Against Praxeas 19

If any seize on this saying of his too as an argument for singleness, “I stretched out the heavens alone,” he means alone with regard to the other powers, guarding in advance against the conjectures of the heretics who will have it that the world was built by angels and various powers, and who make the Creator himself either an angel or someone suborned for other external things, such as the works of the world, and even ignorant of them. Or if he stretched out the heavens alone in the sense in which these heretics perversely presume, as a single individual, then that Wisdom is not admitted who says, “When he prepared the heavens, I was present with him.” And Isaiah said, “Who has known the mind of the Lord, and who has been his counselor?”: none, that is, except Wisdom, who was present with him, yet in him, and fitted all things together with him, not ignorant of what he was doing. And by “except Wisdom” he means except the Son, who is the wisdom and power of God according to the apostle, and who alone knows the Father's mind. For “who knows the things that are in God, except the Spirit who is in him?” Not one outside him. There was, then, one who made God not alone, except alone apart from the others. Then the Gospel too would have to be rejected, which says that all things were made by God through the Word and without him nothing was made. And unless I am mistaken it is written elsewhere too: “By his Word the heavens were made firm, and all their power by his Spirit.” And the Word, the power and wisdom of God, will himself be the Son. So if all things were made through the Son, then in stretching out the heavens too through the Son he did not stretch them out alone, except in the sense in which he is alone apart from the others. And indeed he immediately speaks of the Son: “Who else has overthrown the signs of the ventriloquists and the divinations from the heart, turning the wise backward and making their counsel foolish, establishing the words of his Son?”; that is, by saying, “This is my beloved Son; hear him.” So by adding the Son he is himself the interpreter of how he stretched out the heavens alone: alone, that is, with the Son, as he is one with the Son. Accordingly, this will also be the Son's saying: “I stretched out the heavens alone”; because the heavens were made firm by the Word, because the heavens were prepared with Wisdom assisting in the Word, and all things were made through the Word, it is fitting that the Son also alone stretched out the heavens, since he alone ministered to the Father's work. It will be he too who says, “I am the first, and for what is to come, I am.” The Word was first of all things, of course: “In the beginning was the Word,” in which beginning he was put forth by the Father. But the Father, having no beginning, as put forth by no one, as unbegotten, cannot be seen as “first.” He who was always alone could have no order. So if they have thought that the Father and the Son must be believed to be the same in order to vindicate one God, his oneness is safe, since, though he is one, he also has a Son, who is equally included in the same Scriptures. If they do not want the Son to be reckoned second to the Father, lest the second should make two gods be spoken of, we have shown that two gods and two lords are also mentioned in Scripture; and yet, lest they be scandalized at that, we have given the reason why they are not called two gods or lords, but why the Father and the Son are two; and this not from separation of substance but from arrangement, since we declare the Son undivided and inseparate from the Father, other not in condition but in degree; who, though he is called God when named by himself, does not therefore make two gods but one, by the very fact that he has to be called God from the unity of the Father.