Hilary of Poitiers, De Trinitate or On the Trinity

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Hilary of Poitiers, De Trinitate or On the Trinity

De Trinitate or On the Trinity.

On the Trinity.

1. When I was seeking an employment adequate to the powers of human life and righteous in itself, whether prompted by nature or suggested by the resea

2. I believe that the mass of mankind have spurned from themselves and censured in others this acquiescence in a thoughtless, animal life, for no othe

3. And yet, though I could not tax with folly and uselessness this counsel of theirs to keep the soul free from blame, and evade by foresight or elude

4. Some of these teachers brought forward large households of dubious deities, and under the persuasion that there is a sexual activity in divine bein

5. While my mind was dwelling on these and on many like thoughts, I chanced upon the books which, according to the tradition of the Hebrew faith, were

6. For such an indication of God’s infinity the words ‘I Am that I Am’ were clearly adequate but, in addition, we needed to apprehend the operation o

7. Therefore, although my soul drew joy from the apprehension of this august and unfathomable Mind, because it could worship as its own Father and Cre

8. Thus my mind, full of these results which by its own reflection and the teaching of Scripture it had attained, rested with assurance, as on some pe

9. Beneath all these thoughts lay an instinctive hope, which strengthened my assertion of the faith, in some perfect blessedness hereafter to be earne

10. Yet my soul was weighed down with fear both for itself and for the body. It retained a firm conviction, and a devout loyalty to the true faith con

11. Herein my soul, trembling and distressed, found a hope wider than it had imagined. First came its introduction to the knowledge of God the Father.

12. This lesson in the Divine mysteries was gladly welcomed by my soul, now drawing near through the flesh to God, called to new birth through faith,

13. And lest the soul should stray and linger in some delusion of heathen philosophy, it receives this further lesson of perfect loyalty to the holy f

14. In this calm assurance of safety did my soul gladly and hopefully take its rest, and feared so little the interruption of death, that death seemed

15. While I was thus engaged there came to light certain fallacies of rash and wicked men, hopeless for themselves and merciless towards others, who m

16. Not to touch upon the vain enquiries of other heretics—concerning whom however, when the course of my argument gives occasion, I will not be silen

17. My soul has been burning to answer these insane attacks. I call to mind that the very centre of a saving faith is the belief not merely in God, bu

18. And you, whose warmth of faith and passion for a truth unknown to the world and its philosophers shall prompt to read me, must remember to eschew

19. If in our discussion of the nature and birth of God we adduce certain analogies, let no one suppose that such comparisons are perfect and complete

20. And first, I have so laid out the plan of the whole work as to consult the advantage of the reader by the logical order in which its books are arr

21. Thus, after the present first book, the second expounds the mystery of the Divine birth, that those who shall be baptized in the Name of the Fathe

22. After this short and simple discourse concerning the Trinity, the third book makes further progress, sure though slow. Citing the greatest instanc

23. The fourth book starts with the doctrines of the heretics, and disowns complicity in the fallacies whereby they are traducing the faith of the Chu

24. The fifth book follows in reply the sequence of heretical assertion. They had falsely declared that they followed the law in the sense which they

25. The sixth book reveals the full deceitfulness of this heretical teaching. To win credit for their assertions they denounce the impious doctrine of

26. Next the seventh book, starting from the basis of a true faith now attained, delivers its verdict in the great debate. First, armed with its sound

27. No one can doubt that we have taken the course of true reverence and of sound doctrine when, after proving from Law and Prophets first that Christ

28. While its two predecessors have been devoted to the confirmation of the faith in Christ as Son of God and true God, the eighth book is taken up wi

29. In matters essential to salvation it is not enough to advance the proofs which faith supplies and finds sufficient. Arguments which we have not te

30. We therefore expose the blasphemous misunderstanding at which they have arrived by distortion and perversion of the meaning of Christ’s words. We

31. The purpose of the tenth book is one in harmony with the faith. For since, in the folly which passes with them for wisdom, the heretics have twist

32. Their folly being as great as their blasphemy, they fail to mark that Christ’s words, spoken under similar circumstances, are always consistent t

33. And so—for not even the glory of the Resurrection has opened the eyes of these lost men and kept them within the manifest bounds of the faith—they

34. In this treatise we have followed the course which we know is pursued in every branch of education. First come easy lessons and a familiarity, slo

35. Ignorance of prophetic diction and unskilfulness in interpreting Scripture has led them into a perversion of the point and meaning of the passage,

36. Having thus concluded that we must reject the word ‘creation’ from our confession of faith in God the Only-begotten, we proceed to lay down the te

37. I know, O Lord God Almighty, that I owe Thee, as the chief duty of my life, the devotion of all my words and thoughts to Thyself. The gift of spee

38. And therefore we look to Thy support for the first trembling steps of this undertaking, to Thy aid that it may gain strength and prosper. We look

1. Believers have always found their satisfaction in that Divine utterance, which our ears heard recited from the Gospel at the moment when that Power

2. But the errors of heretics and blasphemers force us to deal with unlawful matters, to scale perilous heights, to speak unutterable words, to trespa

3. For there have risen many who have given to the plain words of Holy Writ some arbitrary interpretation of their own, instead of its true and only s

4. Since, therefore, they cannot make any change in the facts recorded, they bring novel principles and theories of man’s device to bear upon them. Sa

5. Their treason involves us in the difficult and dangerous position of having to make a definite pronouncement, beyond the statements of Scripture, u

6. It is the Father to Whom all existence owes its origin. In Christ and through Christ He is the source of all. In contrast to all else He is self-ex

7. It is easier for me to feel this concerning the Father than to say it. I am well aware that no words are adequate to describe His attributes. We mu

8. We have now exchanged the perils of a harbourless coast for the storms of the open sea. We can neither safely advance nor safely retreat, yet the w

9. The manner of this birth is therefore a secret confined to the Two. If any one lays upon his personal incapacity his failure to solve the mystery,

10. Listen then to the Unbegotten Father, listen to the Only-begotten Son. Hear His words, The Father is greater than I , and I and the Father are One

11. The Son draws His life from that Father Who truly has life the Only begotten from the Unbegotten, Offspring from Parent, Living from Living. As t

12. It remains to say something more concerning the mysterious generation of the Son or rather this something more is everything. I quiver, I linger,

13. Look now to see a thing not less miraculous than lame men running, blind men seeing, the flight of devils, the life from the dead. There stands by

14. But perhaps we shall find that our fisherman has been guilty of departure from the terms of the problem proposed for solution . He has set the Wor

15. For you will plead that a word is the sound of a voice that it is a naming of things, an utterance of thoughts. This Word was with God, and was i

16. But I tremble to say it the audacity staggers me. I hear, And the Word was God I, whom the prophets have taught that God is One. To save me from

17. We are still waiting, Fisherman, for your full description of the Word. He was in the beginning, it may be said, but perhaps He was not before the

18. But, my Fisherman, the objection will be raised that you are reckless and extravagant in your language that All things were made through Him need

19. Reverence for the One Unbegotten Creator distressed me, lest in your sweeping assertion that all things were made by the Word you had included Him

20. Since, then, all things were made through Him, come to our help and tell us what it was that was made not without Him. That which was made in Him

21. This Life is the Light of men, the Light which lightens the darkness. To comfort us for that powerlessness to describe His generation of which the

22. This faith, and every part of it, is impressed upon us by the evidence of the Gospels, by the teaching of the Apostles, by the futility of the tre

23. Let Sabellius, if he dare, confound Father and Son as two names with one meaning, making of them not Unity but One Person. He shall have a prompt

24. In what remains we have the appointment of the Father’s will. The Virgin, the birth, the Body, then the Cross, the death, the visit to the lower w

25. What worthy return can we make for so great a condescension? The One Only-begotten God, ineffably born of God, entered the Virgin’s womb and grew

26. But lest perchance fastidious minds be exercised by cradle and wailing, birth and conception, we must render to God the glory which each of these

27. And now let us consider the glory which accompanies the birth, the wailing and the cradle. The Angel tells Joseph that the Virgin shall bear a Son

28. So was it also during His further life on earth. The whole time which He passed in human form was spent upon the works of God. I have no space for

29. Concerning the Holy Spirit I ought not to be silent, and yet I have no need to speak still, for the sake of those who are in ignorance, I cannot

30. The reason, I believe, why certain people continue in ignorance or doubt is that they see this third Name, that of the Holy Spirit, often used to

31. But the words of the Gospel, For God is Spirit , need careful examination as to their sense and their purpose. For every saying has an antecedent

32. The words of the Apostle are of like purport For the Lord is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty . To make his meaning

33. Let us hear from our Lord’s own words what is the work of the Holy Ghost within us. He says, I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot

34. The next step naturally is to listen to the Apostle’s account of the powers and functions of this Gift. He says, As many as are led by the Spirit

