Against Arius 1.53–2.1

Truth cries out, then, that these are homoousia, co-united in identity with otherness. Again, if the Father is life and the Son is life (since the Son, being life inasmuch as he is motion, is both within and without), God lives, the Son lives, and outside all things live, the Son existing everywhere. And since the Father is in the Son, the Father too is everywhere. Again, likewise, since the Father is in the Son: when you see the Son and understand him, you will see and understand the Father. For this reason it was said: “If anyone sees me, he sees the Father also.” For the Son is the form of the Father: not that “form” is now understood as something outside, apart from substance, nor, as in us, a face lying upon a substance; but a certain subsisting substance in which what is hidden and veiled in another appears and is shown. God is something veiled, for no one sees God: the Son, then, is the form in which God is seen. For if God is existence, power, substance, motion and life, God in hiddenness is, as it were, without form. If, then, life is manifest, and manifest according to the power of motion, the life that is hidden is understood, spoken and seen according to motion, in appearance, in existing motion. Further: being is the Father, life the Son; for it is impossible to grasp being, since it is hidden; but life, inasmuch as it is life, is already that being too. Being, then, appears in life; so life belongs to being. But God the Father is being, the Son life; the Son, then, the life of God the Father, is the form in which the Father's power is contemplated. We must believe, then, in the Son of God, so that life may come to be in us, which is true and eternal life. For if we have faith in Christ the Nazarene, incarnate from Mary, we shall have the same faith in the Son of God, who was and became the Spirit incarnate. How I have understood this, I shall say.

But first we must see how the other names are to be attributed: to the Father or to the Son? I mean spirit, Word, intellect, Holy Spirit, wisdom, substance. First, the Father and the Son are the same, and the Son and the Holy Spirit are the same: existence, then, and life are the same; so existence and blessedness are the same; again, being and life are the same, and life and understanding are the same. It has been said of these, in the book before this one and in others, that the three are in one, and that therefore the three are the same: the three, then, are synonymous, according to the name by which each of them holds its own power. For being is also life and understanding, and so with each in relation to the others: they are the same, then, and synonymous, the same and co-generated, and so these are consubstantial. But since a certain otherness appears, as it were, in them, it is above all for this reason that they are “the same” and not “itself”. For some things in their own power are hidden, and others both are and are understood as manifest; but existing in the same power, they are at once power and consubstantial; and to these alone it belongs to be one and the same, whereas for others than these it belongs to be other and the same in identity.

Now we must consider what the other names first set out signify. I mean spirit, Word, intellect, Holy Spirit, wisdom, substance. Spirit is a name of substance or existence, which signifies being, both in what it is called and in what it is understood to be. If you wish to know what God is, spirit signifies what being is: God and spirit, then, signify what being is. Again, what is life? What spirit is. Spirit and life, then, signify what being is. So too the Holy Spirit signifies by this very name what being is, with the difference of the two first named by one name; and this difference, being substantial, signifies what is. From this it now appears that substance, in each existing one, signifies being. In these three, then, spirit is substance: homoousia, then. For spirit is undivided with spirit, being one in three. But since there is one Father's existence of nature, power and action, and for that which has being the three, begetting one another, are almighty substance, existence did not exist beforehand. For the Father is the begetter of his own substance, and at the summit he is the fountain existence of the others; nor is existence itself split. Both existence and power are in being, in each of these three, according to all majesty, omnipotence and perfection in every way, which once begets, establishing itself, moving itself from itself, always moving itself, consubstantial, at once powerful in this very being so, and in being itself, the Father giving it. The Saviour says: “All that the Father has is mine; and therefore I said: he will receive from what is mine. For he will not speak from himself, but whatever he hears he will speak.” If, then, the Holy Spirit speaks, he speaks from the Son, and the Son from the Father. Voice, then, and Word and utterance: these three, because the three are one. But the Father speaks in silence, the Son openly; and in speaking, the Holy Spirit does not speak openly, but what he speaks, he speaks spiritually.

