Questions on the Old and New Testament 97.1–97.21

If faith is willing to listen to reason, the very meaning of the names Father and Son would show their unity in a natural way. For he would not be called the true Son of God unless he had come into being from the substance of God the Father; nor would God’s truth and justice allow him to be called the true Son if he were not from him. He is not true if he is not from him. But Scripture says, “He is true”; therefore he is from him. Whoever denies that Christ was born of God slanders Scripture, which calls him the true Son precisely to signify that he was born of God. For if he is not from God and yet is called the true Son of God, Scripture is deceptive. But if Scripture does not deceive, whoever does not confess that Christ came into being from God both empties Scripture and denies that Christ is the true Son of God. For it is not will that makes a true son, but birth. “But it lies within God’s power,” they say, “to make false things true.” On the contrary, this is the power of God, for which he is worthy of all praise: that with him the true is true and the false false. To call the false true is the mark of a liar, which does not befit God. God can indeed do all things, but he does nothing except what agrees with his truth and justice.

It is plain, therefore, that Christ is called the true Son of God so that he may be understood as God’s own Son, that is, born of his substance. Hence the apostle too says, “who did not spare his own Son,” and in another letter: “who, though he was in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal to God.” If, then, he did not think it robbery when he said he was equal to God, he showed himself the true Son of God. For he could not be equal to God unless he were from him. Those are equals who are either both true or both false. What has a beginning and what is eternal do not admit equality, or unity. By saying that he is one with the Father, Christ made himself equal to God. “For not only,” it says, “was he breaking the Sabbath, but he also called God his own Father, making himself equal with God,” that is, on a par with him. Is it not plain that this equality comes down from the fact that his birth is proper to the Father? For in calling himself God’s own, that is, true Son, he made himself equal to God.

This is why he says: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father too.” Because they are consubstantial, whoever sees one sees both. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given the Son also to have life; that is, the Father begot a Son equal to himself. And all that is the Father’s is the Son’s, and what is the Son’s is the Father’s; and no one can snatch anything from the Father’s hand or from the Son’s. And he added, “I and the Father are one,” and: “The words that I speak to you,” he says, “I do not speak from myself, but the Father who remains in me himself speaks; and the works that I do he himself does. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves.” For because one who is begotten is not from himself but from the one who begot him, therefore whatever he does he calls the Father’s doing, so that by all this it may be confirmed that Christ is called the true Son of God precisely so that he may be believed to be born of him, lest his essence be thought to be outside the nature of the one God. His humility, then, is his greatest exaltation. For when he seems to place himself beneath the Father, saying, “The words that I speak to you I do not speak from myself, but the Father who remains in me himself speaks; and the works that I do he himself does,” he proves that he has his origin from God and that he is his power, since he says that what he is he is not from himself but from him. By these words Christ is commended, not lowered. For one who speaks from himself is not a true son.

You see, then, that the Arians understand Christ wrongly from the very passages from which he must be rightly understood, and reject him and call him false on the very grounds by which he is shown to be the true Son of God. For he asks to be glorified by the Father and promises to glorify the Father whom he asks, so that where he seems to humble himself he exalts himself. When the Father gives testimony to the Son, he testifies to his own praise; and when the Son proclaims the Father, he manifests his own glory. For the greatness and nobility of the Father is the high birth of the true Son. And therefore whatever is said to be the Father’s is without doubt the Son’s as well, and what is said to be the Son’s is the Father’s as well. The Spirit is called God’s, and the same Spirit is called Christ’s; the church is called God’s, and it is called Christ’s; God is worshiped, and Christ is worshiped; God is served, and Christ is served; the saints are called priests of God, and they are called priests of Christ; God is said to be the temple of the holy city, and likewise Christ; the holy city is said to be lit by the light of God, and in the same way by that of Christ; the throne is God’s, and Christ’s too; God is judge, and so is Christ, for Isaiah the prophet saw Christ, the Lord of hosts, sitting on the throne of majesty, which the Arians do not deny. Of God the Father it is read that he is King of kings and Lord of lords, and the same is read of Christ, the true Son of God. So everywhere the Father and the Son are made equal in divinity, so that the number of persons does not go beyond the measure of the one God.

