On the Orthodox Faith against the Arians preface–5

We believe in God, the Father almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord, our Jesus Christ, the Son of God, born of the Father as only-begotten, that is, of the substance of the Father; God from God, light from light, true God from true God; born, not made; of one substance with the Father, which the Greeks call homoousion; through whom all things were made, both those in heaven and those on earth; who for us men and for our salvation came down, and was incarnate, and was made man, suffered, rose on the third day, ascended into heaven, and will come from there to judge the living and the dead. And in the Holy Spirit. But those who say, “There was when he was not,” and “Before he was born he was not,” and that the Son of God is changeable or alterable: these the Catholic and apostolic church anathematizes. Amen. Preface. Led by love of the Catholic faith, I had some time ago published a small book against the Arians; and when I had given it to a friend to read, because it pleased him, he thought it should be copied. I earnestly asked of him that meanwhile, keeping the author concealed, he should read it to learned and prudent men, so that if he learned of anything that seemed to be stated there too much or too little, it could be corrected by the counsel of many. For no one so arrogantly claims for himself the summit of heavenly teaching as to think that he holds all the mysteries clearly grasped, since the apostle Paul says: “Whoever thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know”; and: “Now we see through a mirror in a riddle; then face to face.” But if everything written there seemed to all to agree with the true faith, then he too should not refuse it to those who asked. It is plain that he did so. And because the matter was judged by everyone to be worthy both of Catholic confession and of an answer to heresy, many wished either to read it or to copy it. But there was one who, out of zeal for doctrine or out of the duty of charity, went over what we had said more scrupulously, and said that some things were either superfluous or ambiguous, which could be taken by some otherwise than I had meant them. Accordingly I have set out those same things again in plainer language in this little book, both to show the simplicity of my meaning and to remove the scruple of my readers. For this is what they say can be faulted: that where we used “Word of God” of the person of the Son, we are thought to understand this Word as the grammarians define it, air struck by the breath of the mouth and intelligible to hearing. But we know not the wisdom of this world, which is being destroyed, but that which is from God, which declares the Word of God to be God when it says: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.” Hence I confess that I wonder that it could be thought that we denied the proper person of the Word, who is the Son. No one names merely in word one whom he often professes to exist truly in his own person: for how have we confessed either a true Son or a true Father, if we have not truly kept the property of the persons both of the Father and of the Son? But because we spoke the word “one God,” we are thought to have denied the persons. And from this what we set down seemed plausible. We so name the Father and the Son as to assign one God in these persons and names. Again, the Father and the Son, though they are called by two names, are yet one in reason and substance; and when I set forth Father and Son, I assign unity of kind. All this was judged capable of being understood as if these names were set between the Father and the Son as a name and a surname are, yet of one person; although from what was said before and after this suspicion could not be admitted. For I who had said that the Son of God was born from nowhere else than properly from the Father, whole from whole, entire from entire, perfect from perfect, a consummate power: how could I make the Father himself his own Son, and in this way call one person by two names, especially since in the same little book I condemned this sect, that is, the Sabellian, and wrote of the distinction of persons according to the name? For no one can say “are one” of a single person, or assign unity of kind except to persons. And what Catholic does not know that the Father is truly the Father, the Son truly the Son, and the Holy Spirit truly the Holy Spirit? As the Lord himself says to his apostles: “Go, baptize all nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” This is the perfect Trinity subsisting in unity, which we profess to be of one substance. For we do not make a division in God according to the condition of bodies; but according to the power of the divine nature, which is not in matter, we believe that the persons of the names truly exist, and we testify that there is a unity of divinity. Nor do we call the Son of God an extension of some part of the Father, as some have thought, nor do we take him as a word without reality, like the sound of a voice; but we believe that the three names and three persons are of one essence, one majesty and power. And so we confess one God, because the unity of majesty forbids them to be called gods in the plural. Indeed we name the Father and the Son in the Catholic way; but we neither can nor ought to say two gods; not because the Son of God is not God, rather he is true God from true God; but because we know the Son of God to be from nowhere else than from the one Father himself, therefore we say one God. For this the prophets, this the apostles handed down, this the Lord himself taught, when he says: “I and the Father are one.” “One” he refers to the unity of divinity, as I said; “are” he assigns to the persons. And the Apostle too says: “There is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him. But knowledge is not in all.” So, having explained these words, which raised a scruple not for me, who know what I said, but for others, I think the occasion of bad interpretation has been removed. For the profession of faith is plain, and the person stands with the names, and one divinity is assigned. Or if anything in the words still seems ambiguous to readers, the words ought to be compared with the meaning; for it is not the simplicity of the words but the obstinacy of bad understanding that smells of guilt. But since our meaning agrees with the truth, the words too ought to agree with the most sincere reason. So let the academic disputer keep away from Christian simplicity.