These three, then, are true lights, or rather one light, truly one Word, one voice, one utterance, that is, one active power, sounding together before it makes anything to be. That the soul is another substance is plain: for it was made by the triple-powered Spirit; it is neither purely voice nor utterance, but like an echo it hears in order to speak, more an image of a voice than a voice. And this is the voice of John crying in the wilderness: “Make straight the way of the Lord.” For the soul cries out in the wilderness, that is, in the world, since it knows the Lord God and wishes to be cleansed, so as to enjoy the Lord God; and it bears witness about God, and is sent ahead into the world to bear witness to the witness. For Jesus Christ is the witness of God, the Son, then, of God; John is the son of the Lord. For John was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. The utterance and the voice, then, is the Son: he is life, he the Word, he motion, he intellect, he wisdom, he existence and first substance, he potential action, he the existent, the truly first existent from whom are all existents, and through whom and in whom. He, who is the middle angle of the Trinity, declares the Father as pre-existent and completes the Holy Spirit into perfection. For, as blessed Paul says, “the gospel is the power of God”, and wisdom: by “power” he signifies the Son, because all things are through him; for by the word of power all things will be made, and by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit all things are made perfect. If, then, God is these, these three are together. And since the two are one, all exist together in knowledge, life existing together in the Father, in which the Holy Spirit too is, according to existence, since the three were one and always are. If, then, the Son, eternal life, is the shining forth of the life that is before eternity, and he is life, perfect knowledge and eternal life (for life is perfect when it has known what it is and whose it is, since it is itself and by the Father's command; for then, existing in itself, it does not become unbounded, saving and saved by itself), then it is necessary to understand and say that the power of God is in it, that is, the Father in the Son, whereas by itself it was unbounded. And this is what is signified by: “And the Word became flesh.” For by an unbounded motion life descended into lower things and gave life to corruption, for whose sake the universal Word and power of life became flesh, as the angel said: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” Jesus Christ, then, was born according to the flesh from Mary, and from the Holy Spirit, by the power of the Most High.

Christ our Lord, then, is all things: flesh, Holy Spirit, power of the Most High, Word. He fulfilled the mystery, so that all life with flesh, filled with eternal light, might run back from all corruption into the heavens. Our Lord Jesus, then, is neither flesh only, nor Holy Spirit only, nor spirit only, nor Word only, but all together. The Holy Spirit, then, all blessedness, in the first unbegotten generation, which alone is and is called generation, was himself the Father, himself the Son. For when the Spirit was moved from itself, that is, when the perfect life existing in motion wished to see itself, that is, its power, namely the Father, there came about the manifestation of itself, which is and is called generation, and in this respect existing outside. For all knowledge, inasmuch as it is knowledge, is outside that which it desires to know. I say “outside” as in a beholding, in respect of seeing itself, which is to know or see that power which pre-exists in the Father's existence. In this, then, in a time without any thought of time, going out, as it were, from that which was being in order to behold that very thing which it was (since there every motion is substance), the otherness that was born quickly returned into identity. For it is not an effulgence that turns its back, but like lights, or faces looking at one another by sight into each other, that very one thing subsisted in the same way as perfect. For lights are like faces looking at each other on every side, and they have no back; and mystically it is said that God is seen from behind. With no diminution, then, the whole always remained one, the Father's power above all made powerful by co-union. The Holy Spirit, then, is the first motion within, which is the Father's thought, that is, knowledge of himself; for knowledge precedes fore-knowledge. According to this natural mode of knowing, then, understanding having come about outside, the Son was born, having become life: not that he was not life, but since life outside is more truly life, for life is in motion. This is the Word who is called Jesus Christ, through whom all things were made, the seed of all things for their being; for without life it is impossible for anything to be, among the things that are and among the things that are not, which follow from them.

