Against Arius 1.14–1.22

All things, then, are one, but from the Father. That Christ proceeded from the Father, that is, that God sent him, that is, that he proceeded from God; for he says: “Because I proceeded from God”; “I proceeded from the Father”. It should be noted that he also said: “and I came out”. But he put “from God” first: “I proceeded from God”, which signifies that God sent him. “Believe, then, this first, that I came out from God.” But from God, and as whom? From that God who is my Father: “I came out, then, from the Father and came into the world.” The natural order of this speech is this: I proceeded from the Father, I came out from God, I came into the world. But the order of effect and of speaking comes from men: “since you have loved me and have believed that I came out from God”; for this comes first for faith. Then, “I proceeded from the Father”, explaining from higher things whose he was; hence they too say: “We believe that you came out from the Father.” But did he leave God and the Father behind on high? No; for he says: “I am not alone, because the Father is with me.” And this is not to be understood as meaning that the Father suffered; nor did the Son himself suffer, but the man that was his. That he came for the resurrection of the flesh: “Glorify the Son, that the Son may glorify you, as you have given him power over all flesh, that to all that you have given him he may give eternal life.” Christ, then, is not only a man, but God in a man. That to have life is this, to believe in the Lord and in his Son: “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you sent.” That he was before the world: “And now glorify me, Father, with yourself, with the glory that I had before the world was.” That men are from God, yet not out of God: “I have made known your name to the men whom you gave me.” From this it is plain that not all were yours: “and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you gave me is from you.” And what wonder if men are from God, if the flesh too is, since he formed it? What then? Is Christ so too? Far from it. This whole passage builds up this point: that men are from God, but not all. And again this: that Christ was before the founding of the world, that the Father handed all things to the Son, since he also gave him the name; for he says: “I kept in your name those whom you gave me.”

We have, then, that Christ has the Father's name, and that he is life and has power to give life. That he himself is life and the Father life, it was said: “The living Father sent me.” And this is the substance of God and of Christ: they are homoousioi, then. Next, it was said that Christ is light, and God the true light; these are for understanding. Is the Holy Spirit anything else? Not at all. Is light, then, not substance? So they are homoousia. And all that God has, the Son has: homoousia, then. But of this later. That he was born: “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, that I might reign.” That the Holy Spirit is from Christ: “Christ breathed and said: Receive the Holy Spirit.” All these are from the Gospel of John. Let us look also at a few texts from Matthew, for I pass over similar ones. That even Satan admits that Christ is the Son of God; for he says: “If you are the Son of God.” And he says this three times. But in the second, confessing the Son of God, he tested whether he was the Christ; for he says: “You are the Son of God: throw yourself down; for it is written that he will command his angels concerning you.” He confesses: he who says “concerning you” confesses the Son of God, and confesses him. Then the demons confess it again: “Demons also came out of many, crying out and saying: You are the Son of God.” Hear, Arius; hear, Eusebius; hear, all you Arians, and above all you who say that Christ is from that which is being, but with the serpent's understanding, namely that the Father is the existent who made Christ, and so you say that the Son is from that which is being. Hear, then: Satan calls him the Son of God, Satan who promised him the kingdom of the world, who knows all the things above, for he is from there. What then? After the third temptation, when the devil went away, he had confessed that he was the Son of God. That the demons too said he is the Son of God: “What have we to do with you, Son of God? Have you come …?” That one must not doubt about Christ: “Blessed is he who is not scandalized in me.” That the Son has all things of the Father: “All things have been handed over to me by the Father; no one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son and he to whom the Son wills to reveal him.” What is the reason that only the Son knows the Father, or that only the Father knows the Son? Only that no one else has his substance. For all things in glory, in divinity, in power, in action itself, know the Father and worship him. But since to know, that is, to know God himself, is to know that very thing which is his being, that is, his substance, therefore no one knows God except the Son, who has the same substance and has it from him. In no other way could anyone see him, as it is said: “The only-begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” What is God's being? In the bosom, and in the womb of substance, both are homoousion, both consisting in substance and divinity, each in each; and each knows the other.

