On the Reason of Faith

For people reborn through faith, sanctified according to the form of the gospel in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and hoping through this confession for the heavenly kingdom, the Apostle said that nothing is more useful than that they should care for good works. For so he writes to Titus: “And concerning these things I want you to insist, that those who believe in God may take care for good works. These things,” he says, “are good and useful to people. But avoid foolish questions and genealogies and quarrels and disputes about the law; for they are useless and vain.” In writing this the blessed Apostle already then foresaw that there would be people who, through curiosity and useless questions, would neglect the care of good works and destroy the peace which the Lord had left to his church. For people who, while they try to be wise about lofty things, are not allowed to understand even humble ones, forgetting the Apostle’s saying, “Do not be high-minded, but fear,” have lost even what is lawful while they presume on what is unlawful. These are the ones who, though they cannot gather and grasp with their mind even the structure of heaven and earth, strive to grasp and measure God himself, the maker and builder; and him whom they ought simply and only to adore through the greatness of his works and the immensity of so many things, they put in question, and dispute about the quality and the quantity of his mystery, saying: How great is the Father? Of what kind is the Son? Of what sort is the Holy Spirit? O man, not yet knowing yourself, do you dare to measure divine things?

And indeed I say nothing of Sabellius the Patripassian, who with foolish presumption dared to say that the Father himself is the one who is the Son, and that he is also the Holy Spirit; and that the Trinity is so in name only, not also in truth, and does not subsist in persons but only in naming: and so he confounds everything, since he imagines that the Father himself took a body and suffered. I say nothing of Photinus, who, hearing of the incarnation of the only-begotten Son of God, his humility, and that passion which brings us salvation, thought him only a man; but denied that he is God, which he ought to have recognized from his very works: forgetting the saying of the Apostle, who says, “That though Christ was in the form of God, he took the form of a servant,” to give us, as slaves of sin, the truest freedom. And to the Corinthians: “You know,” he says, “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that for our sake he became poor, though he was rich, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” I say nothing, then, either of Sabellius or of Photinus, because they have received from almost all the churches the sentence their error deserved.

You have asked me to say a little about this heresy which now slanders the catholic faith; about this heresy, that is, which arose with Arius as its author. For he was not content with the words of the gospel and the preaching of the apostles, which indeed proclaim the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; nor did he deign to believe, as is fitting, that the Father has a Son and the Son truly has a Father: but when the unhappy man stretched himself out and wished to inquire how and in what way God could beget, not grasping the manner, because it cannot be comprehended, he fell into the error of denying both the Father and the Son. He denies the Father in this way: he says that he could not beget from himself a proper and true Son. And he denies the Son in this way: he says that he was made from elsewhere, from things not existing, rather than begotten; and that he is a certain creature who deserved, because of love, to be called Son; but that he is not truly a Son begotten from the Father; and hence it is that he imagined him to be of another substance, so that he might not be believed to be at all a true Son of the Father. Against this perversity of his and new teaching, then, the synod of Nicaea was held, where, all the Scriptures having been brought together and gone through, the truth was made manifest and written down. For the Son, whom Arius had said was from elsewhere and not from the Father, nor from the substance of the Father, that is, from that very thing which God is, our holy fathers confessed to be born from the Father, that is, from 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,” so that no difference at all may be believed in the Son. For truly, if he is the true Son of God and truly begotten from God the Father, he is surely not to be believed of another substance, but of that of him whose Son he is: so that as the Father is God, so the Son is God; and as the Father is light, so the Son is light.

But this very profession, by which the Son is believed to be of the same substance, offends some, and the holy profession is twisted by slanders. For they interpret “of one substance” as if we said that the Father is divided, and the Son is a part of the Father, and God the Father is diminished in the Son; or at least that the Son keeps the unity of the Father’s substance by a flowing out and derivation. Far be it not only from Christian minds but even from Christian ears that anything of this kind should come into our mind. But we believe the Son to be of one substance in this way: we believe that the Father, perfect in his eternity and remaining in his impassibility, so begot the Son that he felt no passion or diminution of his nature and his majesty, but he, perfect, begot from himself a perfect one before all ages, a true, almighty Son, through whom indeed all things were made, without whom nothing was made: so that he may be believed to be the true Father of his only-begotten Son, and the Son the true Son of the Father, not confused but distinct; yet the Son has in himself all things that are the Father’s, as he himself says in the gospel: “All things that the Father has are mine.” What are those “all things”? Surely power, surely might, goodness, incorruption, glory and eternity, as the Father has them. Otherwise, if these were not in the Son, I fear to say it, the Father would seem to have degenerated in the Son. And if it is so, that the Son is thought degenerate, how is there the same honour, as the Lord himself says, “that all may honour the Son as they honour the Father”? This the Lord requires, this the faithful render: they are not scandalized at the humility of the Son, the Saviour, nor at his words which he spoke as man, nor at the sufferings he deigned to fulfil for the salvation of the world: but through these very things they feel that they owe Christ more thanks and more honour: so that even if it were not commanded in the gospel that all honour the Son as they honour the Father, the more faithful would do this of their own accord: because he who deigned to humble himself had to be exalted, as it is written: “Whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

