and therefore ὁμοούσιον, but because God, according to what God is, is the potency of that which is, and is the cause of all things that are, toward that which being is, the λόγος is according to what he is: the λόγος is the paternal potency, toward making that which being is to subsist: the principal that which being is, and the principle, and the perfection.

For from that which is universal being, and above universal, all universal being, and being according to genera, and being according to species, and individuals, have their being from it. If therefore the λόγος has being—for the λόγος is that very thing which is being both to itself and as λόγος—therefore from that which is above universal being, being is: but the λόγος is the universal that which being is: but God is that which is above universal being, and the Son is that which is universal being: the Father therefore is above universal that which being is, therefore ὁμοούσιον in that which being is, toward that which being is, and the above-universal toward the universal: but this is also a procession; for from that which is above universal, the universal goes forth, and to one who understands more clearly it both goes forth and remains, for the universal is not abandoned.

Therefore also that which is universal subsists through itself and is within that which is above universal: it is therefore connected and inseparable; and this is called the radiance of light, having all things of light, but not receiving them, nor born, but connatural, ὁμοούσιος always existing. Not therefore by local motion, nor by change: for the Father is immutable, and the Son is immutable, and always Father, always Son, even if the Son is believed to be in the Father as an existing image, and as the form of that which being is, as has been said, or according to procession the Son is the radiance of light.

These things being so, and existing more as one—for radiance is the splendor of light, and itself has light in itself from the Father and is in the light and outside—therefore also the Son is in the Father, and because the splendor is joined to the light, the splendor is said to be more toward the light, not in the light; even if it shines back from the light it is in the light, and this signifies: In the beginning was the Λόγος, and the Λόγος was toward God: therefore ὁμοούσιον both Son and Father, and always these things, and from eternity, and unto eternity.

We say other things also. That the Λόγος is toward God is agreed. What is the λόγος? He through whom are all things, and in whom are all things, and unto whom are all things; that this one is also Jesus is agreed. That the λόγος is the Son of God, and the Son is Jesus, of whom Paul says: Who delivered us from the power of darkness, and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love. Who therefore is this Son? He himself, he says, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our sins. Who is this? He who was born of Mary. What then? Is that all? Is it not especially what was in him who was from Mary? He also existed before he was from Mary. But what does he introduce, who is the image of God? Is this only of Mary? No: for the image of God is from eternity an image.

If therefore in the Son we have hope, and he himself redeemed us through his blood; but he himself is the image of God; therefore the Son is the image of God. Do I say this alone? Not alone, but Paul also; for how does he say? The firstborn of every creature. Who is the firstborn? The Son. Who is the Son? The Son who is from Mary. Who is the Son from Mary? The firstborn of the whole creation. Who is the firstborn of the whole creation? He who is the image of God. For it is necessary that the firstborn before every creature be the image of God. But who is the image? The λόγος. Who is the λόγος? He who was in the beginning: for without an image, how is God? And who is the λόγος?: He who was toward God, and through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. How is the λόγος the image? And the λόγος the Son? And he himself the one who is from Mary?

Or rather he who is in him who is from Mary. From these things it is manifest, if the Son of God redeemed us through his blood, who is the Son from Mary, and he himself is the image of God; he is the Son of God: for if he is the firstborn of the whole creation, necessarily the Son—is it another? God forbid: for he is the only-begotten Son of God. It is therefore necessary that the same one himself be both the Son, and the image, and he who is from Mary. For how is the image of God the Son, if not the firstborn of every creature? And how is the image of God he who, as Son from Mary, was born after all things were made? It is therefore manifest that he himself is the firstborn. But what is that which was born of Mary?

It is not a creature: but if the Son of God, the image of God, was born before every creature, he himself is in him who was born of Mary. It is therefore manifest that he himself is the only-begotten.

After that it must be examined how the same one himself is both image and Son and λόγος. It is agreed that the image is the Son. For Paul said: the Son of God is the image of God. I say that he himself is the λόγος, of whom it was said: In the beginning was the λόγος. For Paul says how the Son is the firstborn of every creature, because in him were created all things, those in the heavens and those on earth, those visible and those invisible, whether Thrones, or Dominions, or Principalities, or Powers. All things were created through him and in him: and he is before all things, and all things hold together in him. You see what he said about the Son, that he is therefore the firstborn because all things were created from him, and through him, and in him. He therefore says three things from which, as has been said, all things are through him, which has always been given in confession to the τῷ λόγῳ.

If therefore Paul gave to the Son through him; but that very thing which is through him, John gave to the τῷ λόγῳ, the first Apostle and Evangelist: before all others the sayings are in harmony. What will there be to doubt, so that the Son should not be the λόγος? But the other two things which he gave to the Son, whose are they more properly? Necessarily of the τοῦ λόγου; for his power is the subsistence of all things that are. But if also this, that all things are in him; as has been said, that all things were created in him, and therefore all things are in him, because all things will be made spiritual, which Paul also signifies, at the consummation of the world: For when all things shall have been subjected to him, then he himself will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all. What is this, and how is it later? Now how they are spiritual.

It is therefore true that the Son of God is from Mary, and he himself is the image and he himself the λόγος, and he himself before the ages and before every creature, and that every creature was created through him, and in him, from him, and consequently the things that have been said.

Who therefore is the senseless one, who is the sacrilegious Arius? Who without God does not see who Jesus is? And whence the only-begotten Son? But that the λόγος is also God and ὁμοούσιον, that is, both Father and Son, is manifest from these things: what Paul gave to the Son, the same he gave also to the Father, these three things together with paternal dignity in one, so that both the one divinity and the substance and the paternal power might appear. This he said to the Colossians about the Son. But to the Romans the same things about the Father: For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Or who has first given, and it shall be repaid to him? Because from him, and through him, and in him are all things.

You see how the same things, and thus the same things he gave both to the Father and to the Son, in ὁμοούσιον: first three and three, then the same things to both Father and Son: but that through whom are all things was given both to Father and to Son: because the Son is the λόγος, who is the active power of all things that are, in those things that are, and because in the Son the Father is, in him also the Father exists as active power: for simultaneously both the Son is in the Father and the Father is in the Son: therefore one power, that is, one substance exists: for there power is substance: for power is not one thing and substance another. Therefore the same itself belongs both to Father and to Son.

But that from whom are all things, and he himself is the Son: this therefore as proper to the Father: that in whom are all things, which the λόγος also is, and is the place: for he himself is the receptacle of things made and of works through himself. But when all things that are exist there, fullness is effected: for Jesus also is the Father of all works, of those which are through himself. Therefore Father and Son are one. But because works do not enter from outside: for whence would they? For there is nothing outside; therefore all things are in himself: he himself therefore is both the receptacle and the inhabitant.

And because in the Son is the Father, and the Father is the inhabitant: therefore proper to the Son is that in whom are all things, the remaining thing therefore, and in him, I say this to be common: for at the consummation all things are one and therefore Paul says to the Corinthians: One God the Father from whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus, through whom are all things, and we through him. Or how is another in him? Because also in other places it is thus stated about the Father, from whom are all things, through whom are all things, in him are all things. But about the Son, in whom are all things, through whom are all things, unto whom are all things: therefore Paul gave equal things to both Son and Father: rightly. Because the Father and Son are ὁμοούσιος, and therefore it was said: Then he himself will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all.

See the force of the speaker; for he brings together (perhaps concludes) the homoousios: the Son subjects all things to the Father by his own power, as it appears, yet as it is paternal power; for he says: He shall be subjected to him who subjected all things to him. To whom shall he be subjected? To God. Who shall be subjected? The Son, to whom God subjects all things. Therefore both Father and Son are action. Where then is the substance? In which that very action exists, and more truly the action which is the substance—therefore homoousios. Paul says this also: when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God and the Father. He himself therefore now reigns, and according to his own proper action Christ subjects all things, and destroys enmities and death itself: he himself therefore subjects, as Paul says, when he shall have abolished all power. Thus he says that the Son does these things by his own proper power. He adds this also: For he must reign.

God is indeed king of all: but since the Son is also homoousios, and more truly the Logos, that is, the power and wisdom of God; it is necessary that wisdom should reign first, through which all things shall be subjected; for through the Logoi all things both subsist and shall be subjected: since it is both said and has been said that the Logos, that is the Son, subjects all things, and therefore Paul added: Until he put all his enemies under his feet. Who? Whose? Manifestly, because the Son of the Father. But since the Father is in the Son, therefore the Father subjected all things to the Son, and therefore the Son especially has enemies, not the Father: and since both—that is, a good ambiguity of understanding—and therefore they are homoousios, the last enemy that shall be abolished is death: for if Jesus is life and eternal life, death shall be abolished by life: therefore Jesus, that is, the Son, subjects all things to the Father.

But since he is homoousios with the Father both in substance itself and in power itself, according to what it is primarily to be the Father, and what it is primarily to be, while secondarily to act, to live, to understand—since the first is the cause of the two latter—it is necessary to say that the Father subjects to the Son. He says therefore, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God and the Father, necessarily the Son; and when he shall have abolished all principality and power, necessarily the Son. He says again: But when all things are subjected, it is manifest that he is excepted who subjected all things to him: no small matter of understanding. XXXIX. But now let us leave this aside. What does he wish us to understand, that God, who is the cause, and pre-powerful, and pre-principle of power, himself made all things, when the Son makes them?

And if the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, he himself makes in the Son what the Son made; and what the Father does, the Son does indifferently: therefore all things, whether operations or rest, are given either to the Father or to the Son: for in the one, each is toward the other, and nothing is other, since in the one the other is. And therefore there is one alone, and nothing other, but both Father and Son exist with their own proper subsistence, from one substance out of the Father. The Son, however, that is the Logos, is active power, which both acts and vivifies and is intellectual: therefore he both generates all things justly, and makes all things according to life, and regenerates according to the understanding of truth and of God, which Jesus gives to all, since he is the Logos of all intellects and universally of all things that are.

If therefore he generates and regenerates all things, he subjects all things—not men only, but as Paul says, every principality and every power—does he do these things as man, or as Logos? For that very subjecting belongs not only to the time from which he is Son from Mary, but also before and after. For if the flood came to pass, if Sodom and Gomorrah were burned, if these and many such things came to pass, if in the first coming he triumphs over enemies in himself, if in the second coming the last enemy death shall be abolished; the Son the Logos does these things, but by paternal power. Therefore the Spirit does all spiritual things, and then he himself also shall be subjected to God, who subjects all things to him: for when all things have been abolished, the active power rests, and God shall be in him according to what it is to be, and according to what it is to rest: but in all others spiritually, according to his own power and substance.

And this is, that God may be all in all: for not all things in each one, but God existing in all, and therefore God will be all things, because all things will be full of God.

Let us also speak of other things: For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of God. Paul calls Christ Jesus power and might, for the Gospel says this also concerning him: Christ therefore is both the wisdom and the power of God. What then are the wisdom and power of God? Are they not God himself? For it is not as in bodies or in bodily things, where the eye is one thing and vision another. Or as in fire, where fire is one thing and its light another: for the eye and fire need something else—the eye needs another light, so that it may be from it and in it; vision needs fire and air, so that light may be from it.

But just as the power of vision has within itself the vision that then exists outwardly when the power of vision operates, and vision is generated by the power of vision, begotten uniquely from it—for nothing else is begotten from it—and vision is toward the power of vision, not only within but also within the power inwardly, and more in action outwardly, and therefore toward the power, since it is vision—therefore vision is homoousios with the power of vision, and the whole is one. And the power indeed rests, but vision is in motion: and through vision all visible things come to be, and the passions are around vision, while the power of vision exists impassible and generates vision without passion. So therefore the power and wisdom of God is God himself, the whole, which is simple and one, and of one and the same substance, and simultaneously from eternity and always and from the Father, who exists as his own generator.

Therefore wisdom and power belong to operation, for he now signifies this power: for he joined wisdom and power together. Therefore God is the power of these, and therefore Father, because these things are from him: for he begets these into action impassibly, because power and action and God and the power of God and wisdom are homoousios: which, when they are active, having care for the things that are outside, are toward God, always giving wisdom, always vivifying—not God, but every creature made by God through themselves—and if there is any passion, the passion is in the action. In this way, whether Jesus is Logos, or light, or radiance, or form, or image, or power and wisdom, or character, or life, the Logos and God the Father and the Son and the Spirit and Christ will appear homoousios. XLI. Let us bring forward the same things yet again. When we call Christ life, how is he homoousios with God? John says: What was made, in him was life.

And again: For as the Father has life in himself, so also he gave to the Son to have life in himself. How simultaneous! How identical! The Father has life in himself: the Son also has life in himself. What is it to have life in oneself? To be life to oneself, not to receive life from another, but to give it from oneself to others as well. Someone says that he is of like substance, yet not homoousios. That has already been said: that like substance is not what is meant; for it is not said according to what substance is, but rather if it is of the same substance, it is called the same substance, not like—for like applies to qualities, as fire is a substance and air is the same according to substance, for both are matter; but like or unlike according to qualities, by the notion of powers and other things like.

Say also earth and water, by weight and density or other such things, in which this also happens: whatever things are like in some respects are unlike in others, by one quality and another. For like is not the same, nor is the same one, but the same is twofold: and these are not one in substance but one in number. We are now inquiring about substance, which in God or the Son is either itself, or the same, or in some manner both itself and the same. How then is it itself when the Son comes and does such great things both in heaven and on earth and enters into flesh? How is Jesus the Son, which signifies the Father, and how are there three substances—God, Logos, Holy Spirit—for it is not right to say, nor is it lawful to say, that there is one substance and three persons. For if that very substance both did all things and suffered, then we too are Patripassians: God forbid. What then?

It is the same, not itself: but if so, either by a pre-existing substance two came to be, or from the same by division, or by the loss of a part the same became the same: the Son was born neither by dismissal nor by diminution, but the Father is perfect and always perfect and always Father; the Son is perfect and always perfect and Son from eternity and unto eternity. How then is it the same, for in two things what is the same? But Father and Son are one, and he who is Father is Father, and he who is Son is Son. And the Father and the Son are not the same, nor is the Son the same as his Father whose Son he is. Therefore they are not one: nor is the substance itself, nor the same. It remains therefore that it is in some manner both itself and the same.

For it is not lawful to say that the Father and the Son are of different substance: because we shall say what it itself is, whether we speak of God and the Logos, or of God and the power and wisdom of God, or of what it is to be and life, or of what it is to be to understand, or understanding, or to be and to live to understand, or Father and Son, or light and radiance, or God and character, or God and form and image, or substance and species—as there, not as here—or substance and motion, or power and action, or silence and utterance itself must be confessed to be the substance. For when we call God what it is to be, and the Son life, how do we separate life from what it is to be, whether in the Father or in the Son? For the Father has life in himself, and so does the Son, except that the Son received from the Father what he has.

Therefore Father and Son, arising from themselves, powerful of themselves unto life—understand me to say having in this way, as the Gospel says, for the Father also has life in himself. Therefore to have is not as something else but is itself, yet in understanding.

These things we have said. If therefore the Father has life in himself, he is life, and his substance is life, and so likewise the Son. For he says: I am the life: therefore the Father is life, and the Son is life. All life, insofar as it is life, is motion, giving life to those which are capable of being given life. And therefore this is the definition of soul and of life: that it is a being which moves itself. And as his substance is called this, much more therefore are these things so in God and in the Word. What then have we said? The Father is life and substance, and a self-moving substance, and nothing other than self-moving motion is life itself, therefore also substance, and life. But since in motion, understanding is as it were apprehended as something other, yet not perfectly other. But living itself, in relation to another, as if by a mixture in each of the other, insofar as it is life, and is motion, is one.

Again insofar as it is life, it is one in that other itself, and therefore the same substance. But whether it be the same or identical, it is necessarily consubstantial and simultaneous: because the two are simultaneous; for without the one the other never existed. These things therefore are one and one. That which is to be life, and through itself to be motion, is the Father: but that which is to be moved, and through itself to be life, is the Son. For life is the cause of motion. The Father therefore is the more principal life, having motion at rest in hiddenness, and moving itself inwardly: but the Son is motion in manifestation, and is therefore Son, because he proceeded from that which is within. Being rather motion, that which is in manifestation. In this manner also the Son as life is life from the Father who is life, who thus receives being life from the pre-principal principle.

The universal born from the universal, the whole from the whole, and therefore he says: The living Father sent me, and I live because of him. If therefore the begetting one is in life, and the Son according to motion is Son, but according to being moved is life, the Father giving life to the Son in motion, and generation and life simultaneously, and he himself in himself is consubstantial; therefore the Father and the Son are always one, and the Son is born from eternity, and each is in the other, and there is an inseparable separation, and the Son is in the Father, and the Father is in the Son, and the Son is especially action, because the Son together with action is life: but the Father according to what it is to be, is life; and according to what it is to be life, is action. The Father therefore remains, and remains impassible. The Son works, and leads into manifestation. And God works inwardly, with action existing according to power.

And in the Father, and in the Son, action is according to action.

These things of this kind must be referred back to all those things which we set forth before: whether God is the Word, or light and effulgence, or silence and utterance, or other things by which the one and simultaneous consubstantiality of them appears, and the unbegotten generation. Where therefore does it have place to say what is similar to consubstantial? For what reason is it said? Always and the whole mystery is this: One God, and Father, and Son and Holy Spirit, one God. How then is the similar one God? But the consubstantial is necessarily one God. For if as it were not simultaneously, necessarily two; but if that other is similar, necessarily the other is consubstantial; therefore necessarily of another substance. These Arians, these Lucianists, these Eusebian, these Illyriciani, but rejecting some things, removing some things and changing others, all heretics of diverse opinion. To this is added: if the Father and Son are consubstantial, how does the Saviour say: I am the truth?

If what has been said is true, since the Son is truth: the Father is lesser, he who is similar to truth is not truth. How great a blasphemy is this? But if God is truth, the Son is truth, as the Son himself says, and says truly, the Son is consubstantial God: therefore not twofold, but always one truth, and very far outside, and very far below, is that which is similar to truth, which perhaps exists in the world as a likeness of truth, where there is also error, and corruption, and every passion. Therefore to be truth itself is substance; for substance is not one thing and truth another: for what is simple, this is truth, God is simple, the Son is simple, God is truth, the Son is truth, and God and Son are one truth. For truth in itself is truth. Likewise if the Son is similar to truth, that is, he leads what is similar—where does he lead? But if truth, he leads into truth.

But indeed he leads to God, and God is truth, therefore he leads into truth. But it is impossible, when he himself is not truth, to lead into truth: therefore both Father and Son are truth, as it is also said: Whom the Father sends to me, he will come to me. From all these things not only is it concluded, but the confession is made manifest, that motion in God is outside of change. For generation is neither local nor with passion, nor with corruption, nor with increase, or diminution, nor with any change; for to move there, and to be moved, is itself what it is to be simultaneously both itself, and simple, and by intellect, one in one, as in power and action. Always indeed consubstantial in what it is to be, but according to acting from what it is to be, Son and Father. But as has been said, both the Father is in the Son, and the Son is in the Father.

Does fear arise from this, that in saying these things we are as it were Patripassians? The serpentine doctrine differs greatly from the truth. For they say that God alone is he whom we call Father, that he alone exists and is the maker of all things, and that he came not only into the world, but also into flesh, and all the other things which we say the Son did. For if we say Father, Father: and Son, Son, saying both one, and therefore the Word, that which is one, not only saying one, but one and one. But one thing impassible, one other thing having suffered, how therefore are we Patripassians?

For God neither proceeds from himself, nor is action in manifestation, nor as it were in motion: because the inward motion is as it were not motion; but the Word, which is in the power of motion, is rather motion and action, and is borne by its own power into the making of the things which exist; for insofar as the Word is, this is the cause of the things which exist: but insofar as it is cause, this does not always remain in itself, being in what it is as Word. And according to this he is irreversible and immutable, but in those things which exist according to their kinds: which exist as one and another, while he himself, as the universal Word, remains the same in the Father. Where therefore are the passions?

Neither in the Father, nor in the Son, but according to those things which by their own kind are not to be received, the whole power of the Word, whatever is universal: each thing existing, and he distributing its own proper thing, as of Angels, Powers, Thrones, Dominions, Authorities, souls, and sensible things, and of flesh itself. Passion therefore is in these, and according to these things is not of the Word, that is, of the Son. According to the flesh therefore the Saviour suffered, but according to the spirit which he was, without passion. Hence our doctrine differs from the Patripassians. For to be Son is not passion, as has been said, nor to do anything nor to speak: for by divine power all things are done without passion, and this is rather its own, and substantial, and divine motion, not passion.

Then concerning this the Patripassians were not so named, but concerning the cross: saying sacrilegiously that the Father was crucified, implicating the impassible in passion, and not understanding that something must necessarily be impassible, if there is something else which suffers. We however declare the Son also impassible, but according to what the Word was made flesh, passible. But indeed compassion, and anger, and joy, and sorrow, and other such things are not passions there, but nature and substance. If therefore the spirit of benevolence, itself through itself most good, is to some for life, to others for death; not changed in its own nature, but by the matter and will of those who receive, the immutable seal of divinity is said to be affected or to suffer for those who receive it either as is fitting or otherwise: because we judge divine things by our own senses.

For in sensible things, insofar as an animal is an animal, that is, a soul using a body, or an animated body, it is said to suffer according to sense: but truly neither through itself alone are the passions of the soul alone, much more so of the spirit of the Word and of God. For the divine nature is impassible.

Let the Patripassians therefore depart, since we speak both of Father and of Son, the Son alone passible according to motion in matter. Let the Arians depart, since we call the Son of the nature, begotten before every creature. Let those also depart who say that Christ is from being, because he was made by God, who is being: for we call the Son nature, and that he is from the Father, and in the Father. Let the disciples of Marcellus and Photinus depart, for we say that the Word itself was in the flesh, not that the Word is one thing and the man another, in whom they say Christ is, but that the Word itself put on flesh. For they say there is both God, and the Word, and the Spirit. But a fourth, namely the Son, that is the man who is from Mary, whom the Word assumed, and governed as a servant, to which man they say a seat has also been prepared. They have therefore fallen away from the Trinity.

But if the Trinity alone remains, the man himself and the Word; which Word we have above demonstrated to be the Son. But this does not mean: and the Word was made flesh, the Word was corrupted and converted into flesh, but the Word, through whom all things were made, and who made all things, was also made flesh, so that being in the flesh, he might purchase the whole man by his passion and death according to the passions of the body. For if he himself was not the man from Mary, why did he empty himself? And what is taking the form of a servant? And what again is, and the Word was made flesh? Let the consubstantials of Basil also depart. For we say consubstantial, both in truth and according to the Synod at Nicaea. For thus both Father and Son are one, both always and simultaneously both, and because consubstantial.

