Defence of the Nicene Definition 11–20

For God creates, and creating is also said of men; and God is “He who is,” and men too are said to be, having received this too from God. Does God, then, create as men do? Or is he in the way a man is? Far from it! We take these terms in one way of God, and understand them otherwise of men. For God creates by calling into being the things that are not, needing nothing; but men work on underlying matter, having first prayed and received the skill of making from God, who fashioned all things through his own Word. Again, men, being unable to exist by themselves, are contained in place and subsist in the Word of God; but God exists by himself, containing all things and contained by none; and he is in all things by his goodness and power, yet again outside all things by his own nature. As, then, men do not create in the same way as God creates, nor do men exist in the way God exists, so the generation of men is one thing, and the Son’s being from the Father is another. For the offspring of men are in some way parts of those who beget them, since the very nature of bodies is not simple, but in flux and composed of parts; men lose substance in begetting, and again take in substance from their food; and for this reason men become fathers of many children in the course of time. But God, being without parts, is Father of the Son without division and without passion. For there is no effluence from the incorporeal, nor any influx into him, as there is with men. Being simple in nature, he is Father of one only Son; this is why the Son is Only-begotten and alone is in the bosom of the Father, and the Father acknowledges him alone as from himself, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” And he is the Word of the Father, in whom one may understand the Father’s freedom from passion and division; for not even a human word is begotten with passion and division, much less the Word of God. Therefore he sits at the right hand of the Father as Word; for where the Father is, there his Word is too; but we stand before him to be judged, as things made. And he is worshiped because he is Son of the Father who is worshiped; but we worship, confessing him Lord and God, because we are creatures and other than he. [12] This being so, let anyone of them who will now consider, and let someone put them to shame: is it right to say that what is from God and is his own offspring is from nothing? Or is it reasonable even to enter anyone’s mind at all that being from God came upon him as an accident, so that one should dare to say that the Son is not always? For in this too the generation of the Son exceeds and transcends human notions. We become fathers of our own children in time, since we ourselves, not existing before, came to be afterwards; but God, being always, is always Father of the Son. And the generation of men gains credence from things of like kind; but since “no one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son reveals him,” therefore the saints to whom the Son revealed him have given us an image drawn from visible things, saying, “who, being the radiance of his glory and the impress of his hypostasis,” and again, “For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we shall see light”; and when the Word reproaches Israel he says, “You have forsaken the fountain of wisdom”; and it is this fountain that says, “They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water.” The illustration is small and very dim compared with what we long to grasp; yet from it one can understand something beyond human nature, and not think that the Son’s generation is on a level with ours.

For who can even imagine that the radiance ever was not, so as to dare to say that the Son is not always, or that the Son was not before he was begotten? Or who is able to separate the radiance from the sun, or to conceive of the fountain of life as ever empty, so as to say in his madness that the Son, who says “I am the life,” is from nothing, or that he who says “He who has seen me has seen the Father” is foreign to the Father’s essence? For the saints, wishing us to understand in this way, have given such illustrations; and it is absurd and very impious, when Scripture contains such images, for us to form our notions of the Lord from others, which are neither written nor have any meaning that leads to piety.

Let them tell us, then, from where these men too learned, or who handed it down to them, that they began to conceive such things about the Savior. “We have read,” they will say, “in the Proverbs: ‘The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works.’” For Eusebius’s party too used to say this, and you in your letter made it plain that, though these men too were overthrown and condemned by many proofs, they nonetheless kept carrying this text up and down, saying that the Son was one of the creatures and numbering him among originated things. But it seems to me that they have not understood this text rightly either; for it has a pious and very correct sense, and had they understood it, they would not have blasphemed the Lord of glory. Let them compare what has been said above with this text, and they will see that there is a great difference between them. For who … [the things] being created and made … of the maker, whereas the Son, as the argument showed above, exists not from outside but from the Father who begets him? For a man builds a house but begets a son; and no one would turn it round and say that the house and the ship are begotten by the builder, and the son created and made by him; nor again that the house is the image of its builder and the son unlike his begetter. Rather, he will confess that the son is the image of the father, and the house a work of art—unless he is sick in mind and out of his wits. Certainly the divine Scripture, which knows the nature of each thing better than anyone, says of created things through Moses: “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth”; but concerning the Son it brings forward not another, but the Father himself, saying, “From the womb, before the morning star, I have begotten you,” and again, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you.” And the Lord himself says of himself in the Proverbs, “Before all the hills he begets me.” And of originated and created things John says, “All things came to be through him”; but proclaiming the Lord he says, “The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” If, then, he is son, he is not a creature; and if he is a creature, he is not a son; for great …

