On the Christian Faith 3.10–3.15

But it is written: “After me comes a man who was made before me, because he was prior to me.” Hence they say: “See, he who was, was made.” Let us weigh the very words. “After me,” he says, “comes a man.” It is a man, then, who comes, the same who was made. But “man” is the name of a sex, and sex is assigned not to the divinity but to human nature. I could say, then: he was, in the foreknowledge of the body indeed, but in the eternity of power; for the Church too existed, and the saints were predestined before the ages. But I do not say that in this place; rather I assert that “was made” belongs not to the divinity but to the nature of the incarnation, as John himself said: “This is he of whom I said: After me comes a man who was made before me.” So, since he had set forth, as I said above, the twofold substance in Christ, so that you might understand both, that of divinity and that of flesh, in this place he began from the flesh. For the divine Scriptures have a varied custom: sometimes they begin from Christ’s divinity and descend to the mysteries of the incarnation; sometimes they start from the lowliness of the incarnation and rise to the glory of the divinity, as often in the prophets and in the evangelists, and in Paul. So here too, according to this custom, being about to speak of his divinity, he began from the Lord’s incarnation, not to confuse human and divine but to distinguish them. But the Arians, like Jewish innkeepers, mix water with wine, because they confuse the divine and the human generation, referring to the deity what was said of the flesh. Nor do I fear the objection they seem likely to make, that in the earlier passage it does not have “man,” for it reads thus: “He who comes after me.” But let them see what he set before it there too: “The Word,” he says, “was made flesh.” And so he did not add “man,” because he had said “flesh”; and there we understand “man” by “flesh” and “flesh” by “man.” So since he had said, “The Word was made flesh,” it was superfluous to name “man” in this place, whom he had already marked out by the word “flesh.” By the same pattern, in what follows he first spoke of the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world; and so that you might understand that he whom he had mentioned before was incarnate, he says: “This is he of whom I said before: After me comes a man who was made before me”; that is, I said that a man, not God, was made. But to declare that the same one who was incarnate existed before the ages, lest we should believe in two sons, he says: “Because he was prior to me.” For if he had referred “was made” to the divine generation, what need was there for him to add a third phrase and repeat what he had said above? But since before he had spoken only of the incarnation, “After me comes a man who was made before me,” he therefore added, “because he was prior to me,” since the eternity of the divinity had to be expressed. And this is the reason why he is preferred: that he should rightly be seen to be set before, who is the everlasting power of his own Father. Yet the richness of spiritual understanding allows us to run out and range widely so as to hem in the Arians, who want to refer “was made” in this place not to the man but to the divinity. For what can they hold, when the Baptist said, “He who comes after me was made before me”; that is, made above my merit, above my grace, later in the time of the flesh, venerable in the honor of divinity? For “comes after me” belongs to time; “was prior to me” to eternity; “was made before me” to honor; because even the mystery of the incarnation is above human grace. Indeed, further on he expressed what he had woven together above, saying: “After me comes a man whose shoes I am not worthy to carry,” setting forth the excellence of his dignity, certainly not the eternity of the divine generation. And this belongs to the incarnation so much that he had earlier set forth among men a type of the mystical shoe. For by the Law the union with the wife of a dead kinsman or brother was conferred on the next of kin, so that he might raise up seed for his brother or kinsman. Hence Ruth, though herself a foreigner, yet because she had had a husband from among the Jews, who had left a surviving kinsman: Boaz saw her gathering the sheaves of his harvest, with which she fed herself and her mother-in-law, and he loved her; and he did not take her as wife until he to whom she was owed as wife by the Law had first loosed his shoe. The story is simple, but the mysteries are deep; for one thing was being done, another was being prefigured. For if we twist the sense according to the letter, there is something like shame and horror in the word, if we refer the meaning and understanding to the custom of bodily union. But there was signified one to come from the Jews, from whom Christ is according to the flesh, who would raise up the seed of his kinsman, that is, of the dead people, by the seed of heavenly doctrine; to whom the spiritual precepts of the Law assigned the nuptial shoe for union with the Church. Moses is not the bridegroom; for to him it is said, “Loose the shoe from your feet,” so that he might yield to his Lord. Jesus the son of Nave is not the bridegroom; for to him too it is said, “Loose the shoe from your feet,” lest because of the likeness of the name he should be believed to be the bridegroom of the Church. No other is the bridegroom; Christ alone is the bridegroom, of whom John said: “He who has the bride is the bridegroom.” For them, then, the shoe is loosed; for him it cannot be loosed, as John said: “I am not worthy to loose the strap of his shoe.” Christ alone, then, is the bridegroom, to whom that bride coming from the nations, once needy and hungry but now rich with Christ’s harvest, is married; she gathers the sheaves of the fruitful field and the remnants of the Word into the inner bosom of her mind, so that she may feed with new nourishment that widow exhausted by the death of her son, the needy mother of a dead people, not leaving the widow destitute, and seeking new food. Christ alone, then, is the bridegroom, who would not begrudge even the Synagogue the sheaves of his harvest. Would that she did not shut herself out! She had those whom she could gather for herself; but because her people is