But what they call consubstantial, even if they confess that the Son has substance from the Father, yet they say something else, saying that the Son is neither by generation nor by making from God, but by the compulsion of these two, of generation and making, as of stone and iron, and thence a flame is emitted. Saying these things they are hidden Arians. First, saying that the Son of God is not by generation but by making, which is the doctrine of Arius; for that is a making which springs from compulsion, and is from nothing. For the flame is not from iron or stone, which is what the insane Arius especially thinks. Even if a collision has occurred, there was a time when it was not: and if the Son was made by the compulsion of making and generation, making and generation existed before the Son existed. But these are posterior things. How therefore is there compulsion? And this too is Arius's: then how is this collision? And of what things and in what?

Is there perhaps a concurrence of wills in God? Is there perhaps a concurrence of passions or of differences, especially of contrary motions? And if the Father, who is without passion, suffered this, and the Son did not appear to him from his own substance: for by the collision of two wills or passions, neither will was made, nor passion, much less substance from the paternal substance, but some external substance, which would exist from nothing concerning the Word in relation to the Father. To suspect these things is impious blasphemy.

We have spoken of ὁμοούσιον, and we have spoken sufficiently: for this was our purpose.

But how, if ὁμοούσιον, the Son both is always with the Father, and proceeds, and descends, and ascends, and is sent, and does the things that are of the Father's will; and how, since he is the image of God, he sits at the right hand of God; and what the right hand is, and what sitting is; and what it means that all things were made through him, and how all things, and what it is that nothing was made without him; and how he also has a will, and the things he does he does by the will of the Father; and how, being perfect and from a perfect Father, he received a body as though imperfect, and now bears a body, and whether it is holy and spiritual, and like that of those men who will afterward be holy; and how he is always one who is moved, and is begotten from himself by the power of the Father—for all these things define ὁμοούσιον.

If anyone be worthy to understand, he will find even in this book that the Faith is so; and with God permitting, and our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, we say this, lest anyone, upon understanding my teaching, should say that I blaspheme—for all things are both spoken and are from holy Scripture. We shall say especially that from which many heresies are born: that the Gospels, and the Apostle, and all the old Scripture speak all things indeed of God, and of Jesus Christ, that is, of the λόγος incarnate; for he accomplished the mystery of our salvation, he made us free, he redeemed us; in him we believe as our Saviour according to the cross and according to the resurrection from the dead; therefore Paul says: For I judged not myself to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

We confess therefore God the Father almighty; we confess the only-begotten Son Jesus Christ, God from God, true light from true light, the form of God, who has substance from the substance of God, nature, generation, the Son consubstantiated together with the Father, which the Greeks call ὁμοούσιον; the firstborn before the foundation of the world, and the firstborn before every creature, that is, both before the substance of coming, and of generation, and of living again; the firstborn from the dead, the λόγος who is the universal λόγος of all things; the λόγος who is toward God; the λόγος incarnate in the last times, and conquering death and all sin by the cross, our Saviour, judge of all, always consubstantial and ὁμοούσιον with the Father, the active power from the paternal power, both generating and making all things, and the substance of the existence of all things, and of generation, and of reviving—since he is eternal life, and the power of God, and wisdom; himself invisible, immutable insofar as he is λόγος, and insofar as he is always λόγος; but insofar as it belongs to him to create all things, and especially insofar as he acts upon matter, suffering impassibly.

As a spring of waters, immutable, impassible, beyond all motion, when it flows and comes into a river, is believed to suffer according to the channel and the kinds and qualities of the earth, while always preserving its own power as water; and just as a river irrigates the land, sensing no diminution with respect to what it is to be water—so Christ is that river of which the Prophet says: Who waters and pours forth upon all the earth; but Christ wholly irrigates everything, both visible and invisible, and irrigates the substance of all things that exist with the river of life. But in that in which life is, there is Christ; in that in which he waters, there is the Holy Spirit; in that in which the power of vitality is, there is the Father and God; yet the whole is one God. We confess therefore also the Holy Spirit, having all things from God the Father, with the λόγος, that is, Jesus Christ, delivering to him all things which Christ has from the Father.

And in this manner of this kind we confess together that these three exist from that which is one, and one God, these things being ὁμοούσια, and always together—the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit—and the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who is the λόγος, by ineffable power and unutterable generation, and God, and image, and form, and character, and radiance of the Father, and the power and wisdom of God, through which God appears and is declared in the power of all things, both existing and abiding and doing all things according to the action of the Son, that is, of Jesus Christ—whom incarnate, and crucified, and rising from the dead, and ascending into heaven, and sitting at the right hand of the Father, and about to come as judge of the living and the dead, Father of all creation and Saviour, we confess always with voice and with whole heart, ἀμήν.

Grace and peace from God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, to him who thus confesses these things unto all ages of ages.

Spirit, λόγος, nous, mind, wisdom, substance—are all these the same, or are they different from one another? And if the same, by some communion, or by universality? If by some communion, what is first, what is from another, and by what communion? If by universality, both these things and what is the difference, and what is the communion? If they are altogether different from one another, is one in another as subject, another as accident—or according to some other mode? If therefore they are altogether different, they are also ἑτερώνυμα, and of another substance. But nothing is altogether of another substance: for of the things that are, there is a genus of being, and more especially a genus in that which is to be.

But since being is twofold, and being itself, τὸ ὄν, is twofold—for there is truly being, and there is only being—if therefore τὸ ὄν, truly ὄν and only ὄν, stands in relation to all beings, and only ὄν to only beings, whether they are spoken of συνωνύμως or ὁμωνύμως, they are not altogether different: therefore by participation in some communion all things that are stand in relation to other things. For that which is opposed to τῷ ὄντι is what is not being, as a contrary according to privation, with no participation in relation to each other; therefore neither is it other. If therefore the things that are, even though they be different and other, are yet the same by some communion, and in this manner are both the same and other—and this in two ways, either as others in identity, or as the same in otherness—but if the same in otherness, they incline more toward otherness; if however others in identity, identity appears most. What therefore is consonant with these things is to be discerned from this point.

Concerning God and the λόγος, that is, concerning the Father and the Son of God, by God's permission it has been said sufficiently, since those two are one. It has also been said concerning the λόγος, that is, concerning the Son and the Holy Spirit, that they are in one. If therefore those two are one, and in one there are two; that one in which the two are, since it is with that one and from eternity always with it—those things which are simultaneously the same to one another, two are one; it is necessary therefore that these be the same. How this is so: Hear, as I say. Before all things that truly are, there was one—or rather the one itself—before it had being as one. For that one must be spoken of and understood as having one conception of otherness, one alone, one simple; one by concession, one before all existence, before all existentiality, and especially before all lower things, before being itself—for this one is before being.

Before all essentiality therefore, substance, subsistence, and still more, all things that are more powerful—one, without existence, without substance, without intelligence. For it is above these things, immeasurable, invisible, wholly indiscernible, both to those things that are in it and to those that are after it, and even to those that are from it. But to itself alone both discernible and defined by its very own existence—not acted upon, so that its consistency and self-knowledge may not be something other than itself—impartible on every side, without figure, without quality, nor without quality; without quality yet qualified, without color, without species, without form, lacking all forms. Nor is it that very form by which all things are formed, both of universals and of all particulars that are. The first cause of all principles, the principle of all intelligences, the pre-intelligence of all powers, strength itself more celebrated than motion, more stable than rest itself. For by inexpressible motion it is rest, and by ineffable rest it is supereminent motion.

Denser than all continuity, higher than all distance, more defined than every body, and greater than all magnitude, purer than all incorporeal things, more penetrable than all intelligence and body, most powerful of all, the power of powers, greater than every genus, every power, every species; truly itself being all things that are, greater than every whole—corporeal and incorporeal—more a part than every part by inexpressible power, pure, existing before all things that truly are.

This is God, this is the Father, pre-intelligence, pre-existing and pre-existence, preserving his own blessedness by immobile motion, and on account of this not needing others, perfect above the perfect, thrice-powerful in unity, perfect spirit and above spirit. For he does not breathe, but spirit is only in him in that which is for him to be, spirit breathing into himself so as to be spirit; since he is spirit inseparable from himself, himself both place and inhabitant to himself, abiding in himself, alone in the alone, existing everywhere and nowhere by simplicity, one who is, joining three powers—all existence, all life, and all blessedness.

But all these things are also one, and a simple one, and especially in the power of that which is to be, that is, the power of existence, of life and of blessedness—for that which is and exists as power, which is the power of existence, and is the power of life and of blessedness, is so through itself; and therefore also the λόγος of itself, and living, and acting, having according to its very own inexistent existence, the indiscernible spirit's co-union, divinity, substantiality, blessedness, intelligentiality, vitality, optimality, and universally in every mode all things—purely unbegotten, the pre-being, the unity of co-union with no co-union. With this one therefore existing, one accordingly leaps forth as one, one in substance, one in motion—for existence is motion, since motion is existence. This one therefore is existentially one, but not as the Father is inexistentially one, who is existentially one according to power.

For it has power, and more truly has what is to be for it according to operation and according to truth—not as having it, but as being it—since power, as an active compulsion, is all things, is without burden, and truly in every mode needing nothing, which is from this: to be all things as power; for the very unity, which is the action naturally capable of power, acts as needing.

Therefore this, according to that which we call being one, is one life, which is infinite motion, productive of other things—whether of those that truly are, or of those that are—the existing λόγος, moving all things from itself always in motion toward that which is to be for the things that are, having motion in itself, or rather itself is motion: for thus divine Scripture says: That which the Father God himself gave, that in him life should be. This Son is the λόγος who is toward God, this is he through whom all things were made, this is the Son and the whole sonship of the whole fatherhood, who is always Son and from eternity; but Son also as self-moved by motion—for power proceeding, and as it were immobile pre-existence, not moved insofar as it was power. This motion rests nowhere, and rising from itself and hastening into every kind of motion—since it is life which is infinite, and itself in vivification appeared as it were outwardly.

Necessarily therefore life was born, but life is the Son, life is motion, life from vital pre-existence, existence in the constitution and appearance of all wholes, which according to power is the Father, so as to appear as pre-intelligence from the intelligence of those things that truly are. This existence therefore is the life of all existence, and insofar as it is life and motion it has obtained as it were a feminine power—this which desired to vivify. But since, as has been shown, this motion, being one, is both life and wisdom, wholly converted into wisdom and more into the paternal existence, or rather the motion of the motion turned back into the paternal power, and life vivified by him returning to the Father, made masculine—for descent is life, ascent is wisdom. And this is also Spirit.

Spirit therefore is both: in one there are two, and just as with the first existence being life, there was necessity to enter into the virginal power and to be made masculine, to be generated as a male Son of God by the birth of a virgin. For in the first motion—I mean the first coming into appearance—it as it were fell away from the power of the Father, and in the inborn desire of vivifying, being inwardly life yet outwardly in motion, returned into itself; again converted into itself it came into its own paternal existence, made and perfected as power.

So according to this type it was necessary that the order should be, and when the Spirit is in the body, that is, in Christ the Son, and suffers as it were a diminution, and is born of a Virgin, and by that very diminution of his rises again and is renewed by his paternal power, that is, by a more divine and first existence, and returns to the Father, that is, into the paternal existence and power.

How this is so, I still dare to say, so that our incidental matter may be made clear by a fuller exposition. Let us posit the understanding: according to this mode, God is the power of those three powers of existence, life, and blessedness, that is, of that which is to be, to live, and to understand.

But that in each of those three there are three things is manifest: both that which is being in the first sense, and in the second sense that which is being according to living and understanding itself, without any union, but simply simplicity; and this too is manifest as has been demonstrated, and that such a thing as being is manifestly God, as has been demonstrated; a power capable of furnishing being to all things, not from that which is being as giving a part, both paternal and productive of the power proper to each, that being which is proper to it subsisting: but this through the ministering λόγος, that is, through the life which furnishes living to all things, and then someone subsists, receiving that which is being according to receiving what life is. If therefore the being of God is not from that which furnishes being to all things from itself, but from that which ministers what it is to be life; but to be life itself is in that which is God's being, to be one and the same in the one at rest, which is to be the Father, together with that which is to be life according to identity, it is a movement proceeding from its own power depending on the paternal power.

And since every natural power is will, he willed life to move itself, by a motion implanted according to substance, impassibly, erect toward that which is. For natural will is not passion. According to that therefore which is the being of God, in which the power of existence is, the paternal substantiality, according to power, according to that very being, life also is. If therefore life moved itself, and movement is will, then the movement is paternal, and the will is paternal, since the power is paternal life. But if according to that which is being, life is movement, then movement is proper to life. But since movement is carried from one thing to another, as it were from what is within to without, which is life and power and nature and will: and this most of all is its very existence, therefore it is said to be an effulgence or a procession, or a manifestation of the spirit raised up, operative in vivifying that which is the whole totality of what has been given being.

Of the life therefore existing within, according to the fact that movement is life itself, the offspring of that which is to be the Father is life: according to what movement is. But since movement, according to what movement is, having no elevation, has proceeded from within to without, just as sense proceeds from that which is nous, mind, receiving the fountainlike and universal power, according to movement it is both within and without: for movement is nous, mind, so also life according to what movement is, has become the Son, a manifest movement from the paternal movement, which is in hiddenness, which according to the first power is existence. Again, life according to what movement is, proceeding from the paternal movement, is both within and without: but indeed life is movement: therefore life is both within and without, therefore God lives, life itself lives, therefore both God and life are one. Therefore these two are in each, both other and the same: therefore in the Son is the Father, and in the Father the Son.

Truth therefore proclaims that these things are ὁμοούσια according to identity striving together with otherness. Again, if the Father is life, and the Son is life, since the Son, being life according to what he is as movement, is both within and without, God lives, the Son lives, and without, all things live everywhere, the Son being present. And since in the Son is the Father, everywhere also is the Father. Again likewise, since in the Son is the Father: when you have seen the Son and understood him, you will see and understand the Father. If anyone sees me, he sees also the Father: for this reason it was said. Since the Son is the form of the Father: but now form is not understood as being outside and beyond substance, nor as a face adjacent to substance as in us; but a certain subsisting substance, in which that which is hidden and veiled in another appears and is shown.

But God is as something veiled: for no one sees God: therefore the Son is the form in which God is seen. For if God is existence, power, substance, movement, and life in hiddenness, God is as it were without form. Therefore if life is manifest, and manifest according to the power of movement, life according to movement in hiddenness, in appearance, in the existing movement, is understood, is declared, is seen. Further, in this way: that which is being is the Father; but that which is life is the Son; since it is impossible to comprehend that which is being: for that is in hiddenness, but life according to what life is, is already also that being: in life therefore that which is being appears; therefore life is of that which is being. But indeed the Father God is that which is being, and the Son is life; therefore the Son, the life of the Father God, is the form in which the paternal power is contemplated.

We must therefore believe in the Son of God, so that life may come to be in us, which is both true and eternal life. For if we shall have faith in Christ of Nazareth, incarnate of Mary, we shall have the same faith in the Son of God, who was and was made the Spirit incarnate. How I have heard this, I tell.

But we must first see how other names are to be attributed to the Father, and how to the Son. I speak of Spirit, λόγος, nous, mind, Holy Spirit, wisdom, substance. First, Father and Son are the same; but Son and Holy Spirit are the same: therefore existence and life are the same; therefore existence and blessedness are the same: again, being and life are the same, and life and understanding are the same. This has been said about these things in the book which precedes this one, and in others, that in one there are three, and therefore the three are the same: συνώνυμα ἄρα τὰ τρία, according to the name which each of those holds its own power. For that which is being is also life and understanding: and so each to the others; therefore they are the same and συνώνυμα, the same things co-generated, therefore also consubstantial.

But a certain otherness seems to appear in these, and especially for this reason they are not the very same; for some things by their own power are in hiddenness, and others are manifest, and they both are and are understood, but in the same power existence is at once power and consubstantial, and in these alone it belongs to be the same things, while for others distinct from these it belongs in identity to be both other and the same.

Now however we must examine what the other names set down first signify. Spirit is a name of substance or existence, which indeed signifies being, and in that which it is it is both called and understood. If you wish to know what God is, his Spirit signifies what being is: therefore God and Spirit signify that which is being. Again, what is life? That which Spirit is. Spirit therefore and life signify that which is being: so also Holy Spirit signifies that which is being according to that very name, with the difference of the two first ones named by one name. Which difference, since it is substantial, signifies that which is. From these things it is now apparent that substance, each one existing, signifies that which is being. In these three therefore Spirit is substance, therefore ὁμοούσια.

Since Spirit is not divided by dividing the Spirit: for since it is one in three, but since the nature, power, and action of the one paternal existence are one, and to the very one having being, the three things generating themselves are substance in omnipotence: therefore existence did not pre-exist. For the Father is the generator of his own substance, and the fountainlike existence of others according to the summit: nor is that existence itself cleft: and existence and power in that which is being, in each of those three according to all majesty and omnipotence, and perfection in all modes, which once generates, itself establishing itself from itself, moving itself, always moving itself, consubstantial, equally powerful in this very thing which thus is being, and in that very being with the Father giving. The Saviour says: All things that the Father has are mine, and therefore I said: he will receive of mine; for he will not speak from himself, but whatsoever he hears, he will speak.

The Holy Spirit therefore, if he speaks, speaks from the Son; but the Son himself from the Father. Voice therefore, and λόγος, and Word, these three, because one is three. But the Father indeed speaks in silence, the Son in the manifest, and in speech the Holy Spirit speaks not in the manifest, but what he speaks he speaks spiritually.

These three therefore are true lights, or rather one light, truly one λόγος, one voice, one Word, that is, one active power, consonant, before it shall cause something to be. But that the soul is a different substance is manifest: for having been made by the thrice-powerful Spirit, it is neither purely voice nor word, but as an ἠχὼ hears in order to speak, it is more an image of voice than voice. And this is the voice of John crying in the desert: Make straight the way of the Lord: for the soul cries out in the desert, that is in the world, that the Lord God exists and it wishes to be cleansed, so that it may enjoy the Lord God; and this soul bears testimony concerning God, and has been sent before into the world for testimony of the testimony: for the testimony of God is Jesus Christ, the Son therefore of God, and John is the son of the Lord. For John was not the light, but came that he might bear testimony concerning the light.

The Word therefore, and voice is the Son, he himself life, he himself λόγος, he himself movement, he himself nous, mind, he himself wisdom, he himself existence and first substance, he himself potential action, he himself ὄν, but the first ὄν from which all ὄντα, and through whom and in whom: who is the middle one in the Angel of the Trinity, declares the Father pre-existing, and completes the Holy Spirit unto perfection: for as the blessed Paul says: The Gospel is the power of God and wisdom: signifying the Son by power, because all things are through him; for by the word of power all things come to be, and by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit all things are made perfect. If therefore God is these things, at once these three things. But since one is two, all things exist at once in the knowledge existing at once as life in the Father, in which also the Holy Spirit is according to existence, since the three were one, and always are.

If therefore the Son, the eternal life, is the shining forth of the pre-eternal life, but he himself is life, perfect knowledge and eternal life: for then it is perfect when it has known both what things and whose it is, since both itself and by the command of the Father: for then existing in itself, it does not become infinite, saving and saved by itself, it is necessary to understand and to say: that the power of God is in it, that is the Father in the Son, but it itself through itself was infinite. And this signifies: and the λόγος was made flesh. For by infinite movement into lower things life descended, and vivified corruption, for the sake of which the universal λόγος and power of life was made flesh, as the angel said: The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Jesus Christ therefore was born according to the flesh of Mary, and of the Holy Spirit, the power of the Most High.

Therefore Christ our Lord is all things: flesh, Holy Spirit, power of the Most High, λόγος. He himself fulfilled the mystery, so that all life together with flesh, filled with eternal light, might return from all corruption into the heavens. Therefore not flesh alone, nor Holy Spirit alone, nor Spirit alone, nor λόγος alone, but all things together is our Lord Jesus. The Holy Spirit therefore is all blessedness in the first unbegotten generation, which alone is and is called generation; he himself was the Father, he himself was the Son. For when the Spirit moved from itself—that is, of perfect life existing in motion, wishing to see itself, that is, its own power, namely the Father—there came about the very manifestation of itself, which is and is called generation, and in accordance with this existing outside. For every knowing thing, insofar as it is knowing, is outside that which it desires to know.

But I say "outside" in the sense of inspection, according to what it is to see itself: which is to know or to see that power pre-existing in the paternal realm. In that time therefore which is without intellectual reckoning of time, going forth as it were from what it was to be, into the beholding of that very thing which it was—since there all motion is substance—otherness was born, and swiftly returned into identity. For not as a radiance from the back, but as lights, or faces gazing upon themselves in mutual vision, that same one thing in the same manner and perfect stood firm. But lights are everywhere like faces gazing upon themselves, and have no back; and it is said mystically that God is seen according to the back: therefore with no diminution the whole always remained one, especially with paternal power held together in knowledge. The Holy Spirit therefore is the first inward motion, which is the paternal reflection, that is, the knowing of itself: for foreknowledge precedes knowing.

According to this natural mode of knowing, the intelligence brought forth outside, the Son was born, made life: not that he was not life, but because life outside is more truly life, for life is in motion. There is the λόγος who is called Jesus Christ, through whom all things were made, the seed of all things unto their being, inasmuch as he is the life without which it is impossible for anything to exist among things that are, and among things that are not, which are consequences.

Now since we have said that one and the same motion is both the λόγος and the Holy Spirit—the λόγος in that it is life, the Holy Spirit in that it is knowing and intelligence—and since we have said that life and knowing are that same thing, and since we have said that motion in the first motion is intelligence: for this is the natural and divine order, and since it is power, it was necessary that intelligence be moved toward the knowing of itself. The Son was born, who is the λόγος, that is, life by paternal power, with intelligence generating—that is, what is the being of all things that are—as an eternal fountain, so to speak.

He will not err therefore, if anyone understands by implication that the Holy Spirit is the mother of Jesus, both above and below: above in the manner already stated, but below in this manner: for the sake of liberation it was necessary that all that is divine—that is, the nursery of all spirits universally existing, and what is the first being, that is, the universal λόγος—be incarnate from the lower matter and from all corruption, for the putting to death of all corruption and sin: for the darkness and ignorance of souls torn away by material powers needed eternal light as aid, so that the λόγος of the soul and the λόγος of the flesh, with corruption thrust down by the mystery of death, might raise up souls and bodies through the Holy Spirit as administrator unto divine and life-giving intelligences, by knowing, faith, and love. The angel therefore answered Mary and said to her: The Holy Spirit will come upon thee, and the power of the Most High will overshadow thee.

These two in motion, which are the λόγος and the Holy Spirit, were to come so that Mary might be with child, so that flesh might be built from flesh, as the temple and dwelling-place of God: the Holy Spirit indeed as power in motion, for motion is the principle of generation; but the power of the Most High is the λόγος himself: for the power and wisdom of God is the λόγος Jesus. But concerning the λόγος, that is, concerning the Son, he said: will overshadow thee. For human nature does not receive what is perfect, divine, and splendidly clear as it is. And this signifies: And the λόγος was made flesh. But the overshadowing more fully signifies what was said: He emptied himself.