Was this text, then, written in vain? For this is what they keep buzzing about again, like a swarm of gnats. Not at all: it was not written in vain, but quite necessarily. For he is indeed said to be created, but when he became man; for this is proper to man. And this sense will be found well set out in the oracles by one who does not treat the reading as a side matter, but searches out the time, the persons, and the purpose of what is written, and so discerns and understands what he reads. As for the time of this text, he will find and recognize that the Lord, who always is, later, at the consummation of the ages, became man, and being Son of God became also Son of man. And he would understand the purpose: that, wishing to abolish our death, he took to himself a body from the Virgin Mary, so that by offering this as a sacrifice for all to the Father he might set free all of us who through fear of death were subject to slavery all our lifetime. And the person is the Savior’s; but it is said at the time when, having taken the body, he says, “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works.” For as eternal being and being in the bosom of the Father well befits him as Son of God, so, now that he has become man, the saying “The Lord created me” is fitting. For it is then that it is said of him that he hungered and thirsted and asked where Lazarus lay, and suffered, and rose again. And as, when we hear him called Lord and God and true light, we understand him as being from the Father, so it is right, when we hear “created,” “servant,” and “suffered,” not to reckon these to the Godhead (for it is not proper to it), but to measure them by the flesh which he bore for our sake; for these things are proper to the flesh, and the flesh itself belongs to no other but to the Word. And if anyone wishes to learn the benefit that comes from this, he will find it too: for the Word became flesh both in order to offer it for all, and so that we, receiving a share of his Spirit, might be able to be made divine, which we could not otherwise have attained had he not himself put on our created body. For thus we have begun to be called men of God and men in Christ. But as we, receiving the Spirit, do not lose our own essence, so the Lord, having become man for our sake and borne a body, was no less God; for he was not diminished by being clothed with the body, but rather made it divine and rendered it immortal.

These things are enough to expose the heresy of the Arians. For, as the Lord has granted, they have been convicted of impiety out of their own words. Come now, let us too put forward questions and require them in turn to answer; for it is time, since they are at a loss in their own case, that they should now be questioned by us. Perhaps, put to shame in this way, the perverse men may look up and see from where they have fallen. We have learned from the divine Scriptures, as we said before, that the Son of God is himself the Word and the Wisdom of the Father. For the apostle says, “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God”; and John, having said, “And the Word became flesh,” added at once, “and we beheld his glory, glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth”; so that, the Word being the only-begotten Son, it was in this Word and Wisdom that the heaven and the earth and all that is in them came to be. And that God is the fountain of this wisdom we have learned in Baruch, where Israel is blamed for having forsaken the fountain of wisdom. If, then, they deny what is written, they are at once strangers to the name as well, and would properly be called by all godless and Christ-fighters; for they have brought these names upon themselves. But if they agree with us that the words of Scripture are inspired by God, let them dare to say openly what they think in secret: that God was once without Word and without Wisdom; and in their madness let them say, “There was when he was not,” and “Before he was begotten, Christ was not.” And again let them declare that the fountain did not beget wisdom from itself but acquired it from outside itself, so that they may dare to say, “The Son came to be from nothing,” as if it were a cistern that received its water from outside and has usurped the name of fountain.

How full of impiety this is, I think no one with even the slightest perception will doubt. But since they mutter that Word and Wisdom are only names of the Son, it is necessary to ask them: if these are only names of the Son, then he himself must be something other than these. And if he is better than the names, it is not holy for the better to be signified by the lesser; but if he is lesser than the names, he certainly has the reason for his better title, and this in turn indicates an advancement in him, which is no less impious than what came before. … in the Thalia, as if raising a difficulty, he tells the tale: “God speaks many words. Which of them, then, do we call the Son and only-begotten Word of the Father?” Senseless men, anything rather than Christians! For in the first place, by saying such things about God they all but conceive of God as a man, speaking in this way and replacing his first words with second ones, as if one Word from God were not enough to accomplish the whole creation that comes from the Father’s will, and his providence. For to speak many words is a mark of the weakness of them all, each falling short of what the other supplies; but that God uses one Word, as is in truth the case, shows both the power of God and the perfection of the Word who is from him, and the pious understanding of those who think in this way.