dead, she, like a woman left in want by the death of her son, was gathering through the Church sheaves on which to live; and these, coming, they will carry with exultation, as it is written: “But coming they will come with exultation, carrying their sheaves.” For who else would dare to claim the Church as his bride, whom he alone called from Lebanon, saying: “Come hither from Lebanon, my bride; come hither from Lebanon”? Or of whom else could the Church say: “His throat is sweetness, and he is all desire”? And since we have taken up the discussion of the shoe of the feet, to whom else but the incarnate Word of God does the saying fit: “His legs are pillars of marble, set upon bases of gold”? For Christ alone walks in souls and moves in the mind of the saints, in whom, as on golden bases and precious foundations, the firm footsteps of the heavenly Word have been planted. It is clear, then, that both “man” and the type look to the mystery of the incarnation.

“Was made,” then, refers not to the substance of the divinity but often to the incarnation, and sometimes also to a cause. For if you refer it to the divinity, then God was also made a reproach; for so you have it: “But you have rejected and brought to nothing; you have spurned your Christ”; and further on: “He was made a reproach to his neighbors.” “To his neighbors,” it says: not to his fellow citizens, not to those of his household, not to those who cling to him; since “he who clings to the Lord is one spirit”; he who is a neighbor does not cling. He was made a reproach, because the cross of the Lord is to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks folly. For to the wise, through the same cross, he was made higher than the heavens, higher than the angels, and he who was the surety of the former covenant was made the surety of a better one. See how far I am from avoiding these texts: I even gather them together; but consider how he was made. First, that having made purification, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, made so much better than the angels. Where there is purification, there is a victim; where a victim, a body; where a body, an offering; where there is the gift of an offering, there is the sacrifice of the passion. Next, the surety of a better covenant. Where there is a testament, the death of the testator must come first, as is written further on; but death is referred not to the eternity of the divinity but to human frailty. How he was made higher than the heavens is also shown: “Undefiled,” it says, “separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens; who does not have the need daily, like the priests, to offer a victim first for his own sins, then for those of the people. For this he did once for all by offering himself,” as it is written. No one is said to have been made higher except one who was lower in some respect; he was made higher, then, by sitting at the right hand of the Father, in that respect in which, made lower than the angels, he offered himself to the passion. Finally, the Apostle himself says to the Philippians that, “made in the likeness of man, and found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death.” See in what respect he was made: “in the likeness,” he says, “of man,” not in the power of God; and “made obedient to death,” so that he had the obedience of a man and the kingdom of the divinity. How many more examples, then, shall we use to show that “he was made” is to be referred to the incarnation or to some purpose? But “made” is the same as “created”: “For he spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created.” “The Lord created me” was said according to the flesh; we have also shown above, in the first book, that “created” seems to be said of the incarnation. The Apostle himself, too, by asserting that the creature is not to be served, signified that the Son was not created from God but begotten. Yet elsewhere too, to make clear how “The Lord created me” is to be read in Solomon, he showed what it was that was created in Christ. Let us review, then, the course of the whole chapter; for you have it thus: “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise became a partaker of the same, that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death.” Who is it, then, who willed that we should be partakers of his flesh and blood? Certainly the Son of God. How did he become a partaker of what is ours except through the flesh? Or through what, except through the death of the body, did he loose the bonds of death? For the taking on of death in Christ became the death of death. So he set forth a teaching about the incarnation. Let us see what follows: “For he did not immediately take on angels, but the seed of Abraham. Hence he had to be made like his brothers in all things, so that he might become a merciful and faithful prince, a priest before God, to expiate the sins of the people. For in that he himself suffered and was tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted. Therefore, most holy brothers, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the apostle and high priest of our confession, Jesus, who is faithful to his creator, as Moses also was in his house.” These, of course, are the Apostle’s words. You see in what respect he says that he was created: in that, he says, “he took on the seed of Abraham,” he certainly asserts a bodily generation. And in what, if not in the body, did he expiate the sins of the people? In what did he suffer, if not in the body, as we said above: “Christ having suffered in the flesh”? In what is he a priest, if not in that which he took from a priestly race? For a priest must offer something and, according to the Law, enter the holy place through blood; so, since God had rejected the blood of bulls and goats, this priest certainly had to enter through his own blood, as you have read, penetrating the holy of holies, the heights of heaven, so that there might be an eternal offering for our sins. The same, then, is priest and the same is victim; and yet both priesthood and sacrifice are a function of the human condition; for he was led as a lamb to be sacrificed, and he is a priest according to the order of Melchizedek. Let no one, then, where he sees the order of the human condition, assert there the right of divinity. For that Melchizedek