35. Let us therefore make use of this great benefit, and seek for personal experience of this most needful Gift. For the Apostle says, in words I have

1. The words of the Lord, I in the Father, and the Father in Me , confuse many minds, and not unnaturally, for the powers of human reason cannot provi

2. In order to solve as easily as possible this most difficult problem, we must first master the knowledge which the Divine Scriptures give of Father

3. He therefore, the Unbegotten, before time was begot a Son from Himself not from any pre-existent matter, for all things are through the Son not f

4. He, therefore, being the perfect Father’s perfect Son, the Only-begotten Offspring of the unbegotten God, who has received all from Him Who possess

5. Such powers are there in God powers which the methods of our reason cannot comprehend, but of which our faith, on the sure evidence of His action,

6. In the case of the five loaves a miracle of the same type excites our wonder. By their increase five thousand men and countless women and children

7. There is no deception in these miracles of God, no subtle pretence to please or to deceive. These works of the Son of God were done from no desire

8. For there are many of those wise men of the world whose wisdom is folly with God, who contradict our proclamation of God from God, True from True,

9. The Son of God, therefore, having the charge of mankind, was first made man, that men might believe on Him that He might be to us a witness, sprun

10. He says, Father the hour is come glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son may glorify Thee . He says that the hour, not the day nor the time, is come. An ho

11. And next? The centurion of the cohort, the guardian of the cross, cries out, Truly this was the Son of God . Creation is set free by the mediation

12. But perhaps some may suppose that He was destitute of that glory for which He prayed, and that His looking to be glorified by a Greater is evidenc

13. We must next ascertain what and whence this glorifying is. God, I am sure, is subject to no change His eternity admits not of defect or amendment

14. But in what does eternity of life consist? His own words tell us:— That they may know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom Thou hast sent

15. And so the Son glorifies the Father fully and finally in the words which follow, I have glorified Thee on the earth, having accomplished the work

16. Next let us see what this glory is which the Son expects to receive from the Father and then our exposition will be complete. The sequel is, I ha

17. The name Father has thus been revealed to men the question arises, What is this Father’s own name? Yet surely the name of God has never been unkn

18. The Son, wishing to assure us of the truth of this, His Divine birth, has appointed His works to serve as an illustration, that from the ineffable

19. You ask what was the manner in which, as the Spirit teaches, the Son was born? I will put a question to you as to things corporal. I ask not in wh

20. But you, whoever you are that would seek into the unsearchable, and in all seriousness form an opinion upon the mysteries and powers of God —I tur

21. Nay more, the whole constitution of nature would bear us out against the impiety of doubting the works and powers of God. And yet our disbelief ti

22. The Son has said, Father, I have manifested Thy Name unto men. What reason is there for denunciation or fury here? Do you deny the Father? Why, it

23. You hear the words, I and the Father are one . Why do you rend and tear the Son away from the Father? They are a unity: an absolute Existence havi

24. Again, we must not repose so blind a confidence in human intellect as to imagine that we have complete knowledge of the objects of our thought, or

25. Hence the Apostle, familiar with the narrow assumption of human thought that what it does not know is not truth, says that he does not speak in th

26. And therefore the action of God must not be canvassed by human faculties the Creator must not be judged by those who are the work of His hands. W

1. The earlier books of this treatise, written some time ago, contain, I think, an invincible proof that we hold and profess the faith in Father, Son,

2. We are well aware that neither the speech of men nor the analogy of human nature can give us a full insight into the things of God. The ineffable c

3. For the heretics say that Christ is not from God, that is, that the Son is not born from the Father, and is God not by nature but by appointment i

4. Moreover, they use their knowledge of the historical fact that bishops of a former time have taught that Father and Son are of one substance, to su

5. They think also that they have a compendious refutation of Prophets, Evangelists and Apostles alike, in their assertion that the Son was born withi

6. What foolish and godless fears! What impious anxiety on God’s behalf! The meaning which they profess to detect in the word homoousion , and in the

7. To assure ourselves of the needfulness of these two phrases, adopted and employed as the best of safeguards against the heretical rabble of that da

8. For they attempt, by praising the Godhead of the Father only, to deprive the Son of His Divinity, pleading that it is written, Hear, O Israel, the

9. Who can fail to observe that these statements are full of fraud and fallacy? Cleverly as issues have been confused and texts combined, malice and f

10. We, however, who propose to discourse of that most perfect majesty and fullest Divinity which appertains to the Only-begotten Son of God, have no

11. Now that we have exposed their plan of belittling the Son under cover of magnifying the Father, the next step is to listen to the exact terms in w

12. “We confess One God, alone unmade, alone eternal, alone unoriginate, alone true, alone possessing immortality, alone good, alone mighty, Creator,

13. “So there are three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. God, for His part, is the cause of all things, utterly unoriginate and separate from all

14. Such is their error, such their pestilent teaching to support it they borrow the words of Scripture, perverting its meaning and using the ignoran

15. Their starting-point is this We confess, they say, One only God, because Moses says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is One . But is this a trut

16. Since, therefore, the words of the Apostle, One God the Father, from Whom are all things, and one Jesus Christ, our Lord, through Whom are all thi

17. When the world was complete and its inhabitant was to be created, the words spoken concerning him were, Let Us make man after Our image and likene

18. Thus, when we read, Let Us make man after Our image and likeness , these two words Us Our our image our images And God made man after the image o

19. It may seem waste of time to bring forward further arguments, for truths concerning God gain no strength by repetition a single statement suffice

20. If you still wish to assert that God the Father in solitude said these words to Himself, I can go with you as far as to admit the possibility that

21. And furthermore, to make all self-deception unlawful, that Wisdom, which you have yourself confessed to be Christ, shall confront you with the wor

22. I am aware that the full explanation of these words involves the discussion of many and weighty problems. I do not shirk them, but postpone them f

23. After God had often spoken with Abraham, Sarah was moved to wrath against Hagar, being jealous that she, the mistress, was barren, while her handm

24. In this passage the one Deity is first the Angel of God, and then, successively, Lord and God. But to Abraham He is God only. For when the distinc

25. In another instance the Scripture reveals through Abraham that it was God Who spoke. He receives the further promise of a son, Isaac. Afterwards t

26. What blind faithlessness it is, what dulness of an unbelieving heart, what headstrong impiety, to abide in ignorance of all this, or else to know

27. The course of the Divine narrative is accompanied by a progressive development of doctrine. In the passage which we have discussed God speaks to A

28. Lest you fall into the error of supposing that this acknowledgment of the One was a payment of honor to all the three whom Abraham saw in company,

29. And now there falls on Sodom and Gomorrah the vengeance of a righteous judgment. What can we learn from it for the purposes of our enquiry? The Lo

30. You have now had evidence of God the Judge as Lord and Lord learn next that there is the same joint ownership of name in the case of God and God.

31. Here again there occur to me considerations which must be taken into account in a complete treatment of the subject. But the order of defence must

32. And now let us enquire whether elsewhere than in the case of Hagar the Angel of God has been discovered to be God Himself. He has been so discover

33. Continue your study of the witness borne by Moses mark how diligently he seizes every opportunity of proclaiming the Lord and God. You take note

34. Let this be taken as our answer from the books of Moses, or rather as the answer of Moses himself. The heretics imagine that they can use his asse

35. You know the words, Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is One would that you knew them aright! As you interpret them, I seek in vain for their sens

36. But lest these words, For I am, and before Me there is no other God, nor shall be after Me , be made a handle for blasphemous presumption, as prov

37. The fact is obvious from His own words. For He says to Hosea the prophet, I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel, but will altogether

38. Again, how clear is the declaration made by God the Father through Isaiah concerning our Lord! He says, For thus saith the Lord, the holy God of I

39. As for the men of stature who shall come over to Him and follow Him in chains, there is no doubt who they are. Turn to the Gospels Peter, when he

40. Thus God is in God, and it is God in Whom God dwells. But how is There is no God beside Thee true, if God be within Him? Heretic! In support of yo

41. My next book is devoted to the refutation of your denial that God is in God for the prophet continues, All that resist Him shall be ashamed and c

42. As you have listened already to Moses and Isaiah, so listen now to Jeremiah inculcating the same truth as they:— This is our God, and there shall

1. Our reply, in the previous books, to the mad and blasphemous doctrines of the heretics has led us with open eyes into the difficulty that our reade

2. But we who have attained this wisdom of God, which is folly to the world, and purpose, by means of the sound and saving profession of true faith in

3. And so the arrangement of our treatise follows closely the order of the objections raised. Since the next article of their blasphemous and dishones

4. And now, since we accept as common ground the fact that God recognises His Son as God, I ask you: how does the creation of the world disprove our a

5. When the Law says, And God said, Let there be a firmament , and then adds, And God made the firmament God

6. My reader must bear in mind that I am silent about the current objections through no forgetfulness, and no distrust of my cause. For that constantl

