On the Trinity

Above all these things, himself containing all things, leaving nothing empty outside himself, he left no room for any God superior to himself (as some suppose). Inasmuch as he himself has enclosed all things in the bosom of his perfect greatness and power, ever intent upon his own work, and going through all things, and moving all things, and giving life to all things, and beholding all things, and so connecting discordant materials into the harmony of all the elements, that from unlike elements this one world is so solidified by that binding together in concord, that it cannot be dissolved by any force, unless he alone who made it shall have commanded it to be dissolved, to provide greater things for us.

For we read that he contains all things: and therefore nothing could have been outside him; seeing that he has no origin at all, and consequently suffers no end: unless perchance, which God forbid, he should at some time have begun to be, and should not be above all things, but, since he began to be after something, should be below that which was before him, found lesser in power, since he is marked as later even in time itself. For this reason therefore he is always immense, because nothing is greater than he; always eternal, because nothing is more ancient than he. For that which is without origin can be preceded by nothing, since it has no time. Therefore immortal, not failing at the end of consummation. And since whatever is without origin is without law, it excludes the measure of time, since it feels itself debtor to no one.

Concerning him therefore, and concerning those things which are his and are in him, neither can the mind of man worthily conceive what they are, how great they are, and of what kind they are, nor does the eloquence of human speech bring forth a power of speech equal to his majesty. For to think upon and to speak of his majesty, all eloquence is rightly mute, and every mind is too small: for he is greater than mind itself, nor can it be thought how great he is, lest if he could be thought, he should be less than the human mind by which he could be conceived. He is also greater than all speech, nor can he be uttered: lest if he could be uttered, he should be less than human speech, by which, when he is uttered, he can be encompassed and comprehended. For whatever shall have been thought of him will be less than he himself: and whatever shall have been declared will be less than he, compared with him, in relation to him.

For we can perceive him in some measure in silence; but as he himself is, we cannot unfold in speech. For if you call him Light, you speak more of his creature than of himself; you have not expressed himself: if you call him Power, you speak and bring forth more of his potency than of himself: if you call him Majesty, you have described more of his honor than of himself. And why do I make it long by running through each thing singly? I will explain the whole at once. Whatever at all you shall have said of him, you will have explained some thing of his or some power rather than himself. For what can you worthily say or think of him who is greater than all words and all thoughts?

Except that in one way (and this itself as we are able, as we grasp it, as it is permitted to understand) we shall grasp in mind what God is, if we shall have thought that he is that, the nature and greatness of which cannot be understood, nor can it even come into thought itself. For if at the sight of the sun the keenness of our eyes grows dim, lest the gaze should look upon the orb itself, overcome by the brilliance of the rays meeting it: this same thing the keenness of the mind suffers in every thought about God; and the more it is strained to consider God, the more it is blinded by the very light of its own thought.

For what can you say of him (to repeat again) that is worthy, who is more sublime than all sublimity, and higher than all height, and deeper than all depth, and more luminous than all light, and brighter than all brightness, more resplendent than all splendor, stronger than all strength, more powerful than all power, more beautiful than all beauty, truer than all truth, and stronger than all fortitude, and greater than all majesty, and more powerful than all power, and richer than all riches, wiser than all prudence, and more benign than all benignity, better than all goodness, more just than all justice, more clement than all clemency? For all kinds of virtues must necessarily be less than he himself, who is both God and Parent of all virtues: so that it can truly be said, that God is that which is such that nothing can be compared to it. For he is above everything that can be said.

For he is a certain Mind begetting and completing all things, who without any beginning or end of time governs with supreme and perfect reason the causes of things naturally linked together for the benefit of all.

This God therefore we acknowledge and know, the creator of all things: Lord, on account of his power, and parent on account of his institution: him, I say, who spoke, and all things were made; who commanded, and all things came forth; of whom it is written: Thou hast made all things in wisdom; of whom Moses says: God is in heaven above and on earth below; who according to Isaiah, measured the heaven with a span, the earth with a fist: who looks upon the earth and makes it tremble: who holds the circuit of the earth, and those who dwell in it as grasshoppers; who weighed the mountains in a balance, and the forests in scales, that is by the certain examination of divine disposition: and, lest the greatness of an unevenly lying mass should easily fall into ruin, if it had not been balanced with equal weights, he equably balanced this burden of the earthly mass. Who says through the prophet: I am God, and there is none beside me.

Who through the same prophet declares: Because I will not give my majesty to another; so as to exclude all pagans with their idols and heretics, proving that he is not God who has been made by the hand of an artificer, nor he who has been fashioned by the ingenuity of a heretic. For he is not God for whom an artificer must be sought in order that he may exist. And who further added through the prophet: Heaven is my throne, and the earth is the footstool of my feet: what manner of house will you build me, or what is the place of my rest? So as to show that a temple far less contains him whom the world does not contain: and he says these things not for his own glorying, but for our knowledge. For he himself does not desire from us the glory of his greatness, but wishes to bestow upon us a reverent wisdom, as a father.

And who moreover, wishing to draw our savage minds, swollen and broken away from rustic wildness, toward gentleness, says: And upon whom shall my Spirit rest, but upon the humble and quiet, and upon him who trembles at my words? So that he may be able to know God in some measure how great he is, while he learns through the Spirit bestowed to fear him. Who likewise, wishing still more to come to our knowledge, stirring our minds to his worship, said: I am the Lord, who made light and created darkness; so that we might not think some nature, I know not what, to be the artificer of those alternations by which nights and days are governed; but might rather acknowledge God (which was truer) as creator.

Whom, since we cannot see with the gaze of our eyes, we learn to know from the greatness and power and majesty of his works: For his invisible things, says the apostle Paul, from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also and divinity: so that the human mind, learning hidden things from manifest ones, might think with the eyes of the mind upon the greatness of the artificer from the greatness of the works it saw. Concerning whom the same Apostle says: Now unto the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory. For he has escaped the contemplation of eyes, who has surpassed the greatness of thought: Because, he says, of him and through him and in him are all things.

For all things are by his command, that they may be of him: and arranged by his word, that they may be through him: and all things fall back into his judgment; so that while in him they await the freedom from corruption laid aside, they seem to have been called back into him.

Whom the Lord alone rightly pronounces good: of whose goodness the whole world is witness, which he would not have established unless he had been good. For if all things were very good, consequently and rightly the things that were established proved good, and proved their establisher good: and the things that are from a good establisher cannot be anything other than good: from which all evil departs from God. For it cannot come to pass that he should be the initiator or artificer of any evil work, who claims for himself the name of perfect father and judge: especially since he is the avenger and judge of every evil work; because evil does not befall man from any other source than from his having departed from the good God. This very thing is noted in man: not because it was necessary, but because he himself so willed. Hence it became manifest both what evil was, and it shone forth that there was no envy in God, from whom evil might seem to have arisen.

He therefore is always like himself, and never turns or changes himself into any forms, lest through change he might seem to be mortal as well. For the change of conversion is understood to be a portion of a certain death. Therefore neither does any addition of any part or honor ever accrue to him, lest anything should ever seem to have been lacking to one who is perfect; nor is any diminishment wrought in him, lest a degree of mortality should seem to have been received: but what he is, he always is, and he who is, is always himself; and such as he is, he is always such. For increases show an origin, and diminishments prove death and destruction, and therefore: I, he says, am God, and I have not changed, ever holding his own state, since that which has not been born cannot be converted. For whatever that is in him which can—that which is God—must always be; so that he may always be God, preserving himself in his own virtues.

And therefore he says: I am who I am. For what he is, he has this name for that reason, because he always holds the same quality of himself. For change takes away that name which is: for whatever is at any time turned is shown to be mortal by this very fact that it is turned. For it ceases to be what it had been, and consequently begins to be what it was not: and therefore rightly in God his state always remains, since, without the diminishment of change, he is always both like and equal to himself. For what has not been born cannot be changed: for those things alone come into conversion, whatever things are made or whatever things are begotten; since those which at some time had not existed learn to exist by being born, and therefore by being born to be converted.

But those things which have neither birth nor an artificer have excluded change from themselves, since they do not have an origin, which is the cause of conversion: and therefore he has been pronounced one, since he has no equal: for God, whatever he can be, is God, and must be the highest. But whatever is highest must be highest only so long as it is beyond comparison. And therefore it must be alone and one, to whom nothing can be compared, since he has no equal. For neither can two infinite things exist, as the very nature of things dictates. Now infinite is whatever has neither origin at all nor end. For whatever has occupied the whole excludes the beginning of another. For if not the whole of what exists contains whatever it is; since it is found within that by which it is contained, it is found to be less than that by which it is contained.

God will have ceased to be, reduced into the power of another, enclosed by the greatness of another, than which he is lesser; and therefore that which contained him would rather have now begun to be God. From which it results that not even the proper name of God can be uttered, since it cannot even be conceived. For whatever is also comprehended from the condition of its own nature is contained in a name. For a name is the signification of that thing which could be comprehended from the name. But when that of which we speak is such that it is not worthily gathered even by the intellects themselves; how shall it be worthily pronounced by the word of an appellation, since, being beyond intellect, it must also be above the signification of an appellation?

So that rightly when God, from certain reasons and occasions, adds and puts forward his own name, we should know that it is not so much a legitimate proper designation that has been brought forth, as a certain signification that has been established; by running to which men may seem to be able to obtain the mercy of God through it. He is therefore both immortal and incorruptible, suffering no diminishments at all, and no end. For both because he is incorruptible, he is therefore also immortal; and because he is immortal, he is certainly also incorruptible; each being mutually intertwined with the other and within itself by mutual connection, and extended to the state of eternity by reciprocal concatenation, with immortality descending from incorruption, and incorruption coming from immortality.

Even if we read of his angers, and hold certain indignations as described, and know of hatreds related, we do not however understand these to be referred to the examples of human vices. For all these things, even if they can corrupt a man, cannot at all corrupt the divine power. For these passions will rightly be said to exist in men, but will not rightly be judged to exist in God. For man can be corrupted through these things, because he can be corrupted: God cannot be corrupted through these things, because he cannot be corrupted. These things therefore have their own force which they exercise; but where passible matter precedes, not where impassible substance precedes. For even that God is angry does not come from his vice, but he does that for our remedy. For he is indulgent, even when he threatens: since through these things men are called back to right conduct.

For those to whom reason is insufficient for an honorable life, fear is necessary, so that those who have abandoned reason may be moved at least by terror. And therefore all these angers of God, or hatreds, or whatever things are of this kind, since they are brought forth for our healing (as the matter shows), came from counsel, not from vice, and do not descend from frailty; on account of which they also cannot avail to corrupt God. For the diversity of materials in us from which we are made is accustomed to stir up the discord that corrupts us into anger; which in God can exist neither from nature nor from vice: since he is not understood to be constructed from bodily compositions. For he is simple, and without any bodily concretion, whatever that whole is which he alone knows himself to be; inasmuch as he has been called Spirit.

And therefore these things which in men are vicious and corrupting, since they arise from the corruptibility of the body itself and of matter, cannot exercise the force of corruptibility in God: inasmuch as, as we have said, they came not from vice but from reason.

And although the heavenly Scripture often turns the divine face toward human form, when it says: The eyes of the Lord are upon the just: or when: The Lord God smelled the odor of a sweet fragrance: or when the tablets written with the finger of God are handed to Moses: or when the people of the children of Israel are freed from the land of Egypt with a mighty hand and a high arm: or when it says: For the mouth of the Lord has spoken these things: or when the earth is said to be the footstool of God's feet: or when it says: Incline your ear, and hear: we who say that the Law is spiritual do not enclose the manner or figure of the divine majesty within the lineaments of our body, but diffuse it in the fields, so to speak, of its own boundless greatness without any limit.

For it is written: If I ascend into heaven, you are there: if I descend to the underworld, you are present: and if I take my wings, and go beyond the sea, there your hand shall take hold of me, and your right hand shall hold me. For we recognize the reason of divine Scripture from the moderation of its arrangement. For the Prophets then spoke of God still in parables, according to the time of faith, not as God was, but as the people were able to receive. So that these things are said of God in this way, let it be imputed not to God but rather to the people. Thus also the people are permitted to erect a tabernacle; and yet God is not enclosed and contained within the tabernacle; thus also a temple is built; and yet God is not altogether shut within the narrowness of the temple. Therefore God is not limited, but the sense of the people is limited: nor is God narrow, but the understanding of the people's reason is narrow.

Finally in the Gospel: The hour will come, the Lord was saying, when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will the Father be worshipped, and he gave the reasons saying: God is Spirit; and therefore those who worship must worship in spirit and truth. The efficacies of the divine are therefore shown there through members: the appearance of God is not set forth, nor are bodily lineaments. For both when eyes are described, it is expressed that he sees all things; and when an ear, it is set forth that he hears all things; and when a finger, a certain signification of will is opened; and when nostrils, the reception as it were of the odors of prayers is shown; and when a hand, it is proved that he is the author of every creature; and when an arm, it is declared that no nature can resist the strength of him; and when feet, it is explained that he fills all things, that there is nothing where God is not.

For neither are members necessary to him, nor the offices of members, at whose sole silent will all things both serve and are present. For why should he require eyes, who is Light? Or why should he seek feet, who is everywhere? Or why should he wish to enter, since there is nowhere to which he can advance? Or why should he seek hands, whose artificer for establishing all things is his silent will? Nor does he need ears, who knows even silent wills. Or for what reason should he seek a tongue, for whom to think is to have commanded? For these members were necessary to men, not to God: because the counsel of man would have been ineffectual unless thought had filled the body; but not necessary to God, whose works follow upon his wills not only without any effort, but the works themselves proceed immediately together with the will.