What, then, do you too say, Valentinus? “The first aeon came forth, and wishing to see the Father, it could not.” John says that the Son is in the bosom of the Father, and always is. So he not only sees the Father but is always in the Father. That it is a great sin to speak against the Holy Spirit: “Every blasphemy and sin will be forgiven men. And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, neither in this age nor in the age to come.” First, it must be observed that the Holy Spirit is God's; for he said: “By the Spirit of God I cast out demons.” Next, concerning the blasphemy and sin that the Jews committed, as he said, what it is to be against the Holy Spirit. First, that blasphemy and sin against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven anyone. It is a sin to speak blasphemously with the will. But this is not enough. He said second: even if someone speaks any word against him unwillingly, which is not a sin, it will not be forgiven him in any age. If, then, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit has all things from the Son of God, there is one substance for the three, from the substance of the Father: they are homoousia; the three, then, are together one substance. For if the substance of the Father is spirit, and the Son is spirit, is the Holy Spirit the Spirit of the Father? In what order is the Holy Spirit placed? He both precedes, if he is the Spirit of the Father, and follows, if he has what he is from the Son. And again, the Son, as spirit, is one with the Father, and the Father is in the Son, and all exist in one another: so they are homoousioi, having one and the same substance, and always together homoousioi, while having by divine disposition, according to action, their own subsistence.

But again, what has been said in the Gospels suffices us. That Christ is the Son of God, the Saviour himself says: “How do they say that the Christ is the son of David, when David himself says in the book of Psalms: The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand? David, then, calls him Lord; how then is he his son?” By this he himself shows that Christ existed even before he was in the flesh, and was the Spirit of God, and was God. Let us look, then, at the Apostle too; for he says of Christ to the Romans: “Since Christ is God, in the day of wrath and of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God.” Without doubt this is of Christ, for he himself will judge. That with God non-being is nothing, Paul brings an example from Genesis: “For I have made you the father of many nations, before God, in whom you believed, who gives life to the dead and calls the things that are not as though they were.” That the Spirit of God is the Spirit of Christ, and the same is the Holy Spirit: “But you are not in the flesh but in the spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you; but if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his.” The power of the whole mystery is in baptism, and its power lies in receiving the Spirit. If this is so, it is said: you are in the spirit, which the Holy Spirit gave you. Who this Spirit is, he added: “If indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.” Who is he? “But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ.” The Spirit of God, then, and the Spirit of Christ are the same. Here this too must be observed: that the Spirit of Christ is the same as Christ himself. For there follows: “But if Christ is in you.” Hence the Spirit of God too is God. There is one substance, then, because it is the same Spirit, but in three: homoousion, then. Hence it is not a like substance, because it is the same Spirit; yet not therefore are the same passions in the Father too, because there is one Spirit; for passions, as it were, are only in the two, because they are spirits that have already gone forth.