7. This being the case, I ask how a distinction can be made in the words, Let Us make man after Our own image and likeness , between a true God and a

8. To assure us still more fully of the true Godhead manifested in the nature and work of the Son, He, Who expressed His meaning in the words I have c

9. But now let us continue our reading of this Scripture, to shew how the consistency of truth is unaffected by these dishonest objections. The next w

10. What wild insanity of abandoned souls! What blind audacity of reckless blasphemy! You hear of God and God you hear of Our image . Why suggest tha

11. But let us travel once more in our journey of instruction over the lessons taught in the holy Law of God. The Angel of God speaks to Hagar and th

12. Faith burns with passionate ardour the burden of silence is intolerable, and my thoughts imperiously demand an utterance. Already, in the precedi

13. To resume the argument this title of office indicates no difference of nature, for He, Who is the Angel of God, is God. The test of His true Godh

14. Now first, I ask, what is the meaning of these terms, ‘true God’ and ‘not true God’? If any one says to me ‘This is fire, but not true fire water

15. But perhaps it will be argued that, when the Angel of God is called God, He receives the name as a favour, through adoption, and has in consequenc

16. I ask further, Who is this God Who overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah? For the Lord rained from the Lord was it not the true Lord from the true Lord?

17. His merciful and mysterious self-revelations are in no wise inconsistent with His true heavenly nature and His faithful saints never fail to pene

18. But godless unbelief finds it very hard to apprehend the true faith. Their capacity for devotion has never been expanded by belief, and is too nar

19. Be with me now in thy faithful spirit, holy and blessed Patriarch Jacob, to combat the poisonous hissings of the serpent of unbelief. Prevail once

20. The Law in its progress still follows the sequence of the Gospel mystery, of which it is the shadow its types are a faithful anticipation of the

21. Human judgment must not pass its sentence upon God. Our nature is not such that it can lift itself by its own forces to the contemplation of heave

22. It is the Angel of God Who appeared in the fire from the bush and it is God Who spoke from the bush amid the fire. He is manifested as Angel tha

23. What further fictions can the futile folly of insane blasphemy devise? Do you still persist in your nightly sowing of tares, predestined to be bur

24. This long discussion has, I believe, brought out the truth that no sound argument has ever been adduced in favour of a distinction between One Who

25. And now the time has come for us to put a stop to that cunning artifice of heresy, by which they pervert the devout and godly teachings of the Law

26. Blasphemy is incompatible with wisdom where the fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom, is absent, no glimmer of intelligence survives. An

27. To ensure that our explanation of the passage shall be complete and certain, I cite the words in full:— Therefore thus saith the Lord, Behold, the

28. Therefore thus saith the Lord, Behold, they that serve Me shall eat, but ye shall be hungry behold, they that serve Me shall drink, but ye shall

29. Furthermore, we must form a conclusion why it is that the words cited above, Therefore thus saith the Lord , are followed by But the Lord shall sl

30. And now come words in perfect harmony with the inward assurance of our faith. He says, And they shall bless the true God, and they that swear upon

31. And thus this passage of prophecy, taken with its whole context, clearly describes as God both Him Whom we serve for the new name’s sake, and Him

32. If heresy, in its folly and wickedness, shall attempt to entice the simple-minded and uninstructed away from the true belief that these words were

33. But it may be argued that the Apostle was not inspired by the Spirit of prophecy when he borrowed these prophetic words that he was only interpre

34. Thus the Only-begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father, has told us of God, Whom no man has seen. Either disprove the fact that the Son has

35. The distorted mind of heresy is incapable of knowing and confessing the One true God the sound faith and reason necessary for such confession is

36. The true method of our enquiry demands that we should begin with him, through whom God first manifested Himself to the world, that is, with Moses,

37. That true and absolute and perfect doctrine, which forms our faith, is the confession of God from God and God in God, by no bodily process but by

38. This saving faith which we profess is sustained by the spirit of prophecy, speaking with one voice through many mouths, and never, through long an

39. Jeremiah also, a prophet equally inspired, has taught that God the Only-begotten is of a nature one with that of God the Father. His words are:— T

1. It is with a full knowledge of the dangers and passions of the time that I have ventured to attack this wild and godless heresy, which asserts that

2. For my own part, it was not only the claim which my vocation has upon me, the duty of diligently preaching the Gospel which, as a bishop, I owe to

3. For of late the infection of a mortal evil has gone abroad among mankind, whose ravages have dealt destruction and death on every hand. The sudden

4. For this mad heresy does deny it denies the mystery of the true faith by means of statements borrowed from our confession, which it employs for it

5. “We confess one God, alone unmade, alone eternal, alone unoriginate, alone possessing immortality, alone good, alone mighty, Creator, Ordainer and

6. “So there are three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. God, for His part, is the Cause of all things, utterly unoriginate and separate from all

7. Who can fail to see here the slimy windings of the serpent’s track: the coiled adder, with forces concentrated for the spring, concealing the deadl

8. And therefore, although in the two last books I have proved from the teaching of the Law and Prophets that God and God, true God and true God, true

9. For instance, these heretics would have it that the Son of God is not from God that God was not born from God out of, and in, the nature of God. T

10. And then, in continuation of this same fraudulent assault upon the faith, their confession proceeds thus:—“Nor, as Manichæus has declared of the S

11. What follows is this:—“Nor, as Sabellius, who makes two out of One, Son and Father at once.” Sabellius holds this in wilful blindness to the revel

12. Their next clause is:—“Nor, as Hieracas, a light from a light, or a lamp with two flames, nor as if He was previously in being, and afterwards bor

13. And again, what a wonderful example of heretical ingenuity is this:—“Nor as if He were previously in being, and afterwards born or created afresh,

14. And then again, after an interval designed to prepare us for what is coming, their heresy delivers this assault —“While the Son, put forth outside

15. But the fiery zeal of this heresy is such that it cannot restrain itself from passionate outbreak. In its effort to prove, in conformity with its

16. You said in your unreason, and you are still repeating to-day, ignorant that your wisdom is a defiance of God, “As to such phrases as from Him , a

17. But meanwhile let us see what ground these men have for the confidence with which they forbid us to accept as true the utterances of God concernin

18. For you attribute, most godless of heretics, the birth of the Son to an act of creative will you say that He is not born from God, but that He wa

19. And now, Almighty God, I first must pray Thee to forgive my excess of indignation, and permit me to address Thee and next to grant me, dust and a

20. What is this hopeless quagmire of error into which Thou hast plunged me? For I have learnt all this and have come to believe it this faith is so

21. These are the men who have taught me the doctrines which I hold, and so deeply am I impregnated with their teaching that no antidote can release m

22. But this wild talk must cease the rhetoric of exposing heretical folly must give place to the drudgery of framing arguments. So, I trust, those a

23. I will not weaken the evidence for this truth by intermixing words of my own. Let us hear the Father, when the baptism of Jesus Christ was accompl

24. And again, because the life of believers was involved in the confession of this faith,—for there is no other way to eternal life than the assuranc

25. I can conceive of no man so destitute of ordinary reason as to recognise in each of the Gospels confessions by the Son of the humiliation to which

26. And thus, although nothing but a sincere belief that these names are truly significant,—that, when we read, This is My Son and My Father Son Fathe

27. The Son speaks thus:— For the works which the Father hath given Me to finish, the same works which I do, bear witness of Me that the Father hath s

28. And indeed the Son never makes for Himself a lower claim than is contained in this designation, given Him by His Father. The Father’s words, This

29. But He immediately adds, For I am from Him, and He hath sent Me , to debar heresy from the violent assumption that His being from God dates from t

30. They are blankly ignorant who separate the Divine name from the Divine nature ignorant, and content to be ignorant. But let them listen to the re

31. To this the Lord’s words bear witness — I will not say unto you that I will pray the Father for you, for the Father Himself loveth you, because ye

32. In the order of our defence, as I have arranged it in my mind, this has seemed the most convenient place for proving that, thirdly , the Apostles

33. After many dark sayings, spoken in parables by Him Whom they already knew as the Christ foretold by Moses and the Prophets, Whom Nathanael had con

34. By this the holy Apostles did not understand that He had gone forth, in the sense of having been sent, from God. For they had often heard Him conf

35. For God is not born from God by the ordinary process of a human childbirth this is no case of one being issuing from another by the exertion of n

36. A belief that the Son of God is Son in name only and not in nature, is not the faith of the Gospels and of the Apostles. If this be a mere title,

37. This faith it is which is the foundation of the Church through this faith the gates of hell cannot prevail against her. This is the faith which h

38. Do you think, wretched heretic of today, that Peter would have been the more blessed now, if he had said, ‘Thou art Christ, God’s perfect creature