Between the Father and the Son there is no difference except this alone: that the Father is unbegotten and the Son begotten; that is, the Father is from no one, but the Son is from the Father; and this indeed is something sublime in the Son. For from this the eternity of his nobility is learned, and that he is the true Son of the true Father. Otherwise, where does that come from which we read in Genesis, where God says, “Let us make man in our image and likeness”? So if their image and likeness is one, how are they not one in nature too? In spiritual things, where there are certainly no shapes, nothing will be alike except by substance; so where the image of two is one, how will their substance not also be one? We read that their image and likeness is one precisely so that we would believe that one of them differs in nothing from the other, that is, that Christ is the true Son of God, because what is born is not unlike the one who begets. Indeed the Jews, understanding that he called God his own Father, say to Pilate: “We have a law, and according to the law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God.” The Jews understood, and do Christians say they do not understand? Those who did not believe understood; and do those who say they believe act so as not to understand? Let them at least admit this, that the prophet Isaiah, to signify that Christ is God not from himself but from God, says among other things: “After you they will follow bound with chains, and will worship you and will pray in you, because 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, the Savior.”

To a sound mind these things are plain. For by them the Father is proved to be in the Son, and the Son is signified to be God of the same substance as the Father. Of one in whom God is, besides whom there is no God, and who is himself God, what else can be said than that he is what God the Father is, and differs from him in nothing? For this is for two to be one. God is in him, because, although he is God, he is not God from himself; he is from the Father, because he is the Son. But besides him there is no God, because he is the only Son of the Father. And he himself is God, because the substance of God and of Christ is one and the same. So no ambiguity is left: the substance of the Father and of the Son is to be believed to be one. For the true Son is the Son of the true Father.

Of the same kind is that saying of the prophet Jeremiah; for he says among other things: “This is our God; no other shall be reckoned in comparison with him. He found out the whole way of knowledge and gave it to Jacob his servant and to Israel his beloved. After this he was seen on earth and lived among men.” Can one be called degenerate in comparison with whom no other can be reckoned? Or can he be called a God other than the Father is, so as to advance this God to the Father’s injury? For if no other God can be reckoned in comparison with him, and he is apart from God the Father, see whether what follows ought to be said, for it is dangerous: he will be called greater than the Father. Thinking they pay deference to God the Father by separating the Son from him, they detract from him, so that, impiously blinded in mind, they set the one they want to make lesser above the one to whose authority they think he must bow. But Scripture, to teach that the Son differs in nothing from the Father (and he would differ if he were not true), said that no other is to be reckoned in comparison with him, because no other substance can be found like the substance of God, which is also Christ’s. For it could not be taught that Christ is from God otherwise than by saying that no other is to be reckoned like him. For, knowing that God the Father can in no way be called subject, to show that his Son is his equal it says, “No other shall be reckoned in comparison with him,” because he is equal to God the Father, who is God of all; for he is his true Son. So the prophet says, “This is our God,” that is, the God of Israel. If it is he, he himself is the one God; for of him Scripture says, “Hear, Israel, the Lord your God is one God,” and certainly the one meant here is not the Father but his Son.

You see, then, that the person of the Son does not prejudice the one God if he too is called the one God, since Scripture testifies to this. How is this so, unless the Father and the Son are one, because unity is signified not by persons but by nature, so that they are not two in substance but one, nor two in divinity but one God, so that whether the Father speaks or the Son speaks, the one God is said to have spoken? For if the Lord himself says, among other things, of male and female, “They are no longer two, but one flesh,” how much more are the Father and the Son not two gods but one substance! That the Father and the Son are called two is because of the birth; that they are not, on the other hand, two gods is because of the one divinity. With what dullness, then, do they preach that Christ was created, that is, made, when they read that God made nothing without Christ? If nothing was made without him, he himself will not be a thing made. For if he is a thing made, something was made without him. But far from it, because nothing was made without him. Born of God, he did not begin, but came forth; for birth is nothing other than a going forth, and a going forth is a manifestation; so he was not made but brought forth. To signify that Christ came forth or proceeded from the essence of God, his going forth was called birth, so that, since what is born is not unlike the begetter, it would not be doubted that Christ is consubstantial with God, and that mind which says, “There was a time when he was not,” would be condemned; because he who is read to have proceeded from God, so as to signify that he was always with God, cannot at some time not have been. For no one has proceeded from where he was not.

