Discourse Against the Arians, Book 3

The Ario-maniacs, it seems, having once made up their minds to transgress and revolt from the Truth, are energetic in applying to themselves the words of Scripture, 'When the impious comes into a depth of evils, he despises'; for refutation does not stop them, nor perplexity abash them; but, having 'a prostitute's forehead,' they 'refuse to be ashamed' before everyone in their irreligion. For though the passages they cited — 'The Lord created me,' 'having become better than the Angels,' 'Firstborn,' and 'faithful to Him who made Him' — have a right meaning and teach reverence toward Christ, these men still, as if soaked with the serpent's poison, not seeing what they ought to see nor understanding what they read, as if vomiting from the depth of their irreligious heart, have next gone on to disparage our Lord's words, 'I in the Father and the Father in Me,' saying, 'How can the One be contained in the Other and the Other in the One?' or 'How can the Father, who is greater, be contained at all in the Son, who is less?' or 'What wonder is it if the Son is in the Father,' considering that it is written even of us, 'In Him we live and move and have our being'? And this state of mind is consistent with their perversity, since they think God is material, and do not understand what 'True Father' and 'True Son' mean, nor 'Invisible' and 'Eternal Light' and Its 'Invisible Radiance,' nor 'Invisible Subsistence,' 'Immaterial Expression,' and 'Immaterial Image.' For if they knew, they would not dishonor and ridicule the Lord of glory, nor twist good words by interpreting immaterial things in a material way. It would indeed be enough, on hearing words that are the Lord's, to believe at once, since the faith of simplicity is better than an elaborate process of persuasion; but since they have tried to profane even this passage for their own heresy, it becomes necessary to expose their perversity and show the mind of the truth, at least for the security of the faithful. For when it is said, 'I in the Father and the Father in Me,' They are not, as these men suppose, poured into Each Other, the One filling the Other as in the case of empty vessels, so that the Son fills the emptiness of the Father and the Father that of the Son, and Each of Them by Himself is not complete and perfect (for this belongs to bodies, and therefore even to assert it is full of irreligion); for the Father is full and perfect, and the Son is the Fullness of Godhead. Nor again is He in the Son in the way that God, by coming into the Saints, strengthens them. For He is Himself the Father's Power and Wisdom, and originated things are sanctified in the Spirit by sharing in Him; but the Son Himself is not Son by participation, but is the Father's own Offspring. Nor again is the Son in the Father in the sense of the passage, 'In Him we live and move and have our being'; for He, being from the Fountain of the Father, is the Life in which all things are both given life and hold together; for the Life does not live in life, or it would not be Life; rather, He gives life to all things.

But now let us see what Asterius the Sophist, the hired advocate of the heresy, says. Imitating the Jews this far, he writes as follows: 'It is very plain that He has said that He is in the Father and the Father again in Him for this reason: that neither the word He was speaking is, as He says, His own, but the Father's, nor do the works belong to Him, but to the Father who gave Him the power.' Now if a little child had said this at random, his age would have excused it; but when the writer bears the title of Sophist and professes to know everything, what serious condemnation does he deserve! And does he not show himself a stranger to the Apostle, puffed up with persuasive words of wisdom and thinking to succeed in deceiving by them, understanding neither what he says nor the things about which he makes confident assertions? For what the Son has said as proper and suitable only to a Son, who is the Word, Wisdom, and Image of the Father's Essence, he brings down to the level of all the creatures and makes common to the Son and to them; and he says, lawless man, that the Power of the Father receives power, so that from this irreligion of his it may follow that in a son the Son was made a son, and the Word received a word's authority; and, far from granting that He said this as a Son, he ranks Him with all things made, as having learned it as they have. For if the Son said, 'I am in the Father and the Father in Me,' because His teachings were not His own words but the Father's, and the same with His works — then, since David says, 'I will hear what the Lord God will say in me,' and again Solomon, 'My words are spoken by God'; and since Moses was a minister of words that were from God, and each of the Prophets spoke not what was his own but what was from God, 'Thus says the Lord'; and since the works of the Saints, as they professed, were not their own but those of God who gave the power — Elijah, for instance, and Elisha calling on God to raise the dead Himself, and Elisha saying to Naaman when he cleansed him from leprosy, 'so that you may know that there is a God in Israel,' and Samuel too, in the days of the harvest, praying to God to grant rain, and the Apostles saying that they did miracles not by their own power but by the Lord's grace — it is plain that, according to Asterius, such a statement must be common to all, so that each of them can say, 'I in the Father and the Father in me'; and consequently that He is no longer the one Son of God, Word, and Wisdom, but, like others, only one out of many.