But he himself is wholly eye, because he wholly sees; and wholly ear, because he wholly hears; and wholly hand, because he wholly works; and wholly foot, because he is wholly everywhere. For whatever that same thing is, it is wholly equal and wholly everywhere. For whatever is simple does not have diversity within itself. For those things at last will fall into diversity of members which come from birth into dissolution.

But these things which are not compounded cannot have sensation. For whatever is immortal, that very thing is one and simple and always is. And therefore because it is one, it cannot be dissolved; since whatever it is, placed outside the law of dissolution, it is freed from the laws of death.

But as to what the Lord says that God is Spirit, I think that Christ spoke thus of the Father in order that something yet more might be understood than that God is Spirit.

For although in his Gospel he makes increasing steps of understanding for men as he disputes; yet even he himself still speaks of God to men in such a way as they are yet able to hear or grasp; although, as we said, he has already done something toward the knowledge of God in a religious sense, in that God is said to be Charity; yet from this the substance of God is not expressed as Charity: and in that he is said to be Light; yet in this the substance of God is not contained, but all this is said of God to the extent that it can be said; so that rightly also when he is called Spirit, not everything that he is is expressed; but so that, while the mind of man advances in understanding even to Spirit itself, already turned in spirit, it might be able to conjecture that God is something else and more beyond Spirit.

For that which he is, according to what he is, can neither be uttered in human speech, nor perceived by human ears, nor gathered by human senses. For if what God has prepared for those who love him, neither eye has seen, nor ear has heard, nor has the heart or mind of man perceived; of what kind and how great is he himself who promises these things, for the understanding of which both the mind of man and nature itself falls short? Finally, if you take Spirit as the substance of God, you will have made God a creature. For every spirit is a creature. God will therefore now be something made. Just as also if, following Moses, you take God to be Fire, by saying he is a creature you will have expressed one who was instituted, not taught one who is the institutor. But these things are figures rather than literal facts.

For in the Old Testament God is called Fire in order that fear may be struck into a sinful people, while he is shown as judge. And in the New Testament he is set forth as Spirit, so that he may be proved to be the restorer and creator of those who are dead in their sins, through this goodness of the indulgence bestowed upon believers.

This God, then, setting aside the fables and fictions of heretics, the Church knows and venerates; to whom both the invisible and the visible creation, all of it and always, bears witness: whom Angels adore, whom the stars marvel at, whom the seas bless, whom the lands revere, whom all things below look up to: whom every human mind perceives, even if it does not express it: by whose command all things are set in motion, springs well up, all rivers flow, waves rise, all things bring forth their offspring, winds are compelled to blow, rains come, seas are stirred, all things everywhere spread abroad their fruitfulness: who established for the first-formed a certain paradise as a world of eternal life in the East: planted the tree of life; likewise placed another tree of the knowledge of good and evil; gave a commandment; appointed a sentence against transgression; saved the most just Noah from the perils of the flood in accordance with the merit of his innocence and faith; translated Enoch; chose Abraham into the fellowship of friendship; protected Isaac; increased Jacob; appointed Moses as leader over the people; snatched the groaning sons of Israel from the yoke of servitude; wrote the Law; led the offspring of the fathers into the land of promise; equipped the prophets with the Spirit; and through all these promised his Son Christ; and when he had pledged that he would give him, sent him.

Through whom he willed to come to our knowledge: and poured out upon us the wide bosom of his indulgence; bestowing a rich Spirit upon the needy and lowly. And because he is freely generous and good, lest this whole world, turned away, should wither from the rivers of his grace, he willed through his Son that apostles, the instructors of our race, be sent into the whole world: so that the condition of the human race might acknowledge its instructor; and, if it preferred to follow, might have one whom it could already call Father in its petitions as God. Whose providence has not run and does not run only individually through men; but also through the very towns and cities, whose ends he sang through the voices of the prophets; yea, even through the whole world itself, whose end, plagues, diminutions, and punishments he described on account of its unbelief.

And lest anyone should think that this tireless providence of God does not reach even to the smallest things: From two sparrows, says the Lord, not one shall fall without the will of the Father, but even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Whose care and providence did not allow the garments of the Israelites to be consumed, nor the most worthless sandals on their feet to be worn out, but not even the captive sarabarae of those young men to be burned; and not without reason: for if he has embraced all things, containing all things (and all things and the whole consist of individual parts), his care will consequently reach even to each individual thing, whose providence extends to the whole of whatever exists.

Hence it is that he sits above the Cherubim, that is, presides over the variety of his works, with the living creatures holding primacy above the rest subject to his throne, with crystal covering all from above, that is, with heaven covering all things: which had been solidified by God's command from the flowing matter of the waters into a firmament, like firm ice, dividing the midpoint of the waters that had formerly covered the earth, sustaining with its back, as it were, the weight of the upper water, its strength confirmed from the frost. For wheels also lie beneath, namely the ages, by which all the members of the world are always rolled along, with such feet added to them by which these things do not stand forever, but pass away.

But also through all their members they are studded with eyes: for the works of God are to be contemplated with watchful gaze, in whose midst is a fire of coals; either because this world hastens toward the fiery day of judgment: or because all the works of God are fiery, and are not dark, but are vigorous; or also, lest, because these things had arisen from earthly beginnings, they should naturally grow torpid from the coldness of their origin, there was added to all things the warm nature of an inner spirit, which, in bodies congealed from cold, might show equal balance of life to all for their use. There, therefore, is the chariot of God, according to David. For the chariot of God, he says, is multiplied ten thousandfold, that is, innumerable, infinite, immeasurable. For under the yoke of the natural law given to all, some things are as it were called back and restrained by reins, others as it were urged on and driven forward with loosened reins.

For this world as the chariot of God, together with all things, both the Angels themselves and the stars drive; whose varied courses, though bound by fixed laws, we observe leading to the goals of the time appointed to them; so that rightly we too with the Apostle, marveling at both the craftsman and his works, may now cry out: O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and how untraceable his ways! And the rest.

The same rule of truth teaches us to believe, after the Father, also in the Son of God, Christ Jesus our Lord and God, yet the Son of this God; of this God who is both one and alone, namely the founder of all things, as has already been set forth above. For this Jesus Christ—I will say it again—the Son of this God, we both read to have been promised in the Old Testament and observe to have been exhibited in the New Testament, fulfilling all the shadows and figures of the sacraments from the presence of the embodied truth. For him the son of Abraham, him the son of David, both the ancient prophecies and the Gospels alike attest. Him Genesis itself, when it says: To you and to your seed I will give. Him when it shows a man wrestling with Jacob.

Him when it says: There shall not fail a prince from Judah, nor a leader from his loins, until he comes to whom it has been promised, and he himself shall be the expectation of the nations. Him Moses, when he says: Provide another whom you may send. Him the same, when he testifies, saying: God shall raise up for you a Prophet from your brethren: hear him as you hear me. Him when he says: You shall see your life hanging night and day, and you shall not believe him. Him Isaiah: There shall come forth a rod from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall ascend from his root. Him the same, when he says: Behold, a Virgin shall conceive and bear a son. Him when he sets forth the healings that would come from him, saying: Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall hear; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute shall be made clear.

Him when he sets forth the virtues of his patience, saying: His voice shall not be heard in the streets; a bruised reed he shall not break, and smoking flax he shall not quench. Him when he described his Gospels: And I will appoint for you an everlasting covenant, the holy and faithful things of David. Him when he prophesies that the nations would believe in him: Behold, I have set him as a beginning and one who commands the nations. Nations that did not know you shall call upon you, and peoples who do not know you shall flee to you. Him the same, when he cries out concerning his passion, saying: As a sheep he was led to slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer without a voice, so he did not open his mouth in humility. Him when he described the blows of his scourges and his wounds: By his bruise we are healed; or his humility: And we saw him, and there was no form or honor in him.

A man in a plague and knowing how to bear infirmity. Or that the people would not believe: All day long I stretched out my hands to a people that does not believe. Or that he would rise again from the dead: And it shall be in that day that the root of Jesse, and he who shall rise to rule the nations, in him shall the nations hope, and his rest shall be honor. Or the time of the resurrection: As at dawn we shall find him prepared. Or that he would sit at the right hand of the Father: The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet. Or when he is placed as possessor of all things: Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession. Or when he is shown as judge of all: O God, give your judgment to the king, and your justice to the son of the king.

Nor will I pursue more things in this place, which, announced concerning Christ, are better known to all heretics, but even more to those who hold the truth.

But I give this warning: that no other Christ was to be expected in the Gospel than this one promised beforehand by the writings of the Creator in the Old Testament; especially since both the things foretold concerning him have been fulfilled, and the things fulfilled were foretold beforehand. So that I may rightly and steadfastly say to the Christ of those heretics who reject the authority of the Old Testament—that Christ invented and fashioned and painted from old wives' tales—I know not for whom: Who are you? Whence are you? By whom were you sent? Why did you wish to come now? Why of such a kind? Or by what means could you come? Or why did you not go to your own? Unless you have proved that you have no people of your own, since you come to strangers? What have you to do with the world of the Creator? What have you to do with the man of the Maker?

What have you to do with the fashioning of the body, from whom you snatch away the hope of resurrection? Why do you come to another's servant, why do you desire to entice another's son? Why do you strive to tear me away from my Lord? Why do you compel me to blaspheme the Father and to be impious? Or what shall I obtain from you in the resurrection, since I do not receive myself back when I lose my body? If you wish to save, you should have made the man to whom you would give salvation. If you desire to rescue from sin, you should first have granted me not to fall away. But what support of the law do you bring with you? What testimony of prophetic utterance do you have? Or what solid promise can I make to myself concerning you, when I see that you have come in a phantom and not in solid reality? What then have you to do with the form of a body, if you hate the body?

Nay, you are convicted of bearing about the substance of the body which you hate, since you were willing to take on even the form of it. For you ought to have hated the imitation of the body, if you hated the reality. For if you are another, you ought to have come in another manner: lest you be called the son of the Creator, if you had even the image of flesh and body. Certainly if you hated birth, because you hated the Creator's union of marriage, you ought also to have refused the imitation of man, who is born through the marriages of the Creator.

Neither therefore do we acknowledge that Christ of the heretics, who was in image (as it is said) and not in truth: for he would have done nothing true of those things which he performed, if he himself was a phantom and not reality: nor him who bore nothing of our body in himself, since he received nothing from Mary, lest he should not have come for us; since he did not appear visible in our substance. Nor him who desired ethereal or sidereal flesh, as other heretics have maintained; lest we understand any salvation in him for us, if we do not also acknowledge the solid reality of our body: nor any other whatsoever who bore any other body from the fiction of the heretics' fables.

For all these are refuted both by the birth of the Lord and by his very death. For John says: The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. So that our body was rightly in him, since indeed the Word took up our flesh. And blood therefore flowed from his hands and feet and from his very side, that he might be proved a sharer of our body, since he dies by the laws of our death. Who, being raised again in the same substance of the body in which he dies, and proved by the wounds of that very body, showed also the laws of our resurrection in his own flesh—he who restored in his resurrection the body which he had taken from us. For the law of resurrection is established, since Christ is raised in the substance of the body as an example for the rest.

For when it is written that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, it is not the substance of flesh that is condemned—which was built up by divine hands lest it should perish—but only the fault of the flesh is rightly rebuked, which by the voluntary rashness of man ran riot against the laws of the divine law. Because in Baptism and in the dissolution of death, the flesh, having been lifted up, returns to salvation: since it is recalled to the state of innocence, the mortality of sin having been laid aside.

But lest, from our asserting that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God the Creator, was manifested in the substance of a true body, we should seem to have yielded ground to other heretics who in this place defend him as merely and solely a man, and who therefore desire to prove that man to be bare and solitary, or to have furnished them material for speaking, we do not so express the substance of his body as to say that he was only and solely a man: but so that, the divinity of the Word being mingled in that very co-formation, we hold him also to be God according to the Scriptures.

For it is a great danger to say that the Saviour of the human race, the Lord and Prince of the whole world, to whom all things have been delivered and all things granted by his own Father, through whom all things were established, all things created, all things ordered, the King of all ages and times, the Prince of all Angels, before whom there is nothing except the Father—to say that he is only a man, and to deny him divine authority in these things. For this insult of the heretics will redound upon God the Father himself, if God the Father was unable to beget a Son who is God. But indeed no fondness of heretics shall prescribe against the truth. Nor, because in Christ they hold something and do not hold something, see one thing and do not see another, shall that which they do not see be taken from us through that which they see.

For they consider in him the weaknesses as of a man, but do not reckon the powers as of God; they recall the infirmities of the flesh, they exclude the powers of divinity. Whereas if this proof drawn from the weaknesses of Christ avails to the point that he is proved to be a man from his weaknesses, the proof of divinity in him gathered from his powers will avail to the point that he is also asserted to be God from his works. For if sufferings show in him human frailty, why should works not assert in him divine power? Lest, if the latter does not avail to assert him as God from his powers, neither should the sufferings avail to show that he is also a man from those very things. For whatever law shall have been established in either case, it will be found to have been adopted.

