On First Principles 2.4.1–2.5.4

That the God of the law and the prophets is one, and is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. These things having been briefly set out in order as far as we could, it follows, according to what we proposed at the beginning, that we should also refute those who think that the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is another God besides him who gave Moses the answers of the law or sent the prophets, who is the God of the fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. For we must first be made firm in this article of faith. We must consider, then, what is frequently said in the Gospels and added to each of the deeds of our Lord and Saviour: “That what was spoken by this or that prophet might be fulfilled,” since it is plain that the prophets belong to the God who made the world. From this very sequence it is concluded that he who sent the prophets himself foretold what was to be foretold about Christ. And there is no doubt that it was not someone foreign to him, but his own Father, who foretold these things. And what else does the fact that examples from the Old Testament are frequently brought forward by the Saviour or by his apostles indicate but that authority is given to the ancient writings by the Saviour and his disciples? And also what the Saviour says to his disciples when calling them to kindness, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect, who makes his sun rise on the good and the evil, and sends rain on the just and the unjust,” suggests a most evident understanding even to a person of slight intelligence: that he proposes to his disciples for imitation no other God than the maker of heaven and the giver of rain. And when he says that those who pray should say, “Our Father who art in heaven,” what else does it seem to show but that God is to be sought in the better parts of the world, that is, of his creation? And when, laying down excellent rules about oaths, he says that one should not swear by heaven, because it is the throne of God, nor by the earth, because it is the footstool of his feet, does he not seem most plainly to agree with the prophetic words, “Heaven is my throne, and the earth the footstool of my feet”? And also when he cast out of the temple those who sold sheep and oxen and doves, and overturned the tables of the money-changers, saying, “Take these things away from here, and do not make my Father's house a house of trade,” he undoubtedly called his Father him to whose name Solomon had built the magnificent temple. And what he says, “Have you not read what was said by God to Moses: I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; he is not the God of the dead but of the living?” teaches us most plainly that he called the God of the patriarchs, because they were holy and living, the God of the living, namely him who had said in the prophets, “I am God, and there is no God besides me.” For if the Saviour, knowing that the God of Abraham is he who is written in the law, and that he is the same who says, “I am God, and there is no God besides me,” acknowledges as his Father that very one who does not know of another God above him, as the heretics think, he absurdly declares to be his Father one who does not know a higher God. But if he does not indeed fail to know, but deceives in saying that there is no other God besides him, it is much more absurd if he acknowledges his Father to be a liar. From all this the mind is led to this conclusion, that he knows no other Father than God, the founder and creator of all things.

It would take long to gather testimonies from all the passages of the Gospels by which one and the same God of the law and the Gospels is taught. We shall touch briefly, however, on the Acts of the Apostles also, where Stephen and the apostles direct their prayers to the God who made heaven and earth and who spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets, calling him the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God who led his people out of the land of Egypt. These statements undoubtedly direct our mind most evidently to faith in the Creator, and implant love for him in those who have learned these things about him piously and faithfully; as the Saviour himself, when he was asked which was the greatest commandment of all in the law, answered, saying: “You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul and with your whole mind. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” And he added that on these two commandments hang the whole law and the prophets. How, then, does he commend this commandment above all commandments to the one whom he was instructing and bringing into discipleship, a commandment by which love would undoubtedly be won for the God of his law, since these things had been proclaimed by the law in these very words? But let it be granted, against all these most evident proofs, that the Saviour says of some other God, I know not who, “You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart,” and the rest that was said. Then how, if the law and the prophets belong to the Creator, as they say, that is, to another God than the one he calls good, will what he added seem consistent, that the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments? For how will what is alien and foreign to God hang on God? And Paul, saying, “I thank my God, whom I serve in my spirit from my forefathers with a pure conscience,” shows clearly that he came not to some new God but to Christ. For what other forefathers of Paul must be understood but those of whom he himself says, “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I”? And does not the very opening of his Epistle to the Romans carefully show the same to those who know how to understand Paul's letters, namely which God Paul preaches? For he says: “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called an apostle, set apart for the Gospel of God, which he had promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures concerning his Son, who was made to him of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was predestined Son of God in power according to the spirit of sanctification by the resurrection of the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord,” and so on. And there is what he says: “You shall not muzzle the ox that treads out the grain. Is it for oxen that God cares? Or does he say it entirely for our sake? For it was written for our sake, because he who ploughs should plough in hope, and he who threshes in hope of receiving the fruit.” In this he shows evidently that the God who gave the law says for our sake, that is, for the apostles' sake, “You shall not muzzle the ox that treads out the grain,” since his care was not for oxen but for the apostles who preached the Gospel of Christ. Elsewhere too Paul himself, embracing the promise of the law, says: “Honour your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, that it may be well with you and you may live long upon the earth, the good land which the Lord your God will give you.” By this he undoubtedly declares that the law, the God of the law, and his promises are pleasing to him.