But since we said that the Word and the Holy Spirit are one and the same motion, the Word inasmuch as it is life, the Holy Spirit inasmuch as it is to be knowledge and to be understanding; and since what we spoke of is that very thing, life and knowledge; and since we said that understanding was moved in the first motion (for since this is the natural and divine order in power, it was necessary for understanding to be moved to know itself): the Son was born, who is the Word, that is, life by the Father's power, understanding begetting him, that is, the being of all things that are, as an eternal fountain. He will not be deceived, then, who has understood that the Holy Spirit is the mother of Jesus, both above and below: above, as has been said; below, in this way. For the sake of liberation it was necessary that the whole divine, that is, the seed-bed of all spirits existing universally, and that which is first being, that is, the universal Word, should be incarnate from the lower matter and from all corruption, for the putting to death of all corruption and sin. For the darkness and ignorance of the soul, torn away by the powers of matter, needed eternal light to help them, so that the Word of the soul and the Word of the flesh, corruption having been thrust down by the mystery of death into revival, might raise both souls and bodies, through the Holy Spirit as minister, to divine and life-giving understanding, by knowledge, faith and love. The angel, then, answered Mary and said to her: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” These two in motion, the Word and the Holy Spirit, came so that Mary might conceive, so that flesh might be built from flesh, the temple and dwelling of God: the Holy Spirit as power in motion, for motion is the principle of generation; and the power of the Most High is the Word himself, for Jesus, the Word, is the power and wisdom of God. But of the Word, that is, of the Son, he said “will overshadow you”. For human nature cannot receive what is perfect and divine, splendid and bright as it is. And this is what is signified by: “And the Word became flesh.” Or rather, the overshadowing is signified by what is said: “He emptied himself.”

We have, then, in due order, set out God the Father and the Son as homoousion, and as homoousia by identity in substance. For the substance of the Spirit is one; it is being itself. And being itself is both life and understanding. These are three in each, and therefore there is one divinity and one God; for the whole is one God, because Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one, otherness appearing only in power and action. For God moves and commands all things in power and in hidden motion, as in silence; but the Word, the Son, who is the Holy Spirit, speaks also by voice, to beget all things according to life and to establish them according to understanding, for the being of all. From this it appears that the Word himself and the Holy Spirit are intellect and wisdom. For Paul too said this divinely: “Who has known the mind of the Lord?” And again of him: “the power and wisdom of God”. Solomon too speaks of wisdom concerning him, and many names are referred to the Son; and Paul calls him substance, to the Hebrews: “the image of his substance”. And likewise he spoke of a consubstantial people. And Jeremiah: “For who has stood in my substance and seen my word?” And again: “If they had stood in my substance and heard my words.” And the Gospel according to Matthew: “Give us today our consubstantial bread.” In a parable Luke says: “The younger of the sons said to his father: Give me the portion of substance that falls to me.” And again: “There he squandered his substance.” For what descends from there did not keep its powers. These refer to the soul; but I said this against those who deny that the name ousia is found in the sacred Scriptures. Further, God made the soul, that is, man, according to his image and likeness.

What these things signify, hear as I say it. The supreme intellect and perfect wisdom, that is, the universal Word (for it is the same thing in eternal motion), was a circular motion from the first point, existing at the highest summit of the circle at that very point, a cyclic cause turned back inseparably, as from the Father and into the Father, existing with the Father, going forth, existing together; and the Son was in the Father and the Father in the Son. First substance, and already substance in substance, spiritual substance according to intellect, begetting and effecting substance, the pre-principle of all intelligible and intellectual and soul substance, and of all material substance in matter. If, then, the first motion is life, I say, and understanding (for these are that perfect one and only one), this motion is not only circular but spherical, or rather it is a sphere, and truly a sphere perfect in every way. For if there are being, living and understanding, and if life is being itself and understanding, and there are extremities and a middle in each, so too with understanding: three in one, then, circled in themselves and sharing in one another. Or rather, existing together without any interval, it is the sphere, first and perfect, the only sphere itself; while other things are more like a sphere by likeness. By this reasoning, necessarily, the point is power, and it is the line, and working the line it is the point; going out from itself and yet not always going out, at rest and in motion at once, always together, circling itself in a circle on every side, so that God, existing everywhere, is a sphere. Since he is the point from which and into which all motion is brought back by turning, this is God: the whole Word, the whole intellect, the whole wisdom, almighty substance, the substance we revere and worship, seeing by the Spirit alone, raised up to him by his nod and will, by the grace of the cross, our Lord Jesus Christ having mercy on us. Amen.