39. Let us therefore cite every example of a statement of the faith made by an Apostle. All of them, when they confess the Son of God, confess Him not

40. I defer the consideration of the words, which is in the bosom of the Father , to a more appropriate place. My present enquiry is into the sense of

41. I appeal not now to any of the titles which are given to the Son there is no loss in delay when it is the result of an embarrassing abundance of

42. To believe, therefore, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God is true salvation, is the acceptable service of an unfeigned faith. For we have no love

43. John speaks thus — For we know that the Son of God is come, and was incarnate for us, and suffered, and rose again from the dead and took us for H

44. And the persecutor, who was converted to be an Apostle and a chosen vessel, delivers the very same message. What discourse is there of his which d

45. But now let us learn what is this faith concerning the Son of God, which the Apostle holds. For though there is no single discourse, among the man

46. This is no universal and inevitable error they who deny the Son cannot lay the fault upon their ignorance, for ignorance of the truth which they

47. What is the hope of which this futile passion of yours is in pursuit? What is the assurance of your salvation which emboldens you with blasphemous

48. The Lord had given sight to a man blind from his birth the Lord of nature had removed a defect of nature. Because this blind man had been born fo

49. Did devils fail to understand the full meaning of this name of Son? For we are valuing the heretics at their true worth if we refute them no longe

50. If you will not learn Who Christ is from those that know Him, learn it at least from those that know Him not. So shall the confession, which their

51. The confession of the Apostles, for whom by a word of command the raging wind and troubled sea were restored to calm, was an opportunity for you.

52. If this witness of the voyagers seem inconclusive to you because they were Apostles,—though to me it comes with the greater weight for the same re

1. This is the seventh book of our treatise against the wild extravagance of modern heresy. In order of place it must follow its predecessors in orde

2. We call to mind that in the preceding books the reader has been urged to study the whole of that blasphemous manifesto , and mark how it is animate

3. Nothing is more harassing to human nature than the sense of impending danger. If calamities unknown or unanticipated befall us, we may need pity, y

4. But I trust that the Church, by the light of her doctrine, will so enlighten the world’s vain wisdom, that, even though it accept not the mystery o

5. Sabellius sweeps away the birth of the Son, and then preaches the unity of God but he does not doubt that the mighty Nature, which acted in the hu

6. Set our modern heresy in array against the delusion, equally wild, of Sabellius let them make the best of their case. The new heretics will advanc

7. Again, how glorious a victory for our faith is that in which Ebion—in other words, Photinus—both wins the day and loses it! He castigates Sabellius

8. I felt that I must spare a little space to point this out. It has been from no love for amplification, but that it might serve as a warning. First,

9. Thus we have all these different assurances of the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ:—His name, His birth, His nature, His power, His own assertion

10. Consider the other recorded instances in which this name was given by favour or assumed. To Moses it was said, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh .

11. But in this case the Word in very truth is God the essence of the Godhead exists in the Word, and that essence is expressed in the Word’s name. F

12. And now let us see whether the confession of Thomas the Apostle, when he cried, My Lord and My God, corresponds with this assertion of the Evangel

13. Thus the name which expresses His nature proves the truth of our confession of the faith. For the name, which indicates any single substance, poin

14. And first I ask what new element, destructive of His Godhead, can have been imported by birth into the nature of the Son? Universal reason rejects

15. Again, any one who is in doubt concerning this matter may gain from the Jews an accurate knowledge of Christ’s nature or rather learn that He was

16. And now, although we have found the sense of Scripture, as we understand it, in harmony with the conclusions of ordinary reason, the two agreeing

17. The chief reason why the Jews wished to kill the Lord was that, in calling God His Father, He had made Himself equal with God and therefore He pu

18. The next words are, For what things soever He —the Father— doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise likewise whatsoever same Whatsoever same likew

19. Thus the progressive revelation contained in our Lord’s reply is at one with the progressive statement of truth in the Church’s confession of fait

20. And next, lest it should seem that to give life to whom He will is not within the power of One Who has been truly born, but is only the prerogativ

21. Thus the Father works hitherto and the Son works. In Father and Son you have the names which express Their nature in relation to Each other. Note

22. And furthermore, let His own Divine words bear witness to Himself. He says, They that are of My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they fol

23. There still remains, if I read them aright, the same desire in these maddened souls, though their opportunity for fulfilling it is lost. Their bit

24. The mystery contained in those words, I and the Father are One , moves you to wrath. The Jew answered, Thou, being a man makest Thyself God Is it

25. There remains, I conceive, no possibility of doubt but that the words, I and the Father are One , were spoken with regard to the nature which is H

26. Once more, God the Only-begotten has summed up for us, in words of His own, the whole revealed mystery of the faith. When He had given His answer

27. And so the Son, Who does the Father’s works and demands of us that, if we believe not Him, at least we believe His works, is bound to tell us what

28. I call to mind that, at the beginning of our treatise , I gave the warning that human analogies correspond imperfectly to their Divine counterpart

29. Another analogy which casts some light upon the meaning of the faith is that of fire as containing fire in itself and as abiding in fire. Fire con

30. These illustrations, I repeat, must only be used as aids to apprehension of the faith, not as standards of comparison for the Divine majesty. Our

31. We see how the living Son of the living Father, He Who is God from God, reveals the unity of the Divine nature, indissolubly One and the same, and

32. We will leave it to him to preach two Gods, who can preach One God without confessing the unity he shall proclaim that God is solitary, who can d

33. The Lord has not left in doubt or obscurity the teaching conveyed in this great mystery He has not abandoned us to lose our way in dim uncertaint

34. The words which follow those last cited are, If ye know Me, ye know My Father also . It is the Man, Jesus Christ, Whom they behold. How can a know

35. But the novel sound of these words disturbed the Apostle Philip. A Man is before their eyes this Man avows Himself the Son of God, and declares t

36. And therefore the Lord answered Philip thus — Have I been so long time with you, and ye have not known Me, Philip? He rebukes the Apostle for defe

37. And therefore the Lord reproached them that they had not known Him, though He had so long been doing these works, and answered their prayer that H

38. Such is the meaning of this passage, Have I been so long time with you, and ye have not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Fathe

39. Again, the unity of Begetter and Begotten, manifested in sameness of nature and true oneness of kind, proves that the Father was seen in His true

40. Lest they, whose faith conforms to the Gospel, should regard this mystery as something vague and obscure, the Lord has expounded it in this order

41. And so, lest we should believe and say that the Father works in the Son through His own omnipotent energy, and not through the Son’s possession, a

1. The Blessed Apostle Paul in laying down the form for appointing a bishop and creating by his instructions an entirely new type of member of the Chu

2. The reason why I have just mentioned this utterance of the Apostle is this men of crooked minds and false professions, void of hope and venomous o

3. But as it is the nature and endeavour of the good and wise to prepare themselves wholly for securing either the reality or the opportunity of some

4. We, on the contrary, having by spiritual teaching arrived at the faith of the evangelists and apostles, and following after the hope of eternal ble

5. Now seeing that heretics cannot deny these things because they are so clearly stated and understood, they nevertheless pervert them by the most foo

6. He clearly knows not wisdom who knows not God. And since Christ is Wisdom he must needs be beyond the pale of wisdom who knows not Christ or hates

7. For as to those whose soul and heart were one, I ask whether they were one through faith in God? Yes, assuredly, through faith, for through this th

8. These are not our own conjectures which we offer, nor do we falsely put together any of these things in order to deceive the ears of our hearers by

9. Or, again, since he who plants and he who waters are one, are they not one because, being themselves born again in one baptism they form a ministry

10. Now the contradiction of fools always serves to prove their folly, because with regard to the faults which they contrive by the devices of an unwi

11. But although the wickedness of man can pervert his intellectual powers, nevertheless the words retain their meaning. Our Lord prays to His Father

12. But because it is proper to the Father alone and the Son that They should be one by nature because God is from God, and the Only-begotten from the

13. Now our Lord has not left the minds of His faithful followers in doubt, but has explained the manner in which His nature operates, saying, That th

14. The words in which we speak of the things of God must be used in no mere human and worldly sense, nor must the perverseness of an alien and impiou

15. Now how it is that we are in Him through the sacrament of the flesh and blood bestowed upon us, He Himself testifies, saying, And the world will n

16. Again, how natural this unity is in us He has Himself testified on this wise,— He who eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood abideth in Me, and I i

17. I have dwelt upon these facts because the heretics falsely maintain that the union between Father and Son is one of will only, and make use of the

18. So we have made our reply to the folly of our violent opponents, merely to prove the emptiness of their falsehoods and so prevent them from mislea

19. Thus we do not deny a unanimity between the Father and the Son,—for heretics are accustomed to utter this falsehood, that since we do not accept c

20. For the present I forbear to expose their licence of speculation, some of them holding that the Paraclete Spirit comes from the Father or from the