But these things more fully later. “For from him and through him and in him are all things.” “From him” is said as of the Father; “through him” as of Christ; “in him” as of the Holy Spirit. Elsewhere he speaks thus: “in him, through him, to him”. That Christ is God: “From whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all, blessed for all ages of ages.” In First Corinthians: “For if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of majesty.” That Christ, like God, is incomprehensible, or scarcely comprehensible, as it is also said: “What eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love him.” Then he says who understands these things: “As the spirit of a man knows the things in a man, so too the Spirit of God knows the things of God.” If he says these things of Christ, it appears from them that it is not easy to know the generation of the Son. For neither does the intellect grasp the Son of God, nor can it know the mode of his generation. And if he says them of his presence, that too is beyond the eye, beyond hearing, beyond the intellect. And if, as some understand, he says these things of what God has prepared for those who love him, much more wonderful and scarcely comprehensible is the generation. If these things are thus beyond understanding, what can you say from them: that Christ is from the things that are not, or that Christ is of like substance? These are comprehensible and defined. But to be homoousios is not only incomprehensible; it also has many contradictions. For if he is homoousios, then he too is unbegotten; if homoousios, how is one other than the other, how is one the Father, another the Son? If homoousios, how did one suffer and the other not? For from this come the Patripassians. But since by God's will the Spirit who dwells in us searches all things, even the things of God, the mode of the divine generation will be found, by which the homoousios will be made manifest and those objections will be banished: “For we have received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit of God.” That the same Spirit is God and Christ and the Holy Spirit, one and the same Spirit: “Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking in the Spirit of God says ‘Anathema to Jesus’, and no one can say ‘Lord Jesus’ except in the Holy Spirit. Now there are divisions of graces, but the same Spirit; and divisions of ministries, but the same Lord; and divisions of operations, but the same God, who works all things in all.” If, then, no one in the spirit says “Anathema to Jesus”, the spirit is both God's and the Holy Spirit's, of whom he says the same: “And no one can say ‘Lord Jesus’ except in the Holy Spirit.” Further, he says this as well: that the divisions of graces are from the Spirit; the graces indeed are from God, but the divisions from the Spirit. For in action the Holy Spirit is another existence, in substance homoousion, since the Holy Spirit is, like the Lord, a ministry: he divides the ministries, working in the operation of life, and he is himself in his own substance according to the operation of life; but in substance he is homoousios. That the spirit and the operations are from God: the operations are many, but in all is the same God. God differs in this, that he makes the divisions of operations, yet he works all things in all; for since being itself is the cause of operation, he makes the divisions of operations; and God himself, since by substance he is spirit, is homoousion with action. All three, then, are homoousia in action and homoousia in substance. That all three are spirit, and that the Spirit is from the Father: from the Father is the substance.

That Christ is life and that he is spirit, it was said: “But the Spirit gives life.” And there again he says: “Now the Lord is the Spirit.” That Christ is from God, not from the things that are not: “That the illumination of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not shine on them.” If Christ is the image of God, Christ is from God. For an image is the image of what is imaged. God is what is imaged; Christ, then, is the image. But an image is the image of what is imaged, and what is imaged is primary; the image is second and other in substance than what is imaged. But we do not understand “image” there as among sensible things. For here we do not even understand an image as a substance: it is a kind of shadow in the air, or a figure in water, produced by reflection through some bodily light of a bodily outflow; it is nothing by itself and has no motion of its own; it has only the substance of what is imaged, and has neither body nor sense nor understanding; and when that in which it was figured is removed or disturbed, it is wholly nothing and nowhere. In another way, then, we say that Christ is the image of God: that he is first being, and being by himself, and being that understands; and we call him a living image, and life-giving, and the seed of all things that are; for he is the Word, through whom are all things, and without whom nothing. But all these are also attributed to God: God and the Word, then, are homoousioi. And why is the Word the image of God? Because God is hidden, for he is in power; but the Word is manifest, for he is action. And this action, having all things that are in power, produces and manifests all things by life and knowledge according to motion. For this reason action is the image of all things that are in power, perfecting the form of each of the things in power, and existing by itself; for from nothing there is no substance. For all being has an inseparable form; or rather the form itself is the substance itself: not that form is prior to that which is being, but that the form makes that which is being definite. For that which is being is the cause of the form's being in that which is being. And therefore that which is being is the Father; that which is form, the Son. Again, that very thing which is being provides to the form that very being; and the being of the form is the image of that which is being. As to cause: first, that which is being is homoousion; being, then, belongs to these two, and the second being is the image of the first being, without time; I say first and second as to cause. Father and Son are related one to the other in respect of that which is being. But because the cause is not reversed, the Father is Father and the Son is Son. In respect of that which is being, both are together, and always both, homoousioi as to being; but in respect of power and action, the Father is power, the Son action. The Son, then, was born, having in action also potential being, just as potential being has action itself in itself, which is potential being. “Has” must be taken according to the intellect: he does not “have”, he “is”; for there all things are simple. But I said, according to the Gospel: whatever the Father has, the Son has the same. By this reasoning the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, and both are homoousioi, and the Son is the image of the Father; for the very being of the two is homoousion. But in that one is from the other, they are what is imaged and image. And again, in that one is from the other, one is unbegotten, the other begotten; but these are without time, since they are in the beginning, and from eternity to eternity. So neither those who say Christ is a man, nor those who say he is from nothing, nor those who say he is from some point in time, nor others of this kind, have any place in this view.