Would that these men too, at least from what they now say, were willing to confess the truth! For if they once grant that God utters words, they surely recognize him as Father; and knowing this, let them consider that, being unwilling to grant one Word of God, they imagine him to be Father of many. And while they do not wish to deny that there is a Word of God at all, they do not confess that he is the Son of God; and this is ignorance of the truth and inexperience in the divine Scriptures. For if God is in any sense Father of a Word, why is not he who is begotten a Son? And again, who could be Son of God but his Word? For there are not many words, lest each be deficient, but one Word, so that he alone may be perfect; and because, God being one, his image too must be one, and that is the Son. For the Son of God, as one may learn from the oracles themselves, is himself the Word of God, and the Wisdom, and the Image, and the Hand, and the Power; for the offspring of God is one, and these are tokens of his generation from the Father. If you say “the Son,” you have declared what is from him by nature; if you think of “the Word,” again you have in mind what is from him and inseparable from him; when you speak of “the Wisdom,” you mean no less what is not from outside but from him and in him; if you name “the Power” and “the Hand,” again you speak of what is proper to the essence; and when you speak of “the Image,” you signify the Son: for what could be like God but the offspring from him? Certainly, what came to be through the Word was founded in Wisdom; and what was founded in Wisdom was all made by the Hand and came to be through the Son. And we have this faith not from outside but from the Scriptures. For God himself says through Isaiah the prophet: “My hand founded the earth, and my right hand made firm the heaven”; and again: “And under the shadow of my hand I will cover you, by which I set up the heaven and founded the earth.” And David, having learned this, and knowing that the Hand itself is the Wisdom, sang: “In wisdom you have made all things; the earth is filled with your creation”; as Solomon too, having received it from God, said: “God by wisdom founded the earth.” And John, knowing that the Hand and the Wisdom is the Word, proclaimed: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.” And the apostle, seeing that the Hand, the Wisdom, the Word, is himself the Son, says: “In many parts and in many ways God spoke of old to the fathers in the prophets; in these last days he has spoken to us in a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the ages”; and again: “One Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him.” And knowing again that the Word, the Wisdom, the Son, is himself the Image of the Father, he says in the letter to the Colossians: “Giving thanks to God and the Father, who has qualified us for the share of the inheritance of the saints in light, who delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins; who is the image of the invisible God, firstborn of all creation; for in him all things were created, those in the heavens and those on the earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities: all things were created through him and for him; and he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” For as all things were created through him as Word, so, since he is the Image, they were created in him. Whoever thinks thus about the Lord will not stumble on the stone of stumbling, but will rather go toward the brightness, facing the light of truth; for this is truly the mind of the truth, even if these men burst with contentiousness, neither revering God nor put to shame by the refutation that comes from the proofs.

Eusebius’s party, then, after being examined at length in this way at the time and condemning themselves, subscribed, as I said before, and having changed their minds, kept quiet and withdrew. But since these men, swaggering in their impieties and growing dizzy about the truth, attempt nothing else but to accuse the council, let them tell us from what Scriptures they learned, or from which of the saints they heard, the little phrases they have heaped together for themselves: “from nothing,” and “he was not before he was begotten,” and “there was once when he was not,” and “changeable,” and “pre-existing,” and “by will”—in which they tell fables in mockery of the Lord. For the blessed Paul says in the letter to the Hebrews: “By faith we understand that the ages were framed by the word of God, so that what is seen did not come to be from things that appear.” But the Word has nothing in common with the ages; for he is the one who exists before the ages, through whom the ages too came to be. In the Shepherd it is written (since they bring this forward too, though it is not of the canon): “First of all believe that God is one, who created and framed all things, and made all things to be out of what was not.” But this again has nothing to do with the Son; for it speaks of all the things that came to be through him, from which he himself is distinct. For one cannot number the Creator with the things made by him, unless someone were mad enough to say that the architect is the same as the buildings he has made. Why then, when they themselves have invented unscriptural terms for impiety, do they blame those who are pious with unscriptural terms? For impiety is wholly forbidden, even if someone tries to clothe it in varied words and plausible sophisms; but piety is acknowledged by all to be holy, even if someone uses unfamiliar terms, so long as the speaker has a pious mind and wishes to express through them, piously, what he has understood. Now the argument has already shown that the grovelling little phrases of the Christ-fighters mentioned above were, then and now, full of all impiety; but as for what was written and defined against them by the council, if anyone examines it carefully, he will certainly find the mind of the truth contained in it, especially if he asks with a love of learning and hears the reason for such terms, which is a sound one. It is this.

