On First Principles 1.2.1–1.2.13

First we must know that the nature of his deity in Christ, which is the only-begotten Son of the Father, is one thing, and the human nature which he took up in the last times for the sake of the dispensation is another. Therefore we must first see what the only-begotten Son of God is, who is called by many different names according to circumstances or the views of those who name him. For he is called Wisdom, as Solomon said: “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways, and for his works; before he made anything, before the ages he established me. In the beginning, before he made the earth, before he brought forth the springs of waters, before the mountains were made firm, and before all the hills, he begets me.” He is also called firstborn, as the Apostle said: “who is the firstborn of all creation.” Yet the firstborn is not by nature another than Wisdom, but one and the same. Indeed the apostle Paul also says: “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

Let no one think, however, that we are saying something without substance when we name him the Wisdom of God: that is, to give an example, that we understand Wisdom not as some wise living being but as something that makes people wise, offering and implanting itself in the minds of those who become capable of its powers and understanding. If, then, it has once been rightly accepted that the only-begotten Son of God is his Wisdom subsisting substantially, I do not know whether our mind ought to wander any further into suspecting that perhaps this very hypostasis (ὑπόστασις, that is, substance) of his has something bodily, since everything bodily is marked out by shape or colour or size. And who of sound mind ever looked for shape or colour or measurable size in wisdom by reason of its being wisdom? And how can anyone who knows how to understand or feel anything reverent about God think or believe that God the Father ever existed, even for a single moment, without the generation of this Wisdom? For he will say either that God was unable to beget Wisdom before he begot it, so that he afterwards begot into being what previously was not, or that he was able and, what it is impious to say of God, was unwilling to beget. Both are plainly absurd and impious to all: either that God advanced from being unable to being able, or that, though able, he held back and delayed begetting Wisdom. Therefore we know God as always the Father of his only-begotten Son, who is born of him and draws what he is from him, yet without any beginning: not only such a beginning as can be marked off by intervals of time, but not even that which the mind alone is accustomed to contemplate within itself and to behold, so to speak, with bare intellect and spirit. We must believe, therefore, that Wisdom was begotten beyond every beginning that can be spoken of or understood. In this very subsistence of Wisdom was present the whole power and shaping of the creation to come, both of the things that exist primarily and of those that follow as consequences, formed beforehand and arranged by the power of foreknowledge. On account of these very creatures, which had been as it were outlined and prefigured in Wisdom herself, Wisdom says through Solomon that she was created the beginning of the ways of God, since she contains in herself the beginnings, forms and species of the whole creation.

In the same way as we have understood Wisdom to be the beginning of the ways of God, and how she is said to be created, namely as forming beforehand and containing in herself the species and beginnings of the whole creation, in this way too she is to be understood to be the Word of God, because she discloses to all others, that is, to the whole creation, the meaning of the mysteries and secrets which are contained within the Wisdom of God; and she is called the Word because she is, as it were, the interpreter of the secrets of the mind. Hence that saying written in the Acts of Paul also seems to me rightly spoken, that “this is the Word, a living being.” But John, more loftily and gloriously, at the beginning of his Gospel, defining the Word as God by a proper definition, says: “And the Word was God, and this was in the beginning with God.” Let him who assigns a beginning to the Word of God or the Wisdom of God take care that he does not rather hurl his impiety against the unbegotten Father himself, since he denies that he was always Father, always begot the Word, and always had Wisdom, in all preceding times or ages or whatever else can be named.