We know that many grave heresies have bubbled up from very many people and, like poison, pour the venom of their cancer into the inmost breast; but those can easily be either conquered or avoided whose whole purpose of heart is betrayed by their first proposition. But those who have much in common with us can easily strike innocent minds devoted to God alone by a fraudulent fellowship, while they defend the venom of their evils by means of our goods. For nothing can be more dangerous than these heretics, who, while they run through everything soundly, yet by one word, like a drop of poison, infect that pure and simple faith of the Lord’s, and then of the apostolic, tradition. So we must be very careful that nothing of this kind steals secretly into our minds or ears; for nothing drives to death so much as to violate the faith under the pretext of faith. For as gypsum mixed with water counterfeits milk by its colour, so here a hostile tradition is suggested through a plausible confession. Therefore it is not the likeness of the confession but the sense of the mind by which the confession itself is fixed that must be weighed. Indeed, if you attend more carefully and accurately to why they wanted the name of substance removed from the gospel and apostolic faith and from the tradition of the fathers, you will without doubt find that the Arian heresy, abridged in a subtle compendium, has been brought in by the removal of this name. Nor do I affirm that this is gathered from suspicion or opinion, nor do I stand as an academic disputer, as they themselves think, to twist simple meanings by subtlety of words; but to set out in the light of knowledge twisted and depraved meanings composed with thin argument, so that iniquity, once recognized and discovered, may more easily be avoided by men. For what cause or what reason has arisen, that what had been handed down to all the churches to be taught and believed, and what our fathers, apostolic men, cleansed by the Holy Spirit, set up by Catholic reasoning against all heresies, and above all the Arian, as a kind of barrier of truth by which to block every approach of pestilent doctrine, should be laboured with no small effort to be removed by those who are bound to the reproach of the Arian taint: unless that they may feign the Son of God changeable and alterable, as not having come to be from the proper substance of the Father; so that they may now freely, securely, and without hesitation hand down and insinuate to the churches that he has a beginning in time, an origin from nothing, a name from another, as they always taught, for which they have often been condemned?

You see, then, that in their treatise they have set down everything not in gospel faith but with crafty malice, to seduce all the simple. It must now be not so much suspected as plain to all that they have set down “God from God” in the way Arius used to teach, so that he was made from God, not born from God. If he was born, he is of one substance; if he was made, he is not a true Son; and if he is not a true Son, neither is he true God; or if he is true God and is not from the Father, there are two, each having his own will and different commands; or if they are one only by concord and fellowship, yet not also by substance, he is not, as I have said, true God. So he will be God as Moses was to Pharaoh, by power, not by kind; the Son too will have to be believed a son in the way it was said to the people through Isaiah: “I have begotten sons and raised them up”; and elsewhere: “You are gods, and all sons of the Most High.” And he will be held firstborn in the way that Israel too was called by God a firstborn son; and also firstborn of all creation, as if he were firstborn in the order of things made, so that they may assign to him a kind of first place in the series of the world’s created things. Indeed, having removed homoousion, that is, the word “of one substance,” they have set down …, that is, “like his maker”; though likeness is one thing and truth another. For man too was made to the image and likeness of God, and yet he is not God; nor is it to be believed that man has become what God is. So too they want the Son of God to be like, so as to say that he is like from elsewhere, not from the one holy and blessed substance of the Father itself. And if he is not from the substance of the Father, he is ex ouk ontōn, that is, from things not existing, as the same Arius taught: for once what the Father is is removed, wherever the Son came from, he must have both a beginning from nothing and an origin in time; for nothing is without beginning except God alone. Hence the Son too, as the Lord himself says: “I and the Father are one.” He said this to show the names of two persons in the majesty of one deity; as the prophet too says in the voice of God: “My heart has uttered a good Word; I speak my works to the king.” You see, then, that this good Word is the Son of God, whom we believe to have been born from nowhere else than from the Father’s breast and, so to speak, from the womb of God’s heart. And therefore he calls him king, because he is King of kings; God and Lord, to whom all the divine works are subject, who said: “All that the Father has is mine.” Of him the Evangelist too says: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.” So what was in the beginning must be believed always to have been, but to be from nowhere else than from him who has no beginning, that is, from the heart of the Father; because “My heart,” he says, “has uttered a good