For it will be a danger that he is not shown to be a man from his sufferings either, if he could not also be approved as God from his powers. Therefore one must not lean to one side and flee from the other, since no one will hold the perfect truth who has excluded another portion of the truth. For Scripture announces Christ as God just as it announces him as man; it has described Jesus Christ as man just as it has also described Christ the Lord as God. For it sets him forth not as the Son of God only, but also of man; nor does it say only of man, but has been accustomed to refer him also to God: so that, since he is from both, he may be both; lest if he were only one, he could not be the other.

For just as nature itself has prescribed that he who is from a man is to be believed a man, so the same nature prescribes that he who is from God is to be believed God: lest if he were not also God, since he is from God, he should then not be man either, though he were from man, and so in either case both should be endangered, since the same one is convicted of having lost credibility in one by the other. Those therefore who read that Christ Jesus, the son of man, is a man, let them read that this same one is also named God and Son of God. For just as he is, as man, from Abraham, so also he is, as God, before Abraham himself. And just as, as man, he is called son of David, so he is named Lord of David, as God. And just as, as man, he was made under the law, so, as God, he is declared Lord of the sabbath.

And just as, as man, he undergoes sentence, so, as God, he is found to hold judgment over all the living and the dead. And just as, as man, he is born after the world, so as God he is attested to have been before the world. And just as from the seed of David, as man, he was begotten, so likewise through him, as God, the world is said to have been established. And just as, as man, he comes after many, so, as God, before all. And just as, as man, he is inferior to the rest, so, as God, he is greater than all. And just as, as man, he ascended into heaven, so from there, as God, he had previously descended. And just as, as man, he goes to the Father, so, obedient to the Father as Son, he is to descend from there. Thus if the lesser things in him prove human frailty, the majestic things in him affirm divine power.

For it is a danger, when you read both, to have believed not both but only one. From which, since both are read in Christ, both are believed: so that faith may be truly such only if it shall also have been perfect. For if of two things, one failing in faith, one—and indeed the lesser—shall have been taken up for belief, the rule of truth being disturbed, that rashness will not have conferred salvation, but in place of salvation, from the loss of faith, will have kindled a great peril of death.

Why then should we hesitate to say what Scripture does not hesitate to express? Why should the truth of faith waver in that wherein the authority of Scripture has never wavered? For behold, the prophet Hosea says in the person of the Father: I will no longer save them by bow, nor by horses, nor by horsemen; but I will save them in the Lord their God. If God says that he saves in God, and yet God saves only in Christ: why then does man hesitate to call Christ God, whom he perceives to have been set forth as God by the Father through the Scriptures?

Indeed, if God the Father saves only in God, no one can be saved by God the Father unless he has confessed Christ to be God, in whom and through whom the Father promises that he will give salvation; so that rightly whoever acknowledges him to be God finds salvation in God Christ; whoever does not acknowledge him to be God has lost the salvation which he cannot find elsewhere than in Christ God. For just as Isaiah says: Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel, which is interpreted as God with us, so Christ himself says: Behold, I am with you even to the consummation of the age. He is therefore God with us, indeed far more, he is even in us. Christ is with us: therefore he whose name it is, God with us, is with us, because he also is with us. Or is he not with us? How then does he say that he is with us? He is therefore with us.

But because he is with us, he is called Emmanuel, that is, God with us. God therefore, because he is with us, is called God with us. The same prophet: Strengthen the feeble hands and the weak knees, comfort the faint-hearted in mind, be strong. Fear not: behold our God will render judgment: he himself will come and save us: then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall hear; then the lame man shall leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall be made plain. If the prophet says that these signs, which have come to pass, were to occur at the coming of God; let them either acknowledge Christ to be the Son of God, at whose coming and by whom these signs of healings were wrought; or, overcome by the truth of Christ's divinity and rushing into the other heresy, let them, while unwilling to confess Christ as Son of God and God, confess him to be the Father.

For enclosed by the words of the prophets they can no longer deny that Christ is God. What then do they answer, when these signs are said to be future at the coming of God, which were accomplished at the coming of Christ? In what manner do they receive Christ as God? For they can no longer deny that he is God. In what way as Father? Or in what way as Son? If as Son, why do they deny that the Son of God is God? If as Father, why do they not follow those who seem to hold a blasphemy of that kind?—unless because in this contest of truth against them it suffices us for the present that, by whatever means convicted, they confess Christ also to be God, whom they had even wished to deny to be God. Through the prophet Habakkuk he says: God shall come from the south, and the Holy One from the dark and dense mountain. Whom do these men wish to come from the south?

If they say that God the Father Almighty has come, then God the Father comes from a place by which he is also enclosed and contained within the narrow bounds of some seat; and already through these men, as we have said, the sacrilegious Sabellian heresy is given bodily form. Inasmuch as Christ is believed to be not the Son but the Father; and by a new fashion, while he is strictly asserted by them to be a bare man, Christ is again through them proved to be God the Father Almighty. But if Christ is born in Bethlehem, whose measured region looks toward the southern quarter of the sky, and who is called God also through the Scriptures: rightly is this one described as coming from the south, because he was foreseen as about to come from Bethlehem. Let them therefore choose from the two options what they will—whether this one who comes from the south is the Son or the Father: for God is said to be coming from the south.

If the Son, why do they hesitate to call Christ also God? For Scripture says that God is to come. If the Father, why do they hesitate to be mingled with the rashness of Sabellius, who calls Christ the Father?—unless because, whether they call him Father or Son, they must of necessity, however unwillingly, depart from their own heresy, they who are accustomed to call Christ merely a man; while, compelled by the facts themselves, they begin to set him forth as God, whether they wish to name him Father or Son.

And so John also, describing the birth of Christ, says: The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. For his name is also called the Word of God: and not without reason. My heart, he says, has uttered a good word; which Word he consequently calls by the name of King, adding: I speak my works to the King. For through him all works were made, and without him was nothing made. For whether, says the Apostle, Thrones, or Dominions, or Virtues, or Powers, things visible and invisible, all things consist through him. But this is that truth, that he came unto his own, and his own received him not. For the world was made through him, and the world knew him not. But this Word was in the beginning with God, and the Word was God.

Who therefore can doubt, when in the final part it is said, The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, that Christ, whose is the nativity, and because he was made flesh, is man, and because he is the Word of God, is without hesitation to be declared God; especially when one observes that the evangelical Scripture has joined both these substances into the one harmony of Christ's nativity? For this is he who, as a bridegroom, goes forth from his chamber, and exulted as a giant to run his course; his going forth is from the highest heaven and his return is to the highest. Because to the highest, and no one ascends into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven. Repeating this same thing he says: Father, glorify me with that honor which I had with thee before the world was.

And if this Word descended from heaven as a bridegroom to the flesh, so that through the assumption of flesh the Son of man might be able to ascend thither whence the Word, the Son of God, had descended; rightly, while through mutual connection the flesh also bears the Word of God, and the Son of God assumes the frailty of flesh, ascending with the bride-flesh to the place whence he had descended without flesh, he now receives that glory which, since he is shown to have had it before the foundation of the world, most manifestly proves him to be God. And none the less, since the world itself is recorded as having been established after him, it is found to have been created through him; by which very fact both the love and the authority of the divinity in him, through whom the world was made, is proved.

For if, since it belongs to none but God to know the secrets of the heart, Christ beholds the secrets of the heart: if, since it belongs to none but God to forgive sins, the same Christ forgives sins: if, since it belongs to no man to come from heaven, he descended by coming from heaven: if, since this voice cannot be that of any man, I and the Father are one, Christ alone utters this voice from the consciousness of his divinity: if finally, the apostle Thomas, instructed by all the proofs and facts of Christ's divinity, answering Christ, says, My Lord and my God: if also the apostle Paul writes in his letters, of whom are the fathers, and from whom Christ came according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed for ever: if the same declares himself to be an Apostle appointed not by men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ: if the same maintains that he learned the Gospel not from men nor through man, but received it through Jesus Christ: rightly is Christ God.

And so at this point one of two things must be established. For since it is manifest that all things were made through Christ; either he is before all things, because all things are through him, and rightly he is also God: or because he is man, he is after all things, and rightly nothing was made through him. But we cannot say that nothing was made through him, since we observe it to be written that all things were made through him: he is therefore not after all things, that is, he is not merely man, who is after all things: but also God, since God is before all things. He is before all things, because all things are through him; lest if he were merely man, nothing were through him; or if all things are through him, he is not merely man. For if he were merely man, not all things are through him, nay nothing is through him. What then do they answer? Nothing through him, so that he may be merely man?

How then are all things through him? He is therefore not merely man, but also God; since all things are through him: so that we ought rightly to understand that Christ is not merely man, who is after all things; but also God, since all things were made through him. For how could you call him merely man, when you also behold him in the flesh; unless because if both are observed, both are rightly believed?

And yet the heretic still hesitates to call Christ God: Christ who has been shown to be God by so many things and words. If Christ is only a man, how, when he came into this world, did he come into his own, since a man made no world? If Christ is only a man, how is it reported that the world was made through him, since it is reported that the world was not made through a man, but that man was established after the world? If Christ is only a man, how is it not that Christ came only from seed, but that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us? For even if the first-formed man was not from seed, yet the first-formed man was not formed from the union of the Word and flesh: for it is not said that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

If Christ is only a man, how does he who came from heaven bear witness to what he has seen and heard, since it is established that a man cannot come from heaven, because he cannot be born there? If Christ is only a man, how is it reported that things visible and invisible, Thrones, Powers, and Dominions were created through him and in him, since heavenly Powers could not have been made through a man, seeing that they must have existed before man himself? If Christ is only a man, how is he present everywhere when invoked, since this is not the nature of man but of God, to be able to be present in every place? If Christ is only a man, why is a man invoked in prayers as Mediator, since the invocation of a man is judged ineffective for providing salvation? If Christ is only a man, why is hope placed in him, since hope in man is reported to be accursed?

If Christ is only a man, why is it not permitted to deny Christ without the destruction of the soul, since a sin committed against a man is reported to be capable of being forgiven? If Christ is only a man, how does John the Baptist testify and say: He who came after me was made before me, because he was before me; since, if Christ is only a man, born after John, he could not exist before John, unless it is because, in that he is God, he preceded him? If Christ is only a man, how does he do likewise the things which the Father does, since a man cannot do works similar to the heavenly works of God? If Christ is only a man, how, just as the Father has life in himself, so has he given to the Son to have life in himself; since a man cannot have life in himself after the example of God the Father, not being glorious in eternity but formed in the matter of mortality?

If Christ is only a man, how does he say: I am the bread of eternal life who descended from heaven; since a man, himself mortal, cannot be the bread of life, nor could he have descended from heaven, no material of frailty being established in heaven? If Christ is only a man, how can it be said that no one has ever seen God the Father, except him who is from God—he has seen God? For if Christ is only a man, he could not have seen God, because no man has seen God: but if, being from God, he saw God, he wished to be understood as something more than a man, in that he saw God. If Christ is only a man, why does he say: What then if you were to see the Son of man ascending where he was before? Now he ascended into heaven: he was therefore there, since he returns to where he previously was.

But if he was sent from heaven by the Father, he is not merely a man: for a man, as we have said, could not have come from heaven. Therefore a man was not there before, but ascended to where he had not been. But the Word of God descended, which was there—the Word, I say, of God and God, through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. Therefore it is not a man who came from heaven in this way; but the Word of God, that is, God, descended from there.

If Christ is only a man, how does he say: Even if I bear witness of myself, my testimony is true, because I know whence I came and whither I go; you do not know whence I came or whither I go; you judge according to the flesh. Behold, here too he says he will return to the place from which he testifies he came before, namely, sent from heaven. He descended therefore from where he came, just as he goes there from where he descended. From which, if Christ were only a man, he would not have come from there: and therefore he would not go there either, since he would not have come from there. But by coming from where a man cannot come, he shows that it is God who has come. But indeed the Jews, ignorant and unlearned concerning this very descent, produced these heretics as their heirs, to whom it is said: You do not know whence I come and whither I go; you judge according to the flesh.

Both these heretics and the Jews, holding that the birth of Christ is only carnal, believed Christ to be nothing other than a man, not considering that, since a man could not have come from heaven so as to be able rightly to return there, he who descended from where a man could not have come must be God. If Christ is only a man, how does he say: You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world? Now if every man is from this world, and Christ is therefore in this world, is he only a man? By no means. But consider what he says: I am not of this world. Surely he does not lie, when he says he is of this world, if he is only a man? Or if he does not lie, he is not of this world. Therefore he is not only a man, because he is not of this world.

But lest it should be hidden who he was, he expressed whence he was: I, he says, am from above; that is, from heaven, from where a man cannot come; for man was not made in heaven. He is therefore God who is from above, and for that reason is not of this world: although in some sense he is also of this world; whence Christ is not only God but also man. So that rightly, as he is not of this world according to the divinity of the Word, so he is of this world according to the frailty of the body he assumed: for he is man joined with God, and God united with man.

But for this reason Christ here leaned toward the one side of divinity alone, because Jewish blindness looked only at the fleshly part in Christ, and therefore in the present passage, passing over in silence the frailty of the body which is of the world, he spoke of his divinity alone which is not of the world: so that, to the extent that they had inclined to believe him to be only a man, to that extent Christ could draw them to consider his divinity, that they might truly believe him to be God; wishing to overcome their unbelief concerning his divinity, setting aside for the moment the mention of his human lot, by the opposition of his divinity alone. If Christ is only a man, how does he say: I proceeded and came forth from God, since it is established that man was made by God, not that he proceeded from God? For as man did not proceed from God, so the Word of God proceeded; of which it is said: My heart has uttered a good Word.

