Against Arius 1.23–1.31

But enough. And again, what, then, do the Photinians say? If the Son is homoousios with the Father, how did God have as his Son a man born of Mary? And what do the Arians say? That the Son is homoousios, and the Word, and substance together with the Father? For it is impious to say: “There was when he was not”; and it is impious to say that he is from the things that are not. Impious again are those who say that the Son is homoiousios with the Father. For substance, insofar as it is substance, is not something other, so as to be like another: it is the same in the two, and is not like but itself. But when it is other, it is called like, not insofar as it is substance, but according to some quality. It is impossible and unfitting, then, that anything should be homoiousion. Further, what is like in otherness is either in the same substance divided into two parts or in another substance; for what can admit being unlike can admit being like. But substance, insofar as it is substance, does not admit being like or unlike; but insofar as it is receptive of quality, it is called like or unlike, the substance remaining, in its power or existence, either the same or different. But is that substance, whether of God or of the Word, receptive of unlikeness, so that it may be called like? Impossible. Not like, then; not homoiousion, then. Let us look at this too: whether the like is a substance in the same genus, as of man or animal (for man is like man and animal like animal), or in another genus, as a stone to a man or a statue to a horse. How, then, do they say these two are homoiousia? If in the same genus, as in animal, a prior substance must come first; if in the substance itself, it is either divided or born of another, higher substance; and both of these are subordinate, the one being subject to the other; and a divided substance, whether into equal or unequal parts, does not have the other perfect; but these are two perfects, perfect from perfect. Not, then, in likeness itself, since likeness too [is excluded]; if so, then necessarily in another genus. From where, then? Is it something else? From nothing, then, or there are two principles. But neither of these, since there is one principle and cause of all things that are: the Father, in relation to the Word who was in the beginning and therefore always was; so he was not from nothing. And if this is so, neither is it in another genus and by likeness. And how does Paul say, not that Jesus considered himself equal to God, but that he did not consider it robbery to be equal? For things that are equal not by nature, through their own divinity, but made equal by fortune, are equal as if by robbery. Great confidence, then, and truly natural divinity in respect of being equal: not to consider it robbery to be equal with God.

But enough. And again, what does he say to the Colossians? That Jesus is first, before all things. For his generation is twofold: one into divinity and sonship, hidden, divine, understood by faith; the other his coming into flesh and bearing flesh. The former alone is generation from God, the manifestation of power; the latter is rather a taking of flesh, not a generation. If, then, he is prior, the Saviour is not from man; if it is generation, he is not a thing fashioned; if generation from God, not from nothing; if Jesus is the image of God, he is homoousios: for an image is substance with substance, the substance of which and in which it is the image. And that the image is substance, begotten from the substance in which it is or subsists, to declare the power within: hence the Father, who is within; hence the Son, who is without. Again, that the Son, the Word, is substance hastening into action; for the Word is life and the Word is understanding; he proceeded into the substance of the things that are intelligible and material; and therefore the action of the Word himself, because of the weakness of those who perceive him, is passible, or rather is called passible. For blessed Paul says of Christ: “Who rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins; who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn before all creation. For in him were created all things in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were established through him and in him; and he is before all things, and all things hold together in him. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might be the first. For in him it pleased all the fullness to dwell, and through him to reconcile and turn back all things to himself, making peace by the blood of his cross, whether things on earth or things in heaven.” The whole mystery is stated in this exposition: that he is homoousios, he says from this, “who is the image of the invisible God”; that he is the firstborn Son; that he was not created, he said by “before all creation”. For if he too were created, he would not say “before all creation”; and he properly said “firstborn”, which belongs to a son. Let us join the sense, then: “firstborn before all creation”. So he is begotten as Son, and creation is as that which was created; not that God afterwards begot another, but that he is firstborn before all creation. And all creation is of the things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. The Son, then, is apart from creation: Son, then, by nature and generation. That Christ is the Word, and that the Word of all things that are is the cause of their being; and therefore it is said that in him all things were founded and through him founded: for the Word is both the cause of being for the things that are and the receptacle of the things that are in him. And since all things are in him, the receptacle itself is filled with all things that are, and is itself also the fullness; and therefore all things are through him, and all things to him, and all things in him.