We have therefore, according to the order of what has been set forth, both God and the Father, and the Son ὁμοούσιον, and ὁμοούσια according to identity in substance. For the substance of Spirit is one; it is being itself. But being itself is also life and understanding. These three things are in each and every one, and therefore there is one divinity and one; because the whole is one God, since the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one: with otherness appearing only according to power and action. For God in power and in hidden motion moves and governs all things, as in silence; but the λόγος, the Son, who is the Holy Spirit, also speaks by voice to generate all things subsisting according to life and according to intelligence, unto being for all things. From these things it appears that the λόγος himself and the Holy Spirit are nous, mind and wisdom: for Paul also said this divinely: Who has known the nous, mind of the Lord? And again concerning him: The power and wisdom of God.

Solomon also speaks of wisdom concerning him, and many names are referred back to the Son, and Paul calls him and his substance at Hebrews: the image of his substance. And likewise Jeremiah also called the people consubstantial: for who stood in my substance, and saw my Word (acc. To LXX). And again: If they had stood in my substance, and had heard my words. And the Gospel according to Matthew: Give us today our consubstantial bread. In the parable of Luke: The younger of the sons said to his father: Give me the fitting portion of the substance. And again: There he squandered his substance. For what descended from there did not hold fast to its powers. These things pertain to the soul, but I have said this against those who deny that the word οὐσία is placed in the sacred Scriptures. There is added moreover that God made the soul, that is, man, in his own image and likeness.

But hear what these things signify, as I explain: We take nous, mind, and perfect wisdom, that is, the universal λόγος—for that same thing in eternal motion was a circular motion from the first σημεῖον and at the highest summit existing circularly according to that very σημεῖον, a cyclic cause inseparably turned, as from the Father and into the Father, existing with the Father, proceeding, existing simultaneously—and the Son was in the Father, and the Father in the Son. The first substance, and already substance in substance, spiritual substance according to nous, mind, generative and productive substance, the pre-principle of all intelligible and intellectual and soul and material substance universally in matter. If therefore the first motion is life, I say, and intelligence—for these are that perfect one and only—not only is this motion circular, but spherical, and more truly a sphere, and truly in every way a perfect sphere.

For if being and living and understanding, and if life is being itself and intelligence, and the summits and the middle are in each one, so also with intelligence: one therefore of these three things is circled within itself and mutually participating in one another. But rather existing simultaneously without any interval, it is a sphere, and the first, and perfect, and itself alone a sphere: but other things are rather according to spherical likeness. From this reasoning necessarily, the σημεῖον also is power; and the γραμμή and the σημεῖον that produces the γραμμή: and going forth from itself, and not always going forth, in rest and in motion simultaneously, always simultaneously, circling once κύκλῳ on all sides, God existing everywhere is a sphere.

Indeed since it is the σημεῖον from which and into which all motion is brought back by conversion, this is God, the whole λόγος, the whole nous, mind, the whole wisdom, the omnipotent substance, the substance whom we revere, whom we worship, seeing him by Spirit alone, raised up into him by his nod and will by the grace of the cross, our Lord Jesus Christ having mercy on us: ἀμήν.

The cyclic motion being raised up, I speak of the straight line, which from σημεῖον to σημεῖον, that is from the Father into the Father, in the appearance of this motion and of all divinity, and of the λόγος, and by the command of God there exists the image of the Son, an image of the image according to the image and likeness of God, that is, of the Son: for the Son is the image of the Father, as has been demonstrated: but this is so because the Son is life, therefore the soul was made as the image of life, but the soul with its nous, mind, being from him who is nous, mind, is the power of intellectual life, it is not nous, mind, looking toward nous, mind as though it were nous, mind: for there vision is union; but inclining downward and turned away from nous, mind, it draws both itself and its nous, mind downward.

Having become merely understanding, no longer as intelligible, but if it perseveres thus, it is the mother of those things that are above heaven, a light, not the true light, and indeed with its own proper nous, mind a light. But if it looks toward lower things, being wanton, it becomes the power of giving life, which will make things live in the world, and those things in the world down to the stone in the manner of stones, itself also made with nous, mind. For indeed since the soul is λόγος, yet not λόγος: and since it is in the middle of spirits and intelligibles and τῆς ὕλης, turned by its own nous, mind toward both, it either becomes divine or is incorporated: for it is within the intelligence of its own freedom, and by the privation of the true light it is called back again on account of the faint spark of its own nous, mind; since indeed it is alone, but darkened it is said to be below.

For indeed the purer summits of matter, having the power of animating, are the cause for the light as though it were descending into its own. Why therefore was this said: and does someone say that this discerns these things, if the soul is such? How was it said: Let us make man according to our image and likeness?

One must first examine what man is, then what image is, and what the difference is between image and likeness, and how man was made according to image and likeness, not made image and likeness; and what it means, according to ours? For man is understood in a twofold way, as is customary, from body and soul. Some think from body and a threefold soul; but some from body and a soul having three powers. Some again say from body and a partial nous, mind, and soul and spirit, by which the flowing body subsists. There are further those who speak of body with four powers of the four elements, and a twofold soul, and a twofold nous, mind. My understanding is this: The body, as has been demonstrated: for God took dust and formed Adam, that is, from earth already fashioned, we have the summits of earth and its flower as the principles of the body.

The Gospel according to Matthew and Luke also declares a twofold nous, mind and a twofold soul: for they say thus: So also will be the coming of the Son of man. Then two will be in the field: one will be taken, and one will be left; two women grinding at the mill, one will be taken, and one will be left. But Luke added concerning the body two: that same night there will be two in one bed, one will be taken, and the other will be left. And other things similarly. Therefore because in the field, the two λόγοι are, or nous, mind and λόγος, heavenly and the other material. And the two women grinding are two souls, heavenly and material: and therefore the heavenly nous, mind or the heavenly λόγος and the heavenly soul will be taken, but the material λόγος and soul will be left. How this is so, hear. Man is to be acknowledged as consisting of soul and body.

From the body, which is composed from earth, he has therefore a material soul from earth, and Adam was made, with respect to the body, an animal, just as an animal is from water and earth. Other animals into a living soul, but Adam not so; for God breathed into his face there all sensible power, to which nous, mind is present for the discernment of sense. There is therefore another more divine soul with its nous, mind: for to the sensible power the material nous, mind is implanted and consubstantial with the material. If therefore this is so, the heavenly λόγος, that is, nous, mind or the divine Spirit, is in the divine soul. But the divine soul itself is in the material spirit, the material spirit in the material soul, the material soul in the carnal body, which must be purified together with all three, so that it may receive eternal light and eternal life: but this faith in Christ effects.

Let us say, therefore, in what manner such a soul was made according to the image of God and according to the likeness, and whether the soul alone is man, as Paul says—one earthly, another animal, another spiritual, and all these things in one man, but most frequently he speaks of the inner man—for thus is the soul: it gathers together nous, mind and the divine soul; and he calls the heavenly man, but the rest the earthly man. If this is so, our soul is according to the image of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. For if Christ is life and λόγος, he is the image of God, in which image God the Father is beheld, that is, what God is is to be in life: for this is the image, as has been said: and if Christ is life, but what it is to live is λόγος, and life itself is what it is to be, and what it is to be is the Father.

And if again life itself is what it is to understand: and that is the Holy Spirit, and these three are all things; and in each one there are three, and one is three and altogether ὁμοούσια. If therefore the soul, insofar as it is soul, and the being of the soul is both to live and to understand: the soul is therefore the three of the higher Triad, as an image of the image. For it is, insofar as it is soul, in what it is to be, both giving life and understanding, holding them together before understanding, ὁμοούσια in one, and each is as its own substance, not cut off by division, not by separation, not by outpouring, nor by extension, nor by birth, but three eternally: one existing in another existing, and these substantially; according to the image, therefore.

And just as the Father is being, but the Son is two things, yet in motion and in act; so the soul in what it is as soul is as paternal potency: but vivification and understanding are in motion. These therefore are the being of the soul according to the image of the Father and the Son: but to be according to the likeness is thus—ὁμοούσιον therefore also itself in its own unity, and of like substance: in triple potency, itself generating, therefore itself moving itself, and always in motion in the world of motions, a fountain and principle, just as the father and son of the soul's own motion and creator, and pre-cause and pre-principle.

I say further, in secret, a great mystery: just as the more divine unitary Trinity, according to what it effulgently made of itself the soul in the intelligible world into substance and its own proper substance, which we properly call substance: so the unitary trinity of the soul, a second one, unfolded its image in the non-sensible world, the soul itself always being that which is above, begetting the worldly souls, and this therefore according to image and likeness. Let us see therefore whether also according to the flesh, and they speak according to the flesh by foreknowledge, because it was to be that Jesus would put on flesh. But I say perhaps also in this respect that the λόγος is both of the flesh and is λόγος, and is called both God and corporeal and above every body: for God is the power of all things and of all, not without reason according to the image of the body.

For if our body and flesh is to rise again, and to put on incorruption, and to become spiritual flesh, just as our Saviour also in all respects both was, and rose again, and ascended, and is to come: and if after the resurrection it will be changed, as we receive the spiritual garment, nothing prevents man from having been made according to the image of the higher flesh of τοῦ λόγου. For to this end the Prophet bears witness, saying: And God made man according to the image of God. If God made according to the image, the Father according to the image of the Son: but if this says, he made him male and female, as was said before, he made man according to the image of God; it is manifest that also according to body and flesh, greatly and mystically, τῷ λόγῳ existing in male and female: because he himself was his own son, in the first and second birth spiritually and carnally.

Thanks be to God the Father, and to his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, from eternity unto all ages of ages. Amen.

We all now confess Christ Jesus to be God almighty; yet soon all will confess it, those in whom there is faith in Christ the Son. Concerning both, that they are both together and each individually: since, as the Father is God and the Son is Jesus Christ, our whole religion is this, and our whole hope, and our faith is in this. But when we confess the two individually, we nonetheless call them one God, and both one God, because the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father. Others call the Father alone the one God, and the Son a man, but let us set these aside for now: for indeed when we say Jesus is the Son, we confess that he was the Son even before he was born of Mary.

For if in the beginning was the λόγος, and the λόγος was with God, and God himself was the λόγος, and this was in the beginning, he who afterwards, when the λόγος was made flesh, is the same—to be the λόγος and to be Jesus is the same. For if in the beginning was the λόγος, in the beginning was the Son, who afterwards in the flesh was Jesus, on account of the mystery which he fulfilled by the Father's command. It must therefore be confessed that the Son existed from the beginning. Do we say he is from the Father's substance, or outside it? But this must be inquired. Do we not confess that God exists? We do. He therefore who exists—do we say that existence is ἀνούσιον or ἐννούσιον? That is, without substance, or substance? Without substance, they say. I accept this, but I ask: without substance in what sense—he who has no substance at all? Or he who is above substance, that is ὑπερούσιον? Who would say that God, who confesses him to exist, is without substance?

For being is his own substance—not that substance known to us, but he himself is what being itself is, he himself not from substance but is himself the substance, parent of all things, granting being to himself from himself, the first substance, the universal substance, substance before substance. Therefore because he is ὑπερούσιος, he is called ἀνούσιος by some, not because he is without substance, since indeed he is: let us therefore venerate God, and say that he exists, that is, that he is ἐννούσιον, who established all things, heaven and earth, the world, spirits, angels, souls, living creatures, and man according to the image and likeness of their image. What then, since he is ἐννούσιος? He is certainly called God the Father, so we confess, and Father of the Only-begotten: this is the faith of all. Does the Word then deceive the understanding by its ambiguity?

For he said of men, I have begotten you: if therefore it signifies both I have begotten and I have created, as a creature, and I have begotten naturally from my own substance—how much more for the Only-begotten? How much more for him who is the Son? How much more for him who is one and alone? How much more for him in whom the Father is? How much more for him who is in the Father? How much more for him who is the λόγος, who was in the beginning, and was with God, and is God, and through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made? But what does it signify that Christ is the Only-begotten? For if God is the Father of all according to creation, how is he the Father of this Only-begotten, if not in another manner and from his substance, not from nothing? But before all things there was no other substance than the Father's: Christ is therefore from the Father's substance.

Come: we now confess existence in Christ. Let us inquire in the same manner about this: is this existence ἐννούσιον or ἀνούσιον? It has already been said above that it cannot be ἀνούσιον for that which has being. What then? This being—whence is it? ἐκ τοῦ ἀνουσίου or ἐκ τοῦ ἐνουσίου, that is, from that which is being, or from that which is non-being? God, as they say, is being: Christ likewise is being, but he began nonetheless. This is true. But this being which began, began from that which in some manner had already been, so that all divine things, and those sprung from divine things, are and always were in potency: but their procession is act, and manifestation from motion, and indeed a birth: for what of God is born, since God is unbegotten? Or is it credible, or is it right to say, that Christ, whom we call the Son of God, was born or came to be from nothing? He who is the Lord of majesty; and the rest of what we have said above and in other books.

But this last is what that heresy says, to which that one also is similar which says Christ began from Mary, or which says that the λόγος himself did not put on flesh but assumed a man, so that the λόγος himself governed—and this is Marcellus: but the former is Photinus. Let us therefore exclude all who think these and such things about Christ: let us speak with those who call Christ the Son of God, and the Son born, since they confess him to be the Only-begotten, begotten certainly, not made. This is too little, they add: the Son from the Father, God from God, true light from true light, and consequently the Spirit from the Spirit, and the Son in the Father, and the Father in the Son; these things they confess by no counsel, by the reasoning of fear rather than of truth. Some deny that substance should be named here, others name it, but wish to say it is similar, not the same.

For these, that first must be considered which the prophet Isaiah said: No God was before me, and after me there shall be no God like me. If the Son is Christ, Christ is certainly after God; but no one like God after God—Christ therefore is not like God, or if not after God, certainly with God, for in no way before God—ὁμοούσιον. And David thus: none is like thee. Then, as we have shown in many places, substance, in that it is substance, especially if it be of the same kind, and this be in two or more, is said to be not similar but the same substance; as the soul is a substance, and though there are many souls, in that they are souls, there is one and the same substance for them. Not that that substance preceded and pre-existed, but always co-existed simultaneously, and so in other things. How much more in God?

Since he himself is the origin of substance, with whom by a certain divine birth the Son, having received substance from the Father, is always with him and in him, as another and yet the same of the same substance, with no diminution of the one nor any reception by the other, by consubstantial completing unity—God and his power, who always was and always existed, that is, God and λόγος, God and his form, Father and Son, God and Jesus Christ, God and power and wisdom, ὁμοούσιον: therefore if this is said ὁμοούσιον as ὁμοούσιον, since they exist simultaneously in the same species, they are ὁμοειδεῖς of the same time and age. But here ὁμοηλικὴς signifies the consubstantial, at once both substance without composition or separation, but always simultaneously that which is distinguished by the powers and actions of things.

Here questions arise: first, that no mention of substance is made in the sacred Scriptures, and still more that ὁμοούσιον has not been read there. Another is that, if this is so, the Father suffered together with the Son. A third is that, if this is so, the Father is not greater, nor the Son lesser, nor is one the sender and another the one sent. And such things as these. First, therefore, let us examine that point concerning substance: is there no substance in God, nor in Christ? Has it not been read? If it has not, as we said above, do we take it so because there is no substance at all, or because God is altogether above substance, so that it would be impious for us to say that God is not? For substance is what God is, what Spirit is, what light is. Why then do we add true light? For in divine things, and in God, we shall understand substance as bodies are understood among material things, and mind among corporeal things.

For this is substance there: to be above substance. All confess that God is, since he is the power of substance, and therefore above substance, and from this also substance; for being belongs to power. Certainly God is almighty, and of the things whose origin or cause he is, he himself is all things in power and in a certain manner; whence Paul said: That God may be all in all. Therefore he is also ὄν, existent, and substance, since he is all these things, because he is the parent of all things; therefore he is all things in power. We must not hesitate, then, to speak of the substance of God, because when proper words fail us concerning the first or highest things, we adapt among ourselves what can fit the understanding, so that here what is, God's being, we rightly call substance.

In the same way let us accept that Christ both is substance and has his substance from the Father, since he himself is light from light, God from God, Spirit, the λόγος through whom all things were made. And since it is so, that he willed his substance to come even to the bodily mystery, of which the Apostle said: And not according to Christ, because in him dwells all the fullness of divinity bodily, which is οὐσιακῶς; for God is power, and the λόγος is action, and in each is both: for power is what can be, and what is can be. Therefore power itself is action, and action itself is power. Action therefore is also the Father; the Son acts, and the Father acts: therefore the Father, because power begets action; and therefore the Son is action, because action is from power. Therefore the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, but both are in each, and for that reason they are one.

They are two, however, because that which is more fully appears as another: the Father is more fully power, and the Son action; and action is more fully action because it is outward action. If this is so, both the Father and the Son are substance, and one substance, and substance from the Father, and substance together, and always and from eternity the Father and the Son are together, the same and simultaneous substance: this is ὁμοούσιον. Has it not been read in the divine Scriptures? First, whoever denies this admits the reality but seeks the authority of Scripture. But how is it not unjust to refuse the reality because our predecessors omitted the term, perhaps by some chance or cause, when you are overcome by reason? But what do they deny has been read: substance, or the substance of God and Christ, or ὁμοούσιον itself? Substance has been read of God and Christ. Of God it is read in the prophet Jeremiah: Who has stood in the substance of the Lord, and has seen his Word?

Who has given ear and heard? Again a little later: And if they had stood in my substance, and had heard my words. Substance is also read in the prophet David: And my substance in the lower parts of the earth. It is read in Paul to the Hebrews concerning Christ: Who is the character of his substance. There are other examples too, but I think these are enough.

But among the Greeks ὑπόστασις is used, not οὐσία. Let us see what the difference is. The Greeks call ὄντα both those things which exist among eternal things and those which exist in the world and in earthly things: among eternal things, therefore, God is almighty, the cause of all things; and the fount and origin of all things that are, that is, τῶν ὄντων πάντων. What then do we attribute to God? That which is being—or do we attribute being to all things, do we give it, do we not give it? Indeed, reason holds that God is primarily being.

But because being can be taken without it being openly apparent what that being is, if it shall now be comprehensible, it is called ὄν, that is, a certain form coming into knowledge; and such being is already called ὄν and ὕπαρξις; every ὕπαρξις has that which is being, but that which is being is not straightway also ὕπαρξις, nor ὄν, except potentially, not manifestly so as to be called ὄν; for ὄν is a certain figure, that which is being formed, which nevertheless is understood as purely pure when it is already understood as formed: for form engenders understanding, and manifestly declares that form is one thing and that which is formed is another. But that which is formed is being itself; form, however, is that which causes that which is being to be understood. This therefore, which is being, we attribute to God, but form to Christ, because through the Son the Father is known, that is, through form, which is being; and here it is said: He who has seen me has seen the Father also.

Therefore God is also ὕπαρξις, and Christ is ὕπαρξις; for ὕπαρξις is being together with form, and because they are always together, form is being and being itself is form, whence the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father: for being is also in the Father, which is power, which is prior to that which is form. Likewise being is also in the Son; but this being, which is proper being, it has from the Father, so that form may be being for it; therefore each is in the other, and both are one. Therefore God is ὄν, the Son is ὄν, for τὸ ὄν is being together with form: for everything that is ὄν is being with form: this is also called existentia and substantia and subsistentia, for that which is ὄν both exists and is a subject. But that which is being without any connection, which is simple, which is one; subsistentia therefore is more manifest, and is existentia, and is called substantia.

If therefore subsistentia is said of God, substantia is said even more of God, and this latter term more so, since it signifies a subject, and the principal thing which befits God. But let it not be a subject as substantia is in the world, but that which is more honorable and more ancient and according to the fount of the universe. But that which is being, which God bestows upon those things that are, so that each individual thing may be ὁμοούσιος: therefore being having form, and first and alone true: since that which is that pure being is, this is more truly substantia. But since form is also being, it too is substantia, but this is called ὑπόστασις: for being already formed is substantia, and being formed is God, which God is, and the Father, and likewise the Son, which is λόγος and Son. Subsistentia therefore is properly said of both, which is substantia: since that which is principal being, together with form, is called substantia.

This moreover is also called substantia, and therefore it has been said that there are three subsistentiae of one substantia, so that that very being may subsist in a threefold manner: God himself, and Christ, that is the Λόγος, and the Holy Spirit. Therefore ὑπόστασις is rightly attributed to God, rightly to the Λόγος, that is, to the Father and the Son. This the Latins call substantia, because we have said that substantia can also be used, namely for that which is being, or rather for being formed. These things being so, ὑπόστασις has been read, and this is οὐσία, as we have proved.

Now let us see whether, where we read it, ὑπόστασις signifies something other than οὐσία. For many think that wealth and fortune are signified by this word ὑπόστασις; but if it is said: If they had stood in the ὑπόστασις of the Lord, they would have seen his Word (acc. To LXX). What do we understand here by the ὑπόστασις of the Lord, if not that which God is? But God is spirit, light, power, almighty, and such things as these. There one who stands and understands—but there was no one who understands—stands therefore: but one who understands, understands God and sees the Λόγος of God the Son; it is therefore manifest that this is the ὑπόστασις of God, because when it is understood, the Word also is understood, for they are together, and this is ὁμοούσιον. This he says again: Because if they had stood in my ὑπόστασις, and had heard my word. Above, to see; but here he has placed both, that is, the means of understanding.

For one understands a thing who stands in the substance of the thing, that is, in the first fount of the thing, so as to understand all things that belong to it. What then? When elsewhere, either in David or in the Gospel, ὑπόστασις is placed and read, is anything other than οὐσία understood? My ὑπόστασις, says David: concerning God surely, My ὑπόστασις in the lower parts of the earth. For he says: let no one think himself hidden, because surely both all that I am and my substance are also in the lower parts of the earth: for God is everywhere, or the Spirit of God, which is the substance of God.

I wish now to examine also that which is set forth in the Gospel by way of parable and example. For a certain father of a household said to two sons, he divided his ὑπόστασις; we understand this to mean his fortune and patrimony. But if this must be referred to God, ὑπόστασις will here also mean all power and virtue. One son who departs from God consumes this: for indeed he who wanders far from God, and has neither the Spirit of God, nor light, nor Christ, this one consumes the substance of God within himself. For this is the ὑπόστασις of God, as we have said; whether we now call it riches or patrimony here, it makes no difference: for thus it was said by the apostle Paul: O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!

