Against Arius 4.13–4.23

And if these things in the world are acts, how much more are those in the eternal realm and above the heavens acts and actions, which begot these things of the world? Likewise the soul, and the Angels who are from souls and above souls. For the soul too is carried by a self-begotten motion, that is, a motion of its own, arising from itself to itself; it is called self-moving, and hence ever-moving. It is always in motion, then, which is always to act, and to be itself activity, so that that motion is its substance. For it is said: “Let us make man according to our image and likeness.” It has, then, a self-begotten motion, that is, a motion arising from itself, as God has, as Christ has. But because it is not that prior Spirit, it is therefore another substance, and made, not existing from itself, but made so as to have motion from itself. For soul is one thing, life another. For life is the state of living, and as it were a certain form or condition begotten by living, containing in itself living itself and being what life is, both being one substance. For truly the one is not in the other, but is one twinned in its own simplicity; and therefore it is in itself because it is from itself, and from itself because simplicity operates something else within itself. For rest begets nothing; but motion and the operation of acting form for themselves, from themselves, what they are, or rather in what way they are. For to be is to live; and to be life is a certain motion, that is, the form of the living one, made by that very thing whose form it is. That which makes is living, because it never began; for what lives from itself does not begin, because it always lives; hence life does not begin either. For when the maker is without beginning, what is made also lacks beginning. Both, then, are together and consubstantial. Living is God, life is Christ; and in what is living there is life, and in what is life there is living. In this way, indeed, each is in the other, because made and maker are each in the other. For as the maker is in the made, so the made is in the maker, especially if they are always so. So the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father: for the maker is maker of the made, and the made is made by the maker. There is one substance, then: not one shared by two, nor two in one, but because in the substance in which God is, in the same is the Son, that is, of the same kind: for as God lives, so the Son lives; of such substance as the Father is, of such is the Son.

“But if the Father lives,” they say, “the Son lives too, and therefore both are of the same and such a substance. And the substance of this ‘he lives’, since it belongs to both, both live; both are without origin, everlasting.” But this is excluded by the sacred words of the evangelist, the Son himself, our Lord Jesus Christ, speaking: “The Father lives.” This is the fountain without origin. But where is the beginning from another? “And I,” he says, “live because of the Father.” If, then, he lives because of the Father, he received from the Father; and if he received, he was begotten from the unbegotten; and if he lives, his existence is certain, and the force of substance in both is of one kind with this “he lives”, the same for Father and Son, but the Son's substance is from the Father. For what is born of spirit is spirit: from such a substance of the Father, then, such is the substance of the Son. And so that it might be shown more clearly that the substance was given by the Father, and that it is one and the same substance, it was said that “he lives” and life are substance. The substance of God, then, and of Christ the Son from God, is the same, as the evangelist says: “For as God has life from himself, so he has given to the Son to have life from himself.” Christ, then, is homoousios with God, that is, consubstantial, which means of the same substance, the first, principal and universal substance, from which come all things that are and live, having life brought in from outside, not begotten from itself, nor such that their living is that which belongs to God and the Son. For all others have as much of life as Christ bestows. In God, living is the principal maker of life, the two existing from one and the same fountain, with nothing prior in time or in power, at least as regards substance. Hence, if we take homoousion to mean that the substance is the same, there is no doubt that it is the same, because he who lives is already life, which is God, and he who is life lives, which is Christ; and both have life from themselves, as it is said: “As the Father has life from himself, so he has given to the Son to have life from himself.” But if we take homoousion to mean being of the same substance together, this is proved more easily and plainly by what I have said the Father and the Son are. For living and life are together, and always together, so that in what is living there is life, and again life is what living is.

Let us take an example, though what I am saying is rather the thing itself than an example. We have said that God is nothing other than living: but that principal living, that from which comes all the living of all things; the very action of the others, existing in acting, and having its being in such motion, that is, having its existence or substance; though not even “having”, but existing itself as that which is living principally and universally. And what is made from this act, and is as it were its form, is life. For as eternity is made by the ever-present act of all things, so by living, and by the ever-present work of living, life is made. And, to put it so, this is vitality: that the form of life is begotten according to its power and substance. But our living too consists of an ever-present time. For we do not live the past, nor do we live the future, but always use the present. For this alone is time, and because it alone is time, it is said to be the image of aion, that is, of eternity. For as eternity always has all things through presents, and has them always, so we too, because we have through present time all that we can have, this time of ours is the image of eternity, though our present is not the same, nor always the same present. Life, then, is made by living, and at the same time is formed by existing; and formation is appearance; and appearance is a rising from hidden things; and from hidden things it is a rising and a birth, the birth of one who existed even before he so arose. Hence in living there is life before it is life; and yet life is later, because it is life by living; and it is always and from eternity life, because in that it is, it lives, and from eternity it lives, it is life. Since, then, God lives and Christ is life, because life arises, existing, from that which also lives, necessarily the Father lives and the Son is life, as we taught above, so that in what is “he lives” there is life, and in life there is also living. The Son, then, is homoousios with the Father, as we taught above with examples.