Word.” For he did not say, “In the beginning the Word was made,” but, “In the beginning,” he says, “was the Word.” Whatever beginning you wish to assign to the Word, you will find it prejudged, because “in the beginning,” he says, “was.” Not that two beginnings are spoken of from a diversity of things; but because the Word, the Son, is always with the Father and was born from the Father. And so he whose origin has no beginning must be believed everlasting with the Father; because neither can the Father ever be named without the Son, nor the Son be called without the Father; and for this reason always Son, because always Father. “And the Word,” it says, “was God.” What is God always is, since if he had not always been, he could not be true God; as also in the name of Wisdom, since according to the Apostle he himself is the Wisdom of the Father: “I,” he says, “came forth from the mouth of the Most High.” So from nowhere else than from the Father, because always with the Father. And therefore he is called the Wisdom of God, so that the Father may never be believed to have been without Wisdom, that is, without his Son. This is that ineffable Wisdom which in Solomon is described as created, or begotten, or founded as the beginning of the ways of God; yet he says it was created in such a way as to show that it was always with God. What beginning will you give to God, so as to be able to mark a beginning of his Wisdom itself? For God did not create his Wisdom as if he had at some time been without Wisdom; but when he speaks of the beginning of his ways, he shows the beginning of the movement of some work; so that the Wisdom of God has this beginning, that it proceeded from God to create all things both heavenly and earthly, not that it began to be in God. Wisdom, then, was created, or rather begotten, not for itself, since it always was, but for the things that had to be made by it; so that, since how great and of what kind it was could not be known, its power and might might be known from the effect of its works; so that what we judge from things created we might fear the more when we wonder at things made. But if you call Wisdom created so as to understand the Son of God as a creature, the Apostle meets you, condemning those who worship the creature, saying: “Therefore God gave them up in the desire of their heart to uncleanness, to dishonour their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is God blessed for ever.” This, I say, is that Wisdom of God which says: “I came forth from the mouth of the Most High,” the founder and maker of the universe, that is, the Son of God, through whom are all things and in whom are all things; because, as the Apostle said: “In him were established all things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or powers or principalities or authorities: all things were created through him and in him; and he is before all things, and all things hold together in him.” Hence Solomon too says: “Being one, she can do all things; and remaining in herself, she renews all things, and through the nations passes into holy souls.” Confirming this the Apostle says that Christ dwells in the inner man; so that through him through whom all things were made from the beginning, all may also be saved at the end.

But you say to me that the name homoousion, that is, “of one substance,” … [those who] worship [the creature] rather than the Creator; whereas [we] keep the very things the Apostle said: “That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess.” And Moses: “Let all the angels of God worship him,” he says. And David: “All kings will worship him.” This indeed would not be said in the Scriptures, except because he himself is the Word, the Son, the maker of all things. But you say that homoousion ought not to be named, because it is not contained in the divine Scriptures. I too ask, man, you who forbid this: ought it not to be named because it is not written, or because it is not permitted to believe so? But if it must be believed so, why not professed so? “For with the heart,” says the Apostle, “one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” Or if it is not to be named because it is not to be believed so either, then the assertion of the Arian taint has prevailed, which denied that the Father and the Son are of one substance precisely because it brings in the Son of God as made, now from nothing, now from the Father but from another substance, when it wished, and how it wished, and from where it wished; provided only that it may feign that he came to be from elsewhere and not from what the Father is. And though it says he was born, it says so only in word; because again it understands everything born as made, since we too are called begotten of God, who are plainly a thing made. Or if you are not an Arian, and acknowledge a true Son born of a true Father, not made, why do you not call him one substance with the Father? In vain, man, you fear to profess what you believe; and in vain you believe, if you do not believe so; and rightly you are marked as a heretic. And although you have changed the saying by which you are thought to have forbidden the Son of God to be called a thing made, yet when it adds, “as one of the things that have been made,” you show openly that you did not refuse to call him a thing made because he ought not to be understood as made; but you want him made, not as one of the things that are made, yet made all the same. For you call him made in another way, as a perfect creature through whom all things