21. Let us listen to that chosen vessel and teacher of the Gentiles, when he had already commended the faith of the people of Rome because of their un

22. And now I ask whether thou thinkest that in the Spirit of God is signified a nature or a property belonging to a nature. For a nature is not ident

23. For I am aware that the Son of God is revealed under the title Spirit of God in order that we may understand the presence of the Father in Him, an

24. For I think that the expression ‘Spirit of God’ was used with respect to Each, lest we should believe that the Son was present in the Father or th

25. Now I think that it ought to be clearly understood that God the Father is denoted by the Spirit of God, because our Lord Jesus Christ declared tha

26. Now we have of necessity set these things forth with this object, that in whatever direction the deception of heretics betakes itself, it might ye

27. But you, heretic, as you wildly rave and are driven about by the Spirit of your deadly doctrine the Apostle seizes and constrains, establishing Ch

28. Now the Apostle asserts that those words in the Gospel, I and the Father are one , imply unity of nature and not a solitary single Being, as he wr

29. For the Apostle goes on to say, Now there are diversities of gifts, but there is the same Spirit and there are diversities of ministrations but o

30. And indeed that which we called the fourth statement, that is the manifestation of the Spirit in the bestowal of what is profitable, has a clear m

31. Now the blessed Apostle Paul in revealing the secret of these heavenly mysteries, most difficult to human comprehension, has preserved a clear enu

32. But if this one Spirit of one Divinity, one in both God and Lord through the mystery of the birth, does not please thee, then point out to me what

33. Unless perchance we think that the Apostle did not keep to the principle of unity in that he said, And there are diversities of ministrations, and

34. But if impiety has assumed to itself that because he says, The same Lord and the same God , they are not in unity of nature, I will support this i

35. First of all, then, O heretic that hast no part in the Spirit which spoke by the Apostle, learn thy folly. If thou wrongly employest the confessio

36. Now the Apostle, maintaining the true sense of the Lord’s saying, I and the Father are one , whilst He asserts that Both are One, signifies that B

37. Unless perchance the frenzy of utter desperation will venture to rush to such lengths that, inasmuch as the Apostle has called Christ Lord, no one

38. Now that He Who is God over all is also Spirit inseparable from the Father, learn also from that very utterance of the Apostle, of which we are no

39. For whereas he has specially ascribed to God that all things are from Him, and he has assigned as a peculiar property to Christ, that all things a

40. Thrust out now your quivering and hissing tongues, ye vipers of heresy, whether it be thou Sabellius or thou Photinus, or ye who now preach that t

41. So then the one faith is, to confess the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father through the unity of an indivisible nature, not confused but

42. For the Lord had said in the gospels, Work not for the meat which perisheth, but for the meat which abideth unto life eternal, which the Son of Ma

43. Now we ought to recognise first of all that God has spoken not for Himself but for us, and that He has so far tempered the language of His utteran

44. Therefore after this manifold and precise revelation of the presence of the Father’s nature in Himself, He goes on to say, For Him hath the Father

45. But in us the preacher of the Gospel by the Spirit of Christ Who spoke through him, instils the knowledge of this His proper nature when he says,

46. At this point I ask whether He Who abides as God in the form of God is a God of another kind, as we perceive in the case of seals in respect of th

47. In all things the blessed Apostle preserves the unchangeable teaching of the Gospel faith. The Lord Jesus Christ is proclaimed as God in such wise

48. But there is no danger that the one faith will cease to be such through diversity in its preaching. The Evangelist had taught that our Lord said,

49. But, as it is, neither did the Lord leave us in doubt: He who hath seen Me, hath seen the Father also nor was the Apostle silent as to His nature

50. He is accordingly the first-born of every creature because in Him all things were created. And lest any one should dare to refer to any other than

51. Do you now perceive what it is to be the image of God? It means that all things are created in Him through Him. Whereas all things are created in

52. Thus God out of regard for human weakness has not set forth the faith in bare and uncertain statements. For although the authority of our Lord’s m

53. Now that you may understand the saying of the Lord, when He said, All things whatsoever the Father hath are Mine , learn the teaching and faith of

54. Now I ask, whose Godhead is it whereof the fulness dwells in Him? If it be not that of the Father, what other God do you, misleading preacher of o

55. The Apostle has herein held fast to the canon of his faith, by teaching that the fulness of the Godhead dwelt in Christ bodily and this, in order

56. And if you would know what it is to ‘dwell in bodily fashion,’ understand what it is to speak in one that speaks, to be seen in one who is seen, t

1. In the last book we treated of the indistinguishable nature of God the Father and God the Son, and demonstrated that the words, I and the Father ar

2. All this is indeed as it is: He, Who is by nature God of God, must possess the nature of His origin, which God possesses, and the indistinguishable

3. We will offer later an explanation of these texts in the words of the Gospels and Epistles themselves. But first we hold it right to remind the mem

4. It is contrary to our experience of nature, that He should be born man and still remain God but it accords with the tenor of our expectation, that

5. The Only-begotten God, therefore, when He was born man of the Virgin, and in the fulness of time was about in His own person to raise humanity to d

6. We do not deny that all the sayings which are preserved of His, refer to His nature. But, if Jesus Christ be man and God, neither God for the first

7. For our sake, therefore, Jesus Christ, retaining all these attributes, and being born man in our body, spoke after the fashion of our nature withou

8. The Apostle, who knew this mystery, and had received the knowledge of the faith through the Lord Himself, was not unmindful, that neither the world

9. But after the announcement of the mystery of Christ’s nature, and our assumption, that is, the fulness of Godhead abiding in Christ, and ourselves

10. Then is completed the entire mystery of the assumed manhood, And you being dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, you

11. Do you understand already the Mysteries of the Apostle’s Faith? Do you think to know Christ already? Tell me, then, Who is it Who strips from Hims

12. I remember that the Apostle often refers to God the Father as raising Christ from the dead but he is not inconsistent with himself or at variance

13. It is this preaching of the double aspect of Christ’s Person which the blessed Apostle emphasises. He points out in Christ His human infirmity, an

14. I have been compelled to dwell briefly on this, lest we should forget our Lord Jesus Christ is being treated of as a Person of two natures, since

15. We have now expounded the Dispensation of the Mysteries, through which the heretics deceive certain of the unlearned into ascribing to infirmity i

16. Let us see, then, how the questioner styled Him, beside calling Him good. He said, Good Master, what good thing shall I do ? adding to the title o

17. Then, as a proof that He resents the name “good master,” on the ground of the unbelief, which addresses Him as a man, He replies to the vain-glori

18. That He did not shrink from the title of good, or decline the office of master, but resented the unbelief which perceived no more in Him than body

19. The Lord always maintained this definition of the faith of the Church, which consists in teaching that there is one God the Father, but without se

20. In many, nay almost all His discourses, He offers the explanation of this mystery, never separating Himself from the divine unity, when He confess

21. They are not, therefore, acquitted of blame for not recognising the testimony for the works of Christ are the Father’s testimony concerning Him.

22. For, in this very same discourse in which He pronounces that His works testify of Him that He was sent of the Father, and asserts that the Father

23. They have not the love of God in them, He says, because they rejected Him coming in the name of the Father, but accepted another, who came in the

24. By the mystery of the divine nature we are forbidden to separate the birth of the living Son from His living Father. The Son of God suffers no suc

25. And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, He said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God . What is the meaning of such moderate

26. We may perceive also, from the words of our Lord Himself, why He said, Thou art not far from the Kingdom of Heaven , rather than, Thou shalt be in

27. What room is any longer left for doubt? The Lord Himself proclaiming that the chief commandment of the law is to confess and love the one Lord, pr

28. May the faith of the Gospel ever profit thus by the rash contentions of the ungodly to defend itself with the weapons of their attack, and conquer

29. But by these very words He proclaims Himself plainly to be true God in the nature of the only true God. To understand this, let our answer proceed

30. The Lord praised their understanding, and answered not that He was sent from, but that He was come out from, God, signifying by the words “come ou

31. Then, finally, to express in words the whole Mystery, He raised His eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come: glorify Thy Son, that Thy

32. These are the steps by which He advances the knowledge of Himself. He teaches that He is come out from the Father, proclaims that the Father is wi

33. I know that laboured solutions of difficult questions do not find favour with the reader, but it will perhaps be to the advantage of the faith if

34. But perhaps by saying, Thee the only , Christ severs Himself from communion and unity with God. Yes, but after the words, Thee the only true God H

35. Come, heretic, what will your fatuous doctrine instruct us to believe of Christ Christ, Who dispenses eternal life, Who is glorified of, and glor

36. But the faith of the Church, while confessing the only true God the Father, confesses Christ also. It does not confess Christ true God without the

37. But, as we have often said, the inadequacy of human ideas has no corresponding inadequacy in the unity of God the Father and God the Son: as thoug