Now follows the explanation of what the Holy Spirit is, together with these. Of God these things have been said and proved: that God is what being is, and that Spirit is what living is; likewise, that light is what being understanding is, and knowledge. For light allows nothing to be hidden, nothing obscure; it opens, illumines, enlightens. God, then, is this very thing which God is: he is being, he is the first and principal being for all things that are, providing being according to the measure of those who receive it, as we taught before; he is this, that is, living; he is this, understanding; that is, this which is being, this is spirit, this is light. For these are in one and simple, or rather are one and simple. These are what being is; this we rightly call either existence or substance. But the principal of these is that which is being, while the other two, living and understanding, are understood to be motions, since every motion is born from rest. Rest is that which is being; from that which is being, motion is born, and from it action; and the motion of that first, which is being, is living and understanding. For both are motion, and one motion, providing two powers by a twin office, one and the same substance. For motion is substance for these; in them being is not one thing and being moved another. So likewise living is not one thing and understanding another, as far as substance is concerned. For understanding belongs to the living and living to the understanding, turning through their acts by one motion; yet so that, while the work and act of living remain, the act of understanding is set in motion. Hence, since Christ is life and the Holy Spirit knowledge and understanding, the Holy Spirit nonetheless received from Christ all that he has, and Christ from the Father, that is, from that which is being; life came to exist, and from living came knowledge and understanding; and this was so even then, since that first being is such that, when it is being, it is also being moved.

Although it is called rest, it moves within by an inner motion by which it lives to itself and understands itself. From the inner motion, then, motion was born outwardly, to what is outside: from that which is being within, and from that which is living within, living outside; from that which is understanding within, understanding outside, life and understanding moving themselves. For the motions exist in the same way together with that which is being, so that it is both within and without: this Trinity is within, when God is one and alone; outside, when it is Jesus Christ; within and without, when both are one God. And from these, since God is homoousion with Christ, Christ is necessarily homoousion with the Holy Spirit, and through this and through Christ with God; for he too came forth from God. For if every motion that is outside is from God's motion, which is inner motion, then this one too is from God. For knowledge and understanding are the existence and the power of knowing of both; and this is itself motion, by the very fact that motion is substance. Necessarily, then, he is in Christ, or is Christ, and has all things from him, because understanding came to subsist from life, which Christ is, and therefore he is another. For it is said: “And he has all things from me.” “He has” and “from me” are two: so one and another. But because the Holy Spirit too is motion, and Christ is motion, and because Christ is true life and gives true, that is, eternal, life to those who believe in him, and is present with God for those who believe in him, so that they are sons of God, and this through faith, we are therefore reconciled to God through Christ. But because men's memory of themselves and of God had been buried, there is need of the Holy Spirit, if knowledge is to be added: to understand what is the breadth of God, what the length, what the depth and height. And when love and faith in Christ have been confirmed through the Holy Spirit, because he is knowledge, a man will be saved. For he bears full witness about Christ, teaches all things, and is the inner power of Christ, granting knowledge and advancing toward salvation; hence he is another Paraclete. For to men dead through sins life had first to be given, so that they might be raised to God through faith, which was already to live from God's life, which Christ brought in the flesh, to help the flesh too. Therefore, once men had been confirmed through faith in Christ the Son of God, it seemed that knowledge too should be given, about Christ, and likewise about God, and about the world, to convict it. When they had understood these things, they would more easily be set free toward God's light by understanding their own inner man and divine things, by contempt for earthly and worldly things, and by the desire that knowledge of divine things arouses.