But since the defenders of this heresy are sometimes accustomed to deceive the hearts of the simpler by certain deceptive sophisms, I think it not absurd also to set out what they are accustomed to bring forward in their assertions, and to refute their trickery and lies. They say, then: It is written, “No one has ever seen God”; but that God whom Moses preaches was seen both by Moses himself and before him by his fathers; whereas he who is proclaimed by the Saviour has been seen by no one at all. Let us, then, ask them in our turn whether they say that this one whom they confess as God, and say is other than the creator God, is visible or invisible. And if they say that he is visible, besides being shown to contradict the statement of Scripture which says of the Saviour that he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, they will also fall into the absurdity of saying that God is corporeal. For nothing can be seen except through shape, size and colour, which are the special properties of bodies. And if God is declared to be a body, then, since every body is from matter, God too will be found to be from matter; and if he is from matter, and matter is undoubtedly corruptible, then according to them God will be corruptible. Again we shall ask them: Was matter made, or is it unbegotten, that is, unmade? And if they say that it is unmade, that is, unbegotten, we shall ask them whether one part of matter is God and another part the world. But if they reply that matter was made, it will undoubtedly follow that they confess that he whom they call God was made, which neither their reasoning nor ours admits. But they will say: God is invisible. And what will you do? If you say that he is invisible by nature, he will not be visible to the Saviour either. Nay rather, God the Father of Christ is said to be seen, since “He who sees the Son,” he says, “sees the Father also.” This certainly presses you hard, but by us it is more rightly understood not of seeing but of understanding. For he who has understood the Son will understand the Father also. In this way, then, Moses too must be thought to have seen God, not beholding him with fleshly eyes but understanding him with the sight of the heart and the perception of the mind, and this only in some part. For it is plain that he who gave the answers to Moses says, “You shall not see my face, but my back parts.” These words are certainly to be understood with that mystery with which divine sayings ought to be understood, the old wives' fables being rejected and despised which are invented by the ignorant about the front and back parts of God. Let no one think that we have held anything impious in saying that the Father is not visible even to the Saviour: let him consider what distinction we use in dealing with the heretics. For we have said that it is one thing to see and be seen, and another to know and be known, or to recognize and be recognized. To see and to be seen belongs to bodies; and this will certainly not be fittingly applied to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in relation to one another. For the nature of the Trinity exceeds the mode of vision, while granting to those who are in a body, that is, to all the other creatures, the quality of seeing one another; but to incorporeal and principally intellectual nature nothing else belongs but to know and be known, as the Saviour himself also declares, saying: “No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.” It is plain, then, that he did not say, “No one has seen the Father except the Son,” but “No one knows the Father except the Son.”