This Son, then, is also the truth and the life of all things that are; and rightly. For how could the things that were made live except from life? Or how could the things that are exist in truth unless they came down from the truth? Or how could there be rational beings unless the Word or reason preceded them? Or how could they be wise unless there were wisdom? But since it was going to happen that some would fall away from life and bring death upon themselves by the very fact of falling away from life (for death is nothing other than departing from life), and since it would certainly not be fitting that those who had once been brought into being by God to live should perish utterly, there had to be, before death, a power such as would destroy the death to come; there had to be a resurrection, which was formed in our Lord and Saviour, a resurrection consisting in the very Wisdom and Word and life of God. Then, since it was going to happen that some of those who were created, because good was present in them not naturally, that is, substantially, but accidentally, would not be willing to remain always unchangeable and immutable and to continue always in the same goods with an even and measured balance, but would turn and change and fall from their state, the Word and Wisdom of God became the way. It is called the way because it leads to the Father those who walk along it. Whatever, then, we have said of the Wisdom of God will be fittingly applied and understood also of the Son of God as life, as the Word, as the truth, as the way and as the resurrection; for all these names are given from his works and powers, and in none of them can anything bodily be understood, even in the slightest notion, that might seem to denote size or shape or colour. For the children of human beings or of other animals that we see among us correspond to the seed of those by whom they were begotten, or of the mothers in whose womb they are formed and nourished, and have from them whatever it is that they take up and carry into this light when they come forth. But it is monstrous and unlawful to make God the Father, in the generation of his only-begotten Son and in the Son's subsistence, equal to any human being or other creature that begets; rather there must be something exceptional and worthy of God, to which no comparison at all can be found, not only among things but not even in thought or imagination, such that human thought could grasp how the unbegotten God becomes Father of the only-begotten Son. For his generation is as eternal and everlasting as the brightness that is generated from light. For he does not become Son from outside, through an adoption of the Spirit, but is Son by nature.

Let us see, however, how what we say is supported also by the authority of divine Scripture. The apostle Paul says that the only-begotten Son is “the image of the invisible God” and “the firstborn of all creation”; and writing to the Hebrews he says of him that he is “the brightness of the glory and the express figure of his substance.” We also find in the book called the Wisdom of Solomon a certain description of the Wisdom of God, written in this way: “For she is,” it says, “a vapour of the power of God, and a most pure emanation (ἀπόρροια) of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled can fall into her. For she is the brightness of eternal light, and the spotless mirror of the working of God, and the image of his goodness.” We say, then, as we said above, that Wisdom has her subsistence nowhere else than in him who is the beginning of all things, from whom she was also born. And this Wisdom, because he is the one who alone is Son by nature, is therefore also called only-begotten.

Let us now see what is to be understood also by his being called the image of the invisible God, so that through this too we may observe how God is rightly called the Father of his Son; and let us first consider those things which in human usage are commonly called images. Sometimes that is called an image which is painted or carved on some material, such as wood or stone. Sometimes the one who is born is called the image of the one who begot him, when the features of the begetter are in no way falsely reproduced in the likeness of the one born. I think, then, that the first example may be applied to the man who was made in the image and likeness of God, whom we shall consider more carefully, God willing, when we come to expound that passage in Genesis. With the second comparison may be compared the image of the Son of God, of whom we are now speaking, also in this respect, that he is the invisible image of the invisible God, just as according to the history we say that Seth his son is the image of Adam. For so it is written: “And Adam begot Seth according to his own image and according to his own form.” This image also contains the unity of nature and substance of the Father and the Son. For if whatever the Father does, the Son also does likewise, then in that the Son does all things just as the Father does, the image of the Father is formed in the Son, who is certainly born of him like an act of will proceeding from the mind. And therefore I think that the will of the Father ought to be sufficient for what the Father wills to subsist. For in willing he uses no other way than that which is brought forth by the counsel of the will. In this way, then, the subsistence of the Son also is begotten by him. This must be accepted above all by those who confess that nothing is unbegotten, that is, unborn, except God the Father alone. For care must be taken that no one fall into the absurd fables of those who picture to themselves certain emanations, so as to divide the divine nature into parts and, as far as in them lies, to divide God the Father; for even to suspect this lightly of an incorporeal nature is not only the height of impiety but also the extreme of folly, and it is not at all consistent with reason that a substantial division of an incorporeal nature could be conceived. Rather, then, as will proceeds from mind, and neither cuts off any part of the mind nor is separated or divided from it, in some such way is the Father to be thought to have begotten the Son, his image, so that, as he himself is invisible by nature, so he begot an image that is also invisible. For the Son is the Word, and therefore nothing perceptible to the senses is to be understood in him. He is Wisdom, and in wisdom nothing bodily is to be suspected. He is the true light, which enlightens every human being coming into this world, but he has nothing in common with the light of this sun. Our Saviour, therefore, is the image of the invisible God the Father: with respect to the Father himself he is the truth, but with respect to us, to whom he reveals the Father, he is the image through which we come to know the Father, whom no one knows except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him. And he reveals him by being himself understood; for by whomever he himself has been understood, the Father too is consequently understood, according to what he himself said: “He who has seen me has seen the Father also.”