If, then, the Son were from nothing, how could these things be? It would be without faith, then, and impossible for such things to be so. And again, if he is not homoousion, how are both the Father and the Son the fullness? For all things together are the fullness. And is the fullness homoiousion in the way souls are, and the other things that were created? Wholly impossible. For homoiousion, as was said, lies in otherness: for another substance cannot be called like unless it is not in that substance; and if the substance of that power were another, and all things that are had their being from it, it would be impossible for all to be one. But now, since God the Father and the Son, the Word, are homoousioi, all things are called into one through the Word, and all things are from God, and God is all in all, the Father existing without passion, as has also been shown. That Jesus is the Word, who is also the life-giving spirit of all things that are, the fountain of eternal life, who came into flesh according to the mystery, and in the death of sinners conquered death and raised the dead into eternal life. That God is the power of that fountain of eternal life, and therefore the Son is the Word, the fountain of eternal life, existing as the Father's power, the firstborn from the dead; and therefore all things turned toward him will become one, that is, spiritual. The Son of God, then, is homoousios, because he is the fountain of eternal life, as the Father is its power, and because through the Son himself all things will become one, since all things are through him. That Jesus, that is, the Word, is both the seed and, as it were, the element of all things that are, but most of all now in the activity and manifestation of the things that are; for in him dwells all the fullness of divinity bodily, that is, substantially in operation, whereas in the Father all things dwell potentially. And therefore Jesus, the Word, is the image of God the Father: that very thing which is power is now action; for everything that goes out into action is both the image of what is potentially, and what is in action is the son of what is potentially; from these, Son and Father are homoousion. That all things are from Jesus, and therefore all from God, all, I say, that are; and “not holding the head, Christ, from whom the whole body, supplied and brought forth through joints and ligaments, grows with the growth of God.” For all things are one, even though the things that are differ. For the body of the whole universe is not like a heap, which is made a body of grains only by their touching one another; it is a body above all because its parts are linked with one another, as a chain holds a body together. For the chain is God, Jesus, the Spirit, intellect, soul, angels, and then all bodily things supplied in order. The fullness, then, was brought forth.

If, then, all things are one, namely in substance, much more are God and the Son, not only en-substanced but consubstantial. For all existents are en-substanced in Jesus, that is, in the Word, as it is said: “All things were founded in him”; but these are not homoousia. For the first being, which is God, is not as substance, nor is the Son as substance and image; but only these together, which is the being of the divinity as cause, is being for the things that are. God and the Word alone, then, are homoousia. In First Timothy: “For confessedly great is the mystery of piety, which was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, appeared to angels, was preached to the nations, believed in the world, received up in glory.” This is not about the first generation but about the second. For this is the great mystery: that God emptied himself when he was in the form of God; then that he suffered, first being in the flesh and having the lot of human birth, and being lifted onto the cross. These wonders would not have happened if he had been either from man only, or from nothing, or from God by way of making. For what did he empty, if he did not exist before he was in the flesh? And what was it that Paul said, “equal with God”? And how equal, if he was a thing made from nothing? Therefore, then, it is a great mystery, which was manifested in the flesh. He existed, then, before he was in the flesh, but Paul said “manifested in the flesh”: for he existed intelligibly and intellectually, but then he was manifested sensibly and in the flesh. For the power of the Word, according to its substance, is of life; it is always substance insofar as it is life, and it gives life, and gives life again, and does not allow whatever it gives life to remain in death. In the first motion, then, he brought all things into life; and this is the descent of the Word, that, going out from the Father, he gave his own proper life by the Father's power to those in the heavens, and to angels, thrones or glories, and such beings as there are; for he is the Word of all things, through whom all things were made. And again, since there could be no giving of life unless there were matter for the power of giving life, matter was made dead by nature; and this, when given life, sent forth its hosts by the divine giving of life, and corrupted man. But the Word, perfect life, completed the mystery and appeared in matter, that is, in flesh and in darkness. For how was it possible for what had existed to appear, except in flesh, that is, to the senses? Having become all things, then, and being in all things, the Word begot all things, saved, and reigned, being eternal life in the spirit. So he was justified; he appeared to angels; coming, then, he was preached to the nations. He existed, then, before he came. “He was believed in the world”; for so Isaiah too confesses in prophecy: “Egypt has laboured, and the merchandise of Ethiopia and of the Sabaeans; men of lofty stature shall walk with you, and shall be your servants, and shall follow behind you bound in fetters, and shall worship you and pray to you, because God is in you, and there is no God besides you; for you are God, and we did not know it, the God of Israel.” Preached, then, in the world, received in the glory of divinity, both from the beginning and in the beginning and afterwards, and always from eternity, and for ages of ages. Amen.