But if, because of what is said in the Old Testament, that God is angry or repents, or where any other passion of human feeling is indicated, they think material is offered them to refute us, affirming that God is to be thought wholly impassible and free of all such feelings, it must be shown to them that similar things are found also in the parables of the Gospel, when it says that he who planted a vineyard and leased it to tenants, who killed the servants sent to them and at last killed even the son sent to them, is said in his anger to have taken the vineyard from them, to have given the wicked tenants over to a wicked destruction, and to have handed the vineyard over to other tenants who would render him the fruit in its season. And also those citizens who, when the master of the house had set out to receive a kingdom for himself, sent envoys after him saying, “We do not want him to reign over us”: the master of the house, having obtained the kingdom, returned and in anger ordered them to be killed before him, and burned their city with fire. But we, whether in the Old Testament or in the New, when we read of the anger of God, do not take what is said according to the letter, but seek the spiritual understanding in such things, so as to think as it is worthy to understand of God. We showed, as far as we could, according to the smallness of our understanding, how this ought to be understood when we were expounding that little verse of the second Psalm in which it says: “Then he will speak to them in his anger, and in his fury he will trouble them.”

But since some are also troubled by this, that the leaders of this heresy seem to themselves to have made a certain division, by which they said that the just is one thing and the good another, and have applied this division even to the Godhead, affirming that the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is a good God but not just, and that the God of the law and the prophets is just but not good, I think it necessary to reply to this question as briefly as I can. They think, then, that goodness is a disposition such that it ought to do good to all, even if the one to whom the benefit is given is unworthy and does not deserve to obtain good; but, as it seems to me, they have not used this definition rightly, thinking that good is not done to one on whom something harsh or painful is inflicted. Justice, on the other hand, they thought to be a disposition that renders to each according to his deserts. But here again they do not interpret the sense of their own definition rightly. For they think that the just does evil to the evil and good to the good, that is, that according to their sense the just man does not seem to wish well to the evil but is borne against them with a kind of hatred. And they gather any places they find in the Scriptures of the Old Testament where the narrative relates, for example, the punishments of the flood and of those who are related to have perished in it, or how Sodom and Gomorrah are laid waste by a rain of fire and sulphur, or how all fall in the desert for their sins, so that none of those who had set out from Egypt is found to enter the land of promise except Joshua and Caleb. From the New Testament, on the other hand, they gather words of mercy and kindness by which the disciples are instructed by the Saviour, and by which it seems to be declared that no one is good except the one God the Father; and on this basis they have dared to call the Father of the Saviour Jesus Christ good, but say that the God of the world is another, whom they were pleased to call just but not also good.

From them I think we must first demand whether, according to their definition, they can show the creator to be just in punishing according to their deserts either those who perished at the time of the flood, or the Sodomites, or those who had set out from Egypt, when we sometimes see far more wicked and criminal outrages committed than those for which the people we mentioned were destroyed, and yet we do not see each sinner paying the penalty he deserves. Will they say that he who was once just has become good? Or will they rather think that he is just now, but bears human offences patiently, whereas then he was not even just, when he destroyed innocent little children and infants at the breast together with the monstrous and impious giants? But they think so because they do not know how to hear anything beyond the letter; otherwise let them show how it is just according to the letter that the sins of parents be repaid into the bosom of their children to the third and fourth generation, and on their children's children after them. By us, however, such things are not understood according to the letter, but, as Ezekiel taught when he called it a parable, we seek what the parable itself signifies inwardly. They must also show how he is just and renders to each according to his merits who punishes the earthly and the devil, when they have committed nothing worthy of punishment. For they could not do anything good, if, according to these people, they were of an evil and lost nature. And as to their calling him a judge, he seems a judge not so much of deeds as of natures; since if an evil nature cannot do good, neither can a good one do evil. Then again, he whom they call good, if he is good to all, is undoubtedly good also to those who are to perish; and why does he not save them? If he does not will to, he will no longer be good; if he wills and cannot, he will not be almighty. Let them rather hear in the Gospels of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ preparing fire for the devil and his angels. And how, by their way of thinking, will this work, so penal and so grim, seem to belong to the good God? The Saviour himself too, the Son of the good God, testifies in the Gospels and says that “if the signs and wonders had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would long ago have repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.” And when he had come very near to those very cities and had entered their territory, why, I ask, does he avoid entering those cities and granting them an abundance of signs and wonders, if it was certain