But since we have introduced the saying of Paul about Christ, where he says that he is “the brightness of the glory of God and the express figure of his substance,” let us see what is to be understood from this. “God is light,” according to John. The brightness, then, of this light is the only-begotten Son, proceeding from him inseparably as brightness from light and enlightening the whole creation. For in accordance with what we have set out above, how he is “the way” and leads to the Father, how he is “the Word” interpreting and bringing forth to the rational creation the secrets of wisdom and the mysteries of knowledge, and how he is also “the truth” or “the life” or “the resurrection,” we ought consequently to understand also the work of the brightness; for through the brightness what light itself is, is understood and perceived. This brightness, offering itself more gently and softly to the frail and weak eyes of mortals, and gradually, as it were, teaching and accustoming them to bear the brightness of the light, when it has removed from them everything that clouds and hinders their sight, according to the Lord's saying, “Cast out the beam from your eye,” makes them capable of receiving the glory of the light, becoming in this too a kind of mediator between human beings and the light.

But since he is said by the Apostle to be not only the brightness of glory but also the express figure of his substance or subsistence, it does not seem to me an idle exercise of the understanding to consider how something other than the very substance of God, whatever that substance and subsistence is called, can be said to be the figure of his substance. See, then, whether perhaps the Son of God, who is called his Word and Wisdom, and who alone knows the Father and reveals him to whom he wills, that is, to those who are capable of his Word and Wisdom, may be said to express the figure of his substance and subsistence precisely in that he makes God understood and known; that is, when Wisdom first outlines in herself the things she wishes to reveal to others, by which God is known and understood by them, this may be called the express figure of the substance of God. And so that it may be understood still more fully how the Saviour is the figure of the substance or subsistence of God, let us also use an example which, although it does not fully or properly signify the matter we are treating, may be taken up for this one purpose only: to show that the Son, who was in the form of God, emptying himself, seeks through this very self-emptying to show us the fullness of the Godhead. Suppose, for instance, that a statue were made of such size as to fill the whole world, so that because of its immensity it could be seen by no one; and suppose another statue were made, similar in every respect in the shape of its limbs and the features of its face, in form and material, but without the immensity of size, so that those who could not view and behold the immense one might, on seeing this one, be confident that they had seen the other, because it preserved all the features of the limbs and face, and the very form and material, with a likeness entirely indistinguishable. By some such likeness the Son of God, emptying himself of equality with the Father and showing us the way to know him, is made the express figure of his substance, so that we who were unable to look upon the glory of pure light set in the greatness of his Godhead may, through his becoming brightness for us, find the way to behold the divine light by looking at the brightness. The comparison of the statues, since it belongs to material things, is admitted for no other purpose than this: that the Son of God, placed in the very small form of a human body, showed by the likeness of his works and power the immense and invisible greatness of the Father in himself, when he said to his disciples, “He who sees me sees the Father also,” and “I and the Father are one.” With these is also to be understood the similar saying, “The Father is in me, and I in the Father.”

Let us now see also how we should understand what we read written in the Wisdom of Solomon, who says this of wisdom: that she is “a kind of vapour of the power of God, and a most pure emanation (aporrhoea) of the glory of the Almighty, and the brightness of eternal light, and the spotless mirror of the working or power of God, and the image of his goodness.” In defining these things about God, he indicates by each of them certain things that are present in the Wisdom of God: for he names the power of God, and glory, and eternal light, and working, and goodness. He says, however, that wisdom is a vapour not of the glory of the Almighty, nor of eternal light, nor of the working of the Father, nor of his goodness, for it was not fitting that vapour be ascribed to any of these; but with complete propriety he says that wisdom is the vapour of the power of God. We must therefore understand the power of God, by which he is strong, by which he establishes or holds together or governs all things visible and invisible, which is sufficient for all things whose providence he exercises, to all of which he is present as if to one. Of this whole power, so great and so immeasurable, the vapour and, so to speak, the very vigour comes to be in its own subsistence; and although it proceeds from the power itself as will from mind, yet the will of God itself nonetheless becomes a power of God. There comes to be, then, another power subsisting in its own property, as the word of Scripture says, a kind of vapour of the first and unbegotten power of God, drawing from there what it is; and there is no time when it was not. For if anyone should wish to say that it did not exist before but came into subsistence afterwards, let him say why the Father who made it subsist did not do so before. And if he gives some beginning once for all, from which beginning this vapour proceeded from the power of God, we shall ask again why not even before that which he called the beginning; and so, always inquiring about what is earlier and ascending by the word of questioning, we shall arrive at this understanding: that since God was always able and willing, it was never fitting, nor could any reason exist, that he should not always have had the good that he willed. From this it is shown that this vapour of the power of God always existed, having no beginning but God himself. Nor was it fitting that there be any other beginning than God himself, from whom it both is and is born. And according to the Apostle, who says that “Christ is the power of God,” he is to be called not only the vapour of the power of God but power from power.

