Against Arius 4.24–4.33

What follows from this? That if these were born afterwards, they were in God; and if they were, because God is one, they too are one; and what God is, they are, one, because they are God. These same, then, are the knowable and knowledge, but in such a way that what is knowable is knowledge. For since the power of these three is one (for being is nothing other than living, and living itself is understanding, since it is also being understood), the whole force of each lies in knowing, or in being knowledge. But there cannot be knowledge unless there is something knowable; and in these first things, where being is what living and understanding are, the knowable can only be knowledge itself, not yet appearing, but holding itself within, remaining at rest, ceasing, turned toward itself and presenting itself to itself as knowable. For when knowledge itself lies hidden and is with itself, entering into itself from outside, yet naturally immersed in that in which being too remains, it belongs to its form that it can be knowable; when knowledge is roused and, as it were going out, looks round upon itself and makes itself knowing, by knowing itself it becomes knowable, made its own. In this way, then, if it is right to say so, in this way, I say, is that first, that one alone, that God, or spirit, or breathing, or light, or illumining, or existing, or all-existing, or existence, or all-existence, or living, or all-living, or life, or livingness, or all-livingness, or understanding and knowing, or all-understanding, all-knowing, or all-understanding, all-knowledge, almighty, perfect in every way, unbounded, immense, but for others; to himself bounded and measured; above all, and therefore none of all things, but rather he from whom all things are. He is, then, one and only one, for he is the principle of all. Hence he is not one-all, remaining in himself, nor in himself (lest, hearer, you take it as two), but he is himself remaining, or abiding, rest at rest, or rather resting, because rest comes from the one resting, as we taught above. Hence he is said also to sit as in the centre of all things that are, from where, with a universal eye, that is, with the light of his substance, by which he is, or lives, or understands, he sees into the things that are with no turning gaze, because he is rest; from the centre there is one sight into all things at once. These things God is. But how God is Father, and who the Son is, or how he is Son, and afterwards how Jesus is the Son: to be the principle of all, to be before all, is to be all; and the principle is not so much to be at rest as to be rest itself. For all things that were begotten or made were begotten or made from motion. And motion itself, by which it is motion, before it is moved is rest; for contraries arise from contraries, so that by the arising of the contrary, the contrary from which it arose perishes into non-being, as death from life and life from death; likewise from that which is being, and from that which is non-being there would be being; and likewise motion from rest, and rest from motion.

But let us attend more keenly, and with bold understanding see the force and height of things. As these things have been set out, a careful observer will find that there is a certain existence even in those things that appear to perish. For since life is that to which being belongs, and from it death is born, death too has being, if life is born from death. Likewise, if non-being is made from that which is being, necessarily non-being too will be, if what being is is born from it. Likewise, if there is cessation, the cessation of motion must exist, if motion is born from it. What, then? Are contraries not believed, through the arising of their contraries, either to die or not to be? It seems so, but the opposite is true: for both remain, and do not perish from their eternal substantial quality. How this is I shall say; with God's help the explanation will be easier. In eternal things to be is this: what living and understanding are. We have said this often, and proved it. And this being is such that there are living and understanding substances there. Let us take these as providing three things according to the mode of the existents, and holding all things together by sharing in themselves; they thrive in the things known; they alone are simple, divine, eternal. In the things of the world and of matter they are present, but are sustained by various fleshly and mortal things. Here, then, if there is death, it is the death of bodies; and if closer attention is paid, not even of bodies, insofar as they are matter, but the dissolution of these bodies in the form they now have, brought about by a certain perishing. Only the form of the body, then, is dissolved when it is scattered into the elements; the things from which what is to live is restored remain and are. For since in the world there is matter, which always exists in certain elements, and since images of those three present themselves here too, that is, in the world, what does death do, since they are eternal even in their images? By images I mean the powers flowing down through all things from the lines of the soul. Since, then, these are eternal, and the elements in matter are eternal, death, if it dissolves only composite things, itself perishes utterly. Hence it is rightly said that death is made from life, because from the vigour of living of any composite body there comes a dissolution up to a certain point; and again from death there comes a restoration of all the same things into another composition. In this way being too is to be understood in the world, and in this way here both rest and motion. But in divine things, since there are no bodies, there is no death; and life too is of another kind, since it is principal and true. Therefore procession there is not birth, or, if you like, birth there is rather appearance and manifestation. Likewise being and non-being are of another kind there, and motion and cessation of another kind. For God lives; and this is being and understanding, which make these three one: three powers, existence, life and understanding.