See this too, for the homoousion: how the Spirit says in Isaiah, “God is in you, and there is no God besides you.” Since he says it to the Son, our Lord, it is plain: “God is in you”, that is, what is said: “The Father is in me.” The other phrase, “and there is no God besides you”: in this word he foretells all heresies. What do all the Jews say to this? And those who say that Jesus is a man? And those who say he is from nothing, and that “there was when he was not”? For God was, and always one God. For if Jesus is the Word, and the Word is always with God, and the Word with God is one God, and there is no other, God is homoousion. And again the Word: if God is that which is being, and Jesus, that is, the Word, is the power and wisdom of this God and of that which is being, then there is one God and not another. There is, then, a oneness of the Word and God; and that very thing which is being, and being the Word, is the same, together subsisting in that which is being; and therefore homoousion. And what being the Word is, that is, being life and intellect (for these are the power and wisdom of God, which is the Saviour Jesus), is procession and generation, a procession into substance as sonship, and into action as effulgence and refulgence. This was not “when it was not”; it always was: always, then, Father, always Son. And the Father is only Father, and the Son only Son, in relation to the Father; since that which is being, which is God and Father, is the cause for the Word of his being, and not the reverse. And it is proper to that which is first being to rest; but proper to the Word to move and to act, not moving locally nor by transfer from place to place, but by a motion better and more divine than that of the soul, a motion which by its own movement gives life and brings forth understandings, subsisting in itself and not torn away from its own power into operation.

But enough. And again: there are other things in sacred Scripture: that Jesus is God, that he is before the ages; that he is Son, Son by nature and Son in the flesh, and called Son most of all in the flesh; that he then saved all existents and conquered the enmities against the divinity and all death; and that he suffered by way of motion, while the Father did not, by way of rest. If these things are so, only this is lacking: how homoousion is to be understood, or that the Son is homoousion with the Father. For this doctrine has now been stirred up, though once noised abroad by rumours: that one ought not to say homoousion, but rather homoiousion. This doctrine has been invented now. And they dare to say this too, that it was taught long ago. I do not ask when “long ago” was; it is enough for me that it was given neither from eternity nor from the presence of Jesus, but long ago: a hundred years ago, I grant, and more. Where was it hidden? Where was it sleeping eleven years ago, when in the city of Nicaea the faith was confirmed by more than three hundred bishops, who excluded the Arians, in which synod these men were the lights of the church of the whole world? An old doctrine, then, which had fled! If it did not exist, it is refuted and has only now begun; if it did exist, either it fell silent through contention or it was put to flight by the judgment of knowledge and truth. Perhaps you, patron of the doctrine, were then not only alive but a bishop: you too were silent, and your fellows and disciples and fellow teachers; and through all the time afterwards, until the emperor was at Rome, you were present and heard many contrary things, being a table companion of those men whom you now anathematize; angry, perhaps, because they wrote a creed without you. Or did you come, compelled by your masters, as an envoy in defence of a betrayal? But what difference does it make whether thirty or seventy or more bishops, and whether the same faith was produced more often for the destruction of other heresies? It is one, beginning from one, and at work until now. But you write and say this: that Paul of Samosata, and Marcellus, and Photinus, and now Valens and Ursacius, and others of this kind, found to be devout in heresy, were destroyed. Was it by saying homoousion? No. How, then, by blaspheming? The Samosatene, like Arius: “from nothing”, “there was when he was not”, that the Son is a thing made and wholly unlike the Father in every way. What of Marcellus and Photinus? That Jesus is only a man from a man, and that the Triad is outside Jesus. And now Valens and Ursacius, the remnants of Arius. Each had his own blasphemy, then, for which they were cast out. Do you think, then, that you conquered them because you say homoiousion? They did not say homoousion, and so they were conquered.