Let us look at this too. Moses gives God's saying: “Let us make man according to our image and according to likeness.” God says “let us make”: he says it to a co-worker, necessarily Christ; and he says “according to the image”. Man, then, is not the image of God but according to the image; for Jesus alone is the image of God, and man is according to the image, that is, an image of the image. But he says “according to our image”. The Father and the Son, then, are one image. If the Son is the image of the Father, and the Father is that image, they are homoousioi in image. For the image itself is substance; for there being and operating are one and simple, and so too are substance and form. And since substance is image, the Father and the Son are homoousioi: the Father existing as that which is being, also having that which is acting; the Son existing as that which is acting, also having that which is being; each having what he is according to what he most is, that which is being existing as older than that which is acting. The Father is that which is being, and the Father is most of all that very thing which is being, in which action too is present potentially. And again, the Son, as that which is acting, is younger, as younger than that which is being, having his sonship in that which is acting from the first, that which is being. For this reason the Father is one in respect of being, the Son one in respect of acting, each existing at once in the other, as has been shown: homoousioi, then. Let us ask, then: “Let us make man”; and what is “to the image”? And what is “to our”? Then what is this, “and according to likeness”? Said in this way, it signifies a difference between image and likeness. Since there is much question about what he meant by “Let us make man according to our image”, it must be granted for now that it refers to the soul of man, or to both soul and body; for even if to both, nothing else is understood than the soul: for it alone is according to the image and according to the likeness of God. We say that Christ is the image of God, and he is the Word. We say, then, that the soul is according to the image of God, calling it rational. For the soul is not the Word, but it is rational; and because Christ is wholly life, and the soul lives, since life has substance. The soul, then, is according to the image of God, but Christ is the image of God. And what do we understand by “according to likeness”? As the Word is substance, as has been shown (since the Word is being itself and that very thing which is being; and the Word is acting, and being in motion; and since there all this, being itself and acting, is simple, that is, what being is, which there is substance), so the soul too, insofar as it is soul, is what being is, and is substance; and that it moves itself by itself is the image of substance, or rather the substance itself according to the form of substance. And therefore, when we say in the definition of the soul what the soul is, we say properly and substantially that it is moved by itself. It is plain from this too that the substantial image, or rather the substance of the soul, is that it is moved by itself. And this is to be rational, according to the image of the Word. It is one thing, then, to be according to the image, which is substance; another to be according to the likeness, which is not substance but, in substance, a name that declares quality. But as we have taken God as substance, so we have taken the image, that is, Christ, as substance; perfection we understand as signifying quality. And if “like” necessarily signifies quality, how do we say that the soul is rational, and perfectly rational according to the likeness of perfection in God? We say the soul is perfect: according to the image now, in the world; according to the likeness later, by faith in God and in Jesus Christ, such as it would have been in the future if Adam had not sinned. In that it is rational, it is according to the image in respect of reason; in that it is to be perfect, it is according to the likeness. It is one thing, then, to be the image, another to be according to the image, and yet another to be according to the likeness. What blasphemy, then, to call the Father and the Son homoiousion, when the Son is image according to substance, not according to likeness! But enough for now.