that through these deeds they would repent in sackcloth and ashes? Since he does not do this, he undoubtedly leaves them to destruction, though the very word of the Gospel indicates that they were not of an evil and lost nature, since it shows that they could have repented. And also in a certain parable of the Gospel, the king, coming in to see those reclining at table who had been invited, saw a certain man not clothed in wedding garments, and said to him: “Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?” Then he said to the servants: “Bind his hands and feet and cast him out into the outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Let them tell us who this king is who came in to see those reclining and, finding among them one in dirty garments, orders him to be bound by his servants and thrust into the outer darkness. Is he the one they call just? And how had he ordered both good and bad to be invited, and not commanded his servants to inquire into their merits? By this is certainly shown the disposition not of someone just, as these people say, who repays according to merit, but of a kindness that makes no distinction among all. But if this must be understood of the good God, that is, of Christ or the Father of Christ, what else do they object against the just judgment of God? Indeed, what charge do they bring against the God of the law that is comparable to this, that he should order one who had been invited by the servants he had sent to call good and bad to be bound hand and foot and thrown into the outer darkness for his rather dirty garments?

These things which we have taken from the authority of the Scriptures ought to suffice for refuting what the heretics are accustomed to allege. It will not seem unfitting, however, if we deal with them briefly also from reason and its consequences. We ask them, then, whether they know what account is held among human beings of virtue and wickedness, and whether it seems consistent that we speak of virtues in God, or, as they think, in these two gods. Let them answer this too: whether goodness seems to them to be a virtue, which I think they will undoubtedly admit. What will they say of justice? Never, surely, as it seems to me, will they be so foolish as to deny that justice is a virtue. If, then, goodness is a virtue and justice is a virtue, justice is undoubtedly goodness. But if they say that justice is not good, it remains that it is either evil or indifferent. To answer those who say that justice is evil I think absurd; for I shall seem to be answering senseless words or people out of their minds. For how will that seem evil which can render good to the good, as even they themselves admit? But if they say it is indifferent, it follows that, since justice is indifferent, temperance and prudence and all the other virtues are also held to be indifferent. And what shall we answer to Paul, who says: “If there is any virtue, if any praise, think on these things which you have learned and received and heard and seen in me”? Let them learn, then, by searching the divine Scriptures, what the individual virtues are, and not deceive by saying that the God who renders to each according to his merit renders evil to the evil out of hatred of the wicked, and not because those who have sinned need to be healed by harsher medicines, and that for this reason he applies to them things which, with a view to their amendment, seem for the present to bring a sense of pain. They do not read what is written of the hope of those who perished in the flood, about which hope Peter himself says in his first Epistle: “For Christ died indeed in the flesh, but was made alive in the spirit; in which he went and preached to those spirits who were held in prison, who had once been unbelieving, when they awaited the patience of God in the days of Noah, while the ark was being built, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water; and baptism, in a similar form, now saves you also.” As for Sodom and Gomorrah, let them tell us whether they believe that the prophetic words belong to the creator God, namely to him who is related to have rained a shower of fire and sulphur upon them. What does the prophet Ezekiel say of them? “Sodom,” he says, “will be restored to its former state.” And in afflicting those who are worthy of punishment, does he not afflict them for their good? He also says to Chaldea: “You have coals of fire; sit upon them; they will be a help to you.” And about those who fell in the desert, let them hear what is related in the seventy-seventh Psalm, which is entitled “of Asaph”; for it says: “When he slew them, then they sought him.” It does not say that when some were killed, others sought him, but that the death of those who were killed was such that, when put to death, they sought God. From all this it is established that the God of the law and of the Gospels is one and the same, just and good, and that he does good with justice and punishes with goodness; because neither good without just nor just without good can show the dignity of the divine nature. We shall add this too, as their cunning compels us: if the just is something other than the good, since evil is the contrary of good and unjust the contrary of just, then undoubtedly the unjust will be something other than the evil; and just as among you the just man is not good, so neither will the unjust man be evil; and again, just as the good man is not just, so the evil man will not be unjust. But to whom does it not seem absurd that to the good God there should be a contrary, the evil one, while to the just God, whom they call inferior to the good, there should be no contrary? For there is not, as there is Satan who is called evil, another who is called unjust. What then? Let us cut away what we are defending. For they will not be able to say that the evil one is not also unjust, and the unjust evil. And if in these contraries injustice inheres inseparably in evil, or evil in injustice, undoubtedly the good also will be inseparable from the just, and the just from the good; so that, as we speak of one and the same wickedness of malice and injustice, so we may hold one and the same virtue of goodness and justice.