How those three are one, I have taught: any one of them is three; and so these three are one. But in God these three are being; in the Son, living; in the Holy Spirit, understanding. So being, living and understanding are, in God, being; and existence, life and understanding are form, by the inner and hidden act of that which is being, living and understanding. For within they are so, and hidden; and God is rather above being, above living, above understanding. Hence he is called without substance, or without existence, and likewise without life and without intellect, found by a certain pre-understanding, and known rather through his form, but a form inherent in him and consubstantial with him. And this is what it means that the Son is in the Father. Since this is so, the Son is the same as the Father; hence the Son too is God, because this is the form, and because the form is the same as that whose form it is. For since God is being, living and understanding, and the form is existence, life and understanding, I would have you take my words so that God is above these. If this is so, form becomes the same as substance; for these hold and are in the same way: having, or existence, being, living, understanding. So, though there are two logoi, one through which each thing is, the other through which it is in the way it is, yet because by the same force it has both how and what each thing is, necessarily there is one Logos, the form being of the same force as the substance. If, then, it has the same force, and the form is the same, yet the form of this substance being the substance itself (for it is a substantial form), the Son will be the same as the Father; or else, before the going forth, there is neither Father nor Son, but the one itself alone.

This being so, since there is both understanding and intelligence, intelligence is the same as life and as that which is being. But since understanding is more the power of acting than being or living, and since being is understanding that one is, and living is understanding that one lives, necessarily understanding, or intelligence, is God. When God understands, he understands himself; and when he understands himself, not as one understanding another, it comes about that intelligence itself understands itself. When this is so, it makes itself to be, comes forth into existence, and becomes for itself what being is; and in the same way, by understanding, its living also exists. Since all these are born from itself, or rather exist from itself, God is unbegotten, existing from things unbegotten; and since these are one, one and simple, he is one God. And this is as it were the inner intelligence, which understands itself without any motion, since when it understands it exists, and when it exists it understands. And this is God, and this certainly from eternity and to eternity.

But we call the Son the image of God; for the form was begotten, so that from that which is being, living and understanding there should be begotten existence, life and understanding. For there is in these a certain form through which, as through an image, it is understood what being, living and understanding are; necessarily, then, God is understood through the form, for no one has ever seen him. The form of God, then, when it is taken in God, is God; but when God understands himself, he understands himself through the form; and the form itself must also understand. For it is understanding and living existence, since it understands nothing other than that these are God. And this I have often taught. But when intelligence itself understands that it is intelligence (for it necessarily follows that intelligence understands itself), as existing from itself it understood itself and made itself outside: what is outside, by understanding itself, that is, by its own motion. Hence this is the outer intelligence, and this is the Son, this is the Word, the Son born, because he is other than God, yet from God, that is, from that which is existing and living intelligence, which is God. Understanding itself within, intelligence brought itself forth outside and stood forth before the Father, in whom it too was; and it is always the image existing through the inner intelligence, which is being and existing; and therefore it was begotten as the image of the image.