were made; provided that you understand him too as made, though not as the rest. But to return to what you say, that homoousion, that is, the word “of one substance,” is not found in the divine Scriptures: suppose meanwhile that it is so, because wherever substance is read, a thing of God, not God, is understood; although you equally profess another thing that is not written, namely, God from God, light from light: what do you say to this? Either hold the whole with me, or give up the whole. For if you fear to say the word “of one substance” because it is not written, you ought likewise to fear to profess God from God and light from light. But I prove that God from God, light from light, and the word “of one substance” are contained in the divine Scriptures. For since the Son of God himself, who is God, says in his Gospel, “I came forth from the Father,” rightly and fittingly we profess God from God, because we know that the Son of God was born from God the Father, true God from true God. But not in the way that we have been called gods, or that Moses was called Pharaoh’s god; but because he is a true Son, born of a true Father, he is truly and confidently to be called God from God, and so light from light. What is not written you say with me, but you do not at all think with me. And because it is written of the Father, “God is light,” and of the Son, “He was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world,” and “The light shines in the darkness,” that is, Christ in the world, “and the darkness has not overtaken it”: that is, those men whose heart is blinded by the darkness of ignorance did not recognize Christ as true God and true Son of God. But the Lord himself says: “I am the light of the world; whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” So because the Father is light, and the Son light, rightly “light from light.” But you assert “light from light” as if from the Father, who is the true light, another light had been made, which is not from the very substance of the Father, but like any other light, which though made by God is yet far other than him who made it; and therefore you say light out of light, not light from light. Now since I have said these things in advance, though you do not understand them with me, yet you pronounce them in some way, although they are not written. Do you not equally profess with me the word “of one substance” too, which you think is not contained in the Scriptures, except that there you had a way to cover your malign meanings in both with hidden fraud, so as to express this very thing with me in the sound of the voice, but still separate far the understanding of what is said? Just as those heretics too who deny the resurrection of the flesh say, to deceive the souls of the simple, “Woe to those who do not rise in the flesh.” But if you question them why they said this, when you know that they deny the resurrection of the flesh altogether, they will tell you: “Woe indeed to him who has not been baptized in the flesh, so that his soul, while it is in the body, may rise in it through baptism from the death of its sins, as from the tomb of its crimes.” For they defend only the resurrection of the soul in the flesh through the grace of the life-giving washing; for they exclude the salvation of the flesh itself. These too by a plausible confession seduce the minds of the innocent with hidden fraud. And as a deadly cup tempered with the sweetness of honey usually kills while its sweetness deceives, so too this evil, through the flattery of the ears, contaminating the minds of the hearers with a kind of stain, infects them with the contagion of an adhering vice.

Indeed, even now they could name homoousion in word like the rest, if they had a way to pervert it to another understanding with a crooked sense; but when they saw that they were shut in by this word, they wanted no mention at all made of it, lest either by professing it they should believe it, or, believing it, should seem to have professed it; excusing themselves with subtle ingenuity, either that it was not written, or that God ought not to be spoken of as in substance, lest he be believed corporeal. “For God,” they say, “makes substance to be, yet God himself is not to be reckoned in substance; since,” they say, “every substance receives contraries. But God, who can admit nothing different, ought not to be called substance.” I would forgive you if you said this simply, if you came to this question as a novice, if you were not the very one who always asserted that the Son of God was either from another substance or from things not existing; but since you are the same man who, often convicted on this point, often confessed, often denied, have more often been condemned for changing it in another way; who even now, stirring things up by force, ambition, and power, throw everything into confusion: how do you think I can forgive you, who go over the same things again and again? But lest this perversity seem to be condemned prejudged rather than examined, let me briefly answer you on this objection. You forbid substance to be named in God, as if everything called substance were held to be a thing of one kind. Do you not know that heavenly things consist in one way and earthly in another, and that even among heavenly and worldly things there is a great difference? For angels received the substances of their constitution in one way, and each of the Powers in another, as the Apostle says: “One is the glory of the sun, another the glory of the moon, another the