Let us look, then, at this too that you say, and how you say it: “So think the Africans too, and all the Orientals.” Why, then, do you write to them to cast the homoousion out of the holy church? If they say this, it was not necessary to write to them; if it was necessary to write, it was necessary also to persuade them, not by command only but by reasons and the sacred Scriptures; for you ought not only to destroy the homoousion but also to build up the homoiousion. But now, up and down, against the homoousion you say nothing other than that those who say it must confess that a substance pre-exists, and so that the Father and the Son are from it. First, that is not necessary. For God is both substance and the cause of substance, and pre-exists all things that are, all existentiality and all essentiality; for from him are all things, both the things that are and their names. From this God, then, who is the principle of substance, and so is substance, the Son is homoousios, in him and with him. For he is the form of him who is, and his image and imprint, without which God is not understood, nor does he rise into understanding; not, however, as if he were not what the simple God is; and not as though these were something else that is in God himself, or as accidents, but this very thing, God's being. And so being homoousion is what being is, and the Father is what being is. That the Son is being in this way: for God is what is being, but being in this way is the Word; and this he always signifies when he says: “I and the Father are one”; and: “The Father is in me, and I in the Father”; and: “If anyone has seen me, he has seen the Father also”; for they are homoousia. What, then, are you saying when you say: “Substance pre-exists, it is homoousion”? But if it is homoiousion, is it not necessary to understand that substance pre-exists, from which these two like substances were made? By your own reasoning you too run into what you fear in the homoousion. Or is it permitted to you alone to understand homoiousion, the Father giving substance to the Son, while we may not think it homoousion, the Father being the cause that the Son is, God being substance? You too confess homoiousion, for you say that both Father and Son exist. Who is like whom? In dignity, and is the Son like the Father with less dignity? Yet the Father is also like the Son; for in this way all such things are relative. If this is likeness, and we say homoiousion, we say that the Son is like the Father; and how shall we take Isaiah's saying? For he says: “Before me there was no other God, and after me there will be none like me.”