too, through whom Abraham offered his sacrifices, the Church does not understand to be an angel, as in the Jewish fancies, but a holy man and priest of God, who, bearing the type of the Lord, is described as without father and without mother, without genealogy, without beginning and without end, to show that the everlasting Son of God would come into this world, who was born without a father according to the incarnation and without a mother according to the divine generation, and without genealogy; because it is written: “And who will declare his generation?” So we accept that Melchizedek as a priest of God in the type of Christ; but the one in type, this one in truth; and the type is a shadow of the truth; the one king in the name of one city, this one king in the reconciliation of the whole world; because it is written: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself,” that is, the everlasting divinity; or, if the Father is in the Son as the Son is in the Father, then the unity of both substance and operation is certainly not denied. And how can they rightly deny it, even if they wish, when it is written: “But the Father who abides in me, he does the works”; and: “The works that I do, he does”? He did not say, “He also does,” lest you should reckon a likeness rather than a unity of work; but by saying, “What I do, he does,” he left it plain that we are to believe that the work of Father and Son is one. Indeed, where he wanted likeness of works, not unity, to be understood, he says: “He who believes in me, the works that I do he also will do.” Rightly here, by inserting “also,” he granted us likeness, and yet denied natural unity. The work of Father and Son, then, is one, even if it does not please the Arians.

I ask how they would have the kingdom of the Father and of the Son divided, when the Lord said, as we showed above: “Every kingdom divided against itself will easily be destroyed.” And so, to shut out the sacrilege of Arian savagery, holy Peter too asserted one dominion of the Father and the Son, saying: “Therefore, brothers, be diligent to make your calling and election sure. For doing these things you will not stumble; for so an entrance into the eternal dominion of God and of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly supplied to you.” Or if anyone thinks this was said only of Christ’s dominion, and takes it so in order to separate the Father and the Son in power, he will still confess that the Son has a kingdom, and an eternal one. So not only will they bring in two divided kingdoms, which would be liable to fail; but also, since no kingdoms are comparable to the kingdom of God, which, even if they wish, they cannot deny belongs to the Son, either they will go back on their own opinion and confess that the kingdom of the Father and of the Son is the same; or, what it is sacrilege to say, they will ascribe to the Father the right of a lesser kingdom; or, what is contradictory, they will confess that the kingdom of him whom they impiously call lesser in divinity is equal. But this does not square, does not fit, does not hold together. Let them say, then, that the kingdom is one, as we say and prove; and we prove it not by our own testimonies but by heavenly ones. First, learn from other examples too that the kingdom of heaven is also the kingdom of the Son; for he himself said: “Amen, amen, I say to you, there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” It cannot be doubted, then, that there is a kingdom of the Son of God. But learn that the kingdom of the Son is the very kingdom that is the Father’s: “Amen I say to you, there are some of those standing around who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God coming in power.” So far is the kingdom one that the reward is one, the heir the same, the merits the same, the surety the same. How is the kingdom not the same, especially since the Son himself said of himself: “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of my Father”? For what is the Father’s by the property of majesty is also the Son’s by the unity of the same glory. Scripture, then, has spoken of the kingdom of the Father and of the Son. Learn now that when it says “kingdom of God,” it separates the power neither of the Father nor of the Son, for it includes both the Father’s and the Son’s kingdom under the one name of God, as you have it: “When you see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets in the kingdom of God.” Do we deny that the prophets are in the Son’s kingdom, when to the thief who said, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom,” the Lord answered: “Amen I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise”? Or what is it to be in the kingdom of God but not to know eternal death? And those who do not know eternal death see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. How, then, can he not have in his power what he gives, when he says, “To you I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven”? And see the difference. The servant opens, the Lord bestows; the one through himself, the other through Christ; the servant receives the keys, the Lord ordains the powers; the right of the giver is one thing, the service of the steward another. Learn further that the kingdom of the Father and of the Son is one, the dominion one. You have in the letter to Timothy: “Paul, apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the dominion of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope.” One kingdom of Father and Son, then, is plainly declared, as the apostle Paul also asserted, saying: “For know this, that every unchaste or unclean or covetous person, which is idolatry, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.” One kingdom, then, and one divinity. The Law proved one divinity, when it speaks of one God. The Apostle also proved it, when he said of Christ: “In whom dwells all the fullness of divinity bodily.” For if, according to the Apostle, all the fullness of divinity is bodily in Christ, either they will confess that Father and Son are of one divinity, or, if they want to separate the divinity of the Father and of the Son, since the Son has all the fullness of divinity bodily, what do they think is reserved as something more, when nothing is more than the fullness of perfection? One divinity, then.