When the council wished to do away with the impious terms of the Arians, and to write the acknowledged words of the Scriptures—that the Son is not from nothing but from God, and is Word and Wisdom, not a creature or a thing made, but the proper offspring from the Father—Eusebius’s party, drawn on by their long-standing false doctrine, wanted “from God” to be common to us and to the Word of God, and him to differ from us in nothing in this respect, because it is written: “One God, from whom are all things,” and again: “The old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new; and all things are from God.” But the fathers, seeing their craftiness and the cunning of their impiety, were forced to express “from God” more clearly, and to write that the Son is “from the essence of God,” so that “from God” might not be thought common and equal to the Son and to originated things, but that all the others might be believed to be creatures and the Word alone to be from the Father. For though all things are said to be from God, this is said in another sense than that in which the Son is from God. Created things are said to be “from God” because they do not exist at random or of themselves, nor did they come into being by chance, as those say who speak of a concourse of atoms and of like parts, or as some of the heretics speak of another creator, or as others again say that the constitution of all things is the work of certain angels; but because, God existing, all things, which were not before, came into being by him through the Word: for this reason “from God” is said of them. But the Word, since he is not a creature, is said to be, and is, alone “from the Father”; and the token of this sense is that the Son is “from the essence of the Father”; for this belongs to none of the originated things. Indeed, when Paul said that all things are from God, he at once added: “and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things,” to show to all that the Son is other than all the things that came to be from God; for the things that came to be from God came to be through the Son. He said this with reference to the creation made by God, and not because all things are from the Father as the Son is. For neither are all things as the Son, nor is the Word one of all things; for he is Lord and Creator of all things. That is why the holy council said more clearly that he is from the essence of the Father, so that the Word might be believed to be other than the nature of originated things, being alone truly from God, and that no pretext for deceit might be left any longer to the impious. This, then, is the reason for writing “from the essence.”

Again, when the bishops said that it ought to be written that the Word is the true Power and Image of the Father, like and unvarying from the Father in all things, and unchangeable, and always, and in him without division (for the Word never was not, but was always, existing eternally with the Father as the radiance of light), Eusebius’s party bore it, not daring to contradict because of the shame they felt at having been refuted; but they were caught again muttering among themselves and winking with their eyes that “like,” and “always,” and the name “power,” and “in him” were again common to us and the Son, and that there was no harm in agreeing to these. “Like,” because it is written of us, “Man is the image and glory of God”; “always,” because it is written, “For we who live are always…”; “in him,” because “In him we live and move and have our being”; and “unchangeable,” because it is written, “Nothing will separate us from the love of Christ.” And as for “power,” because even the caterpillar and the locust are called “power,” and “great power,” and it is often written of the people, as, “All the power of the Lord went out of the land of Egypt”; and there are other heavenly powers too, for it says, “The Lord of powers is with us; the God of Jacob is our helper.” For Asterius, called the Sophist, learned such things from them and wrote them down, and before him Arius had learned them, as has been said. But the bishops, seeing their hypocrisy in this too, and that, as it is written, “deceit is in the heart of the impious who devise evil,” were forced in their turn to gather up the sense of the Scriptures and to say again more clearly what they had said before, and to write that the Son is “of the same essence” as the Father; so as to signify that the Son is not only like, but the same in likeness, from the Father, and to show that the Son’s likeness and unchangeableness is other than the imitation ascribed to us, which we acquire from virtue by keeping the commandments. For bodies that are like one another can somehow be separated and come to be far from one another, as the sons of men are in relation to those who begot them, as it is written of Adam and of Seth who was begotten from him, that he was like him according to his form. But since the generation of the Son from the Father is other than human nature, and he is not only like but also inseparable from the essence of the Father, and he and the Father are one, as he himself has said, and the Word is always in the Father and the Father in the Word, as the radiance is in relation to the light (for this too is what the term signifies), therefore the council, understanding this, rightly wrote “of the same essence,” so as to overthrow the malice of the heretics and to show that the Word is other than originated things. For having written this, they at once added: “Those who say that the Son of God is from nothing, or created, or changeable, or a thing made, or from another essence, these the holy and catholic church anathematizes.” By saying this they showed plainly that “from the essence” and “of the same essence” do away with the catchwords of impiety, which are: “creature,” and “thing made,” and “originated,” and “changeable,” and “he was not before he was begotten.” Whoever holds these contradicts the council; but whoever does not hold the views of Arius necessarily holds and understands these views of the council, seeing rightly how the radiance stands to the light, and receiving from it the image of the truth.