glory of the stars.” So too in this world, as there are different kinds of things, so there are different bodies of living creatures, and each has the substance of its own kind, as the Apostle says: “Not all flesh is the same flesh.” If, then, the things made by God have different qualities of their substances, do you think that in God there is such a substance as one of these things that are made has, so that it can receive contraries? Far from it. For what is the substance of God? That very thing which God is: simple, singular, pure, mixed with no compound, clear, good, perfect, blessed, whole, wholly holy. Or do you think that what God is, is something empty and void? For it is blasphemy to say this, that he should be thought empty through whom all things came to be, who brought forth all things by the Word, ordered them by reason, perfected them by power, by whose nod and command all things are ruled and all things serve. And well you read written of God: “I am who I am”; and: “He who is has sent me.” And the Saviour Lord himself says: “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” So God is in substance his own essence, the knowledge of whom is eternal life, who is so great that he cannot be told; who is worthily esteemed only when he is said to be beyond esteem, whether you will or not. So that very thing which is, this is the substance of the thing that is maintained to be; which yet, as has been said, how great and of what kind it is can be neither conceived by the mind, nor estimated by sense, nor defined by the soul; provided only that it is established that what is believed to be, is; so that from that very thing which God is, the Son is, so that he is a true Son, and the Father is truly in the Son, and the Son in the Father. This will be homoousios, that is, of one substance with the Father, as the Lord himself says: “I in the Father and the Father in me”; and: “I and the Father are one”; and: “I came forth from the Father”; and: “He who sees me sees my Father too.” Not without reason, because the Son of God was born of God the Father; and therefore they are one in unity of substance and in majesty of deity, as Jeremiah too prophesied: “Who will stand in the substance of the Lord, and see the Word of the Lord?” And again: “If they had stood in my substance, and if they had heard my words, I would have turned them from their most evil pursuits.” And in Solomon: “My substance is my sweetness.”

Since, then, you recognize this unity of substance in the Father and the Son not only by prophetic but also by gospel authority, how do you say that homoousion is not found in the divine Scriptures, as if homoousion were anything other than what he says, “I came forth from God the Father,” and “I and the Father are one,” or what the prophets openly intimated of the substance of God? This is the reason for the name: that you should believe in a unity of substance in the Father and the Son, even though you cannot define the thing itself, which is indescribable; so that whether you say light from light, or word from word, or spirit from spirit, or Lord from Lord, whatever you say of him, you should yet believe the Father and the Son to be of one essence, and understand the Son to be from that very thing which the Father is. For if you make some comparison in him from the things that are seen, by the very unlikeness of the things you will show not a reason but bring in a wrangling of disputes, as it is written in his voice: “To whom will you compare me?” And therefore, for God, to whom nothing can be likened, let it suffice to believe what he himself is perceived to be, who wished himself to be believed, not pointed out. Indeed, if you wish to bring to some likeness in God the very thing that you profess with me, I do not know whether you can define more expressly what you have compared: for instance, when you say light from light, if you are forced to explain it by scrupulous narration, I ask how you believe light from light? As a lamp from a lamp, or as a sun from a sun, so that under this example you bring in either two lamps or two suns, as if two gods? Or do you mark as light from light the brightness of the light of the same lamp, or the radiance of the sun shining from the same sun, so as to liken the figure of the Father to the source of the light, and show the Son as the splendour of the radiance? as the prophet said of him: “With you is the fountain of life, and in your light we shall see light”; or Solomon, when he says: “He is the brightness of eternal light, and the spotless mirror of God’s majesty, and the image of his goodness”; or the Apostle here preached that our Saviour is the image of the invisible God, because the image of the sun is its light, which proceeds from the same sun. But it would take long to say how much can be answered to these things that breeds quarrels, which the Apostle forbids; since it is agreed that the light which God is cannot be estimated, grasped, or defined; nor can anything of the things in this world truly be compared with the divine majesty; because nothing of all the things that are seen or spoken can be estimated by a worthy likeness according to what God is, since he is greater than our very understandings and senses. Therefore he warned beforehand that you should believe the divinity of the substance, and recognize a true Son from a true Father, but should not inquire into the quality of the thing, because you cannot know of what kind or how great it is. For this the prophets, this the apostles preached.