There are, then, two intelligences: one existing within, which is its being; the other existing, which is its being by understanding. This one is outside; this one is the Son. But since intelligence, by understanding itself, understood God, that is, the inner intelligence, which is God, it understood true being and true living, and by understanding truly it came to exist itself as true being, true living, true understanding. For he who understands one both has one and is one, according to his understanding of it within himself. So, then, the Son, that is, intelligence, begotten by understanding itself, as intelligence understood God and all those things which God, unbegotten, is; and by understanding, seeking the fullness, and by understanding the fullness, he came to exist as the same as the Father. For since the Father is necessarily the fullness, he has his capacity infinite, though finite to himself, where he holds and grasps his fullness; and in the same way the Son, by receiving and seeking: for this is to receive the capacity, to exist; and by understanding the whole fullness that the Father is, he came to exist as begotten, he too whole from the whole. And because he is intelligence understanding intelligence, and intelligence is the light of things, he exists as light from light; and because both are intelligence, true light from true light. Likewise, since God is inner intelligence, this intelligence understanding itself is God from God. Homoousion, then, in all things: in being, living and understanding. Likewise in that each is capacity and fullness; likewise in that each is image, for it is said, “to our image”; and in that each is light, and true light, and Spirit; and in that each is motion, but the Father resting motion, that is, inner, nothing other than motion, not motion by movement, while the Son is moved by movement; yet each is motion. Likewise each is action and work, each is life, and each has life from himself; will and will, the same power, wisdom, Word; God and God, living God and living God, from eternity and from eternity, invisible and invisible. For it is said by Matthew: “No one knows the Son except the Father, nor the Father except the Son.” Both together: for this is what homoousion signifies, besides the same ousia. All these can be understood from that full saying: “All that the Father has he has given me”; and: “All that the Father has, I too have.” “All,” he says. If all, the Son is homoousion with the Father; the same, then; and if the same, equal; and if equal, Paul rightly said of the Son of God, Jesus Christ: “Who, when he was in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God.”

Many divine and magnificent mysteries are contained here. First, that Christ is the form of God, in whom it is shown that he has all that God has; for this is what is also called image, as is said of him: “Who is the image of God.” God, then, has his image, and the Son is the image of God. For it is said, “No one has ever seen the face of God”, and it is said, “You will see my back.” Without doubt God has a face, and it is the Son; or rather the Son is the image of God, as it is said: “Who, when he was in the form of God.” Hence it is rightly said: “Let us make man to our image and likeness.” The Son, then, exists, even if he is other; for the Father is not the same as the Son. He is the same in all the things I have set out above; the same, that is, having the same things, each with his own existence. Hence he is both the same and other. For since it is said here, “when he was in the form of God”, the form must certainly be taken as one thing and God as another. But you will say (let there be room for cavil) that the form of God is the form in God himself, so that there is one undivided substance. How, then, shall we understand what follows? “He did not consider it robbery to be equal with God.” It belongs to one set in his own existence to think or say that he is equal with another. And what of that, “he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant”? Have we been taught that Christ died, or that God died? No one ever said the latter. Then, when it is said of the Father that he “raised his Son from the dead”, is it not clear enough that the Father is one and the Son another, one raising and the other raised? So, the form of God: the form is one thing, God another. God has a form; but the Son is the form of God in manifestation, God's form in hiddenness. For so all things, existence, life and knowledge, belong to God within, in hiddenness, and to the Son in manifestation; and so with the rest: capacity, fullness, image, true light, truth, spirit, motion, action, operation, life and life from itself, will, power, wisdom, the Word God, the living God, and all the others. But these belong to the Son as outward and in manifestation; those to the Father in himself and about his existence, or rather they are that very thing which existence is; these belong to the acting act, which is in manifestation. Finally, the Son has all these, but by the Father's gift; and this is strongly expressed when, after saying that the Son has life from himself, he added: “The Father gave him to have life from himself.” A true image, then, and the same existence in all things, but by the Father's gift: both Father and Son, then, but by the Father's gift. For from what we have said the Father is, being, living and understanding, existence was begotten, as also life and understanding; and this is the form of God, this is the Son. But the Son, when he is in the Father, is one whole within: God acting, operating, using himself, enjoying himself, the fountain, and in himself the fullness of all things.

