Against Praxeas 22

And whose teaching does he call it, at which they marveled? His own or the Father's? Likewise, when they were debating among themselves whether he was the Christ (not, surely, the Father, but the Son), he says, “You know me, and where I am from; and I have not come of myself, but he who sent me is true, whom you do not know; I know him, because I am with him.” He did not say, “because I am he, and I sent myself,” but, “he sent me.” Likewise when the Pharisees had sent men to seize him: “A little while longer,” he says, “I am with you, and I go to him who sent me.” And when he denies that he is alone (“but I,” he says, “and the Father who sent me”), does he not show two, as much two as inseparate? Indeed, this was the whole of what he was teaching: that there are two, inseparate. For, citing the law that confirms the testimony of two men, he adds: “I bear witness about myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness about me.” But if he were one, being the same both Son and Father, he would not use the support of the law, which requires faith in the testimony not of one but of two. Likewise, asked where his Father was, answering that neither he nor his Father was known to them, he spoke of two who were unknown; and that if they had known him, they would have known the Father; not as though he himself were Father and Son, but because, by reason of their inseparability, neither can be recognized or unknown without the other. And Scripture, interpreting from outside, notes that they did not understand what he had said about the Father (“He who sent me,” he says, “is true, and what I have heard from him, that I speak to the world”), though they ought to have recognized that the Father's words were in the Son, since they read in Jeremiah, “And the Lord said to me, ‘Behold, I have put my words in your mouth,’” and in Isaiah, “The Lord gives me the tongue of instruction, to know when I ought to speak a word”; as he himself says again: “Then you will know that I am he, and that I speak nothing of myself, but as the Father taught me, so I speak; because he who sent me is with me”: and this also to testify that the two are inseparable. Likewise, in the dispute with the Jews, reproaching them for wanting to kill him, he says: “I speak what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have seen with your father”; and, “Now you want to kill a man who has told you the truth, which he heard from God”; and, “If God were your Father, you would have loved me; for I came forth from God and have come.” (And yet we do not separate them, although he said he came forth, as some seize on the occasion of this saying; for he came forth from the Father as a ray from the sun, a stream from a spring, a shoot from a seed.) And: “I do not have a demon, but I honor my Father”; and, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing; it is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say that he is your God, and you do not know him; but I know him. And if I were to say, ‘I do not know him,’ I would be a liar like you; but I know him and keep his word.” And when he adds, “Abraham saw my day and was glad,” he certainly shows that it was the Son, not the Father, who was seen by Abraham in former times. Likewise, over the blind man, he says that he must do the works of the Father; and after restoring his sight he says to him, “Do you believe in the Son of God?” And when the man asked who he was, by pointing to himself he certainly pointed to the Son, in whom he had said one must believe. Then he declares that he is known by the Father and the Father by him, and that he is loved by the Father because he lays down his life, since he had received this commandment from the Father. And when asked by the Jews whether he was the Christ (that is, of God; for to this day the Jews hope for the Christ of God, not for the Father himself, since it was never written that the Christ who is to come is the Father), he says, “I tell you, and you do not believe; the works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me.” What testimony? That he was the very one they were asking about, that is, the Christ of God. Also, of his sheep … that no one would snatch them out of his hand, “for what the Father,” he says, “has given me is greater than all; and I and the Father are one.” Here, then, these fools, or rather blind men, want to take their stand, not seeing, first, that “I and the Father” signifies two; next, at the end, that “are” is not from one person, since it is said in the plural; then, that he says “we are one thing” (unum), not “we are one person” (unus). For if he had said “we are one person,” he might have helped their opinion; for unus seems to signify the singular number. Further, when he calls two of the masculine gender “one” with a neuter word, which does not concern singleness but unity, likeness, conjunction, the love of the Father, who loves the Son, and the obedience of the Son, who obeys the Father's will, by saying “I and the Father are one” he shows that there are two, whom he makes equal and joins together. So he adds too that he had shown them many works from the Father, none of which deserved stoning. And lest they should think that they ought to stone him because he wanted himself to be understood as God himself, that is, the Father, since he had said, “I and the Father are one,” showing himself God as Son of God, not as God himself, he says: “If it is written in the law, ‘I said, you are gods,’ and Scripture cannot be broken, do you say of him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You blaspheme,’ because he said, ‘I am the Son of God’? If I do not do the works of my Father, do not believe me; but if I do them, and you will not believe me, believe at least for the works' sake; and know that I am in the Father and the Father in me.” It is through the works, then, that the Father will be in the Son and the Son in the Father; and so through the works we understand that the Father and the Son are one. So thoroughly did he persist in impressing all this, that two should still be believed in one power; since otherwise the Son could not be believed in unless two were believed in.