If therefore the riches of God are wisdom and knowledge: and if wisdom and knowledge are themselves the power of God, and the power of God is Christ, and Christ is the Λόγος; and the Λόγος is truly the Son, and the Son is himself in the Father: he himself therefore is the riches of the Father; he himself is the ὑπόστασις. Therefore it makes no difference whether we understand ὑπόστασις as riches or as οὐσία, provided that what is signified is that by which God himself is. Therefore ὑπόστασις or οὐσία has been read concerning God: and this is also understood concerning Christ. It has been said: I am in the Father, and the Father is in me. This indeed was said twice for this reason, that the Son could be in the Father, yet not also the Father in the Son, but so that fullness and the same oneness might be in each. But if the ὑπόστασις is the same, therefore ὁμοούσιον. And it is the same: for Christ is God of God, and light of light. Therefore ὁμοούσιον.

But if this is so from eternity and always necessarily together, therefore truly ὁμοούσιον.

But this very word ὁμοούσιον has been read. For all the things we have said have been read: I say this to you, who already confess concerning God either that he is light or that he is spirit. You say therefore of God, God; of the invisible Spirit, Spirit; and true light of true light, which are the ὑποστάσεις of God. But when you say of Christ, God of God, light of light, and such things: where have you so read? Or is it permitted to you to speak thus, from which ὁμοούσιον is rather proved, while it will not be permitted to us to learn ὁμοούσιον? But if you say light of light because both God has been called light and Christ light, and likewise both the Father is called God and Christ is called God; that indeed is clear, yet it has not been read of God, light of light; yet it was permitted to take it. Let it therefore be permitted to compose from things read what has not been read.

You deny that ὁμοούσιον has been read; but if certain similar things, or things similarly named, have been read, by equal right we ought to accept this similarly named term as well. The οὐσία of God is light, this light is life, and this life, this understanding, that God is this, that Christ is this, has been sufficiently declared. The Father lives, and I live. The Father has life in himself, and has given to the Son to have life in himself. All things that the Father has, he has given to me. By these and many other passages we prove that the same things are in the Father and in the Son, and that this is so always and from eternity: and therefore it has been called ὁμοούσιον.

But as to the source of this word, hear the Gospel, hear the apostle Paul, hear the prayer of oblation, since God is life; and eternal life. We Christians, that is, we who believe in Christ, are taught in the Gospel how we ought to pray to God the Father, in which prayer, while we ask for many things, we also ask for bread, which bread is life (for thus it has been said: For this is the bread which came down from heaven). This life, both of Christ and of God, that is, the eternal life which he himself names by the word ἐπιούσιον ἄρτον, bread of the same οὐσία, that is, of the life of God: consubstantial life. For how shall we be sons of God, except by participation in eternal life? Which Christ, offering it from the Father, gave to us.

This therefore is, δὸς ἡμῖν ἐπιούσιον ἄρτον, that is, life from the same substance, for indeed if what we receive is the body of Christ, and Christ himself is life, we ask for ἄρτον ἐπιούσιον, for riches dwell bodily in Christ; the Greek Gospel therefore has ἐπιούσιον, which is derived from substantia, and certainly from the substance of God: the Latins, either not understanding this or not being able to express it, could not render it, and placed only quotidianum, not ἐπιούσιον. Therefore both the word has been read, and substantia is in God, and it can be said in Greek even though it cannot be expressed in Latin; yet it is said in Greek because it is understood. Therefore we who believe in Christ, because we hope for eternal life from him, because he himself is life, when we follow him, and are with him, and around him, and around eternal life, we are called λαὸς περιούσιος. Hence the holy Apostle in his Epistle to Titus said thus in Greek: Ἵνα λυτρώσηται ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ πάσης ἀνομίας, καὶ καθαρίσῃ ἑαυτῷ λαὸν περιούσιον ζηλωτὴν καλῶν ἔργων.

The Latin translator, not understanding περιούσιον ὄχλον, περιούσιον, τὸν περιόντα, that is, those who are around the life which Christ both has and gives, rendered it as populum abundantem. What merit is there that a people by which one abounds should be saved? But this again is a great reason and as it were a necessity, whereby περιούσιος. Hence the prayer of oblation with the same understanding prays: σῶσον περιούσιον λαὸν, ζηλωτὴν καλῶν ἔργων. Therefore all these things have been read, derived from οὐσία; from this therefore ὁμοούσιον has been compounded concerning God and Christ, which is not alien to reason: for it has the οὐσία which the foregoing names have, and it has been derived in the same manner: and this name excludes all heretics; therefore it was necessarily set down by our forebears. It must therefore be both stated and always treated.

But because it is not understood, they say, it causes scandal and must be removed both from the faith and from discussion, or at least rendered in Latin: it is not understood, they say. Therefore it cannot be said in Latin either. It is not understood—why then do you fear it? For those who attack it nonetheless fear it: if you fear it, you are heretics, wishing to slip in once this word is excluded. Do you deny οὐσία in God, and therefore wish ὁμοούσιον removed, because those who use it confess οὐσία? Therefore you understand it and fear it. But if Basilius also says ὁμοούσιον, and this name too is against you, and you therefore reject it as well, because you once deny οὐσία in God—if you reject it because you understand it, then Basilius himself understands it, he who wishes ὁμοούσιον to be said, of whom we shall speak later. ὁμοούσιον is not a name that is not understood. Let it be said in Latin, they say.

Because it is difficult to say, you demand this; and if it is said, you will follow. A great wonder! A word makes you heretics, or rather the sound of a word, which is said in Greek. Then if I say it in Latin, since the Church has Greeks, and since all Scripture both of the Old and New Testament is written both in Greek and in Latin, if we do not put it in Greek, when questioned by Greeks, what shall we answer? It must necessarily be said as ὁμοούσιον: therefore it must be set down. But what of this? Are there not many names in the Scriptures, either Greek or Hebrew, either translated or not translated? Such as, Ἠλεὶ, Ἠλεὶ, λαμᾶ σαβαχθανεί. Likewise Golgotha, and Emmanuel. Likewise, If anyone does not love our Lord Christ the Son, ἀνάθεμα.

Hundreds of others either translated yet still set down, or not translated and set down alone; or anathema, which is expressed neither in Latin nor in Greek, and yet is set down and used daily, just as Alleluia and Amen, which are said unchangeably in every language. It is therefore permitted to set down ὁμοούσιον in the same way. Certainly when a word is to be removed, it is removed either because it is obscure, or because it is contrary, or because it expresses too little or too much, or because it is superfluous. This word is not obscure; for we ourselves have said what it signifies; and you, because you understand it, fear it; and Basilius, because he understands it, changes it. It is not contrary, for since we all now confess concerning substance—for God is substance, Spirit, light; which things are said of God the Father and of Christ—this word ὁμοούσιον, since it is said concerning substance, cannot be contrary. But it expresses too little or too much. It should rather be corrected than removed.

And how is it superfluous? Because it has already been said, where it was said—or because it is not useful, in that it excludes heretics, especially the Arians? Because it was set down by our forebears as a wall and bulwark? But it was set down recently. Because the poisonous cohort of heretics broke out recently, yet it was established in accordance with the ancient faith, for it had been discussed before, and many bishops of the world, three hundred and fifteen in the city of Nicaea, sending the faith decreed throughout the whole world, had thousands of bishops in agreement with it, both of that time and of the following years. Moreover it was approved by the emperor, the father of our emperor.

But we wish this to be said in Latin: nor will this be denied to you—you who deny substance in God and are overcome by Basilius, and you, Basilius, who confess substance—both of you confess ὁμοούσιον by your own words. Surely you say God, and you say the same is light, the same is spirit. Whoever says these things says the substance of God. For whoever says Father, or almighty, or good, or infinite and such things, says not substance but quality. Likewise you call the Son Λόγος, light, spirit; and these signify substance. Again, when you say God, you say God of God, true light of true light: you remove the ground of Basilius's fear, lest there be a superior substance from which the two come.

For if God is of God, and light of light, then the substance of the Father is that of the Son: because God the Father himself is the substance, from which substance the Son is Λόγος, light, spirit: for when he is called Son, likewise Savior, likewise Jesus Christ, this is said according to quality, not according to substance. So the rest is given either to the Father or to the Son; therefore you confess substance. But you at least believe Basilius, who says the same things of God and of Christ: God is light, spirit, Λόγος, and he confesses substance. But in these things ὁμοούσιον is not present: so it is, if you do not understand the same substance in ὁμοουσίῳ. But if when the word is compounded, the same thing in two or more is signified—ὁμοειδής, meaning of the same species; and ὁμοηλὶξ, meaning of the same age; and ὁμώνυμος, of the same name; ὁμονοίᾳ, concord, of the same heart, the same ἐννοίᾳ—therefore consubstantial means being of the same substance.

But if ὁμοῦ is understood, ὁμοούσιον will mean in Latin simul consubstantiale, not from any other, but from the power of God from eternity. For if In the beginning was the Λόγος, and the Λόγος was with God, since the beginning has nothing before it—for if it had, it ceases to be the beginning—God is from eternity, and the Λόγος is from eternity. Both therefore are together, and always together, and at no time is one without the other, nor is the Son at any time from that which is not. Here therefore Arius is excluded, who put forward ἐνότε οὐκ ἦν: his opinion was also this, that the Son is ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων, that is, from nothing. ὁμοούσιον signifies being together and substance: against both sacrileges the power of this word fights back, by which ὁμοούσιον is said: for if it is so that ὁμοούσιον means of the same substance, as ὁμοειδής, as we taught above, then what was said—that Christ is from nothing—is excluded: for if God and Λόγος are of the same substance, God and Λόγος are not only not from nothing, but not even from a similar substance.

But if ὁμοούσιον is understood from what it is, as being together in substance, that is, the being-together of substances, then God and Λόγος are together, and from eternity always together, Father and Son.

From this is excluded what was said: there was a time when he was not. If this is so, by this one word, that is, ὁμοούσιος, the whole poison of the Arian dogma is destroyed. O learned bishops! O holy ones! O you who confirm the faith by the Spirit! O word, truly the word of God! By which God and Λόγος are shown to be together from eternity, and always of the same substance. ὁμοούσιον has therefore been said in Latin: whence it must necessarily also be set down and treated in Greek. But let us add something further now, by which through your own confession and through divine reading ὁμοούσιον expressed in Latin may be approved. The divine reading says: the Father in the Son, and the Son in the Father. And lest this be too little for faith, our Lord Jesus Christ himself says: I in the Father and the Father in me. What then? Do these names inhere in one another? Or powers, or substances, or wisdoms and authorities?

The Father, insofar as he is Father, cannot be in the Son. Likewise the Son cannot be in the Father, except insofar as he is of the same substance of power, that is, in the other. Hence one is in the other: unity is rendered even as each subsists individually; yet one, because the same is understood and named in both. Therefore both the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father. But in this manner. If this is so, let us see the rest. You say, and rightly say: Jesus Christ our Lord, God of God, and light of light. It is close to saying likewise this. Let us say therefore, and truly say, in God, light in light. Which indeed is not said in reverse for this reason, that one word is in two. For Father and Son are two words, and therefore they can be turned about mutually, so that both the Father is said to be in the Son and the Son in the Father.

But when one name is said of two, God in God, it will be said in the same way also when it is said of the other; the same reasoning applies when light in light is said. By the necessity therefore of one name it is said once, but on account of the two, Father and Son, it is both understood and heard twice. Let us say therefore that Jesus the Son of God is God of God, light of light. Let us say also this: God in God, light in light. For if, as we all confess, both the Son is in the Father and the Father is in the Son, and the Father is both God and light, yet in such a way that the Son is from the Father, then necessarily and truly it must be said: both God in God, and light in light. Or is that harsh? But it must necessarily be confessed that it is so and stands thus.

What if it has also been read, and from these two things one has been set down most openly in such a way that it has not been invented by me but is already proved by sacred reading? The hymnic David in the book of Psalms, which is called the key of all mysteries, thus sings to God: For with thee is the fountain of life, and in thy light we shall see light. Do we think this said to God, or to Christ? Or to both? Because to whichever it is rightly said: for the Son is in the Father, and the Father is in the Son. But if to God the Father, this will be that: If they had stood in my substance, and had heard my word. But if to the Son, this will be that: He who sees me sees also the Father. Therefore in thy light we shall see light. There is therefore light, in thy light we shall see light.

Nor indeed should there be any doubt when this also follows, since what is in the same manner is proved both in reality and by reading. If this is so, let us gather everything together: ὁμοούσιον will now appear both understood in Greek and pronounced in Latin. We believe in God the Father almighty, and in his only-begotten Son. Let it be made true: enough has now been said of this. Isaiah says thus: Egypt has labored, and the merchandise of the Ethiopians and of the Sabaeans. Men of great stature shall walk in thee, and shall be thy servants, and shall follow behind thee, bound in chains they shall worship thee, and shall pray to thee, because God is in thee, and there is no God outside thee.

Jesus Christ our Lord, God of God, light of light: consubstantial, simultaneously substantial: thus the rest joined to the symbols, and the faith is set forth and completed, ὁμοούσιον is full, both of the same substance and in the same substance, and always together—if it please, let it be held in Latin thus. But if one Greek word, which with great expressiveness and great brevity encloses both, is preferred to remain, let it persist concerning God and our Lord; and ὁμοούσιον indeed more and more let it be held, written, said, treated, proclaimed in all the Churches. For this is the faith at Nicaea, this is the faith of the apostles, this is the catholic faith. Hence the Arians, hence all heretics are overcome. Peace with those who think thus, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The divine ΛΟΓΟΣ or nous, mind uses the celestial soul as its seat and as its body; but that soul uses the sensual nous, mind, or the ΛΟΓΟΣ uses the non-sensual soul, just as the sensual itself is in the body, and therefore in whatever kind of body. Now everything that is from divine things is, as it were, a part of them, but as an image, as has been both asserted and proved in other places: for indeed, since among the divine things themselves the ΛΟΓΟΣ of God is an image, so likewise are the rest; therefore they are images of all divine things. For just as the ΛΟΓΟΣ of God is an image, so every soul belonging to τοῦ λόγου, and whatever is of that kind there, and the rest, are images. But in sensual nature they are to be called not images but rather likenesses and semblances.

For the progression of things is such that the effulgence of light is the image of light: whence the substance is the same in the highest and eternal things, because the image of light is light. For just as from Spirit comes only Spirit, and from the true comes the true, and from God comes God: so also from substance comes substance: for Spirit, and the true, and God is substance. Now everything that is the being proper to each thing is substance. But this being which we speak of must be understood differently in that which is being, and differently in that which is being in such a way that one belongs to substance and another to quality. But these things are thus in sensible things and in the world. Yet in divine and eternal things these two are one: for everything there is simple, and this is God—which is light, which is the highest good, which is existence, which is life, which is intelligence: but of this we have spoken also elsewhere.

All things there, therefore, are substantially simple, unconnected, one with number, yet not one by number, but one before number, that is, before the one that is in number—that is, plainly simple, alone without phantasy, which is the other. Whence what is born from thence is an image, not a cleavage, nor an outpouring, but an effulgence: not an extension, but an appearance; not a germination of power, but rather an action of power: for where is action, or whence, if not in power and from power? And when or where is power, if not with action and in action? Therefore neither is one in the other, nor are they ever merely similar, because they are always the same. And because the light is declared by its effulgence, or the power is declared by its action; therefore: He who sees me, sees also the Father. And because no one sees that power itself alone: No one has ever seen God.

And since power at rest is life, and intelligence at rest, but this life and intelligence is action; if anyone were to see God, he must necessarily die: because the life and intelligence of God is in itself, not in act: but every act is outward, and this indeed is our living, which is living outwardly: therefore to see God is death: No one, he says, has ever seen and lived; for like is seen by like. Therefore outward life must be relinquished, outward intelligence must be relinquished, if we wish to see God, and this for us is death.

Now since this life and intelligence is the ΛΟΓΟΣ, who is Christ: through Christ all things are ours also: through him therefore is ΛΟΓΟΣ, and life, and intelligence. Why? Because all these things are movement and addition: we therefore, if we are in Christ the Lord, see through Christ, that is, true life, that is, through the true image. And because it is true, therefore of the same substance, because power is also in action: there therefore we see God, and hence that saying: He who sees me, sees God. Now because action is from power, therefore the Son is from the Father, and the ΛΟΓΟΣ is from Spirit: and because Spirit is from Spirit, therefore God is from God: therefore from the same substance comes the same substance, as we have taught above.

God is power, that is, what is the first universal being of existence, which has life and intelligence with itself, that is, within itself: but rather that very being which is being, that is, which is life and intelligence by interior movement turned back upon itself: there is therefore movement in God, and from this also action, whence it was said: Amen, amen I say to you, the Son can do nothing of himself, unless he sees the Father doing it: for what he does, the Son also does likewise. In like manner therefore the Father both makes and acts, but inwardly, whence having need of nothing from without, he is always full, always whole, always blessed. But since life and intelligence are movements, and all life gives life, and everything that is given life is outward; likewise intelligence—what it understands is outward, and what understands inwardly, drawing life from intelligence, understands by that intelligence either shining forth or illuminating.

Whence from God and from the same substance there is both substance, and life, and intelligence, and likewise movement; when it is inwardly within itself, it is the same as substance: when it looks outward, and so as to project outward, that is, to work and to act, this is birth, this is nativity. And because the movement is one, the Son is only-begotten; but the one movement is either that life or that intelligence: for life must necessarily be movement. For all life gives life, whence life is movement, which, whether existing in itself and turned back upon itself, is substance to itself; or whether it looks outward, whence it is more properly called movement: for inward movement is cessation, or moved cessation, and ceasing movement: for God must be both the parent of each—of cessation I mean and of movement—and the very substance itself, which by its fellowship and a certain form as a source toward both is itself simple and one, and always one and alone, and, as we said above, whole.

When he is received and understood in movement at rest, this is God, and he himself is the Father, always and from eternity the Father: because movement is always from substance and in substance, or rather is the very substance itself; when it looks outward—and this is what it is to look outward, to be movement or motion—which very thing is itself to see oneself, to understand oneself, and to will to know: but when it sees itself, it becomes twofold and is understood as both the seer and what is seen: he himself who sees, the very thing that is seen, because he sees himself: this therefore is the one looking outward, born or existing outwardly, so that it may understand what it is. Therefore if it is outward, and if begotten, it is Son: and if Son, only-begotten, because it is alone, being all act, and all and universal and one movement, and the same is both movement and substance: therefore both Father and Son are one and the same substance: consubstantial therefore, that is, ὁμοούσιον.

All things therefore belong to the Son, as all things belong to the Father. But because substance is prior to act and movement in terms of power—and I said prior with respect to force and to cause, because substance is the cause of movement: for all movement is in substance—therefore the Father is necessarily generator, and likewise necessarily all things that the Father has, the Son also has: All things, he says, which the Father has, he has given to me. And likewise: As the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son to have life in himself: therefore as the Father, so the Son is life, and life from himself. For that is life which is for itself and for others the power of living, not life from another source. Therefore movement, and principal movement, and one movement, and movement from itself, and only-begotten movement: this is ΛΟΓΟΣ: for he is life, through whom all things live.

And because he is life, he is the one through whom all things were made, and unto whom all things were made: because all things, when purified, return to eternal life. And all things were made in him, because the things that were made are life in him: for there is nothing that exists, to which its own being belongs, from which being itself is life to it that it exists. Therefore all things were made in Christ, because Christ is ΛΟΓΟΣ. But life neither began, because it is always from itself to itself, whence it never ceases, and is always infinite, and through all things and in all things, from the divine and the supercelestial all the way down to the celestial, and all the heavens, the aether, the air, the watery and earthly realms, and all things that spring from the earth, and all other things. Therefore also our body and flesh has something vital, and all matter is animated, so that the world might exist, whence by God's command living creatures burst forth.

In flesh therefore life dwells, that is, ΛΟΓΟΣ: and in life dwells Christ: wherefore the ΛΟΓΟΣ was made flesh. Hence it is no wonder that by mystery he took on flesh, so that he might come to the aid of both flesh and man; but when he took on flesh, he took on the universal ΛΟΓΟΣ of flesh: for on that account all power of flesh triumphed in the flesh, and on that account he came to the aid of all flesh, as it was said in Isaiah: All flesh shall see the salvation of God. And in the book of Psalms: To you all flesh shall come. Likewise also the universal λόγος of the soul: for that he also had a soul is manifest, since the same Saviour said: My soul is sorrowful even unto death. And likewise in the Psalm: You will not leave my soul in hell.

Now that he took on the universal λόγος of the soul is made manifest by these words in Ezekiel: All souls are mine, as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son. Likewise the universal λόγος of the soul is shown also from this, that he is angry, when he curses the fig tree, and says: It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in that day than for you. So also in many other places. Likewise also he desires, when he says: Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. There also he reasons: but let your will rather be done.

These and many other things are by which the universal λόγος of the soul is shown: therefore the whole man was assumed, and assumed, and liberated: for in him all universal things were present—universal flesh, universal soul—and they were raised upon the cross and purified through the salvation of God the ΛΟΓΟΣ, the universal of all universals: for through him all things were made, who is Jesus Christ, God and Saviour, and our Lord. Amen.

The Λόγος, therefore—all things that are, and that can be, and that could have been—is, as it were, the seed and potency of existing, the wisdom and power of all substances from God unto all actions, God as the power of the Father and the act by which the Son himself is one God with the Father. For since these existences are living and understanding, let us observe these three things—being, living, understanding—to be three in such a way that they are always one, and in that which is being. But when I say "in that which is being," I mean that being is there: in this being, therefore, this is to live, this is to understand all things substantially, and one in subsistence; for to live itself is the same as to be; for it is not the case in God, as it is in us, that what lives is one thing and the life that causes living is another.

For if we posit and accept that He himself is life and exists, and that whatever is His power, that same thing is His being, it will become clear that we must accept being and living as one and the same: this is the reasoning, and the force of understanding is likewise the same for Him. This very act of understanding, therefore, is what being is for Him, and that being is what understanding is: this very understanding is intelligence: being, therefore, is the being both of life and of intelligence, that is, it is what life and intelligence are: therefore what life is is one, and being is the same as what intelligence is. But if these things are one in each singly and in pairs, it follows that living itself is the same as understanding: for if being is living, and being is the same as understanding, then living and understanding become one, since being is one for them.

To this is added the fact that being itself is nothing other than living: for what does not live loses its very being, so that as long as anything exists, its living is its own being, whence being dies together with life. But when we speak of eternal things, we take living in another sense: yet to know this very thing, that you live, is further to know what understanding is: therefore to know is to understand, and to know that you live is to live: therefore understanding will be the same as living. But if it is so that living and understanding are one, and since being is one with living and understanding; in substance they are one, in subsistence these three are distinct: for since they have their own force and significance, and as they are named so they are; necessarily they are both three and yet one, since every single one of them is one and yet all three, and this is expressed by the Greeks thus: ἐκ μιᾶς οὐσίας τρεῖς εἶναι τὰς ὑποστάσεις.