What, then, is the Word? Before God, or after God, or with God? If before God, God is not unbegotten, nor is God the Father, nor the principle of principles; if after God, then Isaiah says “none like”, yet he would be another God, like him. But if you call this impious, saying he is like not only in power, dignity and deity but also in substance: what is it to be like in substance? From that very substance, insofar as it is that very substance, it is the same, not like; for the like comes about by quality, and such likeness is likeness of colour, habit, disposition, virtue, form. But Jesus, that is, the Word, is the image of God, not a likeness. He is called the image of God: God is not the image, but God by image and by substance is God; not as two, for there is one substance and one image; hence one God and one Word, one Father, one Son, and these are one. For this one and that one are one, not two; and therefore they are together, and the substance itself is the other one, and therefore this is not another one, but rather the only one. But enough. And again, what do we say substance is, as the wise and the ancients have defined it? That which is subject; that which is something; that which is not to be in another. And they distinguish existence and substance: existence and existentiality as pre-existing subsistence without accidents, pure and alone in the things that are in it, in that it is only to be what subsists; substance as the subject together with all the accidents, which exist in it separably. But in use we take both existence and substance, and we use these names wherever we signify being something in the same way. Let it be so, then, whether in the eternal things or in the things of the world; for one may say existence, or substance, or that which is being truly, substance: there there is motion, and not simply motion but first motion, which is a genus and is itself rest, and therefore itself substance. But these belong to a longer and different inquiry. For now we confess that there is substance there, which has this according to its proper meaning: to be some one thing. And we speak against those who say that the name substance is not found in the holy Scriptures. Perhaps the name substance is not, but there are words named from substance. For from what is epiousion derived, if not from substance: “Give us today our epiousion bread”? Since Jesus is life, and his body is life, and his body is bread, as it is said: “Give us bread from heaven.” Epiousion signifies “from” or “in” the substance itself, that is, the bread of life. So again Paul in the letter to Titus: “a people periousion”, around substance, that is, a people that stands around life; as is also said in the offering: “Cleanse for yourself a people around life, zealous for good works, coming around your substance.” The same seems to me to be signified in the prophet Jeremiah, where he says: “For who has stood in the substance of the Lord and seen his word? Who has given ear and heard?” And a little after he says: “And if they had stood in the substance”; but some write it otherwise. But if anyone understands the sense truly, he finds nothing other than this: if anyone has stood in that which is God's being, that is, in the substance, in which the Son is homoousios, he at once sees his Word. For we ought to make the intellect stand within, in the substance, the substance of God; and at once we grasp both God and the Word, for they are homoousion, and both together are one.

But you will see. Let us suppose that it is piety and right confession to say that God's substance is that which is being, and that what is the being of Jesus is to be God. What, then, is God's substance? If substance is spoken of among things of the world, as an animal or a man is, then it is necessary to say that among the eternal things God is substance. But you see God himself according to that being of which we speak: either light, or spirit, or being itself, or the power of that which is being, or universal understanding, or the power of universal understanding, or of universal life or action, or any other such thing in which he is, as the fountain of all the things that truly are or that are. But the Scriptures say that God is light, that he is spirit: and these signify substance, not accident. For to what would that which is first being belong as an accident, if this were an accident? To nothing: for it is impossible that anything should be beyond, above that which is being. It is substance, then, in respect of that being which is light and spirit, which is simple and uncompounded, in which light and spirit are one and the same. And there is an image of this light and spirit, not from necessity of nature but by the will of the Father's greatness; for he bounded himself by himself. And therefore it is said: you understand yourself, but you are intelligible also to the Son. The Son, then, is in the Father as image and form and Word and will of the Father: other, inasmuch as the Son is the Father's will. For every will is offspring; and inasmuch as it is universal will, it is only-begotten: for once, the Word of the whole fullness leapt forth from the power of God; this power, being Word, begot the Word, that is, brought him into manifestation and operation. Thus by the will of the Father the will appeared, the Word himself, the Son. The Word, then, is the will of God, with him who always is; and in relation to him the will itself is sonship. The Father, then, is he whose will it is; the Son is the will, and the will is the Word himself: the Word, then, is the Son. For the Word is not a kind of speech, but a power for creating something, speaking with the things that are to be and giving to each its proper substance according to the power of entity; and the Word himself is form, which is the knowledge of God, for knowledge comes about only through the Word. For this reason it is said that the Word is with God; and the Word is word, light from light, or spirit from spirit, and substance from substance; not first and second in time, but in that one is the cause of the other's being, by power. They are always together; for the effulgence of light is not cut off, but is always in the light. And being himself light, the Word works all things, moving himself and always moving, having abundance: that is the Father's, to be almighty.