Sermons to the People 140.1–141.4

What is it, brothers, that we have heard the Lord saying, “He who believes in me does not believe in me, but in him who sent me”? It is good for us to believe in Christ; especially since he himself also said openly what you have heard, that he had come as light into the world, and whoever believes in him will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life. So it is good to believe in Christ. It is a great good to believe in Christ, and a great evil not to believe in Christ. But since Christ the Son is from the Father whatever he is, while the Father is not from the Son but is the Father of the Son, he commends faith in himself, but refers the honor back to its source.

Hold this firmly and fixedly, if you want to remain Catholics: that God the Father begot God the Son without time, and made him of a virgin in time. That birth exceeds times; this birth illuminates times. Yet both births are wonderful: that one without a mother, this one without a father. When God begot the Son, he begot him of himself, not of a mother; when the mother bore the son, she bore him as a virgin, not of a man. Of the Father he was born without beginning; of the mother he was born today, with a definite beginning. Born of the Father, he made us; born of the mother, he remade us. He was born of the Father so that we might exist; he was born of the mother so that we might not perish. Now the Father begot one equal to himself, and the whole of whatever the Son is, he has from the Father. But that God is Father, he does not have from the Son. So we say that the Father is God from no one, the Son God from God. Therefore everything the Son does wonderfully, everything he says truly, he attributes to him from whom he is; nor can he be other than he from whom he is. Adam was made a man: he could be other than what he was made. For he was made righteous, and he could be unrighteous. But the only-begotten Son of God cannot be changed from what he is: he cannot be turned into something else, cannot be diminished, cannot not be what he was, cannot not be equal to the Father. But plainly he who gave all things to the Son at his birth gave to one who was not in need; without doubt the Father gave the Son his very equality with the Father as well. How did the Father give it? Did he beget him lesser and add to his form to make him equal? If he had done this, he would have given to one in need. But I have already told you what you must hold most firmly: that the Father gave all that the Son is, but to him in being born, not to one in need. If he gave to him in being born, not to one in need, he certainly gave equality too, and by giving equality he begot one equal. And although the one is one person and the other another, yet the one is not one thing and the other another thing: but what the one is, this the other is too. Not who the one is, this the other is: but what the one is, this the other is.

“He who sent me,” he says, as you have heard; “he who sent me,” he says, “himself gave me a commandment, what I should say and what I should speak: and I know that his commandment is eternal life.” It is John’s Gospel; hold it fast. “He who sent me himself gave me a commandment, what I should say and what I should speak: and I know that his commandment is eternal life.” O that he would grant me to say what I want! For my poverty and his abundance put me in straits. “He himself,” he says, “gave me a commandment, what I should say and what I should speak: and I know that his commandment is eternal life.” Look in the Epistle of this John the evangelist for what he said of Christ. “Let us believe,” he says, “in his true Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.” What is “true God and eternal life”? The true Son of God is true God and eternal life. Why did he say “in his true Son”? Because God has many sons; therefore he had to be distinguished by adding that he was the true Son. Not only by saying that he is the Son, but by adding, as I said, that he is the true Son: he had to be distinguished because of the many sons God has. For we are sons by grace, he by nature. We were made by the Father through him: what the Father is, this he is too. Are we too what God is?

But someone, coming at it sideways and not knowing what he is saying, has said: “It was said, I and the Father are one, because they have a harmonious will between them, not because the nature of the Son is the very nature of the Father. For the apostles too” (he said this, not I), “the apostles too are one with the Father and the Son.” A horrible blasphemy! “The apostles too,” he says, “are one with the Father and the Son, because they obey the will of the Father and the Son.” Did he dare to say this? Then let Paul say: “I and God are one.” Let Peter say it, let any prophet say: “I and God are one.” He does not say it: far be it from him to say it. He knows that his is another nature, a nature to be saved; he knows that his is another nature, a nature to be enlightened. No one says, “I and God are one.” However much progress he may make, however much he may excel in holiness, however high the peak of virtue he may reach, he never says, “I and God are one”: because if he has virtue and says this because of it, by saying it he loses what he had.

Believe, then, that the Son is equal to the Father, but yet that the Son is from the Father, and the Father not from the Son. The origin is with the one, the equality with the other. For if he is not equal, he is not a true Son. For what do we say, brothers? If he is not equal, he is lesser: if he is lesser, I ask that nature which needs saving and believes wrongly: how was he born lesser? Answer: does the lesser grow, or not? If he grows, then the Father grows old. But if he will be what he was born, if he was born lesser, he will also be lesser: he will be complete in his deficiency; born complete in his deficiency from the Father’s form, he will never come to the Father’s form. So, you impious ones, you demote the Son; so, you heretics, you blaspheme the Son. What then does the Catholic faith say? God the Son from God the Father; God the Father not God from the Son. But God the Son is equal to the Father, born equal, not born lesser; not made equal, but born equal. What the one is, this is he too who was born. Was the Father ever without the Son? Far from it. Take away “ever,” where there is no time. Always Father, always Son. The Father without beginning of time, the Son without beginning of time: never the Father before the Son, never the Father without the Son. But yet, since God the Son is from God the Father, while the Father is God but not from God the Son, let us not be displeased that the Son honors the Father. For the Son’s honoring gives honor to the Father; it does not lessen his own divinity.

