On the Generation of the Divine Word (to Candidus) 23–32

If this is so, Jesus is not from nothing, for he appeared as action from that which is being, since action itself was also that which is being; nor, because there are these two, is the homoousios lacking, for that is the same which is of one and the same substance. One action, certainly, is one, since it is both acting and being. This is the Son, he is from the Father, he is with God, he is in the bosom of the Father, he is within, he is without. For by his work he is without; by that which is being, within; and in the Father he is God in God, who is altogether the same as he; but by action he is the Son. And wherever he is, he is both being and action; and in this way he is both Father and God, and Son and Word.

Where, then, is that wicked and blasphemous understanding? Where is there room for something to be other, and to have its room from another? Where is what it goes on to say, that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is from nothing? Where is that which is nothing? How can what is nothing fall upon God, or into God's thought? For true thinking comes from true things; and what truly is not is false. God therefore does not think what truly is not. But we deceive ourselves, since we think God's power is greater in this, if he makes things that truly are from things that truly are not. But insofar as God's power can do all things, insofar as it is power, it begets nothing other than the things for which there is power to be. And for things that in every way truly are not, there is no power at all.

How, then, since there is no power belonging to the things that truly are not, was the action of the things that are brought about? For if it is God's power that leads into being the things that cannot be, then by power they already have being, or are existents, those very things which are wholly non-existents. And that is why we said that those things are not which, placed in hiding and in power, have not yet appeared in action. For all things were in God. For the Word is the seed of all things that are. For the Word is in God: in the operation, that is, in the power of God, who is the Son of God, all the things that were made appeared.

But certain sacrilegious men say: “If the Word was with God, and the Son existed upon God's bosom, he is understood to be not inside in the bosom but outside.” What then? God breathed into man a soul from himself, from within; and the creator of all things, the liberator and sanctifier of that very soul, the redeemer and raiser of the whole body, was he not from within? Did he not send forth the angelic nature from within? But when he formed man from the earth, and the other beasts and four-footed creatures, and again all living things from the water, and the rest in the air, one thing out of another, and that from which the first came out of the things that are not: from where do you say Jesus is? For the Son is before all things. From the void, then, and from nothing at all? Then he formed his body; but did he not have a soul or spirit before he entered the world? Did he have a soul? Then God breathed it, or whispered it, forth; for not into him. For how into him, when he did not yet have a body? But if what he breathed forth was the Son himself, if this is so, then the Son is from God; and so too the Spirit. For the spirit is not from nothing. For God says: “Every spirit I have sent forth.” By breathing, then, God breathed forth from himself, and so the Son was born: God, then, did not make him. So he is not outside, with God or upon his bosom, but inside. David testifies to both, saying: “My heart has poured forth a good Word.” What the Son is, then, was not made as all things were made at God's word. For if he was made, then before he was made there was no Word of God.

What, then, do we say? Is it not necessary to confess that, if the Word made all things, the Word is first of all, as the Word that is in every way Word, the Word whom we and the prophets and evangelists call Logos and Son? Moses says: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth.” According to Aquila the same is: “In the head God made”, as the Hebrews pronounce the saying of Moses: whether “in the beginning” or “in the head”, God made it in Christ. Christ, then, is beginning and head. And this is often said: “He created all things in Christ.” For Christ, the Word, is as it were the seed of all things. Christ, then, is first, for he was before all creation. Where, then, is Christ from? If he is the Word, from God; if will, from God; if motion or action, from God; and if acting itself is being, then according to being itself there is the Father, and the Son is action; and since being itself is action, and acting is being, therefore the Father and the Word himself are homoousios.

But how homoousios, when substance does not yet exist? Names are found and taken from the things that are later and from those that are after God. And since no name worthy of God can be found, we name God from the things we know, keeping in mind that we do not name or call him properly; as when we say, “God lives”, “God understands”. So from our actions we name the actions of God, though he exists above all things; and not only existing, but as it were existing, not existing in the way existents exist. In this way too we apply substance, existence and the rest of this kind to God; and we speak of the substance of his essence in another sense, since created substance stands otherwise toward what is in it, and toward its own being.