The Arians are wont to interpret it of the Son of God in this way, saying, “Christ is called the true Son of God because God made him such that he would be true,” as though there were anything God makes false. And what will become of all that we said above about the unity of the Father and the Son, since it has been so strengthened and confirmed? If it is thought that one must judge otherwise here, many things made solid by the divine oracles could be torn up by the testimony of a single degenerate. Yet the point must be cut off, so that wickedness may not flatter itself even about this. “So,” he says, “God made him such that he would be true,” so that will has taken the place of birth, and making the place of begetting. “For this much,” they say, “must be granted to God’s power, that he can make things that are not as though they are.”

Since, then, they use this cunning craftiness against the Son of God, we must answer them from the very things on which they rely, since they have been refuted on the rest, so that they may appear refuted on the whole. This proposition, as to its sense, is of no weight; but as to its words, it makes a fog so that it is not quickly seen through. It is like an Egyptian placed in the dark: a bad cause cannot be defended with a good sense, so they use sacrilegious words to defend impiety. If, then, this is the power of God, that he made Christ his true Son though he was not born of him, then he made him such as he himself is, so that making supplied what begetting would have given. If, then, you say that there is no difference between God and Christ, it might perhaps be thought that you do not assert this maliciously, so that what is said in the word is also in the sense: that because he is called the true Son, he is held to be true, by being of one substance with the Father, though not by begetting but by making, since God can do everything, as you say, so that what was made is as though it were not made.

But if, following the line of reason, you say that what is bounded by a beginning cannot be equal and consubstantial with what is eternal, you reveal the deceit of your malice: to elude the sense of the word, you say with a false voice that Christ is the true Son of God while denying that he is equal to God the Father. For he is not true if he is unequal. Can the Son be called true if the Father is not called true? If the Son is true, the Father will be true too, and equality proves this truth. But if they are unequal, neither of them is true. But since the testimony of the Scriptures, by which Christ is shown to be the true Son of God, cannot be made void, he must be believed to be born of God the Father, because, to confirm this truth, he is read to be both on a par with God and equal to him.

But you who proclaim God’s inestimable power say: “God cannot beget, because he is a simple nature”; and by this you insult God the Father himself. You call him a liar, denying the Son whom he declares to be his own and true, and you uncover your hypocrisy, because you falsely proclaim God powerful. For if you proclaim God’s power in what you assert was made true out of false, so as to mock what is truly true, how much more ought you, if you were of sound mind, to embrace that by which what is called true is proved true, and the testimony God the Father gave of his Son is confirmed as true! For the Lord says, “But with God all things are possible,” so that whatever seems impossible to men is possible to God. If the reasoning of the flesh is considered, neither did a virgin give birth, nor did Jonah live in the belly of the whale, nor will the dead rise, nor did God beget a Son, because a simple nature cannot beget, since nothing in the world is begotten without mingling. All these things must either be believed together or refuted together. If the reasoning of the world is to be held, it ought to have authority in all of them; but if there is a reasoning proper to spiritual things, he must be called carnal who, infected by the reasoning of the world, denies that anything can happen otherwise than he knows.

Again, they are wont to put forward another question with their evasions. They say, “Did the Father beget the Son by will or not?”, so that when they hear, “By will, certainly,” they at once reply, as enemies of the Son of God: “Then the will is before the Son, so that from this he appears not eternal, since he did not take his beginning by birth but came into being.” And yet, if they think this, the will will be not only before the Son but also before the Father, since the begetting concerns the Father and the Son alike. Unbelief follows the senses of the flesh in everything. It presents God’s case as if it were a man’s, as though he had deliberated and thought beforehand in order to beget, as though subject to weakness, whereas in God there was neither begetting without will nor will without begetting. The will itself is the begetting. It is certainly a common way of speaking to say “God made” and “a man made”; but God makes in one way, a man in another. So too in other matters: one must speak of God as is worthy of him.