Since this is so, being is as the foundation for the rest: for living and understanding, as second and posterior things, seem by a certain nature to be, as it were, inherent in that which is being, or to have in some manner come forth from that which is being, and in that which is their own being to have preserved that first and fountainhead being: for it has now been proved that being never exists without living and understanding, nor living and understanding without that which is being.

For the understanding of this matter, let the following serve as an example. Let us posit sight or vision existing potentially through its own force and nature, that is, its being, having the visual power for seeing, which will be its right to see; and likewise having the power, in seeing, to discern each thing seen, which is, on the other hand, to understand: if these are potential, they are said to be nothing other than being, and they remain, and as they are at rest and turned in upon themselves, they operate only so as to be—the existence of vision or sight—and are therefore to be counted as being alone.

But when that same vision has begun to employ the operation of seeing, as though by a going-forth of itself—as though, I say, for it does not go forth nor depart from itself, but by the intention and vigor of its own proper power—which is for it to live all things that are before it, or that it has encountered and beheld by meeting them; when it performs the office of living, the life of vision itself is that which by its active movement shows that vision lives, only in that which it sees by the pure sense of seeing, not distinguishing nor judging what it sees.

This indeed we accept by estimation, so that we suppose there is seeing alone without understanding: but since seeing, which is living for vision, is not seeing unless it grasps and comprehends what it has seen, it therefore simultaneously also judges what it has seen: therefore in that which is seeing, judging is inherent; for if it has seen, however it has seen, it has not failed to judge that very thing, or what it has seen. Therefore, as we say, in that which is seeing, judging is inherent; and in that which is the being of vision, seeing is inherent: thus, disconnected and rather simple things in what they are, are nothing other than one—vision, seeing, discerning; in such a way that also in that which is discerning, seeing is inherent, and in that which is seeing, being as vision is inherent, and, to speak truly, it is not inherent, but in that which is vision, in that is seeing and discerning: so in each singly all things are present, or each one is all things, one.

Lift yourself up therefore and raise yourself, my spirit, and by the power with which you have been breathed into me by God, acknowledge that to understand God is difficult, yet not hopeless: for He willed to be known for this reason, for this reason He established the world and His divine works, that through all these things we might discern Him: the λόγος certainly, who is His Son, who is His image, who is His form, gave from himself the passage of understanding toward the Father. In what nature, therefore, in what genus, in what force, in what power do we place, understand, and estimate God? Or by what phantasm of intelligence do we attain Him and advance toward Him? And since we say He is intelligible, certainly by the inbreathing of God a soul is given to us, and from Him a part is in us, which is the greatest part in us: we attain Him therefore by that by which we are from Him and depend upon Him.

Certainly after the coming of the Savior, when we saw God Himself in the Savior, when we were taught and instructed by Him, when we received from Him the Holy Spirit as the master of understanding, what else will so great a master of understanding give, except to know God, to recognize God, to confess God? And our forebears sought what or who God was; and to them an answer was given by Him who is always in His bosom, thus: You see me and you seek my Father; I have been with you for a long time: he who has seen me has seen the Father also; I am in the Father, and the Father is in me. What then do we say? God is Spirit, and Spirit of life: for it has been said that the Father is life, and likewise that Christ is Spirit. And He himself again said of himself: I am the life. And: As the Father has life in himself, so also He has given to the Son to have life from himself.

In the same manner the Holy Spirit is Spirit, and He too is certainly life. For Christ received all things from the Father: And all things, He says, I have given to Him. And likewise: What things He has are mine. Therefore He has life, and that life is from himself. Why so? Because where life is, there it is that life is from itself: and if this is so, there is the understanding that one is life, and what it is for being to be living: and what being is that is life: all things therefore are joined together, and all things are one and one substance, and truly ὁμοούσια, either together, which is ὁμοῦ, or of the selfsame substance.

The Father therefore is being; for this is the principle and the first for the others with respect to the phantasm of the secondary things: He is God, He together with the other two is God, He is one God, because what living and understanding are, that very thing is what being is; and from the two of these—living and understanding—what they are proceeds from that which is being.

Let no one therefore separate the Holy Spirit, and with profane blasphemy suppose Him to be something unknown, because He too is from the Father, because He himself is also the Son, who is from the Father: for after that which is being, that is, existence or substance—or if you ascend in a certain higher flight on account of familiar names, and say either existentiality or substantiality—which is ὑπαρχότητα, οὐσιότητα, ὀντότητα—all these being what I call being, remaining in itself, vivifying by its own motion from itself by its own power, by which all things are vivified and empowered, full, absolute, above all perfections in every manner, it is divine perfection. There God is above nous, mind, above truth, omnipotent power, and therefore not form; but nous, mind and truth are form, yet not as a form inhering in another as inseparable, but as inseparably annexed for the declaration of the power of God the Father—the same substance, or image, or form.

That first thing therefore which we called being, which is God, is also called silence, and rest and cessation. But if this is so, the going-forth of power—which is not indeed a going-forth but an appearing—and if a going-forth not releasing whence it goes forth, but a going-forth with connection, or rather an appearing: for there was nothing outside into which a going-forth could occur. For God is everywhere, and all things are God: therefore the going-forth of power became an act: that act, if God is silence, is called the Word; but cessation becomes movement; if essence, life. Which, as we have shown, in that which is being and living, in that which is silence there is the silent Word, and in that which is rest or cessation there is either hidden movement or hidden action. Necessarily therefore from this cessation movement was born and action was born, or from silence the Word, or from essence life. Therefore this essence, silence, cessation, is the Father, that is, God the Father.

But life, the Word, movement or action, is the Son and the only Son; because nothing other than one—either life, or the Word, or movement or action—and rather all these things are movement or action: for all those things are active, life and the Word flourish by movement and operate by movement; but universal movement, which is the principal movement, arises from itself: for what is movement, unless it is movement moved by itself from itself? For if it is moved by another, there is something other than movement which is moved by another: and if that which moves this something-or-other is not movement, it cannot move: for it will have no source from which to move. But if movement is born from movement, then movement is born from itself. But this is: The Father gave Him life, that life might be His. VIII. Therefore motion is one, and it is one motion, and a motion from itself. And since in part it is hidden, and from thence this apparent motion is moved by the Father.

And because it is a motion moved by motion, it is therefore a motion from itself, and one motion, whence the only-begotten Son. This is the universal Word in all things, through whom all things were made. This is life for all things, because all things that were made live. This also is Jesus Christ, because he will save all things unto life. Therefore one motion, and one Son and only-begotten, because there is one life and a single life, and that alone eternal. Therefore the Son is consubstantial with the Father: for the Father is life, and the Son is life, which is substance; likewise the Father is motion, and the Son is motion, which is substance; for there is nothing accidental there. Therefore the Father is also Word, though a silent Word, yet Word nonetheless, and the Son is Word, and this is substance. For whatever either is, or acts and operates, is substance, and where substance is most fully present, there is Word.

For Word is not as the air here sounding, but as something here acting. Therefore one Son, because one motion: one life, because there is one and only life which is eternal. For that life which at some point dies is not life. But it never dies, if it knows itself. Yet it will not be able to know itself unless it knows God, and God who is life, and is true life, and the fountain of life. If this is so, once God is known it will know all things: because all things are from God, and God is in all things, and God is all things. This John proclaims: Now this is eternal life, that they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. Knowledge is life. Moreover, whether life or knowledge, it is one motion, and the same motion producing life, and through life knowledge, and through knowledge life: the same motion therefore, fulfilling two offices, life and knowing. Now the Word is motion, and the Word is the Son.

The Son therefore is only-begotten in that he is Son; but in that he is Word, he is twofold. For he himself is life, he himself is knowing, having worked for the salvation of souls by both mysteries: by the mystery of the cross, because we had to be freed from death; and by the mystery of knowing through the Holy Spirit: because he is the one more especially given, and he himself taught all things, and bore witness concerning Christ. Which is for knowledge to produce life, and from this to know God, which is to become true life, and this is to bear witness concerning Christ. Thus Christ the Son of God, that is, the Word, is also Son of life; and because he is also motion and knowing, he is Son by the work whereby he exists as Jesus who is life.

But by the work whereby he is knowing, he himself also exists as the Holy Spirit, so that there are two existences, of Christ and of the Holy Spirit, in one motion, which is the Son. And hence Jesus also is from the Father: From the mouth of the Most High I went forth; and the Holy Spirit likewise is himself from the Father, because one motion brought both into existence. And because the Father gave all things that he has to the Son: therefore also the Son, who is motion, gave all things to the Holy Spirit: for all things that he has he has from me, he says; for since he too is motion, he has from motion: for it is not the Son who gave to him, but he, he says, has from what is mine. For principally motion is life, and life itself is knowledge and knowing: therefore whatever knowing has, it has from life.

This is the supreme Trinity, this is the supreme Unity: All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine; therefore I said that he shall receive of mine and shall announce it to you.

This therefore will make it sufficiently clear that what the Father is, and life which the Son is, and knowing which the Holy Spirit is, are one, and are one substance, three subsistences; which from that which is being, which is substance, is motion, because it too, as we have shown, is that very substance, and is powerful with a twofold potency, both of vitality and of wisdom and intelligence, in such a way, namely, that in each of all three there are three: therefore the Holy Spirit is knowledge and wisdom. That this is so the sacred readings prove: Who has known the mind of God, save the Spirit alone?: The Spirit himself bears witness to our spirit. What witness is there without knowledge? And knowledge itself, because it is wisdom, teaches us that we are sons of God. Likewise: But who searches hearts? Who knows the thoughts of the spirit? Likewise, how are both joined to knowledge?: I speak the truth in Christ.

Where truth is, there is knowledge, because Christ is truth; and therefore knowledge also, which is the Holy Spirit. And likewise: I lie not, my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit. For what else is conscience than knowledge together with another? Now ours is with the Spirit, therefore the Spirit is knowledge: and Christ is knowledge, because he is truth; therefore both Christ and the Spirit are knowledge. But indeed Christ is life: what if the Spirit is life? For there is, as I said, one motion, and the same life which is knowledge: for what one has learned in Christ, that is, from God; and when I say learned, I say it from knowledge, which is the same whether from Christ or from the Spirit; for what does Paul say, when he declares both to be the selfsame thing? The prudence of the spirit is life.

For error, imprudence, ignorance seethes and rebels and fights against itself; and this is the prudence of the flesh, which is imprudence, and because it does not know God, is death: therefore the prudence of the spirit is life and peace: in what manner then are these two joined and are one.

Let us show that God is both knowledge and life, although Paul says this of him: O, he says, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! Thus said by the same: The manifold wisdom of God. Hence also the mystery of God, hence also Christ is called wisdom, hence also that saying: That you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, the length, the height, the depth, and to know also the surpassing knowledge of the charity of Christ. Thus God too is knowledge, and knowledge liberates us, but yet through Christ, because he himself is both knowledge, and the door, and life, and the Word, and the one through whom all things were made. Therefore we ought both to know these things and also to have charity toward Christ.

These and many other things, and that God is knowledge, and Christ, and the Holy Spirit, and that they are sufficiently clearly life as well, may be proved by one example, though we have proved it more fully in other books: For as the Father hath life in himself, so also he gave to the Son to have life in himself. Likewise he says: As the living Father sent me, so also I live because of the Father. These things therefore are each such that all three of these things are each one; therefore one substance is the Father, therefore the Son, the Holy Spirit, God, the Word, the Paraclete, are one, which is substantiality, vitality, blessedness, silence, but silence speaking within itself, Word, Word of the Word: for what else is the will of the Father but the silent Word? In this manner therefore, since the Father is Word, and the Son is Word, that is, the Word sounding and working: therefore, I say, if both the Father and the Son are Word, there is one substance.

Then: My judgment, he says, is just, because I seek not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. Therefore one will, whence one substance: because will itself also is substance. Now that the Word itself is life is shown thus: You will not come to me that you may have life. Then also the whole mystery which I expound is of this: All that has been given to me by the Father I hold with me. But because the same motion is what being is, and what being is is motion, and because by a certain understanding being is prior to being moved, but prior according to cause, that is, kata τὸ αἴτιον: therefore the Father gave to the Son both motion, which also has what being is. Therefore to be motion is the Word: therefore he who is motion also has being: but being is life and knowledge: he therefore has all things, because he has the being of the Father: therefore the Son fulfills the will of the Father.

And what is that will, but that since the Father is life, his motion is his life? This is the will: to make other things live. This therefore is also the will of the Word, that is, of Christ. What, he says, is the will of the Father who sent me? That of all that he has given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and should rise again on the last day. Now to see is to know Christ as the Son of God, as life, and as the God of life; and this is to have received the Holy Spirit the Word, to be what life is. Hence it is proved: After whom shall we go? Thou hast the word of life, and we believe and have known that thou art Christ the Son of God.

The whole mystery is Christ the Son of God, Christ the Word, and that Word itself, the Word of eternal life. Therefore this Word which is life, and he who hears and believes it, assuredly knows God: therefore he also has the Holy Spirit.

Here full faith has been declared, and indeed by the disciples. Likewise he says to the Jews: If you knew me, you would know my Father also. You know neither me nor my Father. And rightly so. For although the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son, existence or substance in life and life in substance; yet since substance is invisible, it is not understood except in life. But Christ is more especially life, though he is also substance: therefore the Father is known in the Son. Whence? Because you do not know me, nor the Father; if you knew me, you would know the Father also. What is this very thing? You would know from me that I am being, because he himself is also knowledge, which is the Holy Spirit. Likewise to those same, because he is the Word, and the Word is the Father: therefore one substance: Likewise, he who sent me is true, and I speak to the world what I have heard from him.

The Father speaks to the Son, the Son to the world: because the Father through the Son, and the Son by the power of the Father's Word does all things, that is, the Word speaking within itself through the Word speaking openly does all things. Now the Word speaking within itself is God with the Son, because the Father and the Son are one God. He himself moreover says: Amen, amen I say to you: if anyone keeps my word, he shall not see death. And he himself again: For I know the Father, and I keep his word. Both are Word, but as I have said. How great or of what kind is that in John? Therefore the Father loves me, and I lay down my soul, that I may take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself: I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.

It is sufficiently clear that Christ has never been called a soul; but neither has God been called a soul. For the Father has been called God, has been called Spirit. Likewise the Son has been called Word, has been called spirit, and without doubt God: since indeed both are one God. Therefore these, Word and spirit, are above the soul by their own higher substance, a substance far other and lower than that of the soul, inasmuch as it was breathed into and begotten by God, and alone truly called substance, because it would underlie its own species within itself, and in the same manner as matter.

To this is added the fact that God is life, Christ is life, and each is life from himself, yet so that Christ has life from himself as the Father giving it: therefore life is superior to soul. For ζωή and ζωηρίς, that is, life and vitality, are prior to soul: therefore those things are ὁμοούσια—God and the λόγος, Father and Son. For as the one is Spirit, so the other is Spirit; and as the one is life, so the other is life. Likewise Word and Word, and so forth. The Spirit therefore has the power of taking up, laying down, and taking up again the soul. For life, and that which is life from itself, has the power of taking up and laying down that which, by its own power and by participation in itself, it causes to live: for the soul was made after the image of the image of God: Let us make man after our image and likeness. Therefore it is inferior, and more derived or made from God and the λόγος.

Never is it God himself or the λόγος, but indeed a λόγος—not that one who is the Son universal and general, and the seed, origin, and fount of all things that were made through him. But the soul is the λόγος of that one: how, or in what manner, I both remember having said, and shall say in its proper place. Therefore the universal, because it is Spirit and life, not soul, has the power of laying down the soul from itself, and again of taking up the soul. God therefore and the λόγος, both because they are life and because they are Spirit, live and live always. For they live from themselves. Therefore those things are ὁμοούσια. But the soul is ὁμοούσιος when it is taken up by divine things, that is, by the λόγος; for it is not taken up by God: for the λόγος is motion, and the soul is motion, and motion moved from itself, whence the soul is the image and likeness of the λόγος.

Therefore when it is taken up, nothing is added to life: since the life of the soul comes from life, that is, from the power of living. When therefore the Spirit takes up the soul, it projects its power and actions, as it were, toward lower things, when it fills the world and worldly things: therefore the Spirit, and most of all the λόγος who is Spirit and who is life, has in its power both to take up the soul and to lay it down: but when it takes it up, it is born, as it were, into the world, and its power converses with the world: but when it lays it down, it withdraws from the world, and does not operate in the world carnally, nor yet spiritually. This we call his death, and then he is said to be in hell, not indeed without a soul. Hence he asks that God not leave his soul in hell.

Therefore, because he is to return to the world, he leads it with him to the lower regions as well, and so takes up the soul again, that is, he receives the world again with its activities, and because the λόγος acts fully and wholly in the world with its activities, and he who is Spirit acts upon both soul and body, it was therefore necessary that these be sanctified again, because he had taken them up again. He went therefore to the Spirit, and sanctified he returns, he acted with the apostles, afterward he acted through the Holy Spirit. Who therefore is the Holy Spirit? That is, the λόγος; for there is one motion, and therefore it was said: and if I depart and prepare a place for you, I come again. For who came after the departure of Christ, if not the Holy Spirit the Paraclete?

That what I say is so—that the Father and the Son are one, likewise that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are one, and therefore that all are one—John declared by a connected reading; for he began from the λόγος: I am, he said, the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. For who arrives at that which is being, and true being, which is the Father, except through life? For life which is true life, because it is eternal, is this: to truly be; for nothing is changed, nothing is corrupted—which are the kinds of death—to be life, true life it is: God lives, he says. Therefore to be life is God. And: I, he says, live. Whoever comes to Christ comes to life, and so through life to God: therefore God and the λόγος are joined. And hence that saying: He who has known me has known the Father also. And: He who has seen me has seen the Father also.

Hence also that saying: Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? Hence also that saying mystically: And if at any time you shall ask anything in my name, I will do it. What is it to ask in the name of Christ? To become an eternal soul, to see the light of God, to come to the seeing of him, to have eternal life—not riches, not children, not honors, and nothing worldly, but everything spiritual, and everything by which, united to God, we may be joined to Christ: for this is that the Father may be glorified in the Son, that is, eternal life, which I will give to those who ask.

Then there follows most fully concerning the Holy Spirit, what it is, whence it is, that it is the same: For if, he says, you love me, keep my commandments. And I will ask my Father, and he will give you another Paraclete, that he may be with you for all time. What is the Paraclete, who defends and supports before the Father all faithful and believing men? Who is this? Is it the Holy Spirit alone by himself? Or is it the same as Christ? For he himself said: God will give you another Paraclete. When he said another, he said himself was another; when he said Paraclete, he declared a like work, and in some manner the same action. Therefore the Spirit is also Paraclete, and the Holy Spirit, another Paraclete, and he himself is sent from the Father. Jesus therefore is the Holy Spirit: for the Spirit is motion, whence also the Spirit is motion, because the Spirit: breathes where it will.

And he himself now says: Spirit of truth, and thus his name is Holy Spirit; Christ also is Spirit, and God is Spirit—all therefore are Spirit. But God is Spirit substantially: for in him there is both what is substance and motion: or rather the substance itself, which is motion, but remaining in itself, as we have already said many times, and shall repeat many times for the sake of clarity. But Jesus and the Holy Spirit are truly a motion that is moved motion; whence operating outwardly, but Jesus is an open spirit: for he is also in the flesh: but the Holy Spirit is hidden; Jesus indeed infuses understanding, no longer working signs or speaking of himself through parables; he himself teaches thus: I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you. But that he himself is hidden in the Holy Spirit he teaches thus: The world will see me no more, but you will see me, because I live and you will live.

This also was given to the Holy Spirit: That the Spirit of truth may be with you forever. And of himself he said: I am the truth. Then he added: Whom the world cannot see. And of himself he said: The world will see me no more. Then he added: Because it does not see him, nor does it know him. But Christ also no one knew: He came to his own and the world did not know him. He added: You will know him, because he remains in you and is in you. And he himself of himself thus: You will see me. And because Christ is life, of himself he added: Because I live, and you will live. And because the Holy Spirit is understanding, and the world itself lacks both, he therefore added: Because he remains with you and is in you. But whence is the Holy Spirit either in them or already remaining, if he is still to come afterward, and has not already begun to be with them through Christ?

Therefore they are joined and are from one, who is motion. This is declared more openly in what follows, for he says: These things I have said to you while remaining with you. But the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things whatsoever I say. I, he says, remain in you. For life has been given, and Christ does not now depart from them: they are therefore also in spiritual motion, which is Christ remaining in them: but to those souls themselves, in whom the Spirit remains and never departs, it was nevertheless said: Now I will go to the Father.

What this is can easily be understood, if it is taken as spoken from mystery, and from bodily mystery: for spiritually, since he himself is in the Father and the Father in him, where or why would he go? From the same mystery comes the fact that the Spirit in the likeness of a dove came to Christ, and that now the Spirit will be sent by the Father, and will be sent to the Father, with Christ going and asking that he be sent: for life recalled from death—and not that life which is itself life, because it is the λόγος: for this knows not death, rather this itself puts death to death; but the life which in men rose again from death. This he put on together with the body, and took it back from hell.

For the sake of this therefore, which was to be sanctified, it was necessary to go to the Father, but bodily and in a manner pertaining to soul, that is, to penetrate in power and in existence into that which in him the Father had been: in this manner therefore he went to the Father. And indeed no period of absence was announced, but on the contrary it was said that on the night following the sabbath he appeared to Mary, and would not allow himself to be touched before he went to the Father: Mary announced it to the disciples: on the same night he came to them showing his hands and side, and no longer forbidding himself to be touched. Afterward Thomas felt and touched him, at his own urging indeed, because Thomas was despairing, which signifies that he had already been sanctified.

How brief therefore is this time, but it was said for the sake of mystery: I will go to the Father: for since he himself is in the Father and the Father is in him, where will he go? By the same mystery therefore: whom the Father sends to you, because the Father sends, since Christ sends. And so he says: The Father sends in my name, that is, in my stead: or in my name, because the Spirit is Christ, and the Holy Spirit himself is the same; or in my name, because the Holy Spirit himself will bear witness concerning Christ, for thus it was said: He bears witness concerning me. Who is he?

He whom I send to you from the Father: all therefore are joined: I send, I send from the Father, I send the Spirit of truth: the λόγος therefore is in the middle, that is, Jesus himself sends; for the principal and universal motion, which is vital and is life, sends the motion of understanding, which, as he taught, is from life and is itself life: for to know what a thing is, this is to live, this is to be. But what is this being, if not to be from the substance of God, which is to be Spirit? Whence we are made spiritual, having received the Spirit from Christ, and hence eternal life: this Trinity therefore is called Spirit. For it was said: God is Spirit. Likewise it was said by Paul in the second letter to the Corinthians: But the Lord is Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

These things are certainly concerning Christ, but the Holy Spirit himself is so called because he sanctifies the holy ones, that is, makes them holy; and certainly he himself is the Spirit of God: for he is called prudence, wisdom, and knowledge of all things, for thus he adds concerning him: He will convict the world of sin, and of justice, and of judgment. Of sin, he says, because they do not believe in me, either that Christ is life, or that he is the Son of God and sent by God, and the one who forgives sins. Of justice, however, because I go to the Father: for so much in the mystery of the passion, because he kept and fulfilled the faith of the commandments: since he said, when he willed otherwise: Thy will be done.