He came later, then; that is, faith came later to operate. For when Christ withdrew, who by miracles and precepts had sown the faith that he was the Son of God and gave life to those who believed in him, all things were completed by the Spirit, and faith, grown to maturity by knowledge of Christ, increased, Christ himself being always present. For so he said: “For he will not speak from himself, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will announce to you the things to come. He will honour me, because he will receive from what is mine.” Understanding, then, comes from life, and life itself from living: that is, the Son from the Father, the Holy Spirit from the Son. For so he added: “All that the Father has is mine.” He said “is mine” because what the Father has belongs to the Son: being, living, understanding. These same the Spirit has: all, then, are homoousia. Yet, to show his constant presence, the same Lord speaks thus according to Matthew: “Go now and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep all that I have commanded you; and behold, I am with you all days until the consummation of the age.” From this it is shown in a certain way that Jesus is the same and the Holy Spirit the same, though with a different act of acting, because the one teaches understanding and the other gives life. For the same is both one motion and first motion; and so it happens that he who lives truly lives and understands, and truly understands, and he who truly understands truly lives. And so that Jesus and the Holy Spirit may be shown to be the same, let us attend to this: the Holy Spirit is teaching, understanding and wisdom itself; and wisdom is ascribed both to Christ and to God; and Christ is called by this name, since the Gospel is that Christ is the Son of God, and the Gospel is defined as the power and wisdom of God, as Paul says to the Romans. Likewise Solomon: “All wisdom is from God, and has been with him always, before the age.” See how homoousia appears, when wisdom is said to be both of God and given by God, certainly to Christ and to the Holy Spirit. And when it is said that it was always with God, which is homoousion, it is shown to be together with the Father. Then, when it is said “before the age”, Christ did not begin when he was in the flesh. Likewise, “wisdom was created before all things”: if Christ is the firstborn, Christ is wisdom. Then what follows refers to the Holy Spirit: “and the understanding of prudence from eternity”. If the Holy Spirit is prudence and understanding, if he is knowledge and teaching, he is without doubt Christ, because he is from the age, that is, from eternity, and firstborn, and, what is more, only-begotten. These and other things, treated by me in many books, prove that not only God and Christ but also the Holy Spirit are homoousia. Let us grant, then, or accept, that God is what is first and principal living, which is true and principal being; for what does not live is not. We have made it clear that this very living by its operation makes and begets life. And in what is life, knowledge and understanding are present. God, then, lives, and by living God is life, and when he is life he is understanding. But these three are as one and simple, and in it as principal, that is, this is what being is: by his principal existence God is above all living, and necessarily also understanding himself. Hence he understands all things, because he understands himself. He is the cause of all existences, and therefore he is all things. Life and understanding, then, taken into that which is being within, always operate, and this is living; and for God living is what being is. The one almighty God, then, is the being of all things. What, then? If he operates within himself, or rather if life and understanding operate him, how could these appear as if outside? And what is outside or inside of the Word? Philosophers and men learned in the law have asked what they are and where they are: what they are, so that we may explain their substance or existence; where they are, whether there or outside, and in all the rest, or in both and everywhere.

These things we have set out thoroughly and fully in other books; but now we shall state them summarily and briefly. Before the existent and before the Logos there is that force and power of existing which is signified by the word “to be”, in Greek to einai. This being is to be taken in two ways. In one, it is universal and principally principal, from which being comes to be in the other things; in the other, being is, for the other things, that which is, for all that come after, whether genera or species, and others of this kind. But the first being is so unparticipated that it cannot be called one or alone, but, by pre-eminence, it is before the one and before the alone, beyond simplicity, pre-existence rather than existence, the universal of all universals, infinite and unbounded, but for all others, not for itself. And therefore it is heard without form by a certain understanding, and is received, known and believed by pre-understanding rather than by understanding. This is what we have called living, or “lives”: that infinite one, which above the living of all universals is being itself, living itself; not being something or living something; and so not even the existent. For the existent is something definite, intelligible and knowable. If, then, it is not the existent, neither is it the Logos; for the Logos is defined and defining: whether it is reason, or the power of existence itself, or those things which understanding grasps so that it becomes the being of each; for it knows what it does not know only when it notices and grasps what those things are which provide substance to each. And this is the Logos of things through which all things were created, the universal power, containing universally the things of all, providing to each its own and proper existence. Because it provides to each what is its own and proper, it flows down and determines, and makes that existent too. For by imposing a limit on the infinite, it forms each thing for its existence, and, when infinity has been removed, places it under understanding. In that it is the power of things for bringing forth and effecting existences, then, it is the Logos; and in that it defines and encloses each thing, giving it form, it is the existent, now existing, since it has become the definite form of that which is being.

This being so, let us see whether there is no Logos of the first, which is being. If we call it infinite, immense, indistinct, we do not grasp or hold the things in which its being consists: so it has no Logos. But since it cannot be that this very existent, which is, should be in any way without its Logos (though it is infinite), it certainly has its own Logos, but lying hidden and secret, so that in that which is being the Logos itself is; or rather the Logos itself is nothing other than being itself. And this is what I called truly first, that universally universal living; although, as we taught, living itself, life and understanding are defined, for they are powers of the Logos, and the Logos is something defined and formed, and understanding is also defining. Yet because these are within and turned in upon themselves, all are unknown and indistinct. So God too, what being is, that is, living, is unknown and indistinct; and his form, that is, life and understanding, is unknown and indistinct; for these are nothing other than being, which is living. And since this is infinite, its form too is infinite, remaining there and existing as nothing other than being. But when it began to be outside, then the form that appears is the image of God, showing God through itself; and it is the Logos, no longer the Logos “toward God” there within, in which life and understanding are now the existent, because it is definite knowledge and existence, grasped by understanding and knowledge. But how did these come to exist outside? Was the form that is within sent out, or did it cast itself out? And since the inner form is indistinct and infinite, how is it known also in the form that is outside? Or is this another? But if it is another, then it was not born from that one, either by emission or by its own motion; and if it is so other, it is not a part, nor the same, nor homoousios at all; and then from where did it appear?