Let us look also at the saying that she is “a most pure emanation (aporrhoea) of the glory of the Almighty”; and let us first consider what “the glory of the Almighty” is, and then we shall perceive what its emanation is. Just as no one can be a father if there is no son, nor a lord without a possession or a servant, so neither can God be called almighty if there are none over whom he may exercise his power; and therefore, for God to be shown almighty, all things must subsist. For if anyone would have it that some ages or periods, or whatever else he wishes to call them, passed when the things that have been made were not yet made, he will undoubtedly show that in those ages or periods God was not almighty and afterwards became almighty, from the time when he began to have those over whom to exercise power; and in this way he will seem to have received some advance and to have come from worse to better, since there is no doubt that it is better for him to be almighty than not to be. And how will it not seem absurd that God, when he did not have some of those things which it was fitting for him to have, should afterwards through some advance have come to have them? But if there is never a time when he was not almighty, then the things through which he is called almighty must also necessarily subsist, and he must always have had those over whom he exercised power and which were governed by him as king or ruler. Of these we shall speak more fully in their proper places, when we come to discuss his creatures. But I think it necessary to give a warning now, even if briefly, since the question of wisdom is being discussed by us, how wisdom is the most pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty: lest anyone think that the title “Almighty” is prior in God to the birth of Wisdom, through which he is called Father, since Wisdom, which is the Son of God, is said to be the most pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty. Let anyone who would like to suspect this hear what Scripture most clearly declares, saying, “In wisdom you have made all things,” and what the Gospel teaches, that “all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made”; and let him understand from this that the title “Almighty” cannot be older in God than that of “Father,” for it is through the Son that the Father is almighty. But since he said that it is the glory of the Almighty of which Wisdom is the emanation, we are given to understand that Wisdom also has a share in the glory of omnipotence, Wisdom through whom God is called almighty. For through Wisdom, which is Christ, God holds power over all things, not only by the authority of one who rules but also by the willing service of his subjects. And so that you may know that the omnipotence of the Father and of the Son is one and the same, just as he is one and the same God and Lord with the Father, hear how John speaks in the Apocalypse: “These things says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” For who else is he who is to come but Christ? And just as no one ought to be offended that, though the Father is God, the Saviour is also God, so too, when the Father is called almighty, no one ought to be offended that the Son of God is also called almighty. For in this way what he himself says to the Father will be true: “All mine are yours and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them.” If, then, all things that are the Father's are Christ's, and among all things that are, the Father is also almighty, without doubt the only-begotten Son also must be almighty, so that the Son may have all that the Father has. “And I am glorified,” he says, “in them.” For “at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven, on earth and under the earth, and every tongue shall confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father.” The emanation of the glory of God, then, in so far as he is almighty, is Wisdom herself, pure and clear, glorified as the emanation of omnipotence or of glory. And so that what the glory of omnipotence is may be more clearly understood, we add this as well. God the Father is almighty because he holds power over all things, that is, over heaven and earth, sun, moon and stars, and all that is in them. And he exercises power over them through his Word, since at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven, on earth and under the earth. And if every knee bows to Jesus, without doubt it is Jesus to whom all things are subjected, and he it is who exercises power in all things and through whom all things are subjected to the Father; for it is through wisdom, that is, by word and reason, not by force and necessity, that all things are subjected. And therefore his glory lies in the very way he holds all things; and this is the most pure and clear glory of omnipotence, that all things are subjected by reason and wisdom, not by force and necessity. The “most pure and clear glory” of wisdom is said fittingly enough to distinguish it from that glory which is not purely or sincerely called glory. For every nature which is changeable and mutable, even if it is glorified in works of righteousness or wisdom, yet, by the very fact that it has righteousness or wisdom as an accident, and what is accidental can also fall away, its glory cannot be sincere and most clear. But the Wisdom of God, which is his only-begotten Son, since it is in all respects unchangeable and immutable, and every good in it is substantial and can never be changed or altered, therefore its glory is proclaimed pure and sincere.