And likewise because, leaving those whom he had admonished, he was no longer to be seen by them in the same way, it was a matter of justice, all those things having been accomplished, to go to the Father, and not only to go to the Father, but to be now with him: for therefore it is said: He sits at the right hand of the Father. Of judgment: because the prince of this world has been judged: for by the mystery of the cross all powers adverse to Christ were triumphed over by that same Christ. These things, he says, the Holy Spirit will teach. What is chosen? The Paraclete completes the mystery of salvation, and Christ did not cut it short when it was not yet complete: or is it because Christ himself and the Holy Spirit are the same, or because he himself sends him, or because the Spirit has all things of Christ? He has all things, he is celebrated through Christ.

And yet let us see what he is about to do: the Spirit is to give knowledge of things done, and the intimation of knowledge, as it were the force of testimony, and more of judgment, either unto repentance or unto punishment; concerning sin, he says, because they did not believe in me. Therefore that the world may now know its punishment. But concerning justice, because I go to the Father. And this can be concerning the sin which they committed unjustly who lifted him up on the cross, because he called himself the Son of God. And now he proceeds to the Father, which likewise will be the lot of all, if they believe in God and do the commandments of God: that they too may proceed to the Father: for they are justified, for: Abraham believed, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Then concerning judgment, he says, because the prince of this world has been judged.

These things, as is evident, pertain not to salvation, which has already been accomplished by Christ, but to the knowledge of things done. For the Father is speaking silence, Christ is the word, the Paraclete is the word of the word. Therefore the Holy Spirit in this act is another Paraclete, a co-worker with Christ in the mystery of salvation, but in the Spirit of sanctification he is what God is. If therefore in this way also Christ is what the Spirit is, but God in the mystery of eternal life is Christ, in sanctification is the Holy Spirit, and God sanctifies, as it is said: Sanctify them in truth, the Son says to the Father, therefore the Father sanctifies. Likewise Christ sanctifies, as it is said: And for their sake I sanctify myself, that they themselves may be sanctified in truth. Likewise the Holy Spirit sanctifies, for even to baptize pertains to sanctification: it was therefore said in the Acts of the Apostles: John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.

Which he poured out upon them unto knowledge: for they had already been sanctified by baptism, with God Christ invoked; for to the Holy Spirit it was thus said: Sanctify them in truth. And the truth is Christ; the Paraclete also is the Spirit of truth: therefore everyone who is baptized, and says that he believes, and receives the faith of truth, that is, the Holy Spirit, and is made holier by the Holy Spirit, and therefore it was said in the Acts of the Apostles: But you shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. Not unto sanctification, but unto knowledge, and unto those things which Christ promised in the Gospel concerning the Holy Spirit, that is, concerning the Paraclete. First that he should bear testimony concerning Christ, for thus he says: You shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem. But Luke also says: The Spirit not yet having been sent. Yet he already bears testimony.

Paul, however, in all his epistles, what else does he do but bear testimony concerning Christ? And after the departure of Christ, he alone saw Christ and Christ appeared to him alone. The Spirit therefore was present through Christ, and Christ through the Holy Spirit. Likewise John and Peter bear testimony: What we have heard, what we have seen, what we have touched. And in the Acts of the Apostles (he himself, and Luke who wrote concerning these things, speaks thus of David: Being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn to him with an oath; that of the fruit of his loins one should sit upon his throne, he foreseeing spoke of the resurrection of Christ: that neither was he left in hell, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus therefore God raised up, of whom we all are witnesses.

When they say these things: When there had already come a sound from heaven, and as with a great force, the Spirit was borne along, which filled the whole house, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in various tongues. Then the Apostles speak of the sin of the world, that it did not believe in Christ, in the Acts thus: As you know, this man, delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, through wicked hands you fastened to the cross and killed, whom God raised up. Likewise in the Acts of the Apostles, Peter reporting: That David had not ascended into heaven, but had spoken thus: The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand. This also Paul said: Who rose again, who is at the right hand of God. Therefore they taught that after the resurrection he went to the Father. The same one presently added: Who also intercedes with the Father. Therefore if Christ intercedes, the Paraclete also does so himself.

Likewise in the Acts, that he went to the Father, the testimony is: While they looked on he was taken up: and a cloud received him from their sight; and while they were gazing at him going into heaven, and the rest.

The three things have now been spoken concerning testimony unto Christ, concerning sin, concerning justice; now concerning judgment. Thus Paul, speaking through the Holy Spirit to the Romans: The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. Likewise he himself to the Ephesians: He who ascended on high led captivity captive. Likewise in the Apocalypse he himself said: And I have the keys of death and of hell. Likewise there: And there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. And the whole passage shows that the devil has been judged.

Since therefore it has been established that these three powers, both by common and by proper act and by the same substance, constitute unity and deity; not without reason are things referred back to these two, to the Son and the Father: for since the Father is as it were twofold in himself, being existence and action, that is, substance and motion, but motion within, self-generated motion, and since what is substance is motion, necessarily also the Son, since he is motion and self-generated motion, is of the same substance: for these two are one with each other without conjunction, and simple without doubling, turned as it were toward their own proper mode of existing, yet in force and power: because never is one without the other, one and the same only in act; but that which is outward, falling into passions, while the other interior one always remains and is eternal, being indeed original and substantial, and therefore always Father, by which reasoning also always Son.

Paul in all his epistles: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Likewise: Not from men, nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and through God the Father. Likewise in the Gospel: I and the Father are one: I in the Father, and the Father in me.

We also always devoutly employ Father and Son, and rightly so according to the reasoning set forth above: for motion, as we taught above, is the Son, and that same motion is life and knowledge, or wisdom. Certainly Paul expressed most fully what we wished to be understood: I give thanks, he says, to my God always for you in Christ Jesus, that you have all been enriched in him, in all word and in all knowledge. The Word we have called Christ, that is, life; knowledge, the Holy Spirit; therefore one: For in Christ, he says, you have been enriched.

Since this is so, if God and Christ are one, and since Christ and the Spirit are one, rightly are the three one, in force and substance: yet the first two are one in a different way, so that the Father is actual existence, that is, substantiality; but the Son is existential act: and the other two are two in such a way that Christ and the Holy Spirit are two in one, that is, in motion, and thus two in such a way that one is two: but the first two are two in such a way as to be one, so that when in one there are two, and when two are one, the Trinity exists as one. For why should I recall many things concerning the Holy Spirit, about whom the treatment has been at length?

From him Christ is conceived in the flesh; from him he is sanctified in baptism, Christ in the flesh; he himself is in Christ who is in the flesh, he himself is given to the Apostles by Christ who is in the flesh, that they may baptize in God, and in Christ, and in the Holy Spirit: he himself is the one whom Christ in the flesh promises will come, with a certain distance of acting; the same is both Christ and the Holy Spirit; and because he is Spirit, therefore also God: because Christ is what the Spirit is, therefore God: whence the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit, are not only one, but also one God.

Are that which lives and life one, or the same, or other? One. And why do two names denote the same, and how? Since it is one thing to be in act, another to be the action itself, therefore they are other. But in what way other? Since in that which lives, life is present, and in that which is life, it must necessarily live: for that which lives is not without life, nor when it is life does it not live: therefore one is in the other, and from this in either one there are two: and if as two, not as purely two, since indeed one is in the other, and that same thing is in both, therefore the same. But the same is in two, and is other from itself: it is therefore both the same and other in any one of these.

But if it is the same, then both are the same and one with respect to themselves; for either one existing as the other, neither is as a duplicate; therefore if each of the two is, by the very fact that it is, also other, each will be one with respect to itself; but when each is one with respect to itself, in the other it is the same one: but when it is the same one, truly each is one: for in no respect do the two differ, neither in the power of existing, nor in time, perhaps in cause, and in this respect one is prior to the other.

That this may be judged more easily, we shall treat these matters better as follows. To live and life are such that what it is to live is life, and what it is to be life is to live; not so that one is doubled in the other, nor is one together with the other: for that is conjunction: is it not the case that even from this, even if inseparably joined, it is united but not one? But now since by the very same act for life to be is to live, and in the same way for life to be. For we are speaking of these two, of to live and life; not of that which has life and to live as an effect. Although that third thing also, both in that which has life, and as one from the other, yet as each one.

From which it appears what existence itself in its own things is worth in itself, when with one and the same substance remaining, each preserves its own being without any renewal of itself: for the being of life is to be moved: but that very being moved is to live. Therefore to be is also to live, and to be life: therefore one and the same substance: for in each thing its own being, in that which it is, is its substance. For in the things above and eternal, that is, in the intelligible and intellectual, nothing is accident, nothing quality, nothing doubled, or together with another, but all are living and understanding substances, pure, simple, of one kind, by the very fact that they are they also live and understand; and conversely, by the fact that they understand, by that very fact they also are. That which lives and life are therefore one substance.

But since the understanding opens itself in this way, and the discourse has proceeded thus, so that in that which is to-live there is life, and in that which is life it is life for this reason, because it lives: we must consider, and inquire with close reasoning, whether this natural conjunction and twin existence is in its manner a pure simplicity and one thing, or two. If there is no difference between to-live and life, and if being life means that to-live is inherent in it by force; we shall rightly and deservedly say that these two form one, not a double, bond for their existence.

But if, on the other hand, the first is one thing and life is another; and likewise if there is a distinction, so that now life is the cause for living, and now to-live itself is the cause for life to be: these two are distinct, yet twin to each other and in themselves simply united; for by its power it pertains to its own λόγῳ and divine reason that these are twinned, so that, being of the same nature and power, one is that whose it is, from which the other comes. And yet there is some distinction, however small it may be, whence the twinning is not in vain. For action and to-act are not the same, nor are potency and operation, nor, to speak more truly, is cause the same as effect: for the former is the origin, the latter is the offspring.

Hence, since these two—it-lives and life—are action and to-act, although they exist in and together with each other, they must nonetheless be regarded as having a different force and nature, so that one is the cause of the other, and the other exists as the effect. But as my understanding is, and as my considered judgment holds, since in the principal and natural beginning of the first divinity, to-live is first and life is second—for reason will teach this and truth itself will confirm it—it comes about that to-live is the cause, and life is the effect of living, yet that same to-live is also life; for these things existed simultaneously and always simultaneously, as is recognized.

Life is something else as an ordered cause and principle for second and third things, or for those that live in succession, in such a way, namely, that life and to-live are the same and simultaneous; but this to-live, being second from life, exists when life exists: that first and principal to-live is at once both the cause of life and the fount and origin of living things. I know this can seem obscure, not so much because of the things themselves as because of the repetition of the same words, in that these two are bound together in such a conjunction that when to-live exists life exists, and when life exists to-live exists; whence, once either one is established, the twinning of the other will seem to have been made in vain.

Hear, reader, hear what you will marvel at, reader: these things so hard, so tortuous, so closed in their treatment of God and divine things, we shall lay open by simple disputation. We all certainly confess God, God almighty, God above all things, God before all things, God from whom are all things. When we confess him, we also without doubt confess that he exists. What do we believe his existence to be? What do we suppose?: God, he says, is Spirit, is light; and God is the true light. What is this existence believed to be, which is called spirit? We are compelled to understand spirit as a certain existing, living, and understanding substance: in the higher realms indeed, and especially around God, as something humble and alien; and in lower things they do not believe the name fits the substance. But why should we flee from this word? Since to-be, for each thing, is for it to be a substance. And in Jeremiah, God speaking says thus (acc.

To LXX): But if you had stood in my substance, you would have seen my Word. So also there not much later, and in many other places. Spirit therefore is substance, that is, his being: let us then gather what was said kata Ιωάννην: God is Spirit; and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. God, he says, is spirit, that is, what belongs to God is to-be: therefore the substance of God is spirit, the same substance, that is, what is living: not so that substance is one thing and living another, but that the living itself is the substance itself. For if it was said by the same one: It is the Spirit that gives life, certainly he who gives life is he who lives and is the power of life: therefore the spirit lives, God lives. Moreover, because he lives, as we said above, he is also life; Spirit therefore is also life, as the same John says: The Spirit is life; therefore God, since he is Spirit, both lives and is life.

Paul also to the Romans: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not according to the flesh: for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed me from the law of sin and death. The spirit of life, he says; for these three are spirit: God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit.

And concerning God I think it has been proved that he is also spirit: and that spirit both lives and makes to live, and is life substantially, so that these things may be understood as a simple and one substance, so that to-be-spirit is the same as to-live and to-be-life. But not that living which is ours, which belongs to animals, to elements, to things created from elements, to the world, to all things in the world, to Angels, to demons, or even to those whom in the world they name gods from the world: not, I say, is that living in God.

This is what God is: what is the living of the soul, either of each individual soul or of that universal and fontal one; not as it is there for Angels, not as it is there for thrones, glories, or the rest of those existing in eternal things, or in intellectual things, or in intellects: but that living from which these receive life and live, each according to its own mode of existing, with that living proceeding in its own way and breathing upon these, insofar as they can receive it, the power of living vigor—from itself to itself, through itself, in itself alone simple, pure, without a beginning of existing from which it was rather poured forth, or proceeded, or was born as a beginning through which the living of the rest would be created. For to-live gives birth to life; for by natural force the actor is prior to the action: for the agent begot the action, and as if having itself bestowed both the name and the thing from itself, itself received them.

This, while it is correct, is also very true by reason: certainly God, to whom this name God befits for omnipotence and principal supremacy—God, I say, first, if anything is to be called first in the works of God: but the understanding of human intelligence, in order to exert itself and grasp things, attributes both origin and diverse origins and a kind of time to things that either exist simultaneously or were poured forth simultaneously. God, I say, first begot the existences and substances of universals: these Plato calls ideas, the principal species of all species inexisting within them; which genus is exemplified by ὀντότης, ζωότης, νόησις: and likewise ταυτότης and ἑτερότης, and the rest of this kind: therefore the genera of genera are poured forth, being the universally principal potencies of all potencies. Therefore ὀντότης, that is, existentiality, or essentiality: or ζωότης, that is, vitality, that is, the first universal power of life, that is, the first life and fount of all living.

Likewise νόησις, the force, virtue, potency, or substance, or nature of understanding: these three are to be taken as each individually, but in such a way that by whatever they most are, by that they are named and said to be: for none of these is what it is without being all three: for being, if this being lives, is in life. But to-live itself is not a to-live that lives without having understanding: they are therefore as it were mixed, and as the thing is, simple in a threefold simplicity. For whatever by the very fact that it is, is also another, is never to be called double, but always one.

But concerning these things more elsewhere. God therefore is to-live, which, being supreme, first, fontal, principally principal, begot these three, that is, by his work of living brought them forth so that they might exist. These therefore came forth by his work, and this offspring, this generation, is such that from the agent the act, from that which is essentiality or essence, from the living one vitality or life, from the understanding one νόησις, the universal understanding of universal understandings, was born. To-live is therefore prior to life: although in that which is to-live, life exists: but to-live is as the parent of life, and life is both the offspring and what is begotten, since it was generated by the living one.

God therefore is that to-live, the first to-live from himself, to-live before the to-live of all things, and before the to-live of life itself: for the agent, always acting and acting from no beginning, does not act from the action, lest the action or phantom of a beginning be prior to the agent, but so that the action was either begotten or came forth or was poured out by the work of the agent. This acting we certainly place in that which is to-live: God therefore is to-live, and the principal to-live: life however is as the begotten. To-live therefore is the father, life is the son: for what was made in him is life, and the son himself says: I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. This is the life that arose from the fact that the father lives, and this is that saying: For I came forth from God.

Likewise he himself says of himself thus: If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink; he who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, rivers of living water shall flow from his belly. Hence also is that which he answered to the Samaritan woman: If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that says to you: Give me to drink, you would rather have asked him, and he would have given you living water. And afterwards: Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again. The Samaritan water is the worldly soul: But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst again, but the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

By these and innumerable examples of this kind it is made sufficiently clear that Christ the Son of God is life, and eternal life: since he too, like the Father, is Spirit.: For what is born of the Spirit is spirit: but the Spirit breathes, and breathes from itself: and to breathe is to live. Moreover, what breathes from itself lives from itself: what lives from itself lives from eternity and unto eternity: for that which is its own cause for being what it exists as never abandons itself.

Since therefore the father is what to-live is, as we taught above, and to-live is to-be-life, and likewise since life is what is begotten by that which is to-live, necessarily life is the same as to-live: for life also lives by the very fact that it is life, and is life from itself: for to-live belongs to it from itself: yet from that first one, which is principally to-live, which is the father, from whom and in whom life exists, in which to-live inheres and to-live-from-itself inheres—which we prove, understand, and confess to be the Son Jesus Christ.

All these things which have been said by me, let us see how they are signified and asserted in the Gospel according to John through the very words of the Saviour: The living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father. And lest anyone should believe that Christ said this in the flesh, he immediately added: This is the bread which descended from heaven. Then he testifies and teaches thus that he is life and eternal life: Unless you receive the body of the Son of man as the bread of life, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you: but he who shall eat his flesh and drink his blood has eternal life. Therefore everything that Christ is, is eternal life, whether spirit, or soul, or flesh: for of all these he himself is the Λόγος.

But the Λόγος is principally life: therefore also those things which he put on are life; whence these things also shall merit eternal life in us through the Spirit which Christ gives to us, having themselves also been made spiritual. And lest anyone should believe that Christ was speaking these things of the carnal Christ, and not of his whole self, who is Spirit, soul, flesh, what does he say?: What if you should see the Son of man ascending? Who is the Son of man? Spirit, soul, flesh: for these he had when he ascended, and with which he ascended. What then is it that he adds?

That the Spirit may be understood: Where he first was: that is, the Spirit: and life, which is the Father, which is God, whence these things are ὁμοούσια, that is, consubstantial, existing at no time outside of themselves, principally principal, one and the same substance, with equal force, the same power, majesty, and virtue, neither prior to the other in any respect, except that one is the cause of the other, and therefore one is the other; but the same other is truly so because it is the same one God; but because it is the other, therefore there is a first and a second; and because one is the cause of the other, therefore the one which is the cause is the father: but that which is from the other is the son: yet in substance there is no distance, no distinction of time, no differentiation; one movement, one will, and sometimes the appearance of another will, but always the same.

That these things are so we teach first from sacred reading, then, as order demands, as the necessity of things requires, let us also discern in those things which have one and the same substance, why one bears the power of the sender, the other of the one sent: one of the one commanding, the other of the minister: one with a movement of acting free from passions, the other through infinite acts in creating the ages is infinite, and in those things which are in the ages, subjected even unto death innumerable passions. That which is first lives, lives from itself, lives eternally, and this is God. That which itself lives, as I have taught, has the force of existence or substance, and the nature of life and intelligence: nay rather, in that which is its being, this is that which we call living, and this which is understanding, and this is God: therefore that which is being for God is the cause and father of existence.

And since in his very being life is his, and in it also the knowing of who he is, he is the fount of universal life and intelligence. For of these three things which are in God in simple existence, or which are God, God is more truly being: because from himself he has living and being life, or understanding and being intelligence, as we have taught above and in many places. So that now we may take the remaining two, life I mean and intelligence, as begotten from that which is being, having their own being from that which is the first being moved, having obtained, prior to the former, the force and name of existence and of life or intelligence.

For all things in the three are in a manner threefold and named in order: not because in each of the three the three are not present, but because by movement they accomplish that which they are said to be: for being is the first movement, which when it ceases is called movement, the same being an inward movement: for when it works so as to exist, it is rightly named both an inward movement and a ceasing movement. Hence we say that movement is that which is lives and to live: but now when from that which is lives and to live, a certain form has been, as it were, completed and begotten and shaped into the appearance of a habit of that which is lives and to live, this is called life, this is called son.

For just as any form, whether placed where it is or elsewhere, leads us to the knowledge of him whose form it is; so life makes us know what living is: for living is an act, and in the act at every moment there is a course, and therefore it is said: No one has ever seen God. For who could see living, which is God, without life which by its active lineaments comes together and exists in a certain appearance, so as to be the form of the living one? Therefore life is the form of that which is living, through which, or in which, that which is, lives and is seen to live, is received and known, which is signified by the saying of the Saviour spoken from the Father: He who sees me sees also the Father: for the Son of God is the form of God, that is, life, which is the form of the living one.

For it was said by Paul to the Philippians: Who, though he was constituted in the form of God, did not count it robbery to be equal with God. Likewise to the Colossians: Who is the image of the invisible God. Therefore Jesus Christ is both the image and the form of God. But we have said that in the form is seen that of which it is the form: and in the same way in the image is seen he whose image it is, especially if he whose image it is, is invisible, as is said here: The image of the invisible God. In the same manner it is said in the Gospel according to John: No one has ever seen God, except the Only-begotten Son, who went forth from his bosom. And likewise it was said to Moses: You shall not see my face; for who has seen my face and lived? Yet he permitted his back parts to be seen, that is, the lower parts, and the rest apart from the face.

How many mysteries are here? How many kinds of questions? How many signs for declaring both God and Jesus Christ, and that both are substance, and that both together are one substance, and that both at once are one substance, and that the substance is from the Father to the Son? All these things, and others of this kind, can in no way be explained, understood, and proved, unless the foregoing treatment shines forth with clear perceptions. Let it therefore be fixed as our settled conviction that God is spirit, and the spirit from which also the Son is spirit, and the Holy Spirit is spirit: For what is born of the spirit is spirit: But the spirit gives life.

That which gives life, certainly itself lives: that which lives, because it is spirit, lives from itself: and that which lives from itself, this very thing is that which lives: and because that which lives from itself, since it itself is that which is lives, has nothing else which may be called living: for it has not been made to live, but itself lives, existing as living or as to live: and because living, and to live is to act, in that which lives from itself, it never began; for it did not wait for another, just as it never abandoned itself, nor will it abandon itself: from eternity therefore and unto eternity lives the principal and universal substance of living, not so that it is a substance and thus living; but that very thing which is living, this itself is substance: for since that very living, and it lives, and to live is being, and is in a manner understood as being, it is not its own being as something it has, but is substance, and this by every sacred reading and by the very voices of things is called spirit.