Which, because it is from God, is rightly also with God. And because it was not put forth idly, it rightly does all things. For all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made. But indeed this Word through whom all things were made is God. And God, he says, was the Word. God therefore proceeded from God, since the Word who proceeded is God who proceeded from God. If Christ is only a man, how does he say: If anyone keeps my word, he shall never see death? Never to see death—what else is that but immortality? Now immortality is the companion of divinity, because divinity too is immortal, and immortality is the fruit of divinity. But every man is mortal; and immortality cannot come from what is mortal. Therefore immortality cannot arise from Christ as a mortal man. But he says: He who keeps my word shall never see death. Therefore the word of Christ bestows immortality, and through immortality bestows divinity.

Which if he cannot accomplish—that a mortal man himself should make another immortal—yet the word of Christ does accomplish and bestow immortality equally: he is therefore not only a man, who bestows immortality; which, if he were only a man, he could not bestow: but by bestowing divinity through immortality, he proves himself to be God by extending divinity, which, unless he were God, he could not bestow. If Christ is only a man, how does he say: Before Abraham was, I am? For no man can exist before him from whom he himself is; nor can it come about that anyone existed before him from whom he himself took his origin. But Christ, though he is from Abraham, says that he exists before Abraham. Either he lies and deceives—and thus he who was from Abraham was not before Abraham—or he does not deceive if he is also God, in that he was before Abraham. Which unless he had been, consequently, since he was from Abraham, he could not exist before Abraham.

If Christ is only a man, how does he say: And I know them and mine follow me; and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish? But since every man is bound by the laws of mortality, and therefore cannot preserve himself forever, much less will he be able to preserve another forever. Yet Christ promises that he will give salvation forever; which if he does not give, he is a liar: if he gives it, he is God. But he does not deceive: for he gives what he promises: he is therefore God, who extends perpetual salvation; which a man, who cannot preserve himself, will not be able to bestow upon another. If Christ is only a man, what is it that he says: I and the Father are one? For how are I and the Father one, if he is not both God and Son?

Who for that reason can be called one, in that he is from him, and in that he is his Son, and in that he is born from him, in that he is found to have proceeded from him, through which he is also God. When the Jews had thought this invidious and believed it blasphemous, because by these words Christ had shown himself to be God, and had therefore rushed to stones and eagerly aimed blows of rocks; he forcefully refuted his adversaries by the example and testimony of the Scriptures. If, he says, he called them gods to whom the words of God were spoken, and the Scripture cannot be broken; do you say of him whom the Father sanctified and sent into this world, You blaspheme, because I said, I am the Son of God? By which words he neither denied that he was God, but rather confirmed that he was God.

For since without doubt those are said to be gods to whom the words of God were spoken, much more is he God, who is found to be better than all of them. And nonetheless he fittingly refuted the calumnious charge of blasphemy by a lawful arrangement: for he wishes to be understood as God in such a way that he would be understood as the Son of God, and not as the Father himself. For he said that he was sent, and showed that he had displayed many works from the Father; from which he wished to be understood not as the Father but as the Son; and in the final part of his defense he made mention of the Son, not the Father, saying: You say, You blaspheme, because I said: I am the Son of God.

Thus, as regards what pertains to the charge of blasphemy, he calls himself Son, not Father: but as regards what concerns his divinity, by saying I and the Father are one, he proved himself to be both Son and God: he is therefore God; but God in such a way that he is Son, not Father.

If Christ is only a man, how does he himself say: And everyone who lives and believes in me shall not die forever? But indeed he who believes in a solitary and naked man is said to be accursed: yet he who believes in Christ is described not as accursed, but as one who shall not die forever. From which, if he is only a man, as the heretics would have it, how shall whoever believes in him not die forever, since he who trusts in a man is held to be accursed? Or if he is not accursed, but rather, as it is written, destined to the attainment of eternal life, then Christ is not only a man but also God; by believing in whom one both lays aside the danger of the curse and draws near to the fruit of righteousness. If Christ is only a man, how does he say that the Paraclete is going to take from what is his the things he is to announce?

For the Paraclete does not receive anything from a man, but the Paraclete extends knowledge to a man, nor does the Paraclete learn future things from a man, but the Paraclete instructs a man concerning future things. Therefore either the Paraclete did not receive from Christ the man what he announces, since a man will be able to give nothing to the Paraclete from whom that same man ought to receive; and Christ deceives and misleads in the present passage, when he says that the Paraclete is going to receive from him, a man, the things he announces; or he does not deceive us, as indeed he does not deceive, and the Paraclete received from Christ the things he announces. But if he received from Christ the things he announces, then Christ is already greater than the Paraclete: since the Paraclete would not receive from Christ unless he were less than Christ.

But the Paraclete being less than Christ proves by this very fact that Christ is also God, from whom he received the things he announces; so that there is great testimony to the divinity of Christ, while the Paraclete, found to be less than Christ, takes from him what he hands on to others. For if Christ were only a man, Christ would receive from the Paraclete what he would say, not the Paraclete from Christ what he would announce. If Christ is only a man, why did he lay down for us such a rule of believing as to say: And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent? If he had not wished himself to be understood as God also, why did he add: And Jesus Christ whom you have sent, unless because he wished to be received as God also?

For if he did not wish to be understood as God, he would have added: And Jesus Christ the man whom you have sent: but as it is, Christ neither added this, nor handed himself on to us as only a man, but joined himself to God, so that through this conjunction he might wish to be understood as God also, as he is. It is therefore to be believed, according to the prescribed rule, in the Lord, the one true God, and consequently in him whom he sent, Jesus Christ, who would by no means have joined himself to the Father, as we have said, unless he had wished to be understood as God also; for he would have separated himself from him if he had not wished to be understood as God: for he would have placed himself only among men if he knew himself to be only a man; nor would he have joined himself with God if he did not know himself to be God also: as it is, he is silent about being a man, because no one doubts that man; and he joins himself to God deservedly, so that he might set before those who were to believe the formula of his divinity.

If Christ is only a man, how does he say: And now glorify me with the glory which I had with you before the world existed? If before the world existed he had glory with God, and held brightness with the Father, he existed before the world: for he would not have had glory unless he himself had first existed, who could hold glory. For no one will be able to have anything unless he himself first existed who holds something. But Christ has glory before the founding of the world; therefore he existed before the founding of the world. For unless he had existed before the founding of the world, he could not have had glory before the founding of the world, since he himself would not have existed.

But a man could not have had glory before the founding of the world, who came after the world: but Christ had it: therefore he existed before the world: therefore he was not only a man, who existed before the world: he is therefore God, since he existed before the world and held glory before the world. But let this be called predestination, since it is not so stated; or let those who think this add it: but woe is to those who add, just as to those who take away, what is written: therefore what cannot be added cannot be said. Predestination therefore being set aside, since it is not stated, Christ existed in substance before the founding of the world. For he is the Word through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. For even if he is said to be glorious in predestination, and the predestination to have existed before the founding of the world, let order be preserved, and before him there will be a great number of men destined for glory.

For by this destination Christ will be understood as less than the rest, since he is marked as coming after them. For if this glory existed in predestination, Christ received this predestination to glory last: for Adam will be seen to have been predestined before, and Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, and Abraham, and all the rest. For since with God the order of all persons and things is arranged, before this predestination of Christ to glory many will be said to have been predestined. And in this way Christ is found to be less than the rest of men, he who is found to be better and greater and more ancient than even the Angels themselves. Either therefore let all these things be removed, so that divinity may be taken away from Christ: or if these things cannot be removed, let his proper divinity be restored to Christ by the heretics.

What if Moses follows out this same rule of truth, and handed this down to us at the beginning of his writings, by which we may learn that all things were created and established through the Son of God, that is through the Word of God? For he says the same thing that John says, that the rest say; indeed John and the rest are understood to have received from him what they say.

For if John says: All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made (John,); and the Prophet reports: I speak my works to the King; and Moses introduces God commanding first that light come to be, that the firmament be established, that the waters be gathered, that the dry land appear, that fruit be brought forth according to seeds, that animals be produced, that luminaries and stars be set in the sky: he shows that there was then present with God no other to whom these works were commanded to be done, except him through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. And if this one is the Word of God—for my heart has poured forth a good word—he shows that in the beginning the Word existed, and that this Word was with the Father, and moreover that the Word was God, and that all things were made through him.

But this Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, namely Christ the Son of God; whom, while we receive him also afterward as a man according to the flesh, and see him before the founding of the world as the Word of God and God, we rightly, according to the institution of the Old and New Testament, both believe and hold Christ Jesus to be both God and man. What if the same Moses introduces God saying: Let us make man in our image and likeness: and below, And God made man, in the image of God he made him, male and female he made them? If, as we have already shown, the Son of God is he through whom all things were made, certainly the Son of God is he through whom man also was established, for whose sake all things were made.

But with God commanding that man be made, it is reported that it is God who makes man: but the Son of God makes man, namely the Word of God, through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. But this Word was made flesh and dwelt among us: therefore Christ is God. Through Christ therefore man was made, as through the Son of God. But God made man in the image of God; therefore he who made man in the image of God is God, therefore Christ is God: so that rightly the authority of the Old Testament concerning the person of Christ does not waver, while it is supported by the manifestation of the New Testament, nor is the power of the New Testament cut off, while the truth of the same is sustained by the roots of the Old Testament.

From which, those who presume that Christ, the Son of God and of man, is only a man and not also God, act against both the Old and New Testament, while they corrupt the authority and truth of both the Old and New Testament. What if the same Moses everywhere introduces God the Father as immense and without end, not one who is enclosed by a place, but who encloses every place: not one who is in a place, but rather in whom every place is: containing all things and encompassing all things, so that rightly he neither descends nor ascends, since he himself both contains and fills all things: and yet nonetheless introduces God descending to the tower which the sons of men were building to examine it, and saying: Come, and presently: Let us descend and confuse their languages there, so that each one may not hear the voice of his neighbor Whom do they wish to have descended here to that tower, seeking to visit those men at that time? God the Father?

Then he is already enclosed by a place: and how does he himself encompass all things? Or does he perhaps speak of an Angel descending with Angels, and saying: Come; and presently: Let us descend and confuse their languages there? But indeed in Deuteronomy we observe that God reported these things, and that God said them, where it is set down: When he scattered the sons of Adam, he established the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God. Therefore neither did the Father descend, as the matter indicates; nor does an Angel give these commands, as the matter proves. It remains therefore that he descended of whom the apostle Paul says: He who descended is the same who ascended above all the heavens, that he might fill all things, that is the Son of God, the Word of God. But the Word of God was made flesh and dwelt among us: this one will be Christ: therefore Christ will be proclaimed God.

Lest this happen to the detriment of human eyes, the rising of that luminary, gradually breaking apart and dispersing the darkness, creeping upward by moderate increases, little by little accustoms the eyes of men to bearing its full orb through the growth of its rays. So also Christ, that is, the image of God and the Son of God, is beheld by men in the measure in which he could be seen. And therefore the frailty and lowliness of the human condition is nourished, led forward, and brought up through him: so that one day it may also be able to see God the Father himself—having grown accustomed to beholding the Son—as he is; lest, struck by his majesty with a sudden and intolerable splendor, it be cut off, and so be unable to see God the Father whom it has always longed to see.

From this it follows that he who is seen is the Son; but the Son of God is the Word of God; but the Word of God was made flesh and dwelt among us: and this is Christ. What reason, pray, is there to doubt that he should be called God, who is understood to be confirmed as God in so many ways?

And if also the Angel met Hagar, the handmaid of Sara, who had been cast out and likewise driven from the house, at a fountain of water on the way to Sur, and questioned her about the causes of her flight and received them, and after this offered her counsels of humility; and moreover gave her hope of a mother's name, and pledged and promised that there would be much seed from her womb, and disclosed that Ishmael was to be born from her, and along with other things revealed the place of his dwelling and described his manner of life: now Scripture presents this Angel as both Lord and God (for he would not have promised the blessing of seed unless he had been both Angel and God): let the heretics consider what they are to make of this passage. Was it the Father who was seen by Hagar in this place, or not?—because he is set down as God.

But far be it to call God the Father an Angel, lest he be subordinate to another, whose Angel he would have been. But they say he was an Angel: how then will he be God, if he was an Angel? Since this name has never been granted to Angels; unless because the truth on both sides presses us into this conclusion: that we ought to understand it was the Son of God; who, because he is from God, is rightly called God, as being the Son of God; and because he is subordinate to the Father and the announcer of the Father's will, he has been proclaimed the Angel of great counsel.

Therefore if this passage neither befits the person of the Father, lest he be called an Angel, nor befits the person of an Angel, lest he be proclaimed God: but it does befit the person of Christ, that he be both God, because he is the Son of God, and Angel, because he is the announcer of the Father's dispensation: the heretics must understand that they act against the Scriptures, who, while saying they believe Christ to be also an Angel, are unwilling to proclaim him also God—him whom they read in the Old Testament to have often come for the visitation of the human race. Furthermore Moses added that God appeared to Abraham at the oak of Mambre, while he himself was sitting at the door of his tent at midday; and that nonetheless, when he had caught sight of three men, he called one of them Lord; whose feet he washed, and offered them ash-baked loaves with butter and an abundance of milk, and urged them as guests detained to eat.