But when the Father says, “This is my Son, hear him,” and the Son says, “That all may honour the Son as they honour the Father,” what blindness of minds is it, leaving off honour, to devise insults? What forgetfulness of hope is it to think Christ weak and lesser and contemptible, who has conferred on us strength and greatness and glory according to the will of his Father? Believe me: the honour of the Son is the dignity of the Father; the more you pay to the only-begotten, the more you will magnify the glory of the Father. A good Father does not begrudge glory to his Son; for all the Son’s glory returns to the Father. This is the catholic mind, this the devotion of the faithful, this the zeal of the saints. In accordance with this they understand all the sayings and deeds of the Saviour, and speak with understanding. Nor are they hindered at all from this devotion by those things which seem to show the Lord’s will, for example: “The Father is greater than I”; and, “I did not come to do my own will”; and, “The Son can do nothing of himself”; and many others of this kind: all of which do not weaken or depreciate the Son but distinguish him from the Father. For these too are set down so that his true divinity may not be denied: “I came forth from God the Father”; and, “I am in the Father, and the Father in me”; “I and the Father are one”; and, “Whoever sees me has seen the Father also”; and, “As the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.”

Nor do those things scandalize a faithful soul in which the Lord is reported to have hungered, slept, wept; then, sorrowful even to death, the cross, the passion, the burial: for these were written and done so that examples of endurance might be given and his true incarnation might be known. For in that the Lord is said to have hungered, understand that he took a true body. But in that he satisfies five thousand men with five loaves and two fishes, recognize his true divinity. Certainly when he says, “I am the living bread who came down from heaven,” it does not enter our mind that the bread is believed to hunger. So too must sleep be understood: for as the truth of the body is known through sleep, so through his at once commanding the winds and waves his true divinity is proved. For in that he shed tears over Lazarus, the suspicion of a phantom is removed; for tears are fluids of a true body. But that he says, “Lazarus, come out,” and at once he who already stank, the earth opening, came out alive, is a great sign of his divinity. And that saying, “My soul is sorrowful even to death,” can be understood from this very raising of Lazarus, how it ought to be taken: for the divinity did not fear death, but showed human feeling through sorrow of soul. The cross likewise, the passion and burial are disposed of by one or another saying of the Lord, so that no powerlessness or weakness may be ascribed to him. When he says to the Jews, “Destroy this temple” (he was speaking of his body), “and I will raise it in three days.” And again he says: “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again.” If he raises the temple of his body, if he has power to lay down his life through the passion and take it up again through the resurrection, the opinion of weakness in Christ ceases, where the height of so great a power is declared.

Everything, then, is to be understood piously; everything is to be treated with honour; both are to be confessed in the Lord: both the form in which he always was and the form of a servant, which was taken for the sake of servants, are to be believed; both passion according to the flesh and impassibility according to the divinity; lest we be judged either impious or ungrateful. For he who denies that the Son of God, according to what he is, is impassible, and says he is unlike God the Father, is impious. And he who disdains to confess his sufferings according to the flesh is ungrateful. Let us glory, then, in the cross of Christ, as Paul used to glory: “Far be it from me,” he says, “to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Let us confess the unity, so that we may not be separated: “For if we have died,” as the Apostle says, “we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him. If we deny, he also will deny us.” If we do not believe what he himself says, “I and the Father are one,” he remains faithful, he cannot deny himself; because he is in the glory of God the Father; because he lives with the Father; because he reigns with the Father in one and the same rule. As the Apostle says, when he was speaking of every unchaste, impure and greedy person: “He will not be an heir,” he says, “in the kingdom of Christ and of God”; he spoke of one kingdom both of Christ and of God; because the will of the Father and of the Son is one, one working together, in short one grace and the same government: as the same teacher of the Gentiles teaches, writing: “Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.” And again: “May our God and Father himself and the Lord Jesus direct our way to you.” He did not say “may they direct,” lest he introduce a difference of will or power between the Father and the Son; but he said “may he direct,” to show rather the unity. With this faith, then, and with the same words, let us too pray that the one grace, the one peace, and also the one government of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit may always protect and direct us. These few things, as a little commentary, I could not refuse, since you asked that they be written for you. I trust that for faithful souls, though they are brief, they will be able to give full joy in God.