But again they call us back to the Scriptures, bringing forward that most famous question of theirs. For they say: It is written that “a good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor a bad tree good fruit; for the tree is known by its fruit.” What then do they say? What kind of tree the law is, is declared by its fruits, that is, by the words of its precepts. For if the law is found to be good, then undoubtedly he who gave it is believed to be a good God; but if it is just rather than good, the lawgiver God will also be thought just. The apostle Paul, using no circumlocution, says: “The law therefore is good, and the commandment holy and just and good.” From this it is plain that Paul had not learned the letters of these people who separate the just from the good, but had been instructed by that God and enlightened by the Spirit of that God who is at once holy and good and just; and speaking by his Spirit he said that the commandment of the law was holy and just and good. And to show more evidently that goodness is present in the commandment over and above justice and holiness, repeating the word, he put forward goodness alone in place of these three, saying: “Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means.” For knowing that goodness is the genus of the virtues, and justice or holiness species of that genus, having named genus and species together above, in repeating the word he turned it back to the genus alone. And in what follows: “Sin,” he says, “worked death in me through what is good.” In this he concludes by the genus what he had set out above by the species. In this way too must be understood the saying: “The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good, and the evil man out of the evil brings forth evil.” For here too he took the genus in good and evil, showing undoubtedly that in the good man there is justice and temperance and prudence and piety and everything that can be called or understood as good. Likewise also he spoke of the evil man, who would undoubtedly be unjust and impure and impious and all the things that disfigure the evil man in his parts. For just as without these wickednesses no one thinks anyone an evil man, nor can he be evil, so it is certain that without those virtues no one will be thought good. There remains to them also what they think was given them as a shield of their own, that the Lord said in the Gospel, “No one is good but one, God the Father,” saying that this is the proper name of the Father of Christ, who is nevertheless other than God the creator of all, to whom, the creator, he gave no title of goodness. Let us see, then, whether in the Old Testament the God of the prophets and the creator of the world and lawgiver is not called good. And what of what is said in the Psalms: “How good is the God of Israel to the upright in heart!” and: “Let Israel now say that he is good, that his mercy is for ever”? And in the Lamentations of Jeremiah it is written: “The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him.” As, then, God is frequently called good in the Old Testament, so too the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is called just in the Gospels. Indeed, in the Gospel according to John our Lord himself, praying to the Father, says: “Just Father, and the world has not known you.” Lest perhaps they say that because of his taking flesh he called the creator of the world Father and named him just, they are excluded by the words that immediately follow; for he says, “And the world has not known you.” For according to them the world is ignorant only of the good God, since it most truly recognizes its own maker, as the Lord himself says that the world loves what is its own. Plainly, then, he whom they think the good God is said in the Gospels to be just. At leisure it will be possible to gather more testimonies where in the New Testament the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is called just, and where in the Old Testament the creator of heaven and earth is called good, so that the heretics, convicted by more testimonies, may perhaps at some time be ashamed.