We have said above that the image is one and the likeness one; it remains for us to show that the Father and the Son are also of one majesty. Nor will it be far to seek; for the Son himself said of himself: “When the Son of Man comes in his majesty, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his majesty.” See, the majesty of the Son is expressed: what does he lack, whose uncreated majesty they cannot deny? There is, then, a majesty of the Son. Let them now accept, so that they cannot doubt it, that the majesty of the Father and of the Son is one; for the Lord himself said: “For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in his majesty and that of the Father and of the holy angels.” What is “and of the holy angels,” but that servants too are honored by the dignity of their lord? He referred his dignity, then, to the Son and to the Father, not so that the angels should have equal fellowship with the Father and the Son, but so that they should behold the preeminent glory of God. For the angels do not have their own majesty, as is read of the Son, “When he sits on the throne of his majesty”; but they stand by, to see the glory of the Father and the Son with such sight as they are able to have or deserve. Indeed the divine words explain themselves, so that you may understand that that glory of the Father and the Son is not shared with the angels; for so you have it: “But when the Son of Man comes in his majesty, and all the angels with him.” And to teach that the majesty and the glory of the Father and of himself are one, he says in another book: “And the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” They are in service, he in glory; they in attendance, he on the throne; they stand, he sits; so that, to use a word of human usage, he judges, they minister. But he did not put the majesty of the Father first and then add his own and that of the angels, lest he should seem to have made a kind of step and order from the higher to the lower. But since the Father could not seem inferior, he put his own majesty first and added that of the Father and of the angels; lest, by naming himself in the middle between the Father and the angels, he should seem either to have made a kind of ascent from the angels to the Father through increments of himself as well, or to be believed to have made, in order, a descent from the Father to the angels with a diminution of himself. For we who confess one divinity of the Father and the Son do not think, as the Arians do, of a diverse order.

But as to substance, august Emperor, what shall I say: that the Son is of one substance with the Father, since we read that the Son is the image of the Father’s substance, so that you may understand that he differs from the Father in nothing according to divinity? According to this image he said: “All that the Father has is mine.” So neither can we deny that there is substance in God; for he is not without substance who has given others to have substance, though the substance of God is one thing, that of the creature another. Nor could the Son of God be without substance, through whom all things subsist. And so he says: “My bone was not hidden from you, which you made in secret, and my substance in the lower parts of the earth.” For the things that were done before the foundation of the world, or in unsearchable majesty, could not be hidden from his power and divinity. We read, then, “substance.” But you will say that “substance” here is said of the incarnation. Meanwhile I have proved that the word “substance” is read, and read not in the sense of property, as you say. Now, if you please, let us take it according to the mystery, that the substance of Christ was in the lower parts. For in order to free the souls of the dead in the soul of his body, to loose the bonds of death, and to forgive sins, he worked in the underworld. And yet what prevents you from understanding it as the divine substance, since God is everywhere in such a way that it was said to him: “If I ascend into heaven, you are there; if I descend into hell, you are present”? Indeed he showed by what follows that the meaning is to be referred to the divine substance, saying: “Your eyes saw my unwrought one,” because the Son is not the product of a work but the begotten Word of eternal power; for it said akatergaston, that is, the Word unwrought and uncreated, born of the Father without the witness of any creature. And yet we have an abundance of other testimonies to substance. Let “substance” be bodily in this place, provided that you yourself confess that the Son of God is not a work of God, but his unwrought divinity. I know, however, that some say that the mystery of the incarnation too was unwrought, because no use of union with a man worked it, since it is the childbearing of a virgin. If, then, many have said that in this place not even Mary’s childbearing was a work, do you, Arian, think that the Word of God is a work? Or do we read “substance” only here? Did it not say elsewhere too: “The gates of the cities were broken, the mountains fell, and the substance was revealed”? Is a creature signified here too? For some are accustomed to say that “substance” means wealth. So if you take it in this sense, the mountains fell so that a monetary patrimony might be seen. But let us remember which mountains fell: surely those of which it was said: “If you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain: Be lifted up and be cast into the sea.” The mountains, then, are heights that exalt themselves. Indeed in the Greek it reads: “kingdoms fell.” What kingdoms, but those of Satan, of whom the Lord said, “How will his kingdom stand?” We read, then, that these very mountains are the kingdoms of the devil. And so, when these kingdoms fell from the heart of the faithful, it was revealed that Christ the Son of God is of the Father’s substance. Who also are those mountains of bronze, from between which the four chariots come out? We observe that that height which exalted itself against the knowledge of God fell at the word of the Lord, when the Son of God said: “Be silent, and come out, unclean spirit.” Of it the prophet also said: “Behold, I am against you, corrupt mountain.” These mountains, then, fell, and it was revealed that there was divine substance in Christ, when those who had seen it said: “Truly he is the Son of God”; for he commanded the demons not by human but by divine power. Jeremiah too says: “Take up lamentation on the mountains and wailing on the desert paths, because they have failed, because there are no men; they did not hear the voice of substance; from the birds to the cattle they were terrified and failed.” Nor did he pass it over elsewhere, when he was setting forth the frailties of the human condition: to show the infirmity of the flesh he had taken on and the affections of our mind, the Lord said through the prophet: “Remember, Lord, what my substance is”; because the Son of God was speaking in the nature of human frailty. Of him, just before, to reveal the mysteries of the incarnation, he says: “But you have rejected, Lord, and held as nothing; you have spurned your Christ; you have overturned the covenant of your servant; you have profaned his holiness on the earth.” In what respect did he call him servant, if not in the flesh, because “he did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of men, and found in appearance as a man”? He is servant, then, by taking on what is mine; Lord by his own power. And what of the text you have: “For who has stood in the substance of the Lord?” and elsewhere: “And if they had stood in my substance, and heard my words, and if they had taught my people, I would have turned them from their wickedness and their inventions”?

How can they deny that God has substance? How can they think that the word “substance,” which is very frequent in the Scriptures, is to be avoided, when they themselves, by calling the Son “of another substance,” that is, heteroousios, do not deny that there is substance in God? It is not the word, then, that they flee, but the force of the word, because they do not want the Son of God to be true. For although the course of the divine generation cannot be comprehended by human words, the Fathers nevertheless judged that their faith was to be marked by such a term, properly against “heteroousios,” following the authority of the prophet who says: “Who has stood in the substance of the Lord and seen his Word?” The Arians, then, accept the word “substance” when it is put according to their impiety; but when it is approved according to the piety of the faithful, they reject and refute it. For what other reason is there why they do not want the Son to be called homoousios with the Father, except that they do not want to confess that he is the true Son of God? As their own author, Eusebius of Nicomedia, betrayed in his letter, writing: “If we say that he is the true and uncreated Son of God, we begin to confess that he is homoousios with the Father.” When this letter had been read at the Council of Nicaea, the Fathers put this word in the statement of the faith, because they saw that it was a terror to the adversaries; so that, with the sword which they themselves had drawn, as it were, they cut off the head of their abominable heresy. In vain do they say that they avoid this word on account of the Sabellians, and in this they betray their ignorance; for homoousios is said of one thing with another, not of a thing with itself. Rightly, then, do we call the Son homoousios with the Father, because by that word both the distinction of persons and the unity of nature are signified. Can they deny that ousia is read in Scripture, when the Lord spoke of epiousios bread, and Moses wrote: “You shall be to me a periousios people”? Or what is ousia, or from what is it named, but from ousa aei, “being always,” that which always abides? For he who is, and always is, is God; and so the divine substance, always abiding, is called ousia. Therefore the bread is epiousios, because from the substance of the Word it supplies the substance of abiding power to heart and soul; for it is written: “And bread strengthens the heart of man.” Let us keep, then, the precepts of our forebears, and let us not violate the hereditary seals with rash daring. That sealed prophetic book neither the Elders nor the Powers nor the Angels nor the Archangels dared to open: to Christ alone was the prerogative of explaining it reserved. Which of us would dare to unseal the priestly book, sealed by confessors and already consecrated by the martyrdom of many? Those who were forced to unseal it nevertheless sealed it again afterwards, condemning the fraud; those who did not dare to violate it became confessors and martyrs. How can we deny the faith of those whose victory we proclaim?