After which he also hears that he is to be a father, and learns that Sara his wife is to bear him a son, and is informed of what the Sodomites deserved to suffer, and learns that God had come down on account of the outcry of the Sodomites. In this passage, if the heretics wish it to be understood that it was the Father who was then received as a guest with the two Angels, they have believed the Father to be visible; but if an Angel—since out of three Angels one is called Lord—why is an Angel called God, which is not customary? Unless because, in order that invisibility may be rendered as proper to God the Father, and proper lowliness be restored to an Angel, none other than the Son of God, who is also God, is to be believed to have been seen by Abraham and received as a guest.

For he who was to come was rehearsing in mystery, having become Abraham's guest, what he was to be among Abraham's sons; whose sons' feet he washed, as proof that he himself was the one, rendering to the sons the right of hospitality which the father had once lent to him. Hence also, lest there be any doubt that this one had been Abraham's guest, it is set down at the departure of the Sodomites: For the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrha fire and brimstone from the Lord out of heaven. For so also the prophets in the person of God say: I overthrew you, he says, as the Lord overthrew Sodom and Gomorrha. The Lord therefore overthrew Sodom, that is, God overthrew Sodom: but in the overthrow of the Sodomites the Lord rained fire from the Lord.

Now this Lord was seen by Abraham as God: and this God is Abraham's guest, seen indeed because touched: but since the Father, being invisible, was not seen even then; he was seen and received and welcomed as a guest, who was accustomed to be touched and seen: and this Son of God, as Lord from the Lord, rained brimstone and fire upon Sodom and Gomorrha. Now this is the Word of God: but the Word of God was made flesh and dwelt among us: and this is Christ. It was not therefore the Father who was Abraham's guest, but Christ; nor was the Father seen at that time, but the Son; and it was Christ who was seen. Rightly therefore is Christ both Lord and God, who was seen by Abraham in no other way than because before Abraham himself, the Word God was begotten as God from God the Father. Furthermore, he says, the same Angel and God comforts and visits the same Hagar, driven from Abraham's house with the child.

For when she had laid the infant down in the wilderness because the water had failed from the skin, and when that boy had cried out and she had raised weeping and lamentation, And God heard, says Scripture, the voice of the boy from the place where he was. Having reported that it was God who heard the voice of the infant, it added: And the Angel of the Lord called to Hagar herself from heaven; referring as Angel the one it had called God, and proclaiming as Lord the one it had placed as Angel: and this Angel and God further promises Hagar greater consolations, saying: Fear not; for I have heard the voice of the boy from the place where he was. Arise, take up the boy, and hold him: for I will make him into a great nation.

This Angel, if he is only an Angel, why does he claim for himself the right to say: For I will make him into a great nation, since this kind of power belongs to God and cannot belong to an Angel? From which it is also confirmed that he who can do this is God: since, to prove this very thing, Scripture immediately adds: And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of living water, and went and filled the skin from the well, and gave it to the boy, and God was with the boy. If therefore this God was with the boy who opened the eyes of Hagar so that she might see the well of living water and draw water on account of the pressing necessity of thirst; and this God calls her from heaven, called Angel, whereas above, hearing the voice of the crying boy, he was rather God—no other is to be understood than one who is at once both Angel and God.

Since this cannot be fitting and appropriate to the Father, who is God only, but can be fitting to Christ, who has been proclaimed not only God but also Angel: it plainly appears that it was not the Father who spoke to Hagar at that time, but rather Christ, who, being God, also has the name of Angel fitting to him, inasmuch as he was made the Angel of great counsel: and he is Angel while he expounds the bosom of the Father, as John declares. For if John himself says that this same one who expounds the bosom of the Father is the Word made flesh, so that he might be able to expound the bosom of the Father: rightly is Christ not only man but also Angel; nor only Angel but also God, as is shown through the Scriptures, and is believed by us to be so—lest, if we refuse to accept that it was Christ who then spoke to Hagar, we either make an Angel into God, or reckon God the Father almighty among the Angels.

What if in another place we likewise read that God is set down as an Angel? For when Jacob was complaining to his wives Leah and Rachel about their father's iniquity, and when he was recounting that he now desired to return and go back to his own land, he also interposed the authority of his dream, at which time he reports that the Angel of God said to him through a dream: Jacob, Jacob. And I, he says, said: What is it? Look, he says, with your eyes, and see the he-goats and rams ascending upon the sheep and she-goats, spotted white, and varied and ash-colored and sprinkled. For I have seen all that Laban has done to you. I am the God who appeared to you in the Place of God, where you anointed a stone standing there for me, and vowed a vow to me there. Now therefore arise, and depart from this land, and go into the land of your birth, and I will be with you.

If the Angel of God speaks these things to Jacob, and this same Angel adds, saying: I am the God who appeared to you in the Place of God: we perceive that he is set down not only as an Angel but also as God, without any hesitation, inasmuch as he reports that a vow was directed to him by Jacob in the Place of God, and does not say in my Place. There is therefore a Place of God, and there is also this God. But indeed there it is set down simply as the Place of God; for it is not said the Place of the Angel and of God, but only of God: whereas he who makes these promises is declared to be both God and Angel; so that there is rightly a distinction between him who is called God only, and him who is pronounced not simply God, but also Angel.

From which, if the authority here present cannot be understood as belonging to any other Angel—that he should also confess himself to be God, and testify that a vow was made to him—except to Christ alone, to whom a vow can be vowed not because he is merely an Angel, but because he is God: it is manifest that it is not the Father who is to be understood, but the Son, God and Angel. Now if this is Christ, as indeed it is, he is in grave peril who says that Christ is either merely a man or merely an Angel, with the power of the divine name taken away from him, which he has frequently received on the testimony of the heavenly Scriptures, which call him frequently both Angel and God.

To all these things there is added also this: that just as divine Scripture has frequently set him down as both Angel and God, so it sets him down as both man and God, the same divine Scripture expressing what he was going to be, and depicting even then in image what was to exist in the truth of substance. For, it says, Jacob remained alone, and a man wrestled with him until morning: and he saw that he could not prevail against him, and he touched the breadth of Jacob's thigh, while he wrestled with him and he with him, and said to him: Let me go, for the morning star has risen. And he said: I will not let you go, unless you bless me. And he said: What is your name? And he said, Jacob. And he said to him: Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name: because you have prevailed with God, and are mighty with men.

And he further adds: And Jacob called the name of that place, Vision of God. For I have seen God face to face, and my soul has been saved. And the sun rose upon him: he soon passed through the Vision of God; but he himself limped upon his thigh. A man, he says, wrestled with Jacob. If a solitary man, who is this? Whence is he? Why does he contend and wrestle with Jacob? What had intervened? What had happened? What was the reason for this great contention and so great a contest? Why moreover does Jacob, who is found strong enough to hold the man with whom he wrestled, and who asks a blessing from him whom he detained because the morning star was now rising, appear to have asked for this reason—except because this contest was prefigured as one that would come between Christ and the sons of Jacob, which is said to have been accomplished in the Gospel?

For the people of Jacob wrestled against this man, in which wrestling the people of Jacob was found the stronger: inasmuch as it gained the victory of its iniquity against Christ, at which time, on account of the crime it committed, it began most gravely to limp, uncertain and unsteady in the gait of its own faith and salvation: which people, although found superior in condemning Christ, nevertheless stands in need of his mercy, stands in need of his blessing. But indeed this man who wrestled with Jacob says: Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name. And if Israel is the man who sees God, the Lord was elegantly showing that he who then wrestled with Jacob was not only a man, but also God. Jacob was indeed seeing God with whom he wrestled, even though he held his human form in the wrestling. And lest there could still be any doubt, he himself provided the interpretation by saying: Because you have prevailed with God, and are mighty with men.

For which reason this same Jacob, now understanding the force of the mystery, and perceiving the authority of him with whom he had wrestled, called the name of that place in which he had wrestled, Vision of God. He further built upon the reasons for extending the interpretation of Vision of God: For I have seen, he says, God face to face, and my soul has been saved. Now he saw God with whom he wrestled as though with a man: but he held the man indeed as a victor, yet asked a blessing as from God, as one inferior. Thus he wrestled with both God and man: and so this wrestling was there prefigured, but in the Gospel was accomplished between Christ and the people of Jacob: in which, although the people was found superior, it was found lesser in that it was proved guilty.

Who will doubt that Christ, in whom this figure of wrestling was fulfilled, is to be acknowledged not as man only, but also as God: since even the very figure of the wrestling appears to have proved him both man and God? And yet even after these things the same divine Scripture equally does not cease to call the Angel God, and to pronounce God the Angel. For when this same Jacob was about to bless Manasseh and Ephraim the sons of Joseph, with his hands placed crosswise upon the heads of the boys, he says: The God who has fed me from my youth until this day, the Angel who has delivered me from all evils, let him bless these boys. So much indeed does he set down the same Angel whom he had called God, that at the close of his speech he placed in the singular the person of whom he was speaking, saying let him bless these boys.

For if he had wished one to be understood as God and another as Angel, he would have embraced two persons in the plural number: but now he set down the singular number of one person in the blessing, from which he wished the same one to be understood as both God and Angel. But indeed God the Father cannot be understood here: whereas Christ can be understood as both God and Angel. And Jacob, by placing his hands crosswise upon the boys, signified him as the author of this blessing, as though Christ were their father, thereby showing in the figure and form of the crossing of hands the future passion. Let no one therefore, just as he does not hesitate to call Christ an Angel, so also hesitate to pronounce him God, since he understands that this same one, and the blessing of these boys, arranged through the mystery of the passion in the figure of the hands, was invoked as both God and Angel.

But if some heretic, stubbornly struggling against the truth, shall wish in all these examples to understand properly an Angel, or shall contend that an Angel is to be understood, he must necessarily be broken by the force of truth even in this. For if, with all things heavenly, earthly, and infernal subjected to Christ, even the Angels themselves together with all others that are subjected are called gods, Christ is rightly also God. And if any Angel whatsoever, subjected to Christ, can be called god; and if this is said and uttered without blasphemy: by much greater right can this also befit Christ the Son of God himself, that he be pronounced God. For if an Angel who is subject to Christ is brought forth as god; much more and more consistently will Christ, to whom all Angels are subject, be said to be God. For it does not accord with nature that what has been granted to lesser things should be denied to greater.

Thus if an Angel is lesser than Christ, and yet an Angel is called god, more consistently is Christ said to be God, who is found greater and better not by one but by all Angels. And if God stood in the synagogue of gods, and in the midst God discerns gods; and Christ stood in the synagogue on various occasions; therefore Christ as God stood in the synagogue, judging, that is, the gods to whom he says: How long will you accept the persons of men? Accusing, that is, consistently the men of the synagogue who do not exercise just judgments. Furthermore, if those who are rebuked and blamed nevertheless appear for some reason to obtain this name without blasphemy, so as to be called gods: by much greater right will he be held to be God who is said not only to have stood as God in the synagogue of gods, but is also revealed by the same authority of the reading as discerning and judging gods.

But if those who fall as one of the princes are nevertheless called gods, by much greater right will he be said to be God, who not only does not fall as one of the princes, but also conquers the very author and prince of wickedness. What reason, pray, is there that, when they read that this name was given even to Moses, when it is said, I have set you as God to Pharaoh, it should be denied to Christ, who is found to be constituted not as God to Pharaoh, but as Lord and God of the whole creation? And in the case of Moses this name was given in a measured way, in the case of Christ abundantly: in the case of Moses according to measure, in the case of Christ above all measure altogether. For not according to measure, he says, does the Father give to the Son: for the Father, he says, loves the Son.

In the case of Moses for a time, in the case of Christ without time, for he received the power of the divine name both over all things and for all time. Now if he who received power over one man, in this smallness of the power thus given nevertheless without hesitation obtains this name of God; how much more will he who has power even over Moses himself be believed to have obtained the authority of this name?

And indeed I could sift through the treatises of all the heavenly Scriptures, and stir up, so to speak, a vast forest concerning this aspect of the divinity of Christ: were it not that my purpose is not so much to speak against this heresy, as briefly to lay open the rule of truth concerning the person of Christ. Yet although I hasten toward other matters, I do not think that should be passed over which the Lord expressed in the Gospel to signify His own majesty, saying: Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Or when in another place and another passage He declares: I have power to lay down my soul and to take it up again: for this commandment I have received from the Father. For who is it that says he is able to lay down his soul or to recover his soul apart, because he has received this commandment from the Father?

Or who says that he is able to raise up again and rebuild the destroyed temple of his body: unless it be that Word who is from the Father, who is with the Father, through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made, the imitator of the Father's works and power, the image of the invisible God, who descended from heaven, who testified to what He saw and heard, who came not to do His own will, but rather to do the will of the Father, by whom He had been sent for this very purpose, that, made the Angel of great counsel, He might unlock for us the secrets of heavenly mysteries—since the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, this Christ from among us is shown to be not man only, because He is Son of man, but also God, because He is Son of God?

And if Christ is also called by the Apostle the firstborn of every creature, how could He be the firstborn of every creature, unless because according to His divinity the Word proceeded from God the Father before every creature? Unless heretics accept it in this way, they will be compelled to show that Christ as man is the firstborn of every creature; which they will not be able to do. Either therefore He is before every creature so as to be the firstborn of every creature, and He is not man only, because man comes after every creature; or He is man only, and is after every creature. And how is He the firstborn of every creature, unless because when that Word which is before every creature, and therefore the firstborn of every creature, is made flesh and dwells among us—that is, takes up this man who is after every creature—and so dwells among us with him and in him, that neither is the man withdrawn from Christ, nor is the divinity denied?