But since, as we taught, intelligence, by the force of its power, necessarily understood itself while turning upon itself, becoming in this way twofold, as it were within and without, the Son is begotten from the Father's existence; for existence is intelligence, which is also life. Appearing, then, and existing, he is God from God. And since in any one of the three are all things, being, living and understanding, when intelligence begot intelligence the Son was begotten, and the Son has all that the Father has, and has it from the Father. Likewise, since these are all the things through which all things are created (for whatever things are receive their own being, their own living, their own understanding), and since the Son is all these, as the image of the Father, and is in active act, that is, so as to provide this to the others according to the nature of the existents, he is necessarily the Logos for all things and all wholes, that is, the force and power through which it comes about that the things that are, are; through whom God made and makes all things, and without whom nothing is made. Others call this active motion, word, operating reason. But since, when he operates, the Father's power is in him, he operates in himself; and so many things are said in such a way that, although what he does is his own, he refers all things to the Father: “The Father sent me”; and, “I do not my own will, but the Father's”; and a thousand such. Yet let us attend to that passage: we shall find him acting, as it were, through himself, of his own accord: “He did not consider it robbery to be equal with God”; and likewise, “He emptied himself and took the form of a servant”, he who had lordship. All these belong to one acting by his own will. But he can be believed to act himself because the Father is in him; among these sayings are also: “I give life for ever”; and, “I am the door, I the life, I the truth”; and, “For as the Father raises the dead and gives life, so the Son too gives life to whom he wills.” These are true and varied; and in all of them a truer understanding makes the Son to be in the Father and the Father in the Son, and yet so that, as Father and as other, they are one and yet two, since one is the Father and the other the Son. For the Father is the fountain of the Son, and the Son is like the river that runs out from the fountain. In the fountain the water remains, quiet, pure, unstained, without the appearance of gushing; but the river, running through various places by a motion more open than the hidden one, is affected by the qualities of the lands it furrows, and in a way suffers. So too the Son, with his water and his substance, which is the Father's, is always pure, unstained, impassible; yet in the regions and places through which he runs, whether above the heavens, in the heavens, or within the heavens, he now foams, as against rocks in his way, which are the kinds of souls, and now runs out as across a quiet plain. He receives passions, then, not in that he is substance, but in act and operation. For when he fulfilled the mystery of his coming, he then endured passion, so as to empty himself, so as to take on the role of a servant; and so with the rest, in all of which there is act and operation. And yet even in the first act of his existence, as we have taught in many books, there was a passion of withdrawal from the Father, from which darkness, that is, matter, followed, not created. But of this more fully elsewhere.