Similarly, when we say that God was made Christ, or man, it is not that he was truly made, but because he is one, and is in all, and all are in him; and therefore he is said to have been made all things to all, that they might be; not that he was made, but that he was brought into being so. Indeed it is not said, “The Son of God was made,” but that he was made Lord for us, as Solomon says: “And that he made me over your ways.” For of the eternal and divine generation he adds at once: “Before all things the Lord begot me.” And John says: “What was made, in him was life.” What next? Did not God make the creation, and in the creation first heaven and earth? He did not, then, make Christ. Christ, then, was born, not made. For wherever “made” is said, after the first and eternal generation, it is said of what was brought about afterwards: as he is said to have been made of a woman; and in the Acts of the Apostles: “Let the house of Israel know most certainly, then, that God made this one Christ, whom you hung on the wood of the cross.” All these things are said after the generation, which is one and holy and ineffable; all these, I say. They are not said of his existence, but of the acts and administration of his power and strength. Concerning the generation, then, which is the Son of God, it is plain also that he is homoousios with his substance, in majesty, in its proper signification and understanding, understood according to the being of the existence of substance. And so it has been shown how he is homoousios.

You have, my Candidus, what remains to be said. If Jesus is the Son of God, he is Son by generation. For you say: “If generation is motion, and motion is change, and it is impossible to conceive of change in God, then it must be impious to say that anything can be begotten from God; Jesus, then, is not Son by generation from God.” You have drawn the argument out in good order; but whom have you led astray? Me, perhaps? Rather yourself. For you said that God made Jesus. What then? Is making not motion? No less than acting. For to act is to make, as to make is to act. Since both are in motion, change must follow, and to place that in God, as has been shown, is unfitting. One must confess, then, either that making is not motion, or that not every motion is change. But making is motion; and God made according to motion, God to whom it in no way befalls to be changed, and for whom it is wholly unfitting to receive any accident in any way. It remains, then, that not every motion is change. If not every motion is change, what is rather to be chosen concerning Jesus: that he is by generation, or by making? By divine understanding, by generation. For although God makes what he makes in the very moment he speaks, yet to speak is motion, silence having gone before: speaking, then, is a change for one who was silent. But if God made through the Word, the Word was before the making. If the Word was before the making, he was before it by generation. For the intellect begets the Word. There is, then, a generation of Jesus, who is the Word. Those who know these matters say that Jesus is Son in three modes: by truth, by nature, by position. Son by truth, by the very fact that he is substance; and therefore he is both simultaneous and of the same substance, as are the Father and the Word and the Son and God. Son by nature, in animal generation. Son by grafting in, in adoption. There are also other modes: by character, by age, by teaching, as the apostle Paul says: “I begot you.” The mode by truth, then, is both higher than all and more divine. But what the mode of his generation or sonship is, whether according to the modes named or other modes, I confess to God, by whose power this was done.

We have spoken sufficiently, I believe, in other books about the one from whom the procession and descent come; and, through the promised Holy Spirit, the return has been set out, and the threefold unity and the single trinity. Nor can I bear to hear your doctrine of the Holy Spirit, which is full of blasphemy: “that this Spirit is for sanctification, and only sanctifies and teaches, and that he himself was made, like every creature.” Yet the Spirit himself differs by his own proper action from the Son, to whom he is nonetheless always present, just as the Son himself differs by action from his Father, who nonetheless is Father in respect of that which is being. And so, since these three exist as one and the same, there is one divinity and not a manifold majesty; there is neither a rival godhead nor godlessness; but three are one and one is three; and, posited three times, it is one and the same and alone. But of these three we shall speak elsewhere.

Save us now, Father; forgive us our sins. Even to say what God is, is a sin; to say how he is, is a sin; and so is wishing to express him, rather than venerating him with one voice, as soberly as can be. But since you have given us, holy Lord Father, the Spirit who distributes to us as he wills, give us knowledge too. For we have faith, and we speak, though we are ignorant of you in every way. And yet we always confess, in every word, you, God the Father, and the Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, and the Spirit, who lives with you and with the same Son for ever. Amen.