But the spirit breathes, and breathes from itself, and God is spirit: and to breathe is this, namely, that it lives: therefore the spirit, which is God, lives from itself and always: it lives, I say, and in the act of living, and by the very work of life when it lives, by the work of life when it lives, it works. Therefore, with God living, eternal life was born, was generated, and because it lives, it itself is substance: and that which is from that which lives, even life itself is substance, equal and simultaneous by the same means, because that very living is life, and life itself by living exists so as to be life. Therefore living is spirit, and life is spirit: each embraces the other, and is in each other, and the one is not as something twin and added, but by the simplicity of that which exists from itself and in itself, as it were doubled as another substance, never separated from itself, because in each it is twin.

For living is together with life, and life again is together with that which is living: but living, as we have taught, is God, life is Christ: and because living is as the generator of life: for by the act which is living, as a certain offspring life is generated, living becomes father, life becomes son, these very things, which are one the other, and therefore two. For whence are they two, unless one is from the other? And always that which is from the other is son, but that from which the other is, is father. But now not other in such a way as to be separated and diverse, but only other from the other, as completing and completed, and generating and generated, both one in the conjunction of substance, since both living is life and life itself is living: hence father and son, one God.

And because the natural conversion of existence is only one: for just as in that which is living, life is present, and likewise in that which is life, living is present; there is one and only one conversion. Whence since in that which is life, living also is present; therefore the only-begotten Son is consubstantial with the Father, himself one Son, one Father. Whence one and the same substance, and simultaneous and always: for this is ὁμοούσιον, ὁμοῦ οὐσίαν ἔχων, having substance simultaneously, and equal force and power of existing, and the same nature of substance, with no time preceding; which we call consubstantial, with the causative prior, which is living, in relation to that which is life, so that the former as generating and father, the latter as generated and son, both is and is said to be.

Therefore because they are present in each other, and although when it is father, it is not son: and again when it is son, who is of him whose son it is, it is not father; yet by the force of things and the equality of substance, since living is life and living is one, it has been rightly proclaimed by the divine voice of the Saviour: And I in the Father, and the Father in me. Hence also this: I and the Father are one: for since by the force of things and with nature itself as guide all things are nothing if they do not live, and being empty of vital movement, are not believed to have even the appearance or form of material mass or of existence: for the slippery, inconstant force of flowing and reflowing does not admit of subsisting in a disordered manner, nor does it receive form, so that it may be said to be anything.

Hence, lacking that which is to be something, it also holds its own being, so that it is rightly said in no way to be. But now, comprehended and whole, and surrounding in its parts, and formed, and thereby embodied, and seized by some species into being something, it is both believed to be and is: because by vital motion, and bounded from the infinite by definite outlines, it is brought forward into the most certain senses. Therefore, the vital force and power, which flows down from that λόγος who is life, whom we call the Son, through Archangels, Angels, Thrones, Glories, and the rest that are above the world—this force makes hylical things appear to be. First, running and gliding into bodies and αὔλα, which are clean and purer by their natural substance, it suffers its light to be shared more broadly; then coming by degrees into the soul and the fountain of the soul. Because the soul is the image of τοῦ λόγου, it receives, as if by a certain recognition, a greater course of flowing down.

And because it hastens to animate the soul, its appetite for animating it becomes more eager. Hence, plunged into matter, and entangled in the elements of the world, and finally in the bonds of the flesh, mingling itself with corruption and death itself, it furnishes to the dregs of matter an idol of living. All earthly, watery, airy, fiery, ethereal, and heavenly things therefore live—not by that prior λόγος, nor by the full light of life, but wounded by the vital light on account of their hylical union.

Those things live more fully, and live more, which have withdrawn from matter and from corporeal bonds, such as the purer souls, and the Thrones, and the Glories; likewise the Angels and the Spirits themselves—some having life in another, that is, in their own substance; others are life itself: but Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit—for we shall teach about this shortly—together with God, yet from God, are life, and they live by universal life, and live from themselves, and do not have in another that by which they live, but so that for them this very thing is to be, to live and to be life and to be knowledge, the Father transmitting this, that is, principally existing as that which is to live.

Therefore, since all these enumerated things live, and there is nothing either among eternal things or among worldly or hylical things that does not live according to its own nature, it must certainly be confessed that there is some force or power by which all things are made alive, and are raised as from a fountain of living into vital spirits, so that from this they both live, and because they live, have obtained being.

Who is he from whom the vital spirit breathes into eternal and mortal things, by whom all things are vigorous, by whom they subsist, by whom they take their proper acts, by whom they were both generated and come forth to generate? God, without doubt God, and—what is to our mind an object of veneration—the father of living and the divine power of living. Him we shall call either the power of life, as we have said in other places, or the supreme and sovereign life, and universally universal, and the origin, cause, head, and fountain of all living things: the Beginning of existents, the Father of substances, who from what he himself is bestows being upon the rest, having moderated the power of living and the substance according to the force and nature of those receiving it. What is he himself, or in what does he consist?

Assuredly living and true: One, as he permits us to speak of him: he lives, and lives from eternity and unto eternity, having from himself that very thing which is his substance: he lives; for neither ought nor could any act accrue to him, lest at some time he be less than himself: but always perfect, full and whole, in that which is for him to be, there also inheres this manner of being: and the rest of things are after God, and are powers, and are actions of power, which by their own force are already believed to be, so that all things both are and appear to have what, through the mature acts of procession, existing things in their own work come to have here: but they are called actions when, through the processes of existing, they beget and bring forth outwardly what they are able to be.

As a seed is already potentially the stalk and the leaves; or as the male or female effusion of venereal desire; but these things are in the world and beneath the moon: above, however, in the ether and heaven, they are actions, and they live by actions, but even the generated things have become what they were going to be: for, released from their origin into their own proper operations, they run through their own acts by the contagion of the containing nature.

But if these things which are in the world are acts, how much more are those things which are in the eternal and above the heavens acts and actions, which generated these worldly things? Likewise also the soul and Angels from souls, and above souls. For the soul is carried by αὐτογόνῳ motion, that is, by its own and self-originated movement, and is called αὐτοκίνητος, whence ἀκίνητος: therefore it is always in motion, which is always to act, and to be itself ἐνέργεια, so that that motion is its substance. For it was said: Let us make man in our image and likeness. It therefore has αὐτόγονον κίνησιν, that is, motion self-originated, as God has it, as Christ has it.

But because it is not that prior spirit, therefore it is of another substance, and made, not existing from itself, but made so as to have motion from itself: for the soul is one thing, life another: for life is the habit of living, and as it were a certain form, or state engendered by living, containing in itself the very act of living, and that being which life is—both being one substance: for truly the one is not in the other, but one thing is twofold in its simple self; and therefore in itself, because from itself; and therefore from itself, because simplicity in the seventh works another thing: for rest begets nothing; but motion and the operation of acting forms from itself what it may be, or rather in some manner how it may be: for to be is to live: but to be life is a certain motion, that is, the form of the living thing, completed by that very thing of which it is the form; but that which completes is the act of living: because it never began: for that which lives from itself does not begin, because it always lives, whence neither does life begin: for when the completing thing is without beginning, that which is completed also lacks a beginning.

Therefore both are simultaneous and consubstantial. Now to live is God, and life is Christ: and in that which is to live, life is, and in that which is life, living is. In this manner indeed the one is in the other, because the completed and the completing are each in the other. For as the completing is in the completed, so the completed is in the completing, especially if these things are always so: therefore the Father is in the Son, and the Son is in the Father: for the completing and the completed are completing, and the completed is completed by the completing; therefore one substance—not one belonging to two, and two in one; but because in which God is, in the same the Son is, that is, of such a kind: for as God lives, so also the Son lives: in what kind of substance the Father is, in such the Son is.

But if the Father lives, they say, the Son also lives, and therefore both are of the same and such a substance. But the substance of this lives, and since both are, both live, both are without origin and sempiternal. But this is excluded by the sacred words of the Evangelist, with the Son himself, our Lord Jesus Christ, speaking: The Father liveth. This is the fountain without origin. But where is there a beginning from another? And I, he says, live because of the Father. If therefore because of the Father, he received it from the Father: and if he received it, he is begotten from the unbegotten: and if he lives, his existence is certain, and the force of substance in both lives in this one manner, the same for Father and Son, but the Son has his substance from the Father. For that which is born of the Spirit is spirit: therefore from such a substance of the Father, such is the substance of the Son.

And that it may be shown more clearly that both the substance was given by the Father, and that it is the same and one substance, it was said that he lives, and that life is substance: therefore the same substance belongs to God, and from God to Christ the Son; the Evangelist saying this: For as God hath life in himself, so also hath he given to the Son to have life in himself: therefore Christ is ὁμοούσιος with God: that is, consubstantial, which is of the same substance, that is, the first, principal, universal substance, from which all things that are and live have life ἔπακτον, that is, brought in from without, not self-begotten, nor is their living that which is the living of God and the Son. For to all others there is from life only as much as Christ bestows. In God, to live as the principal completing of life is, with one and the same existing fountain, with no prior either in time or in power, at least with respect to substance.

Whence whether we take ὁμοούσιον to mean that the substance is the same, there is no doubt that it is the same, because both he who lives is already life, which is God, and he who is life lives, which is Christ: and for both life is from themselves, as it was said: As the Father hath life in himself, so also hath he given to the Son to have life in himself. But if we take ὁμοούσιον to mean what it is to be ὁμοούσιον, to be simultaneously the same substance, this is more easily and more plainly confirmed by what I said the Father or the Son to be. For to live and life are thus simultaneous, and always simultaneous, so that in that which is to live, life is: and again, that which life is, is to live.

For let us take an example: although what I say is rather the thing itself, not an example. We have said that God is nothing other than to live, but that principal living, that from which all living of all others comes—the action itself existing in acting, and having its being in motion of this kind, which is having its existence or its substance: although not even having it, but itself existing as that which is principally and universally to live. But that which is completed from this act, and is as it were its form, is life. For as αἰὼν is completed by the always present act of all things, so by living and by the always present work of living itself, life is completed. And to frame it thus: vitality is this—that the form of life is generated toward its own power and substance. But also our living consists of always present time. For we do not live the past, nor do we live the future, but we always use the present.

For this alone is time, which alone, because it alone is time, is said to be the image of τοῦ αἰῶνος, that is, of eternity. For as αἰὼν always has all things through present realities, and these always. We too, because through present time we have all that we can have, therefore this time of ours is the image of τοῦ αἰῶνος, because our present is not always the same things nor the same present: therefore life is completed by living, and is formed by simultaneously existing: and formation is appearance; but appearance is a rising from hidden things, and a rising from hidden things is both a birth and the birth of him who also existed before he so arose: hence also in living, life is before life; and yet life is posterior, because life comes from living, and yet life is always and from eternity: because in that which is, it lives, and from eternity it lives, it is life.

Since therefore God lives and Christ is life, because life arises existing from that which also lives; necessarily the Father lives, the Son is life, in such a way as we taught above, so that in that which is to live, life is: and in life, living also inheres. Therefore the Son is ὁμοούσιος with the Father, as we taught above with examples.

Now there follows what the Holy Spirit, explained together with these, is. Concerning God these things have both been said and proved: that God is what being is, that Spirit is what living is. Likewise that light is what it is to be intelligence and knowledge. For light permits nothing to be hidden, nothing to be obscure; it opens, illustrates, illuminates. God therefore is this very thing which God is: he is being, he is being first and principal to all things that exist, furnishing being according to the capacity of those who receive it, as we taught before—this, that is, living; this, understanding; that is, this which is being, this is spirit, this is light. For these things are in one and simple—nay rather, are one and simple. These are what being is; this we rightly call either existence or substance.

But since the principal among these is that which is being, while the other two, living and understanding, are understood to be motions—since every motion is born from rest, and rest is that which is being—from that which is being, motion is born, and thence action: and the motion of that first thing which is being is living and understanding. For each is a motion, and one motion, furnishing two powers by a twofold office, one and the same substance. For substance in them is motion: for in them being is not one thing and moving another. So likewise living is not one thing and understanding another, so far as substance is concerned. For it belongs to the living to understand, and to the understanding to live, with one motion turning itself through its acts: yet in such a way that, while the act and work of living remains, the act of intelligence is set in motion.

Hence, since Christ is life, and the Holy Spirit is knowledge and intelligence, yet the Holy Spirit has received from Christ all that he has, and Christ from the Father, that is, from that which is being; life has come forth, and living has come forth as knowledge and understanding: nor is it otherwise when that first being so exists that, since it is being, it is also moving. XVII. Although it is called rest, yet it moves inwardly with a motion by which it lives for itself and understands itself. Therefore from the internal motion, there is born externally also a motion that is outward: from that which is inwardly being, and from that which is inwardly living, outward living; from that which is inwardly understanding, outward understanding—life and intelligence moving themselves.

For these motions exist in the same manner, with that which is being existing simultaneously, so that it might be both inward and outward: this Trinity inward, when God is one and alone outward; when Jesus Christ is both inward and outward; when both together are one God; and from these, since God is ὁμοούσιος with Christ, necessarily also Christ is ὁμοούσιος with the Holy Spirit, and through this and through Christ with God: he too has gone forth from God. For if every motion that is outward comes from God's motion which is the inward motion, then this one too is from God. For knowledge and intelligence is the existence and power of cognition of both; and this very thing is motion, by this very fact that motion is substance: necessarily therefore in Christ, or Christ is, and the Spirit has all things from him, because from life, which Christ is, intelligence has subsisted, and therefore is another. For this was said: "And from me he has all things".

"He has from me also"—these are two: therefore one and another. But because the Holy Spirit is himself also motion, and Christ is motion, so that since Christ is true life and gives to those who believe in him true, that is, eternal life, and is present with God for those who believe in him as the Son of God—and this through faith—therefore through Christ we are reconciled to God; but on account of men's buried memory of themselves and of God, the Holy Spirit is needed, if knowledge should come: "And to understand what is the breadth of God, what the length, what the depth and height"; and when charity has been confirmed, and faith in Christ through the Holy Spirit—because he is knowledge—one will be saved: for he himself fully bears witness concerning Christ, and teaches all things, and is the inner power of Christ, bestowing knowledge and advancing toward salvation, whence he is another Paraclete.

For to men dead through sins, life had first to be given, that they might be raised up to God through faith—which was already to live from the life of God which Christ brought in the flesh, so that he might also aid the flesh. Wherefore, when men have been confirmed through faith in Christ the Son of God, knowledge also seems to be given—both concerning Christ and likewise concerning God; and likewise concerning the world, that he might convict it. When they had understood these things, they would more easily be freed toward the light of God by the intelligence of their own humanity and of divine things, through contempt of earthly and worldly things and through the desire which the knowledge of divine things excites. XVIII.

He comes therefore later, that is, faith works later: for when Christ withdrew—who had sown faith through miracles and through precepts, that he himself was the Son of God and gave life to those who believed in him—all things were filled with the Spirit, and faith grown up in knowledge of Christ increased, and with Christ himself always present—for thus he said: "For he will not speak from himself, but whatsoever he shall hear he will speak, and he will announce to you things to come: he will glorify me, because he will receive of mine". Therefore from life comes intelligence, and life itself from living, that is, the Son from the Father, the Holy Spirit from the Son; for thus he added: "All things whatsoever the Father has are mine": therefore he said "are mine," because what the Father has belongs to the Son—being, living, understanding: these same things the Holy Spirit has; all things therefore are ὁμοούσια.

Yet to show his own presence always, he speaks thus according to Matthew: "Go now, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and behold I am with you all days until the consummation of the age". From this it is shown that in a certain manner Jesus and the Holy Spirit are the same, differing of course in the act of working—in that the one teaches intelligence, the other gives life. For they are the same and one motion and the first motion: by which it comes about that he who lives both truly lives and understands, and he who truly understands truly lives.

And that Jesus and the Holy Spirit may be shown to be the same, let us attend to this: namely, the Holy Spirit is doctrine, intelligence, and wisdom itself; and wisdom is given both to Christ and to God; and Christ is called by this name, which is that Christ is the Son of God—which is defined as the power and wisdom of God, as Paul says to the Romans. Likewise Solomon: "All wisdom is from God, and was with him always before the age". Behold, ὁμοούσιον appears: since wisdom is both given from God and given by God—assuredly to Christ and to the Holy Spirit. And since it was said that it was always with God, what is ὁμοούσιον is shown, since wisdom is given from God—assuredly to Christ and to the Holy Spirit. And since it was said that it was always with God, what is ὁμοούσιον is shown, existing together with the Father. Then since it was said "before the age," it is not therefore when Christ was in the flesh.

Likewise: "Wisdom was created first of all": if Christ is the firstborn, Christ is wisdom. Then what follows—the Holy Spirit: "and the understanding of prudence from the age." If the Holy Spirit is prudence and understanding; if knowledge and doctrine, Christ is without doubt, because he himself is from the age, that is, from eternity, and the firstborn, and what is more, the only-begotten. These and other things treated in many books by me prove ὁμοούσιον not only of God and Christ, but also of the Holy Spirit. Let us grant therefore, or accept, that God is that which is the first and principal living, which is the true and principal being: for that which does not live is not. That this very living by its own operation accomplishes and generates life, we have made clear. But in that which is life, knowledge and intelligence are present: God therefore lives, and by living God is life, and since he is life, he is intelligence.

But these three, as one and simple, and in such a way that among them the principal—that is, this which is being—is more the principal existence: God living, and necessarily also understanding himself. For hence understanding all things, because he understands himself. He is the cause of all existences, and therefore is all things: therefore life and intelligence, received into that which is inward being, always work what living is. But for God, living is what being is. Therefore all things being, God is one and omnipotent. What then? If inwardly in himself he works—or rather works himself—by life and intelligence, how could these things appear as it were outward? And what is the outward or inward ὄν λόγον? Philosophers and men learned in the law have inquired what they are and where they are. What they are—let us explain their substance or existence; where they are—whether from there or outside, and in all the rest, or in both and everywhere.

These things indeed we have set forth fully and at length in other books. But now we shall state these things summarily and briefly. Before ὄν and before λόγος, there is that force and power of existing which is signified by this word which is being—in Greek, τὸ εἶναι. This being itself is to be taken in two ways: one, that it be universal and principally principal, whence in other things there is being, and by another being there is for other things what there is—of all genera or species that come after, and of other such things. But the first being is so unparticipated that it cannot be called even one, nor alone, but by preeminence before one and before alone, beyond simplicity, a pre-existence rather than existence, the universal of all universals, infinite, unbounded—but to all others, not to itself: and therefore it is heard with a certain understanding without form, and is received, known, believed by a pre-intelligence rather than intelligence.

This is that which we said is living or lives—that infinite thing, that which above the living of all universals is being itself, living itself, not being something or living something; whence it is not even ὄν. For ὄν is also something definite, intelligible, knowable. Therefore if not ὄν, neither is it λόγος; for λόγος is defined and a definer: for whether it is reason, or the power of existence itself, or those things which intelligence receives so that for each thing its being comes to be—let one know that it does not know, unless it observes and grasps what those things are which furnish to each its substance: and this λόγος of things through which all things were created is a universal power, containing universally the things of all, furnishing to each its own and proper being toward existence. Therefore because it furnishes to each its own and proper being, it defines and determines, and also makes that thing ὄν.

For by imposing a limit upon the infinite for things toward the existence of each, it forms the thing and subjects it to intelligence with infinity removed. Therefore in that which is the power of things for bringing forth and effecting existences there is λόγος: but from that which defines and concludes each thing by giving it form, there is ὄν—now existing, when there has been a definite form of that which is being.

This being so, let us see whether the first thing, which is being, has no λόγος. If we say it is infinite, if we say it is immense, undivided, we do not grasp, we do not hold the things by which being subsists: therefore it has no λόγος.

But since it cannot be that something exists in any way and yet that very existing thing which it is exists without its own λόγος, it is infinite—without doubt it has its own λόγος, but one that lies hidden and concealed, so that in it what being is, that very thing is the λόγος; or rather the λόγος itself is nothing other than being itself: and this is what I called truly the first, that universally universal living, although, as we have shown, it is itself living, and life, and a defined intelligence: for these are the powers of the λόγος; for something defined and formed is indeed the λόγος; but intelligence is both defining and defined: yet because these things are within and turned back upon themselves, all are ἄγνωστα, ἀδιάκριτα, unknown and undivided: and so God, who is being, that is, living, is unknown and undivided; and his form, that is, the intelligence of life, is unknown and undivided: for these things are nothing other than being, which is living.

Since this is infinite, and its form is infinite, remaining there and existing as nothing other than being. But when it has begun to be outside, then the form appearing is the image of God, showing God through itself; and it is the λόγος, no longer from that point the λόγος πρὸς τὸν Θεόν, in which life and intelligence are now ὄν: because it is a certain knowledge and existence, which is grasped by intellect and cognition: but in what manner these things have come to exist outside, and whether the very form which is within has been sent forth outside, or whether it cast itself out? But since that inner form is undivided and infinite, how is it also known in that which is outside, or is this one different? But if it is different, then it is not born from that one either by emission or by its own motion: and if it is thus another, it is not a part, nor the same, nor altogether ὁμοούσιος, and then from where did this one appear?

From the other, then—two principles, or from nothing? Nothing is not under God among τῶν ὄντων. Then if it came to exist by the power or will of God, the power or will of God is not nothing. For if God is omnipotent, his omnipotence is both the cause of all things and is itself existence. Do we then dare to say what remains—that this form arose from itself? And how, when it was in the Father, was the Father unaware, or did he command it? If he commanded it, then it is not from itself: or was he unaware? Then there is something that was not by the power of God, or there is something that existed without him, since concerning the λόγος who is called his form, it has been said thus: Through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made. What is this? What separation of such great confusions? Which, if it is not truth or the life of truth.

Let the Holy Spirit be present: what has been inspired in us, let the hearer now attend, and we shall unfold it, setting it forth in pure simplicity. Meanwhile I give one warning: that these things must be understood as occurring without time, from eternity always with no beginning of time, but so that both—the generator and the generated—are one single principle. First: in eternal, divine, and especially primary things, those that remain at rest and exist in that which they are generate without any change of themselves through motion. First is God, then the λόγος, or nous, mind, or whatever the other is, or both, as spirit, as living or life, as intelligence or cognition: but the soul alone, being moved, has generations.

All these things are thus the household: God is τριδύναμος, that is, having three powers—being, living, understanding: so that in each of the three all three are present, and he himself is one, receiving whatever name of the three by which he presents himself, as I have shown above and in many places: for nothing is to be called being unless it understands. Therefore a threefold singularity in each individual, and a oneness in the Trinity: and these three things we shall set forth in their progression.

To all things that are, and that can be, or could have been, they furnish and have allotted existence, life, and intelligence according to the capacity of things and substances, and participations in them: for in all things there is their own being, their own living, their own understanding, and their own sensing, so that these are a shadow or image of the three superior things of all: therefore God, since he is, as all say, one, and solely one. Some, however, have said that God is one—all things, and yet not one; for he is the principle of all things, whence not all things but all things in that manner. And this for this reason: and first indeed that God is one and alone. Those three, because they do not subsist by conjunction, but by existing as what they are in themselves, and what we believe to be the other they are, are necessarily one, and in no way another. But this has been said often.