By the upright cyclic motion I mean the straight one, because from the point to the point, that is, from the Father to the Father, in the appearing of this motion and of the whole divinity, the Word and the Son, there exists by God's command an image according to the image and likeness of God, an image of the image, that is, of the Son; for the Son is the image of the Father, as has been shown. And this is so because the Son is life, so the soul was made the image of life. The soul with its own intellect, from him who is intellect, is the power of intellectual life; it is not intellect, but when it looks toward intellect it is, as it were, intellect, for there sight is union. But turning downward, and turned away from intellect, it draws itself and its intellect down. Become merely understanding, no longer as intelligible, yet if it perseveres so, it is the mother of the things above heaven, a light, though not the true light, light indeed with its own intellect. But if it looks toward lower things, when it acts wantonly, it becomes a power of giving life, making to live the things in the world, and things in the world down to the stone in the manner of stones, itself also having been made with intellect. For the soul is a word, not the Word; and when it is in the middle between spirits and intelligibles and matter, turned with its own intellect to both, it either becomes divine or is embodied. For it is free in its turning toward the intelligent; and when deprived of the true light it is called back again by the faint spark of its own intellect; since it is alone, it is said to be darkened below. For the purer summits of matter, having the power of animating, are a cause for the light, as if it were descending into what is its own. “Why, then, is it said, and he distinguishes these,” someone says, “if the soul is such? How is it said: Let us make man according to our image and likeness?”

We must first examine what man is, then what the image is, how the image differs from the likeness, and how man was made according to image and likeness and not as image and likeness; and what “our” means. Man, as is customary, is understood in two ways, as made of body and soul. Some think he is of body and a threefold soul; some of body and a soul having three powers. Others again say he is of body and a partial intellect, and soul and spirit, by which the flowing body holds together. Still others say he is of a four-powered body of four elements, a twofold soul and a twofold intellect. My understanding is this. The body is as has been shown: for God took dust and formed Adam; that is, the earth having already been fashioned, we have the summits and flower of the earth as the principles of the body. The Gospel according to Matthew and Luke declares a twin intellect and a twin soul. For they say this: “So will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field: one will be taken and one left; two women grinding at the mill: one will be taken and one left.” And Luke added two concerning the body: “On that night there will be two in one bed: one will be taken and the other left.” The others similarly. Since they are in the field, then, there are two words: intellect and a heavenly word, and another that is material. And the two women grinding are two souls, heavenly and material. The heavenly intellect or heavenly word, the soul, will be taken; the material word and soul will be left. How this is, hear. Man must be confessed to be of soul and body. He is of body, which is composed from earth; so he has from the earth a material soul, and Adam was made, according to the body, a living creature, as a living creature comes from water and earth. The other creatures were made into a living soul, but Adam not so: for God breathed into his face, and there placed all the sensory power, with which intellect is present to discern what the senses perceive. There is, then, another, more divine soul with its own intellect; for in the sensory power a material intellect is implanted, consubstantial with the material soul. If this is so, the heavenly Word, that is, the divine intellect or spirit, is in the divine soul; the divine soul itself in the material spirit; the material spirit in the material soul; and the material soul in the fleshly body. This must be purified together with all three, so that it may receive the eternal light and eternal life; and faith in Christ accomplishes this.

Let us say, then, how such a soul was made according to the image of God and according to the likeness; and whether the soul alone is the man, since Paul speaks of one man earthly, another psychic, another spiritual, and all these in one man. But above all he often speaks of the inner man, for such is the soul, since it gathers the intellect and the divine soul; and he speaks of the heavenly man, and calls the rest the earthly man. If this is so, our soul is according to the image of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. For if Christ is life and is the Word, he is the image of God, in which image God the Father is beheld, that is, God's being in life; for this is the image, as has been said. And if Christ is life, and what living is, that is the Word; and life itself is being, and this being is the Father. And if again life itself is understanding, and this is the Holy Spirit, then these three are all, and in each are three, and the three are one and wholly homoousia. If, then, the soul, insofar as it is soul, is the soul's being and living and understanding, the soul is three of the higher Triad, as an image of the image. For insofar as it is soul, it is in being, giving life and understanding, having them together before understanding, homoousia in one; and they are each as its substance, not by splitting, not by division, not by outpouring, nor by extension, nor cut off by birth, but everlasting three: one existing in another that exists, and these substantially. It is according to the image, then. And as the Father is being, and the Son the other two, but in motion and act, so the soul, insofar as it is soul, is like the Father's power, while giving life and understanding are in motion. These, then, are the soul's being according to the image of the Father and the Son; and so to be according to the likeness. Homoousion, then, is the soul too in its oneness, and of like substance, in triple power: itself generating, therefore itself moving itself, and always in motion in the world of motions, a fountain and principle, as the Father and the Son are of the soul itself, of its motion, both its creator and its pre-cause and pre-principle.