For if He is only before every creature, the man in Him is withdrawn: but if He is only man, the divinity which is before every creature is cut off. Both therefore are joined together in Christ, and both are united, and both are bound together. And rightly, since there is in Him something that surpasses creation, the harmony of divinity and humanity appears to be pledged in Him. For this reason, He who is set forth as made the mediator of God and men, is found to have united God and man in Himself. And if the same Apostle reports of Christ that, having put off the flesh, He disgraced the powers, openly triumphing over them in Himself: surely it was not without purpose that he set forth the putting off of the flesh, unless because he wished it to be understood that in the resurrection He was clothed with it again. Who then is this one who put it off and put it on again? Let the heretics inquire.

For we know that the Word of God was clothed with the substance of flesh, and that the same was again stripped of that same material of the body, since in the resurrection He received it again and resumed it as a garment, so to speak. But Christ would not have been either stripped of or clothed with the man, if He had been man only. For no one is ever either stripped of or clothed with himself. For that must needs be something other, whatever is either stripped off or put on from elsewhere. From which it rightly follows that it was the Word of God who was stripped of the flesh and clothed with it again in the resurrection; stripped of it, moreover, because He had been clothed with it also at His birth. And so in Christ it is God who is clothed, and must also be stripped: therefore He who is clothed must likewise be stripped. But the man is put on and put off, as a kind of tunic of the woven body.

And therefore it follows, as we have said, that it was the Word of God; who is found to be now clothed, now stripped. For this He also foretold beforehand in the blessings: He shall wash his robe in wine, and his garment in the blood of the grape. If in Christ the robe is the flesh and the garment is the body itself, let it be inquired who is he whose body is the garment and whose flesh is the robe. For it is manifest to us that the flesh was the robe and the body the garment of the Word, who washed the substance of the body and cleansed the material of the flesh with blood, that is with wine, through the passion of the man He had taken up. From which, since He is washed, He is man: because the garment that is washed is flesh: but He who washes is the Word of God; who, in order to wash the garment, became the bearer of the one clothed.

Rightly from that substance which was received in order to be washed, the man is expressed: just as from the authority of the Word who washed, He is shown to be God.

But why, although we seem to hasten toward another part of the discussion, should we pass over that passage in the Apostle? Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of men, and found in fashion as a man: He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross: wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father. Who, being in the form of God, he says. If Christ were man only, He would have been described as in the image of God, not in the form of God. For we know that man was made in the image, not in the form of God.

Who then is this one who, as we have said, was made an Angel in the form of God? But neither do we read of the form of God in the Angels, unless because this one, preeminent and noble above all, the Son of God, the Word of God, the imitator of all the Father's works, since He also works as His Father does, is in the form (as we have expressed) of God the Father. And rightly He is declared to be in the form of God, since He also, being above all things and holding divine power over every creature, is also God after the example of the Father: yet this He obtained from the Father as His own, that He should be both God and Lord of all, and God begotten and brought forth from the Father Himself after the form of God the Father. This one therefore, although He was in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.

For although He remembered that He was God from God the Father, He never compared or equated Himself with God the Father, mindful that He was from His own Father, and that He had what He is because the Father had given it. Hence finally, both before the assumption of the flesh, and after the assumption of the body, and after the resurrection itself besides, He rendered and renders all obedience to the Father in all things. From which it is proved that He never considered divinity a kind of robbery, so as to make Himself equal to God the Father: but rather, on the contrary, obedient and subject to His every command and will, He was content even to take on the form of a servant (that is, to become that man) and the substance of flesh and body, which He received by being born from the servitude of the sins of the fathers and according to man: at which time He also emptied Himself, since He did not refuse to take on the frailty of the human condition.

For if He had been born as man only, He would not have been emptied by this: for a man being born is increased, not emptied: for when he begins to be what he could not have when he was not, as we have said, he is not emptied, but rather increased and enriched. But if Christ is emptied in that He is born, by taking the form of a servant, how is He man only? Of whom it would more truly have been said that He was enriched when He was born, not emptied; unless because the authority of the divine Word, temporarily resting in order to take up the man, and not exercising itself in its own powers, casts itself down for a time and lays itself aside, while it bears the man it has taken up. He empties Himself, while He descends to injuries and insults, while He hears unspeakable things, while He experiences unworthy things; yet the excellent fruit of this humility is immediately present.

For He received a name, which is above every name, which we understand to be none other than the name of God. For since it belongs to God alone to be above all, it follows that that name is above all which belongs to Him who is above all, namely God. That name therefore which is above every name is: which name consequently belongs to Him who, though He was in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God. For if Christ were not God, every knee of heavenly, earthly, and infernal beings would not bow at His name; nor would things visible or invisible, nor every creature of all things, be subject or subjected to a man, which would remember that it existed before man.

From which, since Christ is said to be in the form of God, and since He is shown to have emptied Himself into birth according to the flesh, and since He is expressed to have received from the Father that name which is above every name, and since every knee of heavenly, earthly, and infernal beings is shown to bow and bend at His name, and this very thing is asserted to redound to the glory of God the Father: it consequently follows that not only from that fact is He man, because He was made obedient to the Father unto death, even the death of the cross; but also from these higher matters which proclaim the divinity of Christ, the Lord Christ Jesus is shown to be also God—which the heretics are unwilling to admit.

At this point it will be permitted to me to gather arguments also from the side of other heretics. It is a strong kind of proof which is taken even from an adversary, so that the truth may be proved even by the enemies of truth themselves. For so manifest is it that He is handed down in the Scriptures as God, that many heretics, moved by the greatness and truth of His divinity, and extending His honors beyond measure, have dared to put forward or suppose that He is not the Son, but God the Father Himself. Which, even if it is contrary to the truth of the Scriptures, is nevertheless a great and outstanding argument for the divinity of Christ; who is so much God—but as the Son of God born from God—that many heretics, as we have said, have accepted Him as God in such a way that they thought He should be declared not the Son, but the Father.

Let them therefore consider whether He is God, whose authority has so prevailed over certain persons that they supposed Him, as we said above, to be already the Father God Himself; confessing the divinity in Christ more extravagantly and more freely, the manifest divinity of Christ compelling them to this, so that He whom they read to be the Son, because they perceived Him to be God, they supposed to be the Father.

Other heretics also, having embraced the manifest divinity of Christ to such a degree, said that He was without flesh, and stripped from Him the entire man that had been taken up, lest they should diminish in Him the power of the divine name, if they had associated with Him, as they supposed, a human birth: which however we do not approve; but we bring it forward as an argument that Christ is so much God, that some supposed Him, with the man removed, to be God only, while others believed Him to be God the Father Himself: whereas the reason and the balance of the heavenly Scriptures show Christ to be God, but as the Son of God, and, with the Son of man also assumed by God, to be believed also as man.

For if He was coming to man in order to be the mediator of God and men, it was necessary that He be with him, and that the Word be made flesh, so that in Himself He might fasten together the harmony of earthly and heavenly things alike, connecting in Himself the pledges of both parties, and joining God to man and man to God; so that rightly the Son of God through the assumption of flesh might be made the Son of man, and the Son of man through the reception of the Word of God might be made the Son of God. This most lofty and hidden mystery, destined before the ages for the salvation of the human race, is found to be fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ, God and man, whereby the condition of the human race might be brought to the fruit of eternal salvation.

But the material of this heretical error arose, as I think, from this: that they judge there to be no difference between the Son of God and the Son of man; lest, if a distinction were made, Jesus Christ might easily be proved to be both Man and God. For they wish the same and very one, that is, the human son of man, to be seen also as the Son of God; so that man and flesh, and that fragile substance, may be said to be the same and very Son of God. Whence, since no distinction is drawn between the son of man and the Son of God, but the son of man himself is claimed to be the Son of God, Christ is asserted to be merely man and the same as the Son of God. By this they strive to exclude: The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us; and, Thou shalt call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is God with us.

For they put forward and hold out those things which are recorded in the Gospel of Luke, from which they endeavor to assert, not what is, but only what they wish to be: The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that which shall be born of thee holy shall be called the Son of God. If therefore, they say, the Angel of God says to Mary, that which shall be born of thee holy, the substance of flesh and body is from Mary; and this substance, that is, this holy thing which was begotten of her, he declared to be the Son of God: man himself, they say, and that flesh of the body, that which is called holy, is itself the Son of God. So that when Scripture says holy, we should understand Christ the son of man as man; and when it sets forth Son of God, we ought to perceive not man but God.

But divine Scripture easily convicts and exposes the frauds and thefts of heretics. For if it were only thus: The Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee, therefore that which shall be born of thee holy shall be called the Son of God; perhaps we would have to contend against them in another manner, and we would have to seek other arguments and take up other weapons by which to overcome their snares and deceits: but since Scripture itself, abounding in heavenly fullness, strips itself of the calumnies of these heretics, we readily rely upon what is written itself, and overcome these errors without any doubt.

For it did not say, as we have already stated, therefore that which shall be born of thee holy, but added a conjunction: for it says therefore also that which shall be born of thee holy; so as to show that this holy thing which is born of her, that is, this substance of flesh and body, is not primarily the Son of God, but so in a secondary and consequent sense: but that primarily the Son of God is the Word of God incarnate through that Spirit, of whom the Angel reports: The Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee.

For this is the true Son of God who is from God himself, who, while he takes up this holy thing and attaches to himself the Son of man, and draws him to himself and leads him across, by his union and associated commingling bestows this, and makes that one the Son of God, which he was not by nature; so that the primacy of this name Son of God resides in the Spirit of the Lord who descended and came; so that the consequent bearing of the name resides in the Son of God and of man, and he has deservedly and consequently been made Son of God, since he is not primarily Son of God.

And therefore the Angel, seeing this arrangement and setting forth the order of this mystery, not confounding all things so as to leave no trace of distinction, placed a distinction by saying: Therefore also that which shall be born of thee holy shall be called the Son of God: lest, had he not dispensed this distribution with its proper balances, but left it mingled in confusion, he would truly have given occasion to heretics to pronounce the Son of man, insofar as he is man, to be the same Son both of God and of man. But now, setting forth part by part the order and reason of so great a mystery, he expressed it clearly, so as to say, also that which shall be born of thee holy shall be called the Son of God; proving that the Son of God descended: who, while he received the Son of man into himself, consequently made him Son of God; because the Son of God associated and joined him to himself.

So that while the Son of man cleaves in birth to the Son of God, he might hold by that very commingling, as something lent and borrowed, what he could not possess from his own nature. And thus by the voice of the Angel there was made, contrary to what the heretics wish, a distinction between the Son of God and the Son of man, yet with their union preserved; pressing them to understand Christ, the Son of man, as man, and also to receive the Son of God, and man of God, that is, the Word of God (as it is written) as God: and therefore to know Christ Jesus the Lord, joined (if I may so say) from both, woven and compacted from both, and united in the harmony of both substances in the mutual bond of a reciprocal covenant, as man and God, by the truth of Scripture itself saying this very thing.

Therefore, they say, if Christ is not man only but also God, and Scripture reports that Christ died for us and was raised; then Scripture now teaches us to believe that God died: or if God does not die and yet Christ is reported to have died, Christ will not be God, since God cannot be taken as dead. If they had ever understood, or had understood, what they read, they would never speak so dangerously at all. But the madness of error is always headlong; and it is no new thing if those who have abandoned the true faith descend even to dangerous conclusions. For if Scripture set forth Christ as God only, and no association of human frailty were permitted in him, their tortured argument here might have had some force. If Christ is God, and Christ is dead, therefore God is dead. But since Scripture establishes him, as we have already shown frequently, not only as God but also as man, it follows that what is immortal must be held to have remained incorrupt.

For who does not understand that divinity is impassible, while human frailty is passible? Since therefore Christ is understood to be commingled and united both from what he is as God and from what he is as man—for the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us—who would not easily recognize of himself, without any teacher or interpreter, that it is not that which is God in Christ that died, but that which is man in him that died? For what if the divinity in Christ does not die, but only the substance of flesh is extinguished, seeing that even in other men, who are not flesh only but flesh and soul, the flesh alone suffers the assault of destruction and death, while the soul is seen incorrupt, outside the laws of destruction and death? For the Lord himself, exhorting us to martyrdom and to contempt of all human power, said: Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul.

But if the immortal soul cannot be killed or slain in any other person, even though the body and flesh alone can be slain, how much more certainly could the Word of God who is God in Christ not be slain at all, when only the flesh and body were killed? For if the soul in any man has this nobility of immortality, that it cannot be slain, much more does the nobility of the Word of God have this power, that it cannot be killed. For if the power of men fails to slay the sacred power of God, and if human cruelty fails to slay the soul, much more must it fail to slay the Word of God. For since the soul itself, which was made through the word of God, is not killed by men, much more certainly will the Word of God be believed unable to be destroyed.

And if the bloody savagery of men can do no more against men than merely to kill the body, how much more certainly will it avail in Christ no more than to kill that same body only: so that, while it is gathered from these things that only the man in Christ was slain, it appears that the Word was not brought down to mortality in that place.

For if Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, who are established to have been men only, are manifestly alive (for all of them, he says, live unto God, and death does not destroy in them the soul which dissolves the bodies themselves; for it was able to exercise its right over the bodies, but was not able to exercise it over the souls: for one thing in them was mortal, and therefore dead, another thing in them was immortal, and therefore is understood not to have been extinguished, for which reason they were declared and said to live unto God): much more certainly could death in Christ prevail against the matter of the body alone, but could not exercise itself against the divinity of the Word. For the power of death is broken where the authority of immortality intervenes.