38. Put in the dispensation of the flesh which He assumed, and through the obedience whereby He emptied Himself of the form of God, Christ, born man,

39. For this reason, having already so well prepared their minds for the understanding of this belief, the Lord follows up the words, And this is eter

40. But these words of the Lord are not new, or attested now for the first time in the teaching of the Gospels, for He testified to this very mystery

41. So God is glorified in the Son of Man, Who is also Son of God. Let us see, then, what is this third clause which is added, If God is glorified in

42. The words of the Apostle’s faith are a barrier against your reckless and frenzied profanity, which forbids you to turn the freedom of speculation

43. But perhaps the godless unbeliever meets the pious believer with the assertion that we cannot understand of the true God a confession of powerless

44. Hear how the necessity for the reply arose:— And for this cause did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to kill Him, because He did these things

45. Unless we regard these words as an integral part of His statement, we do them violence by forcing upon them an arbitrary and unbelieving interpret

46. Why do you misrepresent the occasion of the reply in order to detract from His divinity? To the working on the Sabbath He answers that He can do n

47. Although we have treated this passage as the facts themselves explain it, yet to prove that the Lord’s words, The Son can do nothing of Himself, b

48. But, my opponent, the unity of Their nature is such, that the several action of Each implies the conjoint action of Both, and Their joint activity

49. Connect with this that saying, which you lay hold of to support the imputation of infirmity, All that the Father giveth Me shall come unto Me, and

50. But He proves abundantly that His will is free by the words, As the Father raiseth the dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son also quickeneth w

51. He who has not grasped the manifest truths of the faith, obviously cannot have an understanding of its mysteries because he has not the doctrine

52. Therefore, in the discourse we have expounded above, He had borne witness to the unity of His nature with the Father’s: He that hath seen Me, hath

53. So the Only-begotten God, just before He finished His work in the flesh, and completed the mystery of taking the servant’s form, in order to estab

54. But if His equality is doubted because the Name is given Him after He put off the form of God, we dishonour Him by ignoring the mystery of the hum

55. After the explanation that love is the source of this joy, because love rejoices that Jesus is to be confessed in the glory of God the Father, He

56. Why do you distort the Incarnation into a blasphemy? Why pervert the mystery of salvation into a weapon of destruction? The Father, Who glorifies

57. The birth, therefore, does not constitute His nature inferior, for He is in the form of God, as being born of God. And though by their very signif

58. Seeking to disparage His nature, the heretics lay hold of such sayings as, The Father is greater than I, or, But of that day and hour knoweth no o

59. But, before we investigate the meaning and occasion of these words, let us first appeal to the judgment of common sense. Is it credible, that He,

60. But, again, how can we believe that the Lord of glory, because He was able not to know the day of His own coming, was of a discordant and imperfec

61. But God can never be anything but love, or anything but the Father: and He, Who loves, does not envy He Who is Father, is wholly and entirely Fat

62. Moreover Paul, the teacher of the Gentiles, forestalls the impious falsehood, that the Only-begotten God was partially nescient. Listen to his wor

63. Whenever God says that He does not know, He professes ignorance indeed, but is not under the defect of ignorance. It is not because of the infirmi

64. We cannot, then, doubt that the knowledge of God depends on the occasion and not on any change on His part: by the occasion being meant the occasi

65. We find our Lord in the Gospels knowing, yet not knowing, many things. Thus He does not know the workers of iniquity, who glory in their mighty wo

66. The Lord Jesus Christ, then, Who searcheth the heart and the reins , has no weakness in His nature, that He should not know, for, as we perceive,

67. We can now understand why He said that He knew not the day. If we believe Him to have been really ignorant, we contradict the Apostle, who says, I

68. Manifestly, therefore, the ignorance of God is not ignorance but a mystery: in the economy of His actions and words and manifestations, He does no

69. Should any one presume, not merely to speak thus of the Only-begotten God in the rashness of his tongue, but even to think so in the wickedness of

70. The heretics cannot deny that the Lord used these words to signify the mystery His birth, but they attempt to escape from them by referring them t

71. But perhaps it may be held to confirm the Son in His confession of ignorance that He says the Father alone knows. But unless He had plainly said t

72. Far be it from us to imagine vicissitudes of bodily change in the Father and Son, as though the Father sometimes spoke to the Son, and sometimes w

73. We have established this point to exclude the idea that after silence God spoke to the Son, or after ignorance the Son began to know. To reach our

74. So the nature of Christ needed no change, or question, or answer, that it should advance from ignorance to knowledge, or ask of One Who had contin

75. The Son is ignorant, then, of nothing which the Father knows, nor does it follow because the Father alone knows, that the Son does not know. Fathe

1. It is manifest that there is nothing which men have ever said which is not liable to opposition. Where the will dissents the mind also dissents: un

2. Not unmindful of this sin of wilfulness, the Apostle, writing to Timothy, after many injunctions to bear witness to the faith and to preach the wor

3. We have clearly fallen on the evil times prophesied by the Apostle for nowadays teachers are sought after who preach not God but a creature . And

4. But though many may heap up teachers according to their desires, and banish sound doctrine, yet from the company of the Saints the preaching of tru

5. In the earlier books, then, while maintaining the profession of a faith, I trust, sincere, and a truth uncorrupted, we arranged the method of our a

6. But we have always maintained the birth existing out of time: we have taught that God the Son is God of the same nature with God the Father, not co

7. But by the side of this timeless and ineffable generation of the Only-begotten, which transcends the perception of human understanding, we taught a

8. As we are answering all, even their most insensate statements, we come now to the discussion of the unknown hour . Now, even if, as they say, the S

9. Thus the greater number of them will not allow Him to have the impossible nature of God because He feared His Passion and shewed Himself weak by su

10. Now first of all, before we shew from these very texts, that He was subject to no infirmity of fear or sorrow on His own account, let us ask, “Wha

11. Further, what terror had the pain of death for Him, to Whom death was an act of His own free will? In the human race death is brought on either by

12. But perchance with the fearfulness of human ignorance, He feared the very power of death, which He possessed so, though He died of His own accord

13. But was it perhaps the physical pain of hanging on the cross, or the rough cords with which He was bound, or the cruel wounds, where the nails wer

14. The nature of our bodies is such, that when endued with life and feeling by conjunction with a sentient soul, they become something more than iner

15. If the Man Jesus Christ began His bodily life with the same beginning as our body and soul, if He were not, as God, the immediate Author of His ow

16. This deep and beautiful mystery of His assumption of manhood the Lord Himself reveals in the words, No man hath ascended into heaven, but He that

17. The blessed Apostle also perfectly describes this mystery of the ineffable birth of Christ’s body in the words, The first man was from the soil of

18. Again the Lord Himself revealing this mystery of His birth, speaks thus: I am the living bread Who have descended from Heaven: if any one shall ea

19. Being, then, Man with this body, Jesus Christ is both the Son of God and Son of Man, Who emptied Himself of the form of God, and received the form

20. Yet many, with the art by which they seek to prove their heresy, are wont to delude the ears of the unlearned with the error, that as the body and

21. With a view to deprive of substantive divinity the Only-begotten God, Who was God the Word with God in the beginning, they make Him merely the utt

22. But as He by His own act assumed a body from the Virgin, so He assumed from Himself a soul though even in ordinary human birth the soul is never

23. So the Man Jesus Christ, Only-begotten God, as flesh and as Word at the same time Son of Man and Son of God, without ceasing to be Himself, that i

24. It may perhaps be said, ‘We find Him giving way to weeping, to hunger and thirst: must we not suppose Him liable to all the other affections of hu

25. For Christ had indeed a body, but unique, as befitted His origin. He did not come into existence through the passions incident to human conception

26. The Apostles’ belief prepares us for the understanding of this mystery when it testifies that Jesus Christ was found in fashion as a man and was

27. Do you suppose, heretic, that the Lord of glory feared to suffer? Why, when Peter made this error through ignorance, did He not call him ‘Satan’ a

28. But perhaps He feared the pain of wounds. Say then, What terror had the thrust of the nail for Him Who merely by His touch restored the ear that w

29. But, perhaps, in their misguided and impious perversity, they infer His weakness from the fact that His soul was sorrowful unto death . It is not

30. But perhaps He may be thought to have feared to the extent that He prayed that the cup might be removed from Him: Abba, Father, all things are pos

31. Yet, I suppose, you will arm yourself also for your godless contention with these words of the Lord, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me ? P

32. Where, pray, can you see fear in His Passion? Where weakness? Or pain? Or dishonour? Do the godless say He feared? But He proclaimed with His own

33. But, they say, the cross was a dishonour to Him yet it is because of the cross that we can now see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of po

34. But perhaps you think your impiety has still an opportunity left to see in the words, Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit , a proof that He