Now, what has been asserted, what proved? That God the Father and God the Son are homoousion; yet that the Father is in substance, and the Son in that same substance, but existing for himself as act; that by the acting act he came to be in passion, never separated from the Father, from eternity being, having been and to be. He is act, because he is within the nature of acting, and is with the Father or in the Father; and beyond this he is said to be both within and without, since he himself acts, because his act is from the Father; when the Father acts he is said to act, and yet the Father is said to do all things through him. He is the Logos of all things, the Logos of the universally universal, of genera, of species and of particulars; and because he is the Logos of all things and of incorporeal things, he is also the Logos of bodily things, according to their capacity for what they can be, so that they may be. Hence too, by the ordering of the mystery in the last ages, because he is the Logos of all existents, he himself, whom we have shown above to be the Son, overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, was incarnate from the Virgin Mary; in the same way, so as to be in the body, as the Holy Spirit is in us, not whole; for as God he is everywhere, but as a part of him; for of all divine things the part is always what the whole is, as the soul is in bodies, as virtue and discipline are in souls, or the sun or its light in the eyes. That the Word himself, the very one whom we have shown to be the Son, was in the body, all the Gospels declare, the whole Apostle, all the Prophets. For when they foretold that the Christ would come, they foretold that he would come in the flesh; and they say that before the flesh he was seen and appeared, as to Abraham and to Jacob. And he himself said in the flesh: “Abraham saw my day and was glad.” And the Apostle, in that sacred passage full of mysteries, declares above all that the Son of God existed before the flesh and that he himself afterwards took flesh: “For have this mind among yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, when he had been in the form of God.” This was certainly when he existed before the flesh: he existed, then, before the flesh, and what kind of being and how great he was: “the form,” he says, “of God”. What is this? The form, the same as the Father. What is form? That in which the Father is seen: “He who sees me sees the Father also”; certainly not in what was seen, but in that he himself is God, divine substance, Word, life. This, then, he was before the flesh. For what does Paul add? “He did not consider it robbery to be equal with God.” He thinks, then, of himself and of God; he acts so as not to be equal, but he was equal. What does he add next? “But he emptied himself.” What did he empty, or from what, if he did not exist? He adds further: “And took the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and found in appearance as a man. He humbled himself, becoming subject unto death, even the death of the cross.” What here does not declare from every side Jesus Christ and the Son of God? For so it is said: God sent his Son; and the one sent acts by his power, doing all things also by the choice of his own will, so that he willed not to be equal, to empty himself, to put on the form of a servant. He existed, then, who was the form of God; he existed who emptied himself; and he is that very Jesus who took the image of a servant and was found a man, who subjected himself unto death, and, so that Jesus Christ might be designated more fully, unto the death of the cross.

These things have been sufficiently proved to the faithful: that the same Son existed both before the flesh and in the flesh; he who was begotten before the ages; he who ascended into heaven and descended from there; he who is bread for us from heaven; he who says in the flesh: “Give me, Father, my glory, which I had with you”, certainly above the heavens and before the flesh. He is the Word, and in the beginning the Word, and the Word with God, and the Word who is God, through which Word all things were made, and without whom nothing was made; he who enlightens every man coming into this world; he, the Word, who became flesh. You have heard “in the beginning, the Word”; you have heard that the Word himself became flesh: hear that he himself is the Son of God, begotten of the Father, and that this is the generation of which we spoke above. The evangelist says: “No one has ever seen God, except the only-begotten Son alone, who is in the bosom (sinus) of the Father.” But we shall better say gremium; the Greeks say en kolpō, that is, “in the bosom”. But either word signifies the begotten Son, which is to be outside, yet to be with the Father, since it is said: “Who is in the bosom of the Father.” A diligent and faithful inquirer will understand from all the readings that it is so. Now, that the Holy Spirit is in another way Jesus Christ himself, hidden, inward, conversing with souls, teaching these things and bestowing understanding, begotten from the Father through Christ and in Christ, since Christ is the only-begotten Son, we have set out in many books; and what we have proved by very many examples is clear enough. In this way and with this understanding, as the Father and God is homoousion with the Son, and the Son, because he is life, with him, so, because Christ himself is understanding, the Holy Spirit too is understood as homoousion. Hence, the Son being joined to the Father and taken to be the same as the Holy Spirit, in the same way as the Son is the same as the Father; yet so that, as the Father and the Son, though one, are each Father and Son by their own existence, but both are one and the same substance, so Christ and the Holy Spirit, though both are one, Christ nonetheless exists by his own existence and the Holy Spirit by his, but both are one substance. Hence all, that is, the whole Trinity, are one, the Father being joined with the Son and the Son with the Holy Spirit in the same way. And by this reasoning, the Father being joined with the Holy Spirit through Christ, each existing singly, the whole Trinity is one, and exists so, since there is for all one and the same substance, together from eternity. This is our salvation, this our liberation, this the full salvation of the whole man: so to believe in God the Father almighty, so in Jesus Christ the Son, so in the Holy Spirit. Amen.