Let us go on to other things. That there is creation in Christ, but not just one. For there are three creations: one when all things were created through Christ; a second, our creation in Christ by baptism, but in Christ; and another change comes about in Christ. Hence it is said: “If anyone is in Christ, a new creation.” That Christ existed before he was in the flesh: “He who knew no sin was made sin for us.” What time was there in which he knew no sin? Before he was in the flesh. To the Ephesians, that Christ existed before he was in the flesh: “Blessed be the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, even as he chose us before the founding of the world.” That Christ existed before he was in the flesh: “For at that time you were without Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel.” That Christ is God: “having no hope, and without God”, that is, without Christ. That it is the Spirit who binds all together: “eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace: one body and one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is in all, and through all, and in all.” To the Galatians, that Christ is God: “Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father.” And again: “The gospel preached by me is not according to man; for I did not receive it from man, but through the revelation of Jesus Christ.” To the Philippians, that Christ is Spirit: “and through the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.” That the Son is homoousios and together with the Father: “Have this mind among yourselves which was also in Christ, who, existing in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of man, and found in figure as a man.” First let the followers of Photinus, and those after him and before him who say that Jesus is a man and made only from a man, recognize their impious blasphemy against Christ, “who, existing in the form of God”. When was he existing? Before he came into a body; for Paul said that he emptied himself and took the form of a servant: he was, then, even before he became man. And what was he? The Word of God, the form of God. What is this, “existing equal with God”? That it is of his very self and of the substance of his power; for he said “equal”. For “equal” declares magnitude and quantity; and the magnitude of substance is the magnitude of bulk, for quality has no magnitude, nor does it have its being from substance. Only the quantity of substance is quantity by magnitude. And therefore blessed Paul, declaring the substance of God, speaks of all its quantities: “that you may know the height, length, breadth and depth of God.”

According to these texts, then, Christ exists equal with God. For Paul did not say “like God”, which does not signify substance but something else in the substance, a likeness by accident, as man is like God by likeness, the substance of God being one thing and that of man another. Hence it is impious to say that man is equal to God. If, then, Christ is the form of God, and form is substance (for form and image are the same thing), and the Word is the form and image of God, and the Word is always with God, then the Word is homoousios with God, with whom the Word is both in the beginning and always. That to be the image is also substance, and together with substance, which is called homoousion, is plain from this. For the Apostle said: “He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” Did he take only the form of man, and not also the substance of man? For he put on flesh, and was in the flesh, and suffered in the flesh; and this is the mystery, and this is what saves us. If, then, he emptied himself, Christ emptied himself, and Christ existed before he was in the flesh. And if he existed before this, since he emptied himself, he himself put on flesh. For why did he empty himself, if, as you say, Marcellus or Photinus, he took up a man as if the man were a fourth? For then the Word who was had to remain, take up a man, and in some way breathe the Spirit into him for his actions. But Paul said: “He emptied himself.” Rightly: he who was to put on man. What, then, is “he emptied himself”? That the universal Word, in being the Word of flesh, was not universal, and became flesh. He did not, then, take up a man, but became man. Form, then, is substance with substance, the substance in which the form is; it is homoousios, then, with the principal substance of the form, which is potentially prior, since it provides the form with being, and with being in substance, and with being always together; for neither is without the other. Insofar, then, as the form is from the substance, the substance is the form that belongs to the substance: this is the Son of God. That form is substance, and that substance is always with form: always Father, always Son with the Father, that is, the Word with God, and this always. But since this form is substance, which is image and is the Word, whom we call the Son of God, he is the Word inasmuch as he is the Word of all things that are. For the universal Word is the Son of God, by whose power all things come forth and proceed into generation and subsist. His power, then, proceeding and existing together with the Father, makes and begets all things; and this power, in that it belongs to it to proceed (which is called action), itself suffers, if it suffers anything, in respect of the matters and substances to which it provides what is proper for their being, while the universal Word, who is always with the Father and homoousios, remains unalterable and impassible. And therefore it is said of the Son that he is impassible and passible; but passion lies in the procession, and most of all at the far end of the procession, that is, when he was in the flesh. For these are not called passions: generation from the Father, the first motion, and being creator of all things; for these are substantial, or rather substances. For the reasons of the existents are, by power, their substances: they are not, then, passions.