35. We have now seen the power that lay in the acts and words of Christ. We have incontestably proved that His body did not share the infirmity of a n

36. But even now that we have proved what was the faith of the Apostle, the heretics think to meet it by the text, My soul is sorrowful even unto deat

37. That we may understand what was the cause of His sadness, let us see what precedes and follows this confession of sadness: for in the Passover sup

38. And the reason He prayed that the cup might be removed from Him, if that were possible, was that, though with God nothing is impossible, as Christ

39. The Lord was sorrowful then unto death because in presence of the death, the earthquake, the darkened day, the rent veil, the opened graves, and t

40. Although by His words, Thy will be done , He surrendered the Apostles to the decision of His Father’s will, in regard to the offence of the cup, t

41. We must not indeed pass over the fact that in many manuscripts, both Latin and Greek, nothing is said of the angel’s coming or the Bloody Sweat. B

42. Again the Gospels fill up what is lacking in one another: we learn some things from one, some from another, and so on, because all are the proclam

43. Combine the Lord’s prayer in John, the request of the devil in Luke, the sorrowfulness unto death, and the protest against sleep, followed by the

44. There was, then, no place for human anxiety and trepidation in that nature, which was more than human. It was superior to the ills of earthly fles

45. Did the Jewish children fear the flames blazing up with the fuel cast upon them in the fiery furnace at Babylon? Did the terror of that terrible f

46. Daniel, whose meat was the scanty portion of a prophet , did not fear the lions’ den. The Apostles rejoiced in suffering and death for the Name of

47. The Only-begotten God, then, suffered in His person the attacks of all the infirmities to which we are subject but He suffered them in the power

48. Again, the Apostle knows nothing in Christ about fear of pain. When He wishes to speak of the dispensation of the Passion, He includes it in the m

49. There is still, the heretics say, another serious and far reaching confession of weakness, all the more so because it is in the mouth of the Lord

50. Further their heretical ingenuity presses on in the path prepared by their own godlessness, even to the entire absorption of God the Word into the

51. Through this subtle and mischievous doctrine they are drawn into the error that God the Word became soul to the body, His nature by self-humiliati

52. Amid these irreverent and ill-grounded theories the faith of the Church, inspired by the teaching of the Apostles, has recognised a birth of Chris

53. I am not ignorant how much the grandeur of the divine mystery baffles our weak understanding, so that language can scarcely express it, or reason

54. The mystery of that other timeless birth I will not yet touch upon: its treatment demands an ampler space than this. For the present I will speak

55. Again, how great a mystery of word and act it is that Christ wept, that His eyes filled with tears from the anguish of His mind . Whence came this

56. No less real were the tears He shed for Lazarus . The first question here is, What was there to weep for in the case of Lazarus? Not his death, fo

57. If there are many points which we treat scantily it is not because we have nothing to say, or do not know what has already been said our purpose

58. But, further, no one who is endued with reason can impute to God a soul though it is written in many places that the soul of God hates sabbaths a

59. How does He then lay down His soul, or take it up again? What is the meaning of this command He received? God could not lay it down, that is, die,

60. To grasp this divine mystery we must see the God in Him without ignoring the Man and the Man without ignoring the God. We must not divide Jesus C

61. Ye who trisect Christ into the Word, the soul and the body, or degrade the whole Christ, even God the Word, into a single member of our race, unfo

62. It is one and the same Lord Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, Who expresses Himself in all these utterances, Who is man when He says He is abando

63. Stand aside then, all godless unbelievers, for whom the divine mystery is too great, who do not know that Christ wept not for Himself but for us,

64. Listen to the teaching of the Apostle and see in it a faith instructed not by the understanding of the flesh but by the gift of the Spirit. The Gr

65. The Apostle knew nothing else, and he determined to know nothing else: we men of feebler wit, and feebler faith, split up, divide and double Jesus

66. So the Apostle moulding our ignorant and haphazard ideas into conformity with truth says of this mystery of the faith, For He was crucified throug

67. The Only-begotten God suffered indeed all that men can suffer: but let us express ourselves in the words and faith of the Apostle. He says, For I

68. The Apostle is careful to leave no room for doubt: we cannot say, “Christ was born, suffered, was dead and buried, and rose again: but how, by wha

69. The Apostle then looking in us for the righteousness which is of Faith, cuts at the root of incredulous doubt and godless unbelief. He forbids us

70. But there is demanded from us an unwavering certainty. The Apostle expounding the whole secret of the Scripture passes on, Thy word is nigh, in th

71. If then He said, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me , and Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit I thank Thee, that Thou hast heard Me

1. The Apostle in his letter to the Ephesians, reviewing in its manifold aspects the full and perfect mystery of the Gospel, mingles with other instru

2. But how can it be any longer one faith, if it does not steadfastly and sincerely confess one Lord and one God the Father: and how can the faith whi

3. Yet it cannot be denied that Christ was Christ. It cannot be that He was incognisable to mankind. The books of the prophets have set their seal upo

4. But these teachers of a new Christ, who deny to Him all that is His, preach another Lord Christ as well as another God the Father. The One is not t

5. Unlearned in the teaching of the Gospels and Apostles, they extol the glory of God the Father, not, however, with the sincerity of a devout believe

6. But, as we pointed out in the former books, they seize the Dispensation of the assumed manhood as a pretext to dishonour His divinity, and distort

7. In our reply we have followed Him to the moment of His glorious death, and taking one by one the statements of their unhallowed doctrine, we have r

8. Among their other sins the heretics often employ as an argument the words of the Lord, I ascend unto My Father and your Father, and My God and your

9. Falsehood is always infamous, for the liar throwing off the bridle of shame dares to gainsay the truth, or else at times he hides behind some veil

10. You credit with the weight of irresistible authority, heretic, that saying of the Lord, I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your

11. We do not know Christ the God unless we know God the Begotten. But to be born God is to belong to the nature of God, for the name Begotten signifi

12. See in all that He said, how carefully the Lord tempers the pious acknowledgment of His debt, so that neither the confession of the birth could be

13. So the Dispensation of the great and godly mystery makes Him, Who was already Father of the divine Son, also His Lord in the created form which He

14. Being, then, in the form of a servant, Jesus Christ, Who before was in the form of God, said as a man, I ascend to My Father and your Father, and

15. These, then, are the words with which He prefaces the message, Go unto My brethren, and say to them, I ascend unto My Father and your Father, and

16. By assuming flesh, however, He acquired our nature in our totality, and became all that we are, but did not lose that which He was before. Both be

17. The Apostle here speaks in carefully guarded words, which by their definiteness can give no occasion to the ungodly. We have seen that the Evangel

18. Time and the lapse of ages make no difference to a Spirit . Christ is one and the same Christ, whether in the body, or abiding by the Spirit in th

19. But the Word was God, and with God in the beginning, and therefore the anointing could neither be related nor explained, if it referred to that na

20. Let no one then defile with his godless interpretations the mystery of great godliness which was manifested in the flesh, or reckon himself equal

21. But perhaps that subjection, that delivering of the kingdom, and lastly that end betoken the dissolution of His nature, or the loss of His power,

22. It will not be out of place here if we review the full meaning of the Apostle’s teaching upon this subject. Let us take, then, each single sentenc

23. The Apostle who was chosen not of men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ, to be the teacher of the Gentiles , expounds in language as expre

24. And if, by an error incident to human nature, we be clinging to some preconception of our own, let us not reject the advance in knowledge through

25. Three assertions are here disputed, which, in the order in which the Apostle makes them, are first the end, then the delivering, and lastly the su

26. At the outset take note that this is not the order of the Apostle’s teaching, for in that order the surrender of the Kingdom is first, then the su

27. Before going any further we must now enquire whether the end is a dissolution, or the delivering a forfeiture, or the subjection an enfeebling of

28. Christ is the end of the law but, tell me, is He come to destroy it or to fulfil it? And if Christ, the end of the law, does not destroy it, but

29. We can therefore no longer doubt that by the end is meant an ultimate and final condition and not a dissolution. We shall have something more to s

30. As to the subjection, there are other facts which come to the help of our faith, and prevent us from putting an indignity on Christ upon this scor

31. What that is must be understood in view of this same hope of our faith. We cannot be ignorant that the Lord Jesus Christ rose again from the dead,

32. The meaning of the abolishing of every power which is against Him is not obscure. The prince of the air, the power of spiritual wickedness, shall

33. So when their authority is abolished, His enemies shall be subjected: and so subjected, that He shall subject them to Himself. Moreover He shall s

34. When authorities and powers are abolished, His enemies shall be subjected under His feet. The same Apostle tells who are these enemies, As touchin

35. But we must not forget what follows the subjection, namely, Last of all is death conquered by Him . This victory over death is nothing else than t

36. Hence the Apostle, to make his explanation of this Mystery complete, after saying that death is the last enemy to be conquered, adds: But when He