Thirdly, wisdom is said to be the brightness of eternal light. The force of this we have already explained in what precedes, when we introduced the comparison of the sun and the brightness of its rays and showed, as far as we could, how this should be understood. We will add, however, this one point as well. That is properly called everlasting or eternal which neither had a beginning of its existence nor can ever cease to be what it is. This is indicated in John when he says that “God is light.” And his Wisdom is the brightness of his light, not only in that he is light but also in that he is everlasting light, so that his Wisdom is the eternal and everlasting brightness. If this is fully understood, it clearly declares that the subsistence of the Son comes down from the Father himself, but not in time, nor from any other beginning except, as we have said, from God himself.

Wisdom is also named the spotless mirror of the ἐνέργεια, that is, of the working, of God. We must first understand, then, what the working of the power of God is: it is a kind of vigour, so to speak, by which the Father works, whether when he creates, or provides, or judges, or disposes and dispenses each thing in its own time. Just as in a mirror the image formed through the mirror moves or acts with the very same acts and movements, deviating in nothing, as all the movements by which the one who looks into the mirror moves or acts, so too Wisdom wishes to be understood of herself, when she is named the spotless mirror of the Father's power and working; just as the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Wisdom of God, declares of himself the works, saying, “Whatever the Father does, these the Son also does likewise”; and again he says that “the Son can do nothing of himself, except what he sees the Father doing.” Since, then, the Son in no way at all differs or varies from the Father in the power of his works, and the work of the Son is not other than the Father's, but one and the same movement, so to speak, is in all, therefore he named him a spotless mirror, so that by this no dissimilarity whatever of the Son to the Father may be understood. How, indeed, can the things said by some about the likeness or imitation of a disciple to his master, or that the Son makes in bodily matter what had first been formed by the Father in spiritual substances, be consistent with this, when in the Gospel the Son is said to do not similar things, but the same things in like manner?

It remains to inquire what the image of his goodness is. In this, I think, it is fitting to understand the same things that we expressed above about the image formed through a mirror. For the original goodness is without doubt the Father, from whom the Son is born; and he, being in all respects the image of the Father, will without doubt fittingly be called also the image of his goodness. For there exists in the Son no other, second goodness besides that which is in the Father. Hence the Saviour himself also rightly says in the Gospel that “No one is good but one, God the Father,” so that by this it may be understood that the Son is not of another goodness but of that alone which is in the Father, of which he is rightly called the image, because he is from nowhere else than from that original goodness itself, lest another goodness than that which is in the Father should seem to be in the Son. Nor is there any dissimilarity or difference of goodness in the Son. Therefore it should not be thought a kind of blasphemy that it is said, “No one is good but one, God the Father,” as if it were thought that either Christ or the Holy Spirit is therefore denied to be good; but, as we said above, the original goodness is to be understood in God the Father, from whom the Son is born and the Holy Spirit proceeds; and they without doubt reproduce in themselves the nature of his goodness, which is in that fountain from which the Son is born and the Holy Spirit proceeds. Now if any other things are called good in the Scriptures, whether an angel, or a man, or a servant, or a treasure, or a good heart, or a good tree, all these are said by an extended use, since they contain in themselves a goodness that is accidental, not substantial. It would be a great task, and one for another work or time, to gather all the names of the Son of God: for example, how he is the true light, or the door, or righteousness, or sanctification, or redemption, and countless others, and to explain for what reasons, or from what powers or dispositions, each of them is given. But content with what we have discussed above, let us go on to investigate the rest as well.