As I was saying, then, what I had set out: “And I know,” he says, “that his commandment is eternal life.” Attend, brothers, to what I say: “I know that his commandment is eternal life.” And we read in the same John of Christ, “He is the true God and eternal life.” If the Father’s commandment is eternal life, and Christ the Son is himself eternal life, then the Father’s commandment is the Son himself. For how is that not the Father’s commandment which is the Father’s Word? Or if you take carnally the commandment given by the Father to the Son, as if the Father said to the Son, “I command you this, I want you to do that”: in what words did he speak to the only Word? When he gave a commandment to the Word, did he look for words? Since, then, eternal life is the Father’s commandment, and the Son himself is eternal life, believe and receive, believe and understand; for the prophet says, “Unless you believe, you will not understand.” You do not grasp it? Be enlarged. Hear the apostle: “Be enlarged; do not be yoked with unbelievers.” Those who will not believe this before they grasp it are unbelievers. And because they have chosen to be unbelievers, they will remain ignorant. Let them believe, then, so that they may understand. Plainly the Father’s commandment is eternal life. So the Father’s commandment is the Son himself, who was born today: a commandment not given in time, but a commandment born. The Gospel of John exercises minds, files them and frees them from the flesh, so that we may think of God not carnally but spiritually. Let this be enough for you, then, brothers, lest in a long discussion a forgetful sleep should creep in.

Among other things, when the holy Gospel was read, you heard what the Lord Jesus said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Every man desires truth and life; but not every man finds the way. That God is a certain life, eternal, unchangeable, intelligible, intelligent, wise, making wise, some philosophers of this world too have seen. The fixed, stable, unswerving truth, in which are the principles of all created things, they saw indeed, but from afar; they saw, but from where they stood in error: and therefore they did not find by what way one might come to that possession, so great, so ineffable, so beatifying. For that they too saw (as far as man can see) the Creator through the creature, the maker through what he made, the builder of the world through the world, the apostle Paul is witness, whom Christians certainly ought to believe. For he says, when speaking of such men: “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness.” These, as you recognize, are the words of the apostle Paul: “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold back the truth in unrighteousness.” Did he say that they do not hold the truth? No, but “they hold back the truth in unrighteousness.” What they hold is good; but where they hold it is bad. “They hold back the truth in unrighteousness.”

But it occurred to him that someone might say to him: “From where do these ungodly men hold the truth? Did God speak to any of them? Did they receive the Law, as the people of the Israelites did through Moses? From where, then, do they hold the truth, even in that unrighteousness?” Hear what follows, and he shows it. “Because what can be known of God,” he says, “is manifest in them: for God has manifested it to them.” Manifested it to those to whom he did not give the Law? Hear how he manifested it. “For his invisible things are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made.” Ask the world, the ornament of the sky, the brightness and arrangement of the stars, the sun sufficient for the day, the moon the comfort of the night; ask the earth, fruitful in plants and trees, full of animals, adorned with men; ask the sea, filled with how many and what kinds of swimming creatures; ask the air, alive with how many flying creatures; ask all things, and see whether they do not answer you, as it were, in their own way: “God made us.” Noble philosophers too have searched out these things, and have come to know the artist from the art. What then? Why is the wrath of God revealed against this very ungodliness? Because they hold back the truth in unrighteousness? Let him come, let him show how. For he has already said how they came to know. “His invisible things,” that is, God’s, “are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made; his eternal power also and divinity; so that they are without excuse. Because when they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks; but they became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened.” They are the apostle’s words, not mine: “And their foolish heart was darkened; for professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” What they found by curiosity they lost by pride. “Professing themselves to be wise,” that is, attributing God’s gift to themselves, “they became fools.” They are the apostle’s words, I say: “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”

Show it; prove their folly. Show it, apostle; and as you have shown us from where they could come to the knowledge of God, since his invisible things are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made, so now show how, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. Hear: “Because they changed,” he says, “the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and of four-footed beasts, and of serpents.” For the pagans made gods for themselves of the figures of these animals. You found God, and you worship an idol. You found the truth, and you hold back that very truth in unrighteousness. And what you came to know through God’s works, you lose through man’s works. You have considered the whole; you have gathered the order of heaven, earth, sea, and all the elements: and you will not attend to this, that the world is the work of God, the idol the work of a craftsman. If the craftsman could give the idol a heart, as he gave it a shape, the craftsman would be worshiped by his own idol. For as your maker, O man, is God, so the idol’s maker is a man. Who is your God? He who made you. Who is the craftsman’s God? He who made him. Who is the idol’s god? He who made it. So if the idol had a heart, would it not worship the craftsman who made it? See in what unrighteousness they held the truth, and did not find the way leading to that possession which they saw.

But Christ, because he himself is with the Father the truth and the life, the Word of God, of whom it was said, “The life was the light of men”; because, then, he himself is with the Father the truth and the life, and we had no way by which to go to the truth, the Son of God, who is always in the Father the truth and the life, became the way by taking up man. Walk by the man, and you come to God. You go through him; you go to him. Do not look for a way to come to him other than himself. For if he had not been willing to be the way, we would always have gone astray. So he became the way by which you may come. I do not say to you, look for the way. The way itself has come to you: arise and walk. Walk with your conduct, not with your feet. For many walk well with their feet and badly with their conduct. For sometimes even those who walk well run outside the way. For you will find men living well who are not Christians. They run well; but they do not run in the way. The more they run, the more they go astray, because they go away from the way. But if such men come to the way and hold to the way, O how great is their security, because they both walk well and do not go astray! But if they do not hold to the way, however well they walk, alas, how they are to be lamented! For it is better to limp in the way than to walk strongly beside the way. Let this be enough for your Charity. Turning to the Lord, and so on.