37. Nor are the Gospels silent concerning the glory of His present reigning body. It is written that the Lord said, Verily, I say unto you, there be s

38. He promised also to the Apostles the participation in this His glory. So shall it be in the end of the world. The Son of Man shall send forth His

39. He shall deliver the Kingdom to God the Father, not in the sense that He resigns His power by the delivering, but that we, being conformed to the

40. In His body, the same body though now made glorious, He reigns until the authorities are abolished, death conquered, and His enemies subdued. This

41. We have a sufficient and sacred guarantee for this belief in the authority of the Apostle. Through the Dispensation, and within time, the Lord Jes

42. Does He not reveal to His Apostles the Dispensation of this glory by the express signification of the words, Now is the Son of Man glorified, and

43. But what absurd folly is it of the heretics to regard as unattainable for God that goal to which man hopes to attain, to imply that He is powerles

44. To me, who hold that God cannot be known except by devotion, even to answer such objections seems no less unholy than to support them. What presum

45. But the Apostle does not neglect to say with what manner of confession we should bear witness of God. O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom

46. It is a recognised axiom of natural philosophy, that nothing falls within the scope of the senses unless it is subjected to their observation, as

47. The Apostle then recognised that nothing can fall within our knowledge, except it be posterior in time to the faculty of sense. Accordingly when h

48. But neither is it necessary for the Only-begotten God that He should change. He is God, and that is the name of full and perfect divinity. For, as

49. It is therefore for the promotion of us, the assumed humanity, that God shall be all in all. He Who was found in the form of a servant, though He

1. At length, with the Holy Ghost speeding our way, we are approaching the safe, calm harbour of a firm faith. We are in the position of men, long tos

2. Yet we do not rest, like sailors, on uncertain or on idle hopes: whom, as they shape their course to their wish, and not by assured knowledge, at t

3. Moreover no one doubts that the assertions of impiety always contradict and resist the assertions of religious faith and that that cannot be pious

4. Does Christ, Who is God, speaking in Paul, fail to refute this impiety of falsehood? Does He fail to condemn this lying perversion of truth? For th

5. Since by the faith of the Apostles and Evangelists these statements are referred in their meaning to the Son, through Whom all things were made, ho

6. But our impiety, by the licence of this forbidden language, waxes apace with yet deeper faithlessness asserting that since the Son is a creature i

7. But to be in this way in the form of God is nothing else than to be equal with God: so that equality of honour is owed to the Lord Jesus Christ, Wh

8. This again is a notable utterance of the Father concerning Him: From the womb, before the morning star I begat Thee . Here, as we have often said a

9. For often by means of these members of our bodies, God illustrates for us the method of His own operations, enlightening our intelligence by using

10. Therefore since heart is put for desire, and eyes for sight, and hands for work achieved,—and yet, without in any way being made up of parts, God

11. Now the constitution of human society does not allow, nor indeed do the words of our Lord’s teaching permit, that the disciple should be above his

12. On the other hand His works in creation are acts of making and not a birth through generation. For the heaven is not a son, neither is the earth a

13. And we indeed are sons of God, but sons because the Son has made us such. For we were once sons of wrath, but have been made sons of God through t

14. Yet perchance inasmuch as He says, My firstborn Son Israel , some one will interpret the fact that He said, My firstborn Mine This is My beloved S

15. Therefore the people of Israel is born, in such wise that it is made nor do we take the assertion that it is born as contradictory to the fact th

16. For indeed human births involve a previous non-existence, because, as a first reason, all are born from those, all of whom formerly were not. For

17. But for God Only-begotten, Who is preceded by no antecedent time, the possibility is excluded that at some time He was not, since that “some time”

18. Now I am not ignorant that most of those, whose mind being dulled by impiety does not accept the mystery of God, or who through the strong influen

19. Now, first of all, men professing a devout knowledge of divine things, in matters where the truth preached by Evangelists and Apostles shewed the

20. But the blessed Apostle Paul, taking precaution against this, as we have often shewn, warned us to be on our guard, saying: Take heed lest any man

21. Accordingly let misbelief abandon its efforts let it not think, because it does not understand, that we deny a truth which, in fact, we alone rig

22. But some one, who cannot receive this divine mystery, will say, “Everything which has been born, once was not since it was born in order that it

23. But does any one doubt that all human beings that have been born, at one time were not? It is, however, one thing to be born of some one who once

24. And so God Only-begotten, containing in Himself the form and image of the invisible God, in all things which are properties of God the Father is e

25. Therefore He was , and He is

26. And so we confess that God Only-begotten was born, but born before times eternal: since we must make our confession within such limits as the expr

27. For we can embrace all time in imagination or knowledge, since we know that what is now to-day, did not exist yesterday, because what was yesterda

28. We may grant that for anything to be born before times eternal is not the way of human nature, nor a matter which we can understand and yet in th

29. But our opponent cunningly anticipates us with this carping objection. “If,” he urges, “it is inconceivable that He did not exist before He was bo

30. I will ask this objector in reply, whether he remembers my calling Him anything else than born, and whether I did not say that existence before ti

31. Again, this same fact excludes the possibility of saying that He existed before He was born because He Who transcends perception transcends it in

32. Therefore the conclusion reached by faith and argument and thought is that the Lord Jesus both was born and always existed: since if the mind surv

33. Now the declarations of impiety even go so far as not only to ascribe to the Son birth in time, but also generation in time

34. But, heretic, do you consider it pious and devout to confess that God indeed always existed, yet was not always Father? For if it is pious for you

35. But we are accused of lying, and together with us the doctrine preached by the Apostle is attacked, because while it confesses the birth, it asser

36. And, O wretched heretic! you turn the weapons granted to the Church against the Synagogue, against belief in the Church’s preaching, and distort a

37. But now, lest the terms ‘creation’ and ‘establishing’ should be an obstacle to belief in the divine birth, these words follow, Before He made the

38. But this divine discourse has not left our understandings unenlightened, since it explains the reason of the phrase in what follows:— God made the

39. But the voice of God, our instruction in true wisdom, speaks what is perfect, and expresses the absolute truth, when it teaches that itself is pri

40. For the preparation for creation is perpetual and eternal: nor was the frame of this universe actually made by isolated acts of thought, in the se

41. Thus, though Christ was present in God with these infinite and eternal decrees, He has granted to us nothing more than a knowledge of the fact of

42. But perhaps the word ‘creation,’ and its employment of Him, disturbs us. Certainly the word ‘creation’ would disturb us, if birth before the ages

43. Or perhaps you wish the assertion that He was created for the works to be understood in the sense that He was created on account of the works in

44. Learn at last, heretic, from the revelation of Catholic teaching, what is the meaning of the saying that Christ was created for the beginning of t

45. We must also enquire what is the meaning of the saying that God, born before the ages, was again created for the beginning of the ways of God and

46. And so let us see for what ways of God, and for what works of God, Wisdom was created from the commencement of the ages, though born of God before

47. Glance over the whole course of time, and realise in what guise He appeared to Joshua the son of Nun, a prophet bearing His name, or to Isaiah, wh

48. But that blessed and true birth of the flesh conceived within the Virgin the Apostle has named both a creating and a making, for then there was bo

49. If, then, Wisdom, in saying that it was mindful of the things which have been performed since the beginning of the ages, said that it was created

50. For although the weakness of the understanding might hinder the perceptions of a man devoutly disposed, so that, even after this explanation, he m

51. But none of these phrases does a firm apostolic faith permit. For it knows in what dispensation of time Christ was created, and in what eternity o

52. For my part, so long as I shall have the power by means of this Spirit Whom Thou hast granted me, Holy Father, Almighty God, I will confess Thee t

53. For in human affairs Thou hast set before us many things of such a sort, that though we do not know their cause, yet the effect is not unknown an

54. His birth is before times eternal. If anything exist which precedes eternity, it will be something which, when eternity is comprehended, still elu

55. But, for my part, I cannot be content by the service of my faith and voice, to deny that my Lord and my God, Thy Only-begotten, Jesus Christ, is a

56. But I cannot describe Him, Whose pleas for me I cannot describe. As in the revelation that Thy Only-begotten was born of Thee before times eternal

57. Keep, I pray Thee, this my pious faith undefiled, and even till my spirit departs, grant that this may be the utterance of my convictions: so that

27. Before going any further we must now enquire whether the end is a dissolution, or the delivering a forfeiture, or the subjection an enfeebling of Christ. And if we find that these are contraries, which cannot be connected as causes and effects, we shall be able to understand the words in the true sense in which they were spoken.

27. Quid obtendant haeretici.---Et quaerendum nunc ante omnia est, an finis defectio sit, an traditio amissio sit, an subjectio infirmitas sit. Quae si his sibi contrariis non subjacebunt, erunt in ea intelligentiae veritate qua dicta sunt.