They are also wont to raise another question against God the Father himself, saying: “Did begetting come to him as something added, or is it his nature always to beget?” They bring this forward in order both to assert that God is a liar, who testifies that he begot Christ, and to make Christ not a true but an adopted son. “For if he begot,” they say, “he ought always to beget; so, since he does not always beget, he should not be believed to have begotten Christ,” as though he were to be denied to have made the world because he does not make others. What irreverence, what lack of discipline, to lay down a law for God: “If he begot, either he begot many or he could not beget one,” not believing even the Lord himself, who declared that he is the only Son of God!

Having shown above that the Father and the Son are equal, let us see whether what is written about the Holy Spirit agrees with this, so that the Trinity, which we hold in the profession of salvation, admits no difference of nature, just as it has no difference of faith. For since there is no salvation without any one of them, the power of the three which gives salvation to those who believe in them is seen to be one. Since we brought forward the words of the Father as testimony to the Son, let us now use the words of the Son as testimony to the Holy Spirit, by which he declares that the Holy Spirit does not differ from him, so that, since the Father is witness to the Son and the Son to the Holy Spirit, the Trinity may be understood to be of one nature. So the Lord says among other things: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete, to be with you for ever, the Spirit of truth.” When he says that another Paraclete is to be sent, he certainly shows that he himself is a Paraclete. It is also read in the letter of John, who says, “We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, who intercedes for our sins”; and again the Lord says, “I am the truth.” See, the unity of the Holy Spirit and the Son of God is plain; for what the Son says of himself, he says also of the Holy Spirit.

Now we must add what Scripture sets out in this sense. It is read in Isaiah that he saw the Lord of hosts sitting on the throne of majesty, whom John the evangelist understood to be Christ, saying among other things, “Isaiah said these things when he saw his majesty and spoke of him.” The apostle says that this is the Holy Spirit. For he says in the last part of the Acts of the Apostles: “The Holy Spirit spoke well to your fathers, saying: With the ear you will hear and not understand,” and so on. These words were spoken by the Lord of hosts. This is the one God, and whether he is understood as the Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit, there is no contradiction, because their divinity and power are one. For if, in the edict of a single praetorian prefect, the other prefects too are said to command because of the authority of the one office, how much more, in the command of the one God, if one of the three has spoken, will the three fittingly be said to have spoken! For their nature and will are one.

Again, they are wont to prejudge the Holy Spirit, saying that he is to be understood as inferior because he is placed third in order, whereas there is such simplicity in the divine Scriptures that sometimes you find the third placed first. As the case required, so they are placed; it is an injury to none, because their divinity is one. Indeed we read in Isaiah, where the Lord says: “I am the first and I am for ever, and my hand founded the earth, my right hand made firm the heaven,” and in what follows: “I have spoken, I have called, I have brought him and made his way prosperous. Come near to me and hear this: I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; when these things were made, I was there; and now the Lord has sent me, and his Spirit.” Who do you think it is that founded the earth? For he says that he has been sent. The Father? Far from it. It is the Son, then, who says he was sent by God and by the Holy Spirit. See, these things are on a par between the Son and the Holy Spirit. For as the Holy Spirit is read to be sent by the Father and the Son, so Christ too was sent by God and the Holy Spirit. For this alone is peculiar to the Father, that he is not said to be sent.

Take the words of the apostle, who includes the Trinity in another order; for he says among other things in the second letter to the Thessalonians: “May the Lord direct your hearts in the love of God and the patience of Christ.” Whom, do you think, does he call Lord except the Holy Spirit? And what wonder, since the one whom Isaiah saw sitting on the throne of majesty, the Lord of hosts, the apostle himself calls the Holy Spirit, as we showed above? And John the apostle signifies that God is understood in the Holy Spirit, saying among other things: “By this we know that God remains in us, from his Spirit whom he has given us.” If, then, he remains in us through his Spirit, there is no doubt that the Holy Spirit is from God. And there is no doubt that what is from God is God. This is why the apostle says: “No one knows what is in God except the Spirit of God.” How can he know what is in God unless he is of the same divinity? An inferior nature cannot know what is in a superior one; how much less could a creature know what is in its Creator!