But if the Lord said this in that sense, His words would not rightly have been, 'I in the Father and the Father in Me,' but rather, 'I too am in the Father, and the Father is in Me too,' so that He would have nothing of His own, no special privilege as a Son in relation to the Father, but the same grace in common with all. But it is not as they think; for, not understanding that He is the genuine Son from the Father, they slander Him who is such, whom alone it befits to say, 'I in the Father and the Father in Me.' For the Son is in the Father, as far as we are allowed to know, because the whole Being of the Son is proper to the Father's essence, as radiance from light and a stream from a fountain; so that whoever sees the Son sees what is proper to the Father, and knows that the Son's Being, because it is from the Father, is therefore in the Father. For the Father is in the Son, since the Son is what is from the Father and proper to Him, as the sun is in the radiance, the thought in the word, and the fountain in the stream; for whoever contemplates the Son in this way contemplates what is proper to the Father's Essence, and knows that the Father is in the Son. For since the Form and Godhead of the Father is the Being of the Son, it follows that the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son.

For this reason, and reasonably, having said before, 'I and the Father are One,' He added, 'I in the Father and the Father in Me,' to show the identity of Godhead and the unity of Essence. For They are one, not as one thing divided into two parts that are nothing but one, nor as one thing named twice, so that the Same becomes at one time Father and at another His own Son; for Sabellius was judged a heretic for holding this. But They are two, because the Father is Father and is not also Son, and the Son is Son and not also Father; but the nature is one (for the offspring is not unlike its parent, for it is his image), and all that is the Father's is the Son's. So neither is the Son another God, for He was not obtained from outside; otherwise there would be many gods, if a godhead foreign to the Father's were obtained; for even if the Son is other as an Offspring, He is still the Same as God; and He and the Father are one in the proper and particular character of their nature and in the identity of the one Godhead, as has been said. For the radiance too is light, not second to the sun, nor a different light, nor light by participation in it, but a whole and proper offspring of it. And such an offspring is necessarily one light; and no one would say that they are two lights, but that sun and radiance are two, yet the light from the sun, enlightening all things in its radiance, is one. So too the Godhead of the Son is the Father's; and so it is indivisible; and so there is one God and no other but He. And so, since They are one and the Godhead itself is one, the same things are said of the Son that are said of the Father, except His being called Father: for instance, that He is God — 'And the Word was God'; Almighty — 'Thus says He who was and is and is to come, the Almighty'; Lord — 'One Lord Jesus Christ'; that He is Light — 'I am the Light'; that He wipes out sins — 'so that you may know,' He says, 'that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins'; and so with other attributes. For 'all things whatever the Father has,' says the Son Himself, 'are Mine'; and again, 'And Mine are Yours.'

And on hearing the attributes of the Father spoken of a Son, we will in this way see the Father in the Son; and we will contemplate the Son in the Father when what is said of the Son is said of the Father too. And why are the attributes of the Father attributed to the Son, unless the Son is an Offspring from Him? And why are the Son's attributes proper to the Father, unless, again, the Son is the proper Offspring of His Essence? And the Son, being the proper Offspring of the Father's Essence, reasonably says that the Father's attributes are His own too; so, fittingly and consistently with saying, 'I and the Father are One,' He adds, 'so that you may know that I am in the Father and the Father in Me.' Moreover, He has added this again: 'Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father'; and there is one and the same meaning in these three passages. For whoever understands in this sense that the Son and the Father are one knows that He is in the Father and the Father in the Son; for the Godhead of the Son is the Father's, and it is in the Son; and whoever enters into this is convinced that 'whoever has seen the Son has seen the Father'; for the Father's Godhead is contemplated in the Son. And we may grasp this at once from the illustration of the Emperor's image. For in the image is the shape and form of the Emperor, and in the Emperor is the shape that is in the image. For the likeness of the Emperor in the image is exact, so that a person who looks at the image sees the Emperor in it; and again, whoever sees the Emperor recognizes that he is the one in the image. And since the likeness does not differ, the image might say to someone who wished to see the Emperor after seeing the image, 'I and the Emperor are one; for I am in him, and he in me; and what you see in me, you see in him, and what you have seen in him, you have in me.' Accordingly, whoever worships the image worships the Emperor in it too; for the image is his form and appearance. Since, then, the Son too is the Father's Image, it must necessarily be understood that the Godhead and proper character of the Father is the Being of the Son.

And this is what is meant by 'who, being in the form of God,' and 'the Father in Me.' Nor is this Form of the Godhead merely partial; the fullness of the Father's Godhead is the Being of the Son, and the Son is whole God. So also, being equal to God, He 'did not count equality with God a prize to be grasped'; and again, since the Godhead and Form of the Son belongs to no one but the Father, this is what He says: 'I in the Father.' So 'God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself'; for the proper character of the Father's Essence is that Son in whom creation was then reconciled with God. So the things the Son then did are the Father's works, for the Son is the Form of the Father's Godhead, which did the works. And so whoever looks at the Son sees the Father; for the Son is and is contemplