On the Christian Faith 1.0–1.9

The Queen of the South came to hear the wisdom of Solomon, as we read in the book of Kings. Hiram the king also sent to Solomon in order to come to know him. You too, holy Emperor Gratian, imitating that ancient story, have wished to hear my faith. But I am not Solomon, that you should marvel at my wisdom; nor are you Augustus of one nation, but of the whole world, and you have ordered the faith to be set out in a little book, not in order to learn it, but in order to approve it. For what could you learn, Emperor Augustus, of a faith which you have always cherished with devout affection from your very cradle? “Before I formed you,” he says, “in your mother’s womb, I knew you, and before you came forth from the womb, I sanctified you.” Sanctification, then, is not handed on; it is poured in. Guard therefore the divine gifts; for what no one taught you, God, its author, has certainly poured into you. You ask me, holy emperor, for a little book on the faith as you are about to set out for battle; for you know that victory is usually sought by the faith of the commander more than by the valor of the soldiers. Abraham too led three hundred and eighteen men to war and brought back trophies from countless enemies; and by the sign of the Lord’s cross and name, having subdued the strength of five kings and their victorious troops, he both avenged his neighbor and won his brother’s son and a triumph. Jesus also, the son of Nave, conquered by the sound of seven priestly trumpets the enemies whom he could not overcome by the strong hand of the whole army, when he recognized the commander of the heavenly host. So you too are preparing to conquer, you who worship Christ; you are preparing to conquer, you who defend the faith, a book on which you have asked of me. I would rather indeed undertake the duty of exhorting to faith than of disputing about faith; for the one is a devout confession, the other a rash presumption. But since you do not need exhortation, and I am not free to excuse myself where it is a duty of piety, I will undertake a bold task on a modest occasion, so as to argue a little about the faith and to weave together more from the testimonies of Scripture. From the councils I shall follow above all what the three hundred and eighteen priests, chosen as it were by the judgment of Abraham, victors by the harmonious strength of faith, raised up like a trophy when the faithless had been subdued throughout the world; so that it seems to me a divine thing that we have the oracle of faith in the councils by the same number by which we have the example of piety in the history.

This is the assertion of our faith: that we say that God is one; and that we do not, like the pagans, separate the Son; nor, like the Jews, deny that he was begotten of the Father before all time and afterwards born of the Virgin; nor, like Sabellius, confuse the Father and the Word, so as to assert that the Father and the Son are the same; nor, like Photinus, hold that the Son had his beginning from the Virgin; nor, like Arius, by believing in many unlike powers, make many gods, in the error of the pagans. For it is written: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God.” For “God” and “Lord” is a name of majesty, a name of power, as he himself says: “The Lord is my name”; and as the prophet asserts elsewhere: “The Lord Almighty is his name.” He is Lord and God, then, either because he rules over all, or because he beholds all things and is feared by all. If, then, God is one, the name is one, the power of the Trinity is one. Indeed he himself says: “Go, baptize the nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”: in the name, certainly, not in the names. He himself also says: “I and the Father are one.” He said “one,” so that there might be no separation of power and nature; he added “are,” so that you may recognize Father and Son; for the perfect Father is believed to have begotten a perfect Son, and Father and Son are one, not by confusion of person but by unity of nature. We say, then, one God, not two or three gods; this is the charge which the impious heresy of the Arians brings against us and itself incurs. For whoever separates the divinity of the Trinity speaks of three gods; whereas the Lord, by saying, “Go, baptize the nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” showed that the Trinity is of one power. We confess Father and Son and Holy Spirit in such a way that in the perfect Trinity there is both fullness of divinity and unity of power. “Every kingdom divided against itself will easily be destroyed”: the Lord says this. The kingdom of the Trinity, then, is not divided. If, then, it is not divided, it is one; for what is not one is divided. They want the kingdom of the Trinity, then, to be such as would easily be destroyed by being divided within itself. On the contrary, because it cannot be destroyed, it is plain that it is not divided. For unity is not divided or split, and so it is subject neither to corruption nor to age.

“Not everyone,” he says, “who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven.” Faith, then, must not be perfunctory, Emperor Augustus; for it is written: “Zeal for your house has consumed me.” So with a faithful spirit and a devoted mind let us call upon Jesus as Lord and believe that he is God, so that whatever we ask of the Father in his name we may obtain. For the Father wishes to be asked through the Son; the Son wishes the Father to be asked. The grace of their devotion is in accord, and the deeds of their power are not at variance. For “whatever the Father does, the Son also does likewise.” The Son does both “likewise” and “the same things”; but he wishes the Father to be asked for what he himself is going to do, so that you may recognize in this not a sign of inability but the unity of power. Rightly, then, is the Son of God to be adored and venerated, who by his divinity founded the world and by his love formed our affection. And so we must believe God to be good, eternal, perfect, almighty, and true, as we have received in the Law and the prophets and the other divine Scriptures; for without these there is no God. For he who is God cannot fail to be good, since in the nature of God there is fullness of goodness; nor can he who made time be God from a point in time; nor can God be imperfect, for he who is less is certainly imperfect, since he lacks something by which he could be equal to the greater. This, then, is the proclamation of the faith: God is not evil; to God nothing is impossible; God is not temporal; God is not less. If I am wrong, let them refute me. Since, then, Christ is God, he is certainly good, almighty, eternal, perfect, and true; for these things belong to the nature of divinity. Either, then, let them deny the nature of divinity in Christ, or they cannot deny to God what belongs to the divine nature. Certainly, so that no one may go astray, let him follow the terms by which Holy Scripture has signified the Son, so that we might understand him. He is called the Word, he is called the Son, he is called the power of God, he is called the wisdom of God: the Word, because he is spotless; the power, because he is perfect; the Son, because he is begotten of the Father; the wisdom, because he is one with the Father, one in eternity, one in divinity. For the Father is not himself the one who is the Son; but between Father and Son a distinction of generation is expressed, so that he is God from God, abiding from abiding, full from full. These, then, are not bare names but signs of an active power; for there is fullness of divinity in the Father and fullness of divinity in the Son, not differing, but one divinity. What is one is not confused, nor is what is without difference multiple. For if all who believed, as it is written, had one soul and one heart; if everyone who clings to the Lord is one spirit, as the Apostle said; if husband and wife are in one flesh; if all of us human beings, as far as nature is concerned, are of one substance; if Scripture says this of human beings, that many are one, though there can be no comparison between them and divine things; how much more are the Father and the Son one in divinity, where there is no difference either of substance or of will! For otherwise how shall we speak of one God? Diversity makes many; unity of power excludes numerical quantity, because unity is not a number but is itself the beginning of all numbers.

How fully divine Scripture has expressed the unity of the Father and the Son according to divinity, the prophetic oracles bear witness. For thus says the Lord of hosts: “Egypt has labored, and the merchandise of the Ethiopians and of the Sabeans; men of stature will pass over to you and will be your servants, and they will follow behind you bound in chains, and will worship you and make supplication in you; for God is in you, and there is no God besides you. For you are God, and we did not know it, the God of Israel.” Hear the prophet’s voice: “In you,” he says, “is God, and there is no God besides you.” How does this fit the Arians? They must deny the divinity either of the Father or of the Son, unless they believe in the unity of one and the same divinity. “In you,” he says, “is God,” because the Father is in the Son. For it is written: “The Father who abides in me, he speaks,” and: “The works that I do, he also does.” But elsewhere too the Son is in the Father, for he says: “I am in the Father, and the Father is in me.” Let them undo, if they can, this property of nature and this unity of work. God, then, is in God, but they are not two gods, for it is written that God is one; and Lord is in Lord, but they are not two Lords, for it is equally written: “You cannot serve two masters.” And the Law says: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God.” And certainly in the same Testament it says: “The Lord rained from the Lord.” “The Lord,” it says, “rained from the Lord.” So also you have in Genesis: “And God said,” and “God made”; and further on: “And God made man in the image of God.” Yet not two Gods, but one God made. In both places, then, the unity of operation and of name is preserved. For certainly when we read “God from God,” we do not say two gods. Indeed you have in the forty-fourth Psalm that the prophet both spoke of God the Father and declared God the Son, saying: “Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever,” and further on: “God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions.” It is God who anoints, and God, the Son of God, who is anointed according to the flesh. For who are Christ’s companions in his anointing, if not in the flesh? You see, then, that God was anointed by God; but it is in the assumption of human nature that the Son of God is described as anointed, and the form of the Law is not violated. Here too, then, when it is said, “The Lord rained from the Lord,” recognize the unity of divinity. For unity of operation does not make divinity plural, as the Lord himself showed when he said: “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me; otherwise believe for the sake of the works themselves.” And here we observe that he indicated the unity of divinity through the unity of works. But so that one deity and one dominion of Father and Son might be proved, lest we fall into the error of pagan or Jewish impiety, the Apostle foresaw this and showed what we should follow, saying: “One God the Father, from whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him.” For just as by saying “one Lord Jesus Christ” he did not deny that the Father is Lord, so by saying “one God the Father” he did not separate the Son from the truth of deity either. Hence he showed not a plurality of divinity but a unity of power; for there is both divinity in dominion and dominion in divinity, as it is written: “Know that the Lord himself is God; he made us, and not we ourselves.” “In you,” then, “is God,” through unity of nature; “and there is no God besides you,” through the property of substance, all difference being excluded. In the book of Jeremiah too Scripture speaks of one God, and yet confesses both Father and Son. For you have it thus: “This is our God, and no other will be accounted of in comparison with him. He found out every way of discipline and gave it to Jacob his servant and to Israel his beloved. After this he was seen on earth and lived among men.” He is speaking of the Son, for it is he who lived among men; and he says: “This is our God, and no other will be reckoned in comparison with him.” Why do we debate about him, of whom so great a prophet says that no other can be reckoned in comparison with him? For what other reckoning can there be where there is unity of deity? The people confessed this when they were placed in dangers; one who feared religion did not know how to sow questions. Be present, Holy Spirit, with your prophets, in whom you are accustomed to dwell, and whom we believe. If we do not believe the prophets, shall I believe the wise men of this world? But “where is the wise man, where is the scribe?” Our countryman, while grafting figs, found what the philosopher did not know. For “God chose the foolish things of this world to confound the things that are strong.” Do we believe the Jews because God was once “known in Judea”? But they deny the very thing on account of which we believe, because they did not know the Father, since they denied the Son.

The common nature of things testifies to one God, because the world is one. Faith signifies one God, because the faith of the New and the Old Testament is one. Grace testifies to one Holy Spirit, because there is one baptism in the name of the Trinity. The prophets speak of one God; the apostles hear of him. The Magi believed in one God, and as suppliants brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh to Christ’s cradle, confessing him king by the gold and venerating him as God by the incense. For treasure belongs to a kingdom, sacrifice to God, myrrh to burial. What, then, did the mystic gifts mean amid the lowly manger, but that we should understand in Christ the difference between divinity and flesh? He is seen as a man; he is adored as Lord. He lies in swaddling clothes, but shines in the stars; the cradle shows him being born, the stars show him reigning. It is the flesh that is wrapped up; it is the divinity that is served by angels. Thus neither is the dignity of his natural majesty lost, nor is the reality of the flesh he assumed called in question. This is our faith. So God willed to be known by all; so the three youths believed and did not feel the fires around them, when the harmful fire burned up the faithless and the harmless flame bedewed the faithful, who were refreshed by the fires that burned others; for by the merit of faith the punishment had lost its own nature. For one was present in the form of an angel, who admonished them that in the number of the Trinity there should be the praise of one power. God was blessed; the Son of God was seen in the angel; the holy and spiritual grace spoke in the youths.

Now let us consider what questions the Arians raise about the Son of God. They say that the Son of God is unlike the Father. If this were said against a man, it would be an insult. They say that the Son of God began in time, though he himself is the founder of times. We are human beings, and we do not wish to be temporal. We began in time, and we believe that we shall be beyond time. We long to be made eternal; how then can we deny that the Son of God is everlasting, whom nature, not grace, teaches and shows to be everlasting? They say that he was created. Who would count an author among his own works, so that he should seem to be what he made? They deny that he is good. The sacrilegious utterance condemns itself, so that it cannot hope for pardon. They deny that he is the true Son of God; they deny that he is almighty, though they admit that all things were made through the Son, that all things were created through the power of God. For what is power but perfect nature? They deny also that he is one with the Father in divinity. Let them, then, erase the Gospel; let them erase the voice of Christ. For he himself said: “I and the Father are one.” It is not I who say this; Christ said it. Was he deceitful, that he should lie? Was he impious, that he should claim what he was not? But these points will be treated more fully, each in its own place. Now, since the heretic says that he is unlike, and strives to build this up by cunning disputations, we must say what is written: “Take care that no one despoils you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men and according to the elements of this world, and not according to Christ; for in him dwells all the fullness of divinity bodily.” For they rest all the force of their poisons on dialectical disputation, which by the opinion of the philosophers is defined as having no power to establish anything, but only an eagerness to destroy. But it did not please God to save his people by dialectic; “for the kingdom of God is in simplicity of faith, not in contention of speech.”

They say, then, that he is unlike; we deny it; indeed we shudder at the word. But I do not want you, holy Emperor, to trust to argument and to our disputation. Let us question the Scriptures, let us question the apostles, let us question the prophets, let us question Christ. In short, let us question the Father, whose honor they claim to champion if the Son is judged inferior. But an injury to the Son is no honor to a good Father. It cannot please a good Father if the Son is believed to have fallen short of the Father rather than to be his equal. Pardon me, holy Emperor, if I turn my words to them for a little while. But whom in particular shall I single out? Eunomius, or Arius and Aetius, his teachers? For there are many names but one faithlessness: in impiety they are not discordant, in communion they are at odds; not unlike in deceit, but divided in their association. Why they will not agree with one another I do not understand. The Arians shun the person of Eunomius, but they assert his faithlessness and carry out his impiety. They say that he published too lavishly what Arius had written. What a great outpouring of blindness! They approve the author and repudiate the one who carried it out. And so they have now divided themselves into several forms. Some follow Eunomius or Aetius, others Palladius or Demophilus and Auxentius, or the heirs of this faithlessness; others follow various leaders. Is Christ divided? But those who divide him from the Father split themselves. And so, since those who do not agree among themselves have conspired in common against the Church of God, I shall call those whom I must answer by the common name of heretics. For heresy, like some Hydra of the fables, has grown by its wounds, and though it is often cut back it has sprouted again, destined for the fire and to perish in burning; or, like some Scylla, a monstrous portent, divided into various forms of faithlessness, it holds out the name of the Christian sect as a pretense; but the wretches whom it finds tossing amid the shipwrecks of faith in that strait of its impiety, girt with bestial monsters, it tears apart with the savage tooth of its foul doctrine. Its cave, holy Emperor, bristling, as sailors say, with hidden lairs, and all its neighborhood, which resounds with dark dogs among the rocks of faithlessness, we must sail past with our ears, as it were, closed. For it is written: “Hedge your ears with thorns.” And elsewhere: “Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers.” And again: “Avoid a heretical man after a first correction, knowing that such a one is perverted and sins, since he is condemned by his own judgment.” So, like good pilots, let us spread the sails of faith where we can pass by most safely, and retrace the course of the Scriptures.

The Apostle says that Christ is the image of the Father; for he says that he is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” “Firstborn,” he says, not “first-created,” so that he may be believed to be both begotten, as regards his nature, and first, as regards his eternity. Elsewhere too the Apostle asserted that God “appointed him heir of all things, through whom also he made the ages, who is the radiance of his glory and the impress of his substance.” The Apostle says “image,” and Arius says that he is unlike. Why an image, if it has no likeness? People do not want their portraits to be unlike them, and Arius maintains that the Father is unlike the Son, and would have it that the Father begot one unlike himself, as though he were powerless and could not beget one like himself. The prophets say: “In your light we shall see light.” The prophets say: “For she is the radiance of eternal light, and the spotless mirror of God’s majesty, and the image of his goodness.” See what great things are said! “Radiance,” because the brightness of the Father’s light is in the Son; “spotless mirror,” because the Father is seen in the Son; “image of goodness,” because what is seen in the Son is not a body in a body but the whole power. “Image” teaches that he is not unlike; “impress” signifies that he is the exact expression; “radiance” marks him as eternal. The image is certainly not a bodily face, not composed of paints or of wax, but simple, from God, gone forth from the Father, drawn from the fountain. By this image the Lord showed Philip the Father, saying: “Philip, he who sees me sees the Father also. And how do you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?” For he who sees him in the Son sees the Father in the image. Do you see what kind of image he means? This image is truth, this image is righteousness, this image is the power of God: not mute, because it is the Word; not without feeling, because it is wisdom; not empty, because it is power; not void, because it is life; not dead, because it is the resurrection. You see, then, that when he is called an image, this signifies that there is a Father whose image the Son is; for no one can be his own image. I could say more from the Son’s testimonies; but lest he should perhaps be said to have favored himself too much, let us question the Father. He certainly said: “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” The Father says to the Son, “in our image and likeness,” and do you say that the Son of God is unlike? John says: “Beloved, we are children of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be; we know that when it is revealed, we shall be like him.” O heedless madness! O shameless obstinacy! We are human beings, and as far as we can we shall be in the likeness of God; and do we dare to deny that the Son of God is like him? So the Father said: “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” At the very beginning of the world I hear that there are the Father and the Son, and I see one work. I hear one speaking, I recognize one making; but I read of one image, one likeness, of Father and Son. This likeness is not one of diversity but of unity. What you claim for yourself, then, you take away from the Son of God; and yet you certainly cannot be in the image of God except through the image of God.

It is clear, then, that he is not unlike; and so the way is easier for us to confess that he is also everlasting, since one who is like the Everlasting is certainly everlasting. But if we call the Father everlasting and deny this same thing of the Son, we say that he is unlike; for the temporal is unlike the everlasting. The prophet proclaims him everlasting, and the Apostle too proclaims him everlasting; the Old Testament is full of testimonies to the everlasting Son, and so is the New. Let us keep to order, then. It is written in the Old Testament, to cite one text out of many: “Before me there was no other God, and after me there will be none.” I will argue nothing, then; I question you yourself. Who says this, the Father or the Son? Whichever you say, you will understand that by it you are refuted, or, if you believe, taught. Who, then, says this, the Father or the Son? If the Son: “Before me,” he says, “there was no other God”; if the Father: “After me,” he says, “there will be none.” The one has no one before him, the other no one after him; the Father is known in the Son and the Son in the Father, each in the other. For when you have named the Father, you have also indicated his Son, because no one is father to himself; when you name the Son, you also confess his Father, because no one is son to himself. So neither can the Son be without the Father, nor the Father without the Son. Always, then, the Father; always also the Son. For “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; he was in the beginning with God.” “He was,” it says, “with God.” Was, was, was, was: see, “was” four times. Where did the impious find that “he was not”? Elsewhere too John says in his epistle: “That which was from the beginning.” The “was” stretches out without limit: whatever you may imagine, the Son was. Our fisherman shut out all heresies with this short chapter. For what “was in the beginning” is not enclosed by time, is not preceded by a beginning: so let Arius fall silent. What “was with God” is not confounded by mingling, but is distinguished by the solid perfection of the Word abiding with the Father: so that Sabellius may be struck dumb. “And the Word was God”: this Word, then, is not in the utterance of speech but in that designation of heavenly power: so that Photinus may be refuted. That he “was in the beginning with God” teaches the inseparable unity of eternal divinity in Father and Son: so that Eunomius may blush. Finally, since all things are said to have been made through him, he is shown to be the founder of both the New and the Old Testament: so that the Manichaean can find no foothold for his temptation. Thus the good fisherman enclosed them all within one net, to make them incapable of deceit, though they were not worth the catching.

Tell me, heretic (for the most clement emperor gives me leave to address you for a little, not from any eagerness to converse with you or desire to hear you, but for the sake of setting the matter out), tell me, I say, was there ever a time when almighty God was not Father and yet was God? “I do not maintain a time,” you say. Well and cleverly said. For if you say a time, you will convict yourself; for you must assert that there was a time before the Son, though the Son is the author and creator of time; for he cannot have begun after his own work; you must therefore admit that he is the author of his own work. “I do not deny,” you say, “that the Son was before time; but when I call him Son, I show that the Father is prior, because the Father,” you say, “is prior to the Son.” What is this? You deny that there was time before the Son, and yet you want something or other that belongs to time to have preceded the Son; and you show that there were some intermediate exertions of begetting, by which you indicate that the Father’s begetting was temporal. For if he began to be Father, then he was God first and afterwards became Father. How then is God unchangeable? For if he was God first and Father afterwards, he was certainly changed by the addition of begetting. But God forbid such madness! We have raised this question in order to refute their impiety. For a devout mind asserts a generation without time, so as to call the Father everlasting together with the Son and never to assert that he was changed. Let honor, then, join to the Father the Son whom divinity has joined; let impiety not separate him whom the property of generation has united. Let us honor the Son, so that we may honor the Father also, as it is written in the Gospel. The everlastingness of the Son is the mark of the Father’s majesty. If the Son did not always exist, then the Father was changed; but the Son always existed; therefore the Father too was never changed, for he is always unchangeable. So you see that those who wish to deny that the Son is everlasting wish to teach that the Father was changed.