I speak further of a great mystery in secret. As the more divine Trinity, with its oneness, made the soul by itself, radiantly, in the intelligible world, into substance and its own substance, which we properly call substance, so the second trinity with oneness, that of the soul, unfolded an image in the sensible world, the soul itself, which is always above, begetting the souls of the world; and this, then, is according to the image and likeness. Let us see, then, whether man is made according to the flesh as well. Some say “according to the flesh” by foresight, since Jesus was going to put on flesh. But I say: perhaps also in this, that he is the Word, and the Word of flesh, and God who is both bodily and said to be above every body; for God is the power of the universe and of all things; not without reason is man according to the image of the body. For if our body and flesh are to rise and put on incorruption and become spiritual flesh, as our Saviour was in all things, and rose, and ascended, and is to come; and if after the resurrection we shall be changed, receiving a spiritual garment, nothing prevents man from having been made according to the image of the higher flesh of the Word. For the prophet bears witness to this, saying: “And God made man according to the image of God.” If God made him according to the image, the Father made him according to the image of the Son. And if he says this, “he made him male and female”, as was said before, “he made man according to the image of God”, it is plain that he made him also according to the body and the flesh, greatly and mystically, the Word existing as male and female, since he was a son to himself in the first and second birth, spiritually and in the flesh. Thanks be to God the Father and to his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, from eternity to all ages of ages. Amen.

We all confess God almighty; we now confess Christ Jesus; but soon all will confess him who have faith in Christ the Son. Concerning both, that they are both two and each one: since God as Father and Jesus Christ as Son are our whole religion and our whole hope, and our faith is in this. But while we confess two, each in himself, we still say one God, and both one God, because the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father. Others say that God is one, the Father alone, and that the Son is a man; but let us leave them aside for now. For when we say that Jesus is the Son, we confess that he was the Son even before he was born of Mary. For if in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word himself was God, and this one was in the beginning, who afterwards became flesh, then to be the Word and to be Jesus are the same. For if in the beginning was the Word, in the beginning was the Son, who afterwards in the flesh was Jesus, because of the mystery which he fulfilled at the Father's command. It must be confessed, then, that the Son was from the beginning. Do we say that he is from the Father's substance, or outside it? This must be inquired into. Do we not confess that God is? We do. Do we, then, say that this being is anousion or enousion, that is, without substance or with substance? “Anousion,” they say. I accept it; but I ask: anousion in what way? As one who is not substance at all, or as one who is above substance, that is, hyperousion? Who, confessing that God is, would say that he is without substance? For his being is his substance, not the substance known to us; but he himself, that which being is, is not from substance but is substance itself, the parent of all, giving himself being from himself, the first substance, the universal substance, the substance before substance. Because he is hyperousios, then, he is called anousios by some, not because he is without substance, since he is. Let us venerate God, then, and say that he is, that is, that he is enousios, he who established all things, heaven and earth, the world, spirits, angels, souls, living creatures, and man according to the image and likeness of their image. What, then, since he is enousios? He is certainly called God the Father: so we confess, and Father of the Only-begotten; this is the faith of all. Does the word, then, deceive our understanding by its ambiguity? For God also said of men, “He begot you.” If, then, “I begot” can signify “I created”, as of a creature, it also signifies “I begot by nature, from my own substance.” What belongs more to the Only-begotten? What more to him who is the Son, to him who is one and alone, to him in whom the Father is, to him who is in the Father, to him who is the Word, who was in the beginning and was with God and is God, through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made? And what does it signify that Christ is only-begotten? For if God is the Father of all by creation, how is he the Father of this Only-begotten, if not in another way, from substance, not from nothing? And there was no other substance before all things than the Father's: Christ, then, is from the Father's substance.