But on this occasion, because Christ is proved to be not only man but also God by the sacred authorities of the divine Scriptures, other heretics burst forth and contrive to shake the foundation of religion in Christ, wishing by this very fact to show that Christ is God the Father, since he is asserted to be not only man but is also declared to be God. For they say thus: If one God is declared, and Christ is God; therefore, they say, if the Father and Christ are one God, Christ will be called the Father. In this they are proved to err, not knowing Christ but approving the mere sound of the name: for they are unwilling that he should be the second person after the Father, but hold him to be the Father himself. Since it is easy to answer them, a few words will be said.

For who would not acknowledge the second person of the Son after the Father, when he reads what was said by the Father in sequence to the Son: Let us make man in our image and likeness; and after this it is recorded, And God made man, in the image of God he made him? Or when he holds in his hands: The Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah fire and brimstone from the Lord out of heaven? Or when to Christ: Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee; ask of me and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance, and the ends of the earth for thy possession? Or when even that much-desired scribe says: The Lord said to my Lord: Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool? Or when, expounding the prophecies of Isaiah, he finds it written thus: Thus saith the Lord to my Christ my Lord?

Or when he reads: I came down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me? Or when he finds it written: Because he who sent me is greater than I? Or when he considers it written: I go to my Father and your Father, my God and your God? Or when he has it set down together with the rest: But in your law it is written, that the testimony of two men is true; I bear witness of myself, and the Father who sent me beareth witness of me? Or when the voice is rendered from heaven: And I have glorified it, and will glorify it again? Or when it is answered and said by Peter: Thou art the Son of the living God? Or when the mystery of this revelation is confirmed by the Lord himself, and it is said: Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed this to thee, but my Father who is in heaven?

Or when it is expressed by Christ himself: Father, glorify me with the glory which I had with thee before the world was? Or when the same says: Father, I knew that thou hearest me always; but because of the people who stand around I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me? Or when the definition of the rule is set down by Christ himself, and it is said: And this is life eternal, that they may know thee the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. I have glorified thee on earth, I have finished the work which thou gavest me? Or when likewise it is asserted and said by the same: All things are delivered to me by my Father? Or when sitting at the right hand of the Father is confirmed both by the prophets and by the apostles?

And I make it sufficiently long if I strive to gather together absolutely all the utterances bearing on this point; since the divine Scripture of not only the Old but also the New Testament everywhere shows that he was born of the Father, through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made, who has always obeyed the Father and does obey him, always having power over all things, but as a power delivered, as a power granted, as a power indulged to him by the Father as his own. For what can be so evident as that this one is not the Father but the Son, as that he is set forth as obedient to God the Father, lest if he were believed to be the Father, Christ should be said to be subject to another God the Father?

He answers well to that saying: I and the Father are one, which they pressed in their own behalf. But because they frequently press upon us that passage in which it is said: I and the Father are one; in this too we shall overcome them with equal ease. For if, as the heretics suppose, Christ were the Father, it would have been necessary to say: I and the Father am one. But when he says I and then introduces the Father, saying I and the Father, he distinguishes and separates the property of his own person, that is of the Son, from the paternal authority, not only in the sound of the name but also in the order of the arranged power; he who could have said: I am the Father, if he had remembered that he was the Father. And because he said one, let the heretics understand that he did not say one person. For one, placed in the neuter, sounds the harmony of fellowship, not the unity of person.

For one thing is not said to be one person, since it is not referred to number but is expressed with reference to fellowship with another. Finally he adds saying, we are, not he is, so as to show by this that he said we are and the Father, that there are two persons. But what he says, one, pertains to concord and the same mind and to the very fellowship of love; so that the Father and the Son are rightly one, through concord, and through love, and through affection. And since whatever that is, it is from the Father, he is the Son: the distinction nevertheless remaining, so that he who is the Father is not the Son; because neither is he the Son who is the Father. For he would not have added we are, if he had remembered that he, made the Son, was one and the same as the Father. Finally the apostle Paul also knew this unity of concord, yet with distinction of persons.

For when writing to the Corinthians, he says: I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters: but God who gives the increase. Now he who plants and he who waters are one. But who would not understand that Apollos is one person and Paul another, and that Apollos and Paul are not one and the same? Finally the distinct offices of each are also set forth: for one is he who plants, and another he who waters; yet these two the apostle Paul set forth not as being one person, but as being one thing; so that Apollos is indeed one person and Paul another, as far as the distinction of persons is concerned, but as far as concord is concerned, both are one. For when two persons have one mind, there is one truth, one faith, one and the same religion, one fear of God also, they are one, even if they are two; they are the same thing, while they think the same thing.

For those whom the principle of person divides from one another, the principle of religion again brings together. And although they are not the same and identical persons, while they think the same they are the same thing; and though they are two, they are one, having fellowship in faith, even if they bear diversity in persons. Finally when the Jewish ignorance had been stirred up at these words of the Lord, and rashly inflamed even to the point of stones, so that they ran about and said: We stone thee not for a good work, but for blasphemy, and because thou, being a man, makest thyself God, the Lord set forth a distinction in giving account of how he had said or wished to be understood to be God. He whom the Father hath sanctified, he says, and sent into this world, do you say, Thou blasphemest, because I said, I am the Son of God? Here also he said that he has a Father.

He is therefore the Son, not the Father; for he would have confessed himself to be the Father, if he had remembered that he was the Father; and he sets forth that he was sanctified by his own Father. While therefore he receives sanctification from the Father, he is less than the Father: but he is consequently less than the Father, yet he is the Son. For if he had been the Father, he would have given sanctification, not received it. And now moreover by professing that he received sanctification from the Father: by this very fact, by which he proves himself lesser than the Father by receiving sanctification from him, he showed himself to be the Son, not the Father.

Furthermore he says that he was sent, so that through this obedience by which the Lord Christ came, sent, he is proved to be not the Father but the Son, who would certainly have sent if he had been the Father: but the Father was not sent, lest the Father, while being sent, should be proved subject to another God. And yet after these things he adds what would dissolve all ambiguity entirely and extinguish the whole controversy of error. For he says in the last part of the discourse: You say, Thou blasphemest, because I said, I am the Son of God. Therefore if the Lord clearly testifies that he is the Son, not the Father, it is an example of great rashness and immense madness to stir up controversy about divinity and religion against the testimony of Christ the Lord himself, and to say that Christ Jesus is the Father, when one observes that he proved himself to be not the Father but the Son.

I will add yet that part also in which the heretic, as though rejoicing with a certain eye of his own truth and light lost, may recognize the whole blindness of his error. For he presses and frequently objects that it was said: So long a time I am with you, and hast thou not known me? Philip, he that hath seen me hath seen the Father also. But what he does not understand, let him learn. Philip is rebuked, and rightly and deservedly so, because he had said: Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us. For when had he either heard from Christ, or learned, that Christ was the Father? When on the contrary he had rather frequently heard and often learned that he was the Son, not that he was the Father.

For what the Lord said, If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also, and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him, he had not said in such a way as to wish himself to be understood as the Father; but because whoever has approached the Son of God thoroughly and fully and with entire faith and entire devotion, will in every way through the Son himself, in whom he so believes, be about to arrive at the Father, and will see him. For no man, he says, can come to the Father but by me. And therefore he is not only about to come to God the Father and to know the Father himself; but he ought also to hold this, and so to presume in mind and thought, as though he had already known the Father and seen him alike.

For divine Scripture often announces things not yet done as done, because they are so to be; and what is in every way bound to come to pass, it does not proclaim as though it were future, but narrates as though it were accomplished. Thus, when Christ had not yet been born in the times of the prophet Isaiah, he said: For a child is born unto us; and when approach had not yet been made to Mary, he said: And I went unto the prophetess, and she conceived, and bare a son. And when Christ had not yet unfolded the bosom of the Father, he reported: And his name shall be called the Angel of great counsel. And when he had not yet suffered, he declared: As a sheep he was led to the slaughter. And when the cross was nowhere yet, he said: All the day long I have stretched forth my hands unto a people that believeth not.

And when he had not yet been given to drink insultingly, he said: In my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. And when he had not yet been stripped, he said: Upon my vesture they cast lots: they numbered all my bones: they pierced my hands and my feet. For divine Scripture, foreseeing, speaks of things it knows to be future as done, and speaks of things it has as future as accomplished, which are without doubt to come. And therefore the Lord in the present place was saying: From henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.

For he was saying that the Father would be seen by whoever had followed the Son; not as though the Son himself were the Father who was seen, but that whoever had been willing to follow him and to be his disciple would obtain this reward, that he might be able to see the Father: for he is also the image of God the Father: so that to these considerations this also is added, that as the Father worketh, so the Son also worketh. And the Son is an imitator of all the works of the Father, so that each person may hold it as though he had already seen the Father, while he sees him who in all works always imitates the invisible Father. But if Christ himself is the Father, how does he immediately add and say: He that believeth in me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto the Father?

And he further subjoins: If ye love me, keep my commandments: and I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Advocate. After which he also subjoins this: If a man love me, he will keep my word: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. He also added this as well: But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. He sets forth this passage further, whereby he shows himself to be the Son, and fittingly subjoins and says: If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I go to the Father: for the Father is greater than I. What moreover when he also subjoins those words: I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman: every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away, and every branch that beareth fruit he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit?

He presses on still and adds: As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: abide in my love; if ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love. He urges further and says: But I have called you friends, because all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. He also adds this: But all these things will they do unto you for my name's sake, because they know not him that sent me.

These things, therefore, the Lord would never have subjoined after those words so evidently testifying that he is not the Father but the Son; if he had either remembered that he was the Father, or wished to be understood as the Father: except in order to express that each person ought to hold it as though he had already seen the Father, while he sees through the Son the image of God the Father; since each believer in the Son is exercised in the contemplation of the image, so that, having grown accustomed to seeing divinity through the image, he may be able to advance and grow unto the perfect contemplation of God the Father Almighty. And because whoever has drunk this in with mind and thought, and has believed that all things will be so, has in a manner already seen the Father whom he is about to see, and should hold it here and now as though he possesses what he knows for certain he is to have.

But if he himself had been the Father, why was he promising as a future reward what he had already bestowed and given? For since he says: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God; he is found to be promising the contemplation and sight of the Father; therefore he had not yet given it: for why would he promise it, if he had already given it? For he would have given it if he were the Father; for he was being seen and touched. But when, while Christ himself is being touched and seen, he nevertheless promises and says that whoever shall be pure in heart shall see God, by this very fact he proves that he is not the Father, who, while being seen as present at that time, was promising that whoever should be pure in heart would see the Father.

He who was making these promises was therefore not the Father, but the Son: because he who was the Son was promising what was to be seen; whose promise would have been superfluous, unless he had been the Son. For why was he promising to the pure that they would see the Father, if those who were then present were already seeing Christ as the Father? But because he was the Son, not the Father, rightly both the Son, as the Image of God, was then being seen; and the Father, as invisible, is promised and designated to the pure in heart, that he might be seen. Let this therefore suffice, to have dictated even against this heretic a few things out of many. For a wide and indeed broad and extensive field will open up, if we shall wish to press this heretic more fully; since, blinded by those two passages with his eyes as it were gouged out, he is wholly overcome in the blindness of his doctrine.

But indeed the order of reason and the authority of Faith, in the arranged words and letters of the Lord, admonishes us, after these things, to believe also in the Holy Spirit, promised of old to the Church, but rendered at the appointed opportunities of the times. For he was promised through Joel the prophet, but rendered through Christ. In the last days, he says, I will pour out of my Spirit upon my servants and handmaids. But the Lord: Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins ye shall remit, they shall be remitted; and whose ye shall retain, they shall be retained. Now this Holy Spirit the Lord Christ at one time calls. The Paraclete, at another time declares him to be the Spirit of truth; who is not new in the Gospel, nor newly given: for this same one both accused the people in the Prophets, and furnished advocacy to the Gentiles in the Apostles.

For those deserved to be accused because they had despised the Law: and those who believe from among the Gentiles deserve to be aided by the patronage of the Spirit, because they eagerly strive to attain to the Evangelical law. There is indeed a difference in him in the kinds of offices: since the reason of causes differs in the times: yet he himself is not thereby diverse, who thus conducts these things; nor is he another while he thus acts: but he is one and the same, dividing his offices according to the times, and the occasions and records of events. Finally the Apostle Paul says: Having the same Spirit, as it is written: I believed, therefore have I spoken; we also believe, therefore we speak. One and the same Spirit therefore, both in the Prophets and in the Apostles; except that there it was for a moment, here always.

For there, not that he might always abide in them: here, that he might always remain in them: and there distributed in moderate measure, here poured out wholly; there given sparingly, here bestowed abundantly; nor yet exhibited before the resurrection of the Lord, but contributed after the resurrection of Christ. For he said: I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate, that he may be with you forever, the Spirit of truth. And: When that advocate shall come, whom I am about to send to you from my Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from my Father. And: If I do not go away, that advocate will not come to you: but if I go away, I will send him to you. And: When the Spirit of truth shall come, he will guide you into all truth.