But what was said—one all things, and not one, for he is the principle of all things—declares sufficiently openly and clearly that God is the father and principle of all things: who, since he is not one, is rather all things: because he is both the cause and principle of all things, and in all things is all things. Since these things are so, God will be all things—all-existing, all-living, all-seeing, and all-understanding. And since we have said that power is constituted by act: for the first things are so disposed that, since all things come from divine energy, that is, acts and operations, it is necessary that from God, the principle of all powers, the fount and origin of universally universal things should be born. For this is the progression of things: that since all things are from God, powers and acts are believed to have arisen from God, who is received as above powers and acts. XXIII.

But since we have said that God is a certain act, which is living, but this living which is above all living, and from eternity and unto eternity, living received simultaneously with intellect, and with that which is being, and with that which is understanding, but simultaneously in such a way that there is not even a phantasm of conjunction: necessarily, however, by the act of living, as I have shown, the form which we call universal power is acknowledged and comes to exist, formed through each of those individual things—which form comes from all existence as all-existence, from all-living as all-living, from all-seeing as all-seeing. These individual things are powers as known and determined: But when all things are in one, or one is all things, or when one is all things, or neither one nor all things, it becomes infinite, becomes unknown, indiscernible, unknowable, and what is truly called ἀοριστία, that is, infinitude and indetermination.

For let there be the being of all things, and the living of all things and the understanding of all things, and that one, and without the phantasm of another one: whence not even one, because it is the principle of all things: whence also of the one itself. From this we are now necessarily compelled to say also those things about God, that his being, living, and understanding are incomprehensible, and not only that his being, living, and understanding are incomprehensible; but also that these do not even seem to be what they are, since he is above all things: wherefore he is also called ἀνύπαρκτος, and ἀνούσιος, and ἄνους, and ἄζων—without existence, without substance, without intelligence, without life: not indeed by στέρησιν, that is, not by privation, but by supereminence; for all things that words name are after him: whence he is not ὄν, but rather προόν.

In the same way, pre-existence, pre-seeing, pre-knowing of those things that are constituted: but he himself is pre-existing, pre-seeing, pre-knowing: but all these things are both understood and named through the secondary things that appear. For after cognition appeared, pre-cognition was both understood and named; in the same way also pre-existence and pre-living. These things were indeed present, but not yet observed, not yet named. Whence also all that God is is unknowable. But since a thing is then held and said to be knowable when there is cognition: for these are relative, and they hold and beget one another, or mutually destroy one another—that unknowable thing was not yet not, because cognition did not yet exist. Not that that thing did not exist which cognition made knowable to itself; but because there was indeed that which could be knowable, not in that it was knowable: which then comes to be and is received when it is additionally understood that there could also be intelligence.

In this way therefore also in God, it both could be and was knowable from this; because it also could be, from this there was cognition.

What then follows from these things? Since if these were born afterward, they were in God: and if they were, because God is one, and these are one, and what God is and these are one because God. These therefore are the same—the knowable and cognition; but in such a way that what the knowable is, that same is cognition. For since the power of these three is one: for being is nothing other than living, and that very living is understanding, since it is also understood being; the whole force of each individual lies in that which is to know, or to be cognition. But being cannot be cognition unless there is something knowable: but in these primary things where what is being, that is what is living, and what is understanding, being knowable is not possible unless cognition itself, not yet appearing but holding itself within and remaining quiet, ceasing, and turned back upon itself, offers itself as knowable to itself.

For when cognition itself lies hidden and is with itself, entering inwardly into itself from without, but naturally submerged in that in which its being consists, remaining there; it is of its form that it can be knowable when cognition, aroused and as it were going forth and looking about itself, has made itself cognition, and by knowing itself becomes its own knowable. In this manner therefore, if it is permitted to say so—in this manner, I say, that first thing, that one alone, that God, or spirit, or the one that breathes, or light, or the one that illumines, or the existing, or the all-existing, or existence, or all-existence, or the living, or the all-living, or life, or living-ness, or all-living-ness, or the understanding and knowing, or the all-understanding, all-knowing, or all-understanding, all-cognition, omnipotent, perfect in all ways, unbounded, immense—but to others, to itself bounded and measured, above all things, and therefore none of all things, and rather that from which all things are.

Therefore one and solely one: for it is the principle of all things. Whence not one—all things remaining in itself, nor in itself—lest you, hearer, take these as two, but itself remaining or the remaining, rest, quiet, more properly resting, because rest comes from the one that rests, as we have shown above. Whence it has also been said to sit as if at the center of τῶν πάντων ὄντων, that is, of all things that are, whence with a universal eye, that is, with the light of its own substance, by which it either is being, or living, or understanding, it sees into those of τῶν ὄντων, not with a turning gaze, because it is also rest; from the center its one vision reaches simultaneously into all things. This is God, but how God is Father, and who the Son is, or how the Son, and afterward how Jesus the Son is the principle of all being, to be before all things, is the being of all things—the principle is not so much to be rest as to be rest itself.

For all things that have been generated or made have been generated or made from motion. But motion itself, by which it is motion, before it is moved is rest; for contraries arise from contraries, so that by a contrary arising the contrary from which this arose perishes into non-being, as from life death, and from death life. Likewise from that which is being: and from that which is non-being, being would be. And likewise from rest motion, and from motion rest.

But let us attend more keenly, and with bold understanding behold the force and depth of things, so that, as these matters are set forth, if a careful examiner attends, he will find that there is a certain existence even in those things whose phantasm seems to perish: for since life is that to which being is present, and from which death is born, death too has being, if from death life is born. Likewise, if from that which has being, non-being is produced, then non-being itself will necessarily also have being, if from it that which has being is born: and likewise if there is cessation, it is necessary that cessation have being as motion, if motion is born from it. What then? Are not contraries believed to die or not to be, by the birth of contraries? So it seems, but the contrary is the case: for both remain, and do not perish from their eternal substantial quality.

How this is so I shall explain; let God be present, and the explanation will be made easier. In eternal things, to be is the same as to live, as to understand. These things we have both said and proved many times. But that being is such that there are therein living and understanding substances: let us take these as providing, after the manner of existing things, three things, and as holding all things by participation in themselves, and as flourishing in the night, as being alone simple, divine, eternal: but in worldly and hylic things they are indeed present, yet are sustained by carnal, various, and mortal things.

Here therefore, if death exists, it is the death of bodies; and if fuller attention be applied, not even of bodies, that is, in respect of what they are as hyle; but of these bodies, in the form which now exists, a dissolution brought about by a certain destruction: therefore only the form of the body, dissolved and dispersed into elements, perishes, while those things remain and exist from which they are restored to live again. For since in the world there is hyle, which always subsists by fixed elements, and since the images of those three things present themselves here also, that is, in the world, what does death accomplish when even in their images these things are eternal? By images I mean the powers flowing through all things from the lines of the soul. Since therefore these things are eternal, and the elements in hyle are eternal: death, if it dissolves only composite things, utterly perishes.

Hence it is rightly said that death is produced from life, that from the vigor of living of any composite body there comes a dissolution up to a certain point, and again from death a restoration into another composition is made from all the same things. In this way being in the world is also to be understood, in this way here both rest and motion: but in divine things, since there are no bodies, there is no death: but life too is in another mode, being that principal and true life; and therefore there progression is not a birth, or if one prefers, it is rather an appearance and manifestation of birth. Likewise being and non-being are in another mode there, and motion and cessation in another mode: for God lives; but that is to be and to understand, which three things make one, three powers, existence, life, intelligence.

But because I have taught how those three things are one: as any one thing may be three, so also these three are one: but in God these three are being, in the Son living, in the Holy Spirit understanding: therefore being, living, understanding, are being in God: but existence, life, intelligence, are form: for by the inner and hidden act of that which is being, living, understanding: for inwardly they are thus and hidden, and God is more than being, and more than living, and more than understanding. Whence he is also called ἀνούσιος, or ἀνύπαρκτος, and likewise ἄζων, ἄνους, discovered by a certain pre-understanding, and known more through his form, but a form inhering in him and consubstantial with him.

And this is what it means that the Son is in the Father: which being so, the Son is the same as the Father, whence also the Son is God, because this is form, because that which is, is so by means of that whose form it is. For since God is being, living, understanding, but form is existence, life, intelligence: I would wish you to receive what I say in such a way that God is above these things. But if this is so, form becomes the same as substance: for in the same manner these things that have or possess being, living, understanding, are valid and exist: so since there are two λόγοι, one by which each thing is, another by which it is in a certain way: yet because it has by the same force both how and what each thing is, necessarily one λόγος results, form being of equal value with substance.

Therefore if form is of equal value, and is the same, yet of this substance as the substance itself, for it is a substantial form, the Son will be the same as the Father, or neither Father nor Son before the going forth outward, but one single thing alone.

This being so; since to him understanding and intelligence belong, and intelligence is the same as life and as being: but since understanding is more a power of acting than being, than living; and since this being is the understanding of what it is, and since this living is the understanding of what it lives: necessarily understanding, or intelligence, is God. When God understands, he understands himself; but when he understands himself, not as one understanding another, it comes about that intelligence itself understands itself. When this is the case, it makes itself to be, and comes forth into existence, and becomes for itself that which is being: and in the same way by understanding there exists also its own living, from all of which things born from itself, or rather existing from itself, God is unbegotten, existing from unbegotten things: which since they are one, one and simple, God is one, and this is as it were an inner intelligence, which understands itself without any motion, since when it understands, it exists, and when it exists, it understands.

And this is God, and assuredly this from eternity and unto eternity.

But since we call the Son the image of God, for form was begotten, so that from that which is being, living, understanding, there might be begotten existence, life, intelligence. For there is a certain form in these, through which as through an image it is understood what being, living, and understanding are; necessarily God is understood through form, for him himself no one has ever seen. Therefore form of God, when it is received in God, is God; but when God understands himself, he understands himself through form: but the form itself must also understand. For existence, understanding and living, since it understands nothing other than that these things are God. And these things I have already taught many times. But when intelligence itself understands what intelligence is (for it necessarily follows that intelligence also understands itself), as though existing from itself it understood itself, and made itself outward: that which is outward by understanding itself, that is, by its own motion.

Whence this intelligence is outward, and this is the Son, this is the λόγος, the Son born, because other than God, yet from God, that is, from that which is existing: and living intelligence, which is God, and by understanding itself inwardly brought itself forth outward, and stood forth to the Father, in whom it also was, and is always the image existing through internal intelligence, which is being and existing, and therefore the image born as image of image.

There are therefore two intelligences: one existing inwardly, which is for it being; the other existing, which is for it being by understanding. This latter is outward, this is the Son. But since intelligence, by understanding itself, understood God, namely the internal intelligence, and that is God; it understood also true being, and true living, and by truly understanding it itself also stood forth as true being, true living, true understanding. For he who understands one thing, both has that one thing and is that one thing: according to its understanding of it within itself: thus therefore the Son, that is, intelligence begotten by understanding itself, by understanding understood God, and all those things which God is as unbegotten, and by understanding the πλήρωμα by seeking, and by understanding the πλήρωμα, whence it stood forth as the same as the Father.

For since the Father is necessarily πλήρωμα, he has his own χώρημα, infinite, though also finite to himself: where he holds and contains his own πλήρωμα, and in the same way the Son by receiving and seeking: for to receive χώρημα is to exist, but by understanding the whole which the Father is as πλήρωμα, he stood forth begotten, himself wholly from the whole: and because intelligence is intelligence understanding intelligence, since intelligence is the light of things, light exists from light: and because both are intelligence, true light from true light. And likewise since God is inwardly intelligence, this intelligence understanding itself is God from God: ὁμοούσιον therefore in all things, in that which is being, and living, and understanding. Likewise in that both are χώρημα and πλήρωμα: likewise in that both are image and image: for it was said after our image.

And in that both are light and light, and in that both are true light and true light, and in that both are Spirit and Spirit: and in that both are motion and motion, but the Father is motion at rest, that is, interior, and nothing other than motion, not moved by movement, but the Son is moved by movement, yet both are motion. Likewise both are action and work, both are life, and both having life from themselves, will and will, the same power, wisdom, word, God and God, and living God and living God, from eternity and from eternity, invisible and invisible: for it was said by Matthew: No one knows the Son except the Father, nor the Father except the Son.

Both together: for this is what ὁμοούσιον signifies, beyond the same οὐσία. All these things can be understood from that full statement: All things that the Father has, he has given to me. And, All things that the Father has, I also have. All things, he says: if all things, the Son is ὁμοούσιον with the Father: therefore the same: and if the same, equal; and if equal, Paul rightly said of the Son of God Jesus Christ: Who, being in the form of God, did not count it robbery to be equal with God.

Many divine and magnificent mysteries are contained here. First, that Christ is the form of God, in which it is shown that he has all things that God has: for this is what is also called image, as has been said of him: Who is the image of God. God therefore also has his own image: and the Son is the image of God, for indeed if it has been said: No one has ever seen the face of God. And it has been said: My back parts you shall see. Without doubt there is a face to God, there is one to the Son, or rather the Son himself is also the image of God, as it has been said: Who, when he had been in the form of God. Whence it has rightly been said: Let us make man in our image and likeness.

The Son therefore exists, and if he is another, he exists: for the Father is not the same as the Son: in all those things set forth above by me he is the same, yet the same, that is, having the same things in his own proper existence. Whence he is both the same and another: for since it is said here: when he had been in the form of God, one thing is certainly to be understood as the form, another as God. But you may seem to find room for a charge, that the form of God is a form within God himself, so that there is one undivided substance. How shall we understand what follows? He did not reckon it a robbery to be equal to God. Being placed in his own existence, it belongs to him to believe or say that he is equal to another. But what of that: he emptied himself, and taking the form of a servant? We have received this of Christ, that he died—or is it of God?

But no one has ever said so. Then when it is said of the Father, who raised his Son from the dead, is it not sufficiently clear that the Father is one, the Son another, that the one who raises is one, and the one who is raised is another? Therefore the form of God. The form is one thing, God is another; and indeed there is a form to God, but the Son of God is the form in the manifest, yet in the hidden in respect of God: for thus all things—both existence, and life, and knowledge—belong to God inwardly in the hidden, to the Son in the manifest: thus the rest—χώρημα, πλήρωμα, image, true light, truth, spirit, motion, action, operation, life, and life from himself, will, power, wisdom, the Word God, the living God, and all other things besides. But these are as it were outward and in the manifest; those are in himself and around existence, or rather are themselves what existence is: but these are in the active act which is in the manifest.

Finally the Son has all these things, but with the Father giving—which is powerfully expressed in the fact that, although the Son has from himself, he says, yet he added: The Father gave him to have life from himself. A true image, therefore, and existence the same in all things, but with the Father giving: therefore the Father and the Son are ὁμοούσιον, but with the Father giving. For from what we have said—that the Father is, lives, understands—existence was begotten, as life, as understanding: and this is the form of God, this is the Son: but the Son, when he is in the Father, is wholly within throughout the whole year, God acting, working, using himself, enjoying himself, the fountain and within himself the fullness of all things.

But since, as we have taught, understanding by the force of its own power, necessarily while it turns itself back upon itself, understood itself, and thereby became in some manner twofold, as it were inward and outward—the Son is begotten from the existence of the Father: for existence is understanding, which is also life: appearing therefore and subsisting, he is God from God. And since in any one of the three all things are present—being, living, understanding—when understanding has begotten understanding, the Son is begotten, and the Son has all things that the Father has, and has them from the Father.

Likewise, since all these are the things through which all things are created: for whatever things exist receive their own being, their own living, their own understanding; the Son, since he is all these things, being indeed the image of the Father, and since he is in active act, that is, so as to furnish this to others according to the nature of existing things, is necessarily for all things universally and wholly the λόγος, that is, the force and power through which it comes about that the things which are have their being, through whom God made and makes all things, and without whom nothing is made. Others call this the active motion, the word, the operative reason. Yet since when he operates, the paternal power is present in him, he operates in himself, whence many things are so spoken that, although what he does is his own, he nevertheless refers all things back to the Father, as: The Father sent me. And: I do not my own will but the Father's. And a thousand such things.

Let us attend, however, to this passage: we shall find him acting as it were by himself and of his own accord: He did not reckon it a robbery to be equal to God. And likewise: He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, he who had dominion. All these things belong to one acting by his own will. But it can be believed that he himself acts, since the Father is in him, from which come also those words: I give life unto eternity. And: I am the door, I am the life, I am the truth. Likewise: For as the Father raises the dead and gives life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.

This true, this varied, and in all respects truer understanding makes both the Son to be in the Father and the Father in the Son, and yet so that the Father and the Son are both one and yet two, since the Father is one and the Son another: inasmuch as the Father is the source of the Son, the Son is as a river which flows out from the source: but in the source the water, as it remains, is still, pure, undefiled, without any appearance of gushing forth, moving by a hidden motion more open to itself, flowing through various channels, and is both affected by the qualities of the lands it furrows and in some manner suffers; so also the Son, with his own water and his own substance, which is the Father's, always pure, undefiled, impassible, through the regions through which he flows and the places—whether supracelestial, or celestial, or intracelestial—now foams, as against rocks that stand in the way, which are from the kinds of souls; through a quiet plain he flows on.

He receives therefore passions, not in that which is substance, but in act and operation. For when he was completing the mystery of his coming, then at last he endured passion, so as to empty himself, so as to take on the person of a servant. So also the rest, in all of which there is act and operation. Although even in the first act of his existence, as we have taught in many books, the passion of recession from the Father came to be, whence darkness, that is, hyle, followed—not created. But these things more fully elsewhere.

Now what has been asserted, what has been proved? That God the Father and the Son God are ὁμοούσιον, yet that the Father exists in substance, and the Son in that same substance but as an act existing for himself, having come forth through passion from an acting act, never separated from the Father, from eternity both existing, and having existed, and being about to exist. By act, because he is within the nature of acting, and is with the Father or in the Father; and he is said to be both within and without, since he himself acts, because his act is from the Father—he is said to act while the Father acts, and yet the Father is said to do all things through him; he is the λόγος of all things, and universally the λόγος of universals, of genera, of species, and of particulars.

And because he is the λόγος of all things, both incorporeal and therefore also corporeal, according to his power toward what they can be, so that they may be λόγος: whence also by the ordering of the mystery in the last ages, the λόγος—because he is the λόγος of all existing things—was himself incarnate, overshadowed through the Holy Spirit by the Virgin Mary, that very one whom we demonstrated above to be the Son, in the same manner as he would be in a body as the Holy Spirit is in us, not wholly: for as God is everywhere, yet as a part of him—for in all divine things this part is always what the whole is, as the soul is in bodies, as virtue and discipline are in souls, or as the sun or its light is in the eyes. That the λόγος himself, and that Son whom we demonstrated, was in a body, all the Gospels declare, every Apostle, all the Prophets.

For when they foretold that Christ was to come, they foretold that he was to come in the flesh, since they say that even before he was both seen and appeared in the flesh, as to Abraham, as to Jacob. And he himself said in the flesh: Abraham saw my day, and was glad. And the Apostle, in that sacred place so full of mysteries, declares most fully that the Son of God existed before the flesh, and that he himself afterwards took on flesh: For have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, when he had been constituted in the form of God. Surely this was when he was before the flesh; therefore both before the flesh he existed and was such and so great. In the form, he says, of God. What is this—form is the same as the Father. What is form? That in which the Father is discerned: He who sees me sees also the Father.

Surely not in what was seen, but in that he himself is God, divine substance, λόγος, life. This therefore he was before the flesh: for what does he add? He did not count it robbery to be equal to God. He thinks therefore of himself and of God: he acts so as not to be equal, but he was. What does he then add? But he emptied himself. What did he empty? Or from what, if he had not existed? He adds further: And took the form of a servant, made in the likeness of men, and found in habit as a man. He humbled himself, made subject even unto death, and that the death of the cross. What here does not declare from every side that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?

For thus it is said: God sent his Son—and sent him, doing all things by the power and also by the will of his own authority, so that he willed not to be equal, so that he emptied himself, so that he put on the form of a servant: he therefore existed who was the form of God, he existed who emptied himself: but he himself is Jesus, who took the image of a servant, and was found as a man, who subjected himself even unto death, so that Jesus Christ is more fully designated, even unto the death of the cross. XXXIII.

These things have been sufficiently proved to faithful men: both that he existed before the flesh, and that the same Son was in the flesh—he who was begotten before the ages, he who ascended into heaven and descended thence, he who is bread for us from heaven; he who says in the flesh: Restore to me, Father, my honour, which I had with thee—surely above the heavens and before the flesh, that one: he is the λόγος, and in the beginning the λόγος, and the λόγος was with God, and the λόγος who is God, and through whom the λόγος all things were made, and without whom nothing was made; he who illuminates every man coming into this world; he who, the λόγος, was made flesh. You have heard: in the beginning, the λόγος; you have heard that the λόγος himself was made flesh; hear that he himself is the Son of God, and begotten of the Father, and that there is that generation which we spoke of above.

The evangelist says: No one has ever seen God, except the only-begotten Son alone, who is in the bosom of the Father. But we shall better say in the lap. The Greeks say ἐν κόλπῳ, that is, in the lap. But whether this word or that, it signifies both that the Son is begotten, which is to be outside, and yet to be with the Father, since it is said: Who is in the bosom of the Father. A diligent and faithful inquirer will understand this to be so in all readings. Now indeed that the Holy Spirit is in a certain other manner Jesus Christ himself—hidden, interior, conversing with souls, teaching these things, bestowing understanding, and begotten by the Father through Christ and in Christ—since the only-begotten Son is Christ, we have set forth in many books; and what we have confirmed by very many examples is sufficiently clear. In this manner and with this understanding, as the Father and God is ὁμοούσιον with the Son, and the Son because he himself is life is so with him.

But because Christ himself is understanding, the Holy Spirit is understood to be ὁμοούσιον: whence, with the Father joined to the Son and the Son received, that the Holy Spirit is the same as they, in that manner indeed in which the Son is the same as the Father; yet in such a way that, as the Father and Son, while being one, are nevertheless such that the Father is also the Son, each in his own existence, yet both of one and the same substance: so Christ and the Holy Spirit, while both being one, yet Christ subsists in his own existence and the Holy Spirit in his own; but both are of one substance, from which all—that is, the whole Trinity—is one, and in the same manner the Father is joined with the Son, and the Son with the Holy Spirit.

And by this reasoning, with the Father joined through Christ to the Holy Spirit, each indeed existing as one, the whole Trinity is and will be, and that ὁμοούσιος will obtain, since for all there is one and the same substance simultaneously from eternity. This is our salvation, this is liberation, this is the full salvation of the whole man: to believe thus in God the Father almighty, thus in Jesus Christ the Son, thus in the Holy Spirit. Amen.