And in the first letter to the Corinthians, leaving aside the order that belongs to the handing on of the faith, he begins from the Holy Spirit in recounting the workings of graces and ministries, then adds the Lord Jesus, and puts God third, whom he says works both in the Holy Spirit and in the Lord, as the Lord too says, “The Father who remains in me himself works.” For since both the Holy Spirit and Christ are from God the Father, their working is God’s work. Indeed he calls the Holy Spirit Lord as well, and the Lord he also calls God, because of the unity of nature. Since, then, in this place he says that the same God, who is also Lord, works all things in all, further down he concludes thus: “All these things are worked by one and the same Spirit, distributing to each as he wills.” What could be plainer than that the three have one working, since when one works, three are said to work? Why, unless because they are of one divinity? There is no doubt that it is properly the Holy Spirit who works the gift of graces. But to teach that God and the Lord and the Holy Spirit are one because their nature is without difference, he showed that the work of the Holy Spirit is the work of the three. And to make plain that, as far as person is concerned, it is the work of the Holy Spirit alone, he says, “All these things are worked by one and the same Spirit, distributing to each as he wills.” “As he wills,” because his will is God’s will. For he did not say, “as God wills,” but “as the Spirit wills.” A creature compels itself to do God’s will; but the Holy Spirit wills it by nature.

To make it shine plainly that the Holy Spirit works all things, the Lord says among other things: “For if I cast out demons by the finger of God,” and so on. He calls the Holy Spirit the finger of God, to prove that he is from God. Indeed he testified that the Jews, who said he cast out demons by Beelzebub, had blasphemed against the Holy Spirit. And that Moses too did signs through the Holy Spirit the magicians confess, saying, “This is the finger of God.” In the Acts of the Apostles too we read: “While they were serving the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said: Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” See, the Lord is served, and the Holy Spirit claims this service for himself, from which it plainly appears that he is Lord, as God the Father is too. And Christ called Saul from heaven and sent him to preach, and in the same way the Holy Spirit claims this for himself by saying, “for the work to which I have called them.” No one is unaware that the Savior instituted bishops for the churches; for before he ascended into heaven, laying his hand on the apostles, he ordained them bishops. The apostle attributes this to the Holy Spirit when he says: “Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has placed you as bishops to rule the church of the Lord Jesus.” And among other things Peter says to Ananias, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?”, and below: “You have not lied to men,” he says, “but to God.” It is plain that the Holy Spirit is called God, since Ananias, who lied to him, is said to have lied to God. If he had not wanted the Holy Spirit to be understood as God, he would have said, “You have not lied to men but to the Holy Spirit,” so as to designate him neither as God nor as man. And what wonder? For the apostle sometimes calls a human being the temple of God, sometimes the temple of the Holy Spirit, because they are one in nature. For if the Holy Spirit were not understood to be God, with what boldness would he say below, “For the temple of God is holy, which you are”?

Since one God is preached in all the Scriptures, but his mystery is worshiped in the Trinity, Scripture proceeds in such a way that, under the profession of one God, the things that are from him, that is, his Son and his Spirit, may be understood to be in the same honor in which God himself is; for the sacrament of God was revealed precisely so that his glory might be shown to remain in the Trinity. For this reason what is from God is not called God outright, lest it be believed to make another God apart from him who is one; but Scripture gives us to understand, so that we may believe that the salvation of the creature consists in the Trinity for this reason, that their divinity is one. For Creator and creature, Lord and servants, the eternal and what is subject to a beginning could not be joined together and placed in one series, especially since there is salvation for no one without any one of them. Whatever is God, whether the Son or the Holy Spirit, is insulted if it is reckoned outside the honor and glory of the one God. The Scriptures, then, show Christ to be God and show the Holy Spirit to be God, so that those who see may know what it is that is shown. It is as if someone shows a gem without shouting that it is a gem; because he does not shout, will what is seen not be a gem? So the Scriptures too, through the things treated above, show what we ought to believe, enclosing our understanding within faith in the one God by the mystery of the Trinity.