And because the Lord was about to depart into the heavens, he was necessarily giving the Paraclete to the disciples, lest he should leave them in some manner as orphans, which was altogether unfitting, and desert them without an advocate and a certain guardian. For this is he who strengthened the minds and souls of those very men, who set forth the Sacraments of the Gospel, who was in them the illuminator of Divine things, who being strengthened feared neither prisons nor chains for the name of the Lord; nay rather they trod down even the powers and torments of the world, armed now of course through him and strengthened, having in themselves the gifts which this same Spirit distributes and directs to the Church of Christ the bride as certain ornaments.

For this is he who established Prophets in the Church, instructed Teachers, directs tongues, works powers and healings, performs wonderful works, extends discernments of spirits, contributes governings, suggests counsels, and composes and arranges whatever other gifts of charisms there are; and therefore makes the Church of the Lord perfect and complete in every respect and in all things. This is he who, in the manner of a dove, after the Lord was baptized, came upon him and remained, dwelling in Christ alone full and whole, not mutilated in any measure or portion, but distributed and sent in full abundance with all his redundancy; so that from him others might obtain a certain first-fruits of graces; the whole Holy Spirit remaining in Christ as a fountain, so that from him the streams of gifts and works might be drawn, the Holy Spirit dwelling abundantly in Christ.

For this very thing Isaiah, prophesying, was already saying: And there shall rest upon him the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and piety, and the Spirit of the fear of God shall fill him. This same and identical thing also in another place in the person of the Lord himself: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; because of which he anointed me, he sent me to preach the gospel to the poor. Likewise David: Therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. Concerning this the Apostle Paul: For he who has not the Spirit of Christ, this man is not his. And: Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

Hence is he who works from the waters a second birth, a certain seed of the divine race, and the consecrator of heavenly birth, the pledge of the promised inheritance, and as it were a certain bond of eternal salvation; who makes us the temple of God, and makes us his house: who intercedes with divine ears on our behalf with unutterable groanings, fulfilling the offices of advocacy and exhibiting the gifts of defense; given as an inhabitant to our bodies, and the author of holiness: who, working this in us unto eternity, may bring forth our bodies to the resurrection of immortality, while he accustoms them in himself to be mingled with heavenly virtue, and to be joined with the divine eternity of the Holy Spirit. For our bodies are instructed in him, and through him to advance toward immortality, while they learn to temper themselves moderately according to his decrees. For this is he who desires against the flesh, because the flesh fights against him.

This is he who restrains insatiable desires, breaks immoderate lusts, extinguishes unlawful ardors, conquers burning impulses, rejects drunkenness, repels avarice, puts to flight luxurious feastings, binds together charities, constrains affections, repels sects, sets forth the rule of truth, refutes heretics, drives out the wicked, guards the Gospels. Concerning this the same Apostle: For we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is of him. Concerning this he exults, and says: But I think that I also have the Spirit of God. Concerning this he says: And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. Concerning this he reports: But the Spirit expressly says, that in the last times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, to doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared.

No one placed in this Spirit ever says anathema to Jesus: no one has denied Christ the Son of God, or repudiated God the creator: no one brings forth any words of his own against the Scriptures: no one establishes other and sacrilegious decrees: no one writes diverse laws. Whoever shall have blasphemed against this one has no forgiveness, not only in this age, but not even in the future. This one in the Apostles bears witness to Christ, in the Martyrs shows forth steadfast faith of religion, in Virgins encloses the admirable continence of sealed chastity, in the rest preserves uncorrupted and uncontaminated the laws of the Lord's teaching, destroys heretics, corrects the perverse, convicts the faithless, exposes pretenders, also corrects the wicked, and guards the Church uncorrupted and inviolate, in the holiness of perpetual virginity and truth.

Finally, to what extent the said heretics have drawn the origin of their error from the fact that they observed it written: one God: even if we call both Christ God and the Father God, yet Scripture sets forth no more two Gods than two Lords or two Masters. And these things indeed concerning the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have been briefly said by us, and set down concisely, and not extended in a lengthy disputation. For they could have been extended more broadly, and drawn out in a more expansive disputation; inasmuch as the whole of both the Old and New Testament could be brought forward as testimony that the true faith is so constituted.

But because heretics, always struggling against the truth, are accustomed to draw into controversy the sincere tradition and Catholic faith, being scandalized in Christ because He is also asserted to be God through the Scriptures, and this is believed by us; it is rightly to be disputed by us (so that every heretical calumny may be removed from our faith) concerning the fact that Christ is also God, in such a way that it does not impede the truth of Scripture; but neither our faith, by which one God is both set forth through the Scriptures, and held and believed by us. For both those who say that Jesus Christ is the Father God himself, and also those who have wished Him to be merely a man, have drawn the origins and causes of their error and perversity from this: because when they observed that it was written that God is one, they thought they could hold to this opinion in no other way, unless Christ were to be believed either merely a man, or certainly the Father God.

For thus they are accustomed to gather their calumnies, so that they strive to approve their own error. And indeed those who say that Jesus Christ is the Father put forward this: If there is one God; but Christ is God: Christ is the Father, because God is one; if Christ is not the Father, while the Son also is God, Christ, two Gods seem to have been introduced contrary to the Scriptures. But those who contend that Christ is merely a man gather from the other side thus: If the Father is one and the Son is another: but the Father is God, and Christ is God: therefore not one God, but two gods are introduced equally, the Father and the Son; and if there is one God, consequently Christ is a man, so that the Father may rightly be the one God. In truth the Lord is crucified as it were between two thieves, as He was once nailed, and thus receives the sacrilegious insults of these heretics from either side.

But neither the Holy Scriptures nor we furnish them with causes of perdition and blindness, if certain things plainly set in the midst of the Divine Letters they either will not see or cannot see. For we both know and read and believe and hold that there is one God, who made heaven and earth alike, since we know no other nor shall we ever be able to know one (since there is none). I am, He says, God: and there is none besides me just and saving. And in another place: I am the first and the last, and besides me there is no God. Who is like me? There is: Who has measured heaven with a span, and the earth with a fist? Who has hung the mountains in weight, and the forests in a balance? And Hezekiah: That all may know that thou art God alone. The Lord Himself moreover: Why do you ask me about the good? One God is good.

The Apostle Paul also: Who alone, he says, has immortality, and dwells in unapproachable light: whom no man has seen, nor can see. And in another place: Now a mediator is not of one; but God is one. But as we hold and read and believe this, so we ought to pass over no part of the heavenly Scriptures: since indeed those marks of Christ's divinity which are set down in the Scriptures we ought in no way to refuse, lest by corrupting the authority of the Scriptures we be held to have corrupted the integrity of the holy faith. Let us therefore also believe this, since it is most faithful, that the Son of God is Jesus Christ our Lord and God: because, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This was in the beginning with God. And: The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. And: My Lord and my God.

And: Of whom are the Fathers, and of whom Christ came according to the flesh, who is over all things God blessed for ever. What then shall we say? Does Scripture set forth two Gods? How then does it say that God is one? Or is Christ not also God? How then was it said to Christ, My Lord and my God? Therefore unless we hold all this with proper reverence and legitimate disputation, we shall rightly be thought to have furnished a stumbling-block to heretics; not indeed from any fault of the heavenly Scriptures which never deceive, but from the presumption of human error, by which they have chosen to be heretics. And first that must be turned back against those who presume to raise for us the controversy of two Gods. It is written, which they cannot deny, that there is one Lord. What then do they think concerning Christ? That He is Lord, or that He is not Lord at all?

But they do not doubt at all that He is Lord: therefore if their reasoning is true, there are now two Lords. How then, according to the Scriptures, is there one Lord? And: One Master is said to be Christ, yet we read that the Apostle Paul is also a Master. Therefore there is not now one Master: for by these arguments we gather two Masters. How then according to the Scriptures is Christ the one Master? One is called good in the Scriptures, namely God; but in those same Scriptures Christ also is set down as good. Therefore, if they reason rightly, not one good, but two goods as well. How then according to the faith of the Scriptures is one reported to be good?

But if they do not think that by any principle of office it can be detracted from the fact that there is one Lord, through the fact that both Christ is Lord and Paul is Lord; nor from the fact that there is one Master, through the fact that both Christ is Master and Paul is Master: or from the fact that there is one good, through the fact that Christ also has been called good: by the same principle of office let them understand that it cannot be detracted from the fact that there is one God, by the fact that Christ also has been declared God.

God the Father, therefore, is the founder and creator of all things, alone knowing no origin, invisible, immeasurable, immortal, eternal, one God; whose greatness, whose majesty, whose power I will not say can be preferred above, but cannot even be compared with anything. From whom, when He Himself willed it, the Word the Son was born: who is not understood as a sound of air struck, or as a tone of voice forced from the depths of the chest, but is recognized in the substance of a power brought forth from God: the mysteries of whose sacred and divine nativity neither the Apostle learned, nor the Prophet discovered, nor the Angel knew, nor any creature has come to know; they are known to the Son alone, who has come to know the secrets of the Father. He therefore, since He is begotten of the Father, is always in the Father. Yet I say "always" in such a way as to prove Him not unborn but born.

But He who exists before all time must be said to have always been in the Father: for no time can be assigned to Him who is before time. Always therefore in the Father: lest the Father not always be Father: indeed the Father also precedes Him (in a certain sense), because it is necessary that He who is Father be (in some manner) prior. For it is necessary that He who knows no origin should in some way precede him who has an origin. So that this one is lesser, in that he knows himself to be in Him, having an origin, because he is born; and through the Father in some manner (though he has an origin by which he is born) close in nativity, since he is born of that Father who alone has no origin.

He therefore, when the Father willed it, proceeded from the Father: and He who was in the Father, because He was from the Father, was afterwards with the Father, because He proceeded from the Father: namely that divine substance whose name is the Word, through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. For all things are after Him, because they are through Him. And rightly He is before all things, but after the Father, since through Him all things were made; He who proceeded from Him from whose will all things were made. God indeed proceeding from God, making a second person after the Father as Son; yet not taking from the Father that which is His, namely that He is one God. For if He had not been born, being unborn and compared with Him who was unborn, by equation He would make two Gods.

If He had not been begotten, compared with Him who was not begotten, and found equal, two unbegotten ones would rightly have rendered two Gods; and thus Christ would have rendered two Gods. If He were without origin like the Father, found also to be the principle of all things like the Father, making two principles, He would consequently have shown us two Gods as well. Or if the Son Himself were not Son, but the Father generating from Himself another Father, rightly compared with the Father and marked as equally great, He would have made two Fathers: and thereby would have confirmed two Gods as well. If He had been invisible, compared with the invisible One and expressed as equal, He would have shown two invisibles; and thereby would have confirmed two Gods as well. If incomprehensible, if all the other attributes whatsoever that belong to the Father, rightly, we say, He would have raised the controversy of two Gods such as these men fabricate.

But as it is, whatever He is, He is not of Himself, because He is not unborn; but He is of the Father, because He is begotten: whether as He is the Word, or as He is the Power, or as He is the Wisdom, or as He is the Light, or as He is the Son, and whatever of these He is, since He is not from any other source than, as we have already said above, from the Father; owing His origin to His Father, He could not create discord in the divinity by making a number of two Gods, since He derived His origin by being born from Him who is one God. By which manner, since He is both the only-begotten and the first-born of Him who has no origin, He is the one beginning and head of all things. Therefore He has affirmed one God, whom He has shown to be not under any principle or beginning, but rather the beginning and principle of all things.

The Son however does nothing of His own will, nor acts by His own counsel, nor comes of Himself, but obeys all the commands and precepts of the Father: so that although His nativity proves Him to be Son, yet His dutiful obedience declares Him to be the minister of the paternal will from whom He is: thus, while He renders Himself obedient to the Father in all things, although He is also God, He nevertheless shows by His obedience that the one God is the Father, from whom He also drew His origin. And therefore He could not make two Gods, because He did not make two origins, He who received the beginning of His nativity before all time from Him who has no origin.

For since that is the beginning for all others which is unborn (which God the Father alone is, who is outside of origin; from whom He is who is born), while He who is born of Him rightly comes from Him who has no origin, proving that to be the beginning from which He Himself is: even if He who is born is God, He nevertheless shows one God, whom He who is born has proved to be without origin. He is therefore God, but begotten for this very purpose, that He might be God. He is also Lord, but born for this very purpose from the Father, that He might be Lord. He is also the Angel, but sent as Angel from His Father to announce the great counsel of God. His divinity is so handed down that He does not appear to have rendered two Gods either by dissonance or by inequality of divinity.

For when all things have been subjected to Him as Son by the Father, while He Himself together with those things which are subjected to Him is subjected to His Father, He is proved to be the Son of His Father; but is found to be Lord and God of all others. From which, while all things are delivered in subjection to Him who is God, and the Son, receiving all things subjected to Himself, refers them back to the Father, He returns the entire authority of divinity again to the Father; one true and eternal God the Father is shown: from whom alone this power of divinity, having been sent forth and transmitted and directed also to the Son, returns again to the Father through communion of substance.

The Son is indeed shown to be God, to whom divinity is seen to have been transmitted and extended; and yet nonetheless the Father is proved to be one God, while by degrees, in reciprocal course, that majesty and divinity is sent back and returned again from that same Son to the Father who had given it, and is redirected: so that rightly God the Father is God of all, and the beginning even of His own Son whom He begot as Lord: but the Son is God of all others, since God the Father set Him whom He begot over all: so Christ Jesus the Mediator of God and men, holding subjected to Himself by His own Father all the power of every creature by which He is God; when all creation is subdued to Him, found in harmony with the Father under God, He has briefly confirmed His Father to be the one and only and true God, while there remained in Him that by which He was also heard.