From another, then, so that there are two principles? Or from nothing? But nothing is not among the existents under God. Next, if it came to exist by God's power or will, God's power or will is not nothing. For if God is almighty, his omnipotence is both the cause of all things and existence itself. Do we dare, then, to say what remains: that this form arose from itself? And how, since it was in the Father? Without the Father's knowledge, or at his command? If at his command, then not from itself. Or without his knowledge? Then there is something that was not by God's power, or something that was without him; yet of the Word, who is called his form, it is said: “Through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made.” What is this? What separating of such great confusions? Which, if not the truth, or the life of truth? May the Holy Spirit be present: what has been breathed into us, if only the hearer attends, we shall lay open, expounding it with pure simplicity. Meanwhile I give one warning: these things must be taken without time, always, from eternity, with no beginning in time, but so that both, the begetter and the begotten, are one principle. First, in eternal and divine things, and above all in the first things, remaining at rest and existing in what they are, they begot with no change of themselves through motion: first God, then the Word or Intellect, or whatever the other is, or both, as spirit, as living or life, as understanding or knowledge; only the soul, being moved, has generations. All these I set out thus. God is triple-powered, that is, having three powers: being, living, understanding; so that in each there are three, and he himself is any one of the three, taking the name of the one in which he stands out, as I taught above and in many places; for nothing is to be said to be except what understands. There is, then, a threefold singularity in each and a oneness in the Trinity; and these three we shall set out in their progression.

All things that are, and that can be or could have been, have received existence, life and understanding according to the capacity of things and substances and the sharing that these three provide. For in all there is their own being, their own living, their own understanding and their own sensing, so that these are a shadow or image of the three higher ones. God, then, is, as all say, one, and only one. But some have said that God is one all and not one; for he is the principle of all, and so not all things, but all things in that way. This is so for this reason; and first, that God is one and alone. Those three, because they do not consist by coupling but by existing as what he himself is, and as what we believe to be other, are necessarily one and in no way other. But of this much has been said. And what was said, “one all and not one, for he is the principle of all”, declares clearly and plainly that God is the Father and principle of all things; who, since he is not one, is rather all, because he is the cause and principle of all, and all in all. Since these things are so, God is also all things: existing, all-living, all-seeing and all-understanding. And since we said that power is completed by act (for so the first things are, since all things are from divine energy, that is, from acts and operations), it is necessary that from God, the principle of all powers, the fountain and origin of the universally universal things should be born. For this is the progression of things: since all things are from God, powers and acts from God, who is understood to be above powers and acts, these are believed to have arisen from him.

But since we have said that God is a certain act, which is living, but that living which is above all living, from eternity and to eternity, living being taken together with that which is being and that which is understanding, but together in such a way that there is not even the imagination of a coupling: necessarily, by the act of living, as I taught, there is completed and comes to exist the form which we call the universal power, formed through those single ones: from the all-existing, all-existence; from the all-living, all-livingness; from the all-seeing, all-seeingness. These single powers are as known and determined. But when all are in one, or one is all, or when one is all, or neither one nor all, it becomes infinite, unknown, indiscernible, unknowable, and what is truly called aoristia, that is, infinity and indetermination. For it is the being of all, the living of all and the understanding of all, and it is one, and one without the imagination of another; hence not even one, because it is the principle of all, and so also of the one itself. From this we are now necessarily compelled to say these things also of God: that his being, living and understanding are incomprehensible; and not only that they are incomprehensible, but that they do not even seem to be what he is, who is above all. Therefore he is called without existence, without substance, without intellect, without life: not by privation, but by supereminence; for all things that words name come after him. Hence he is not the existent, but rather the pre-existent. In the same way there is a pre-existence, a pre-vision and a pre-knowledge of the things that are made; he himself is pre-existing, pre-seeing, pre-knowing. But all these were understood and named only when the second things appeared. For after knowledge appeared, pre-knowledge was understood and named; in the same way pre-existence and pre-living. These indeed existed, but were not yet noticed, not yet named. Hence all that God is, is unknowable. But since the knowable is had and spoken of when there is knowledge (for they are relative, and hold and beget each other, or destroy each other), that knowable was not yet knowable, because there was no knowledge. Not that what knowledge made knowable to itself did not exist; but it was indeed what could be knowable, not yet such as to be known; and that happens and is received when it is further understood that there can also be understanding. In this way, then, in God too, it both could be and was, and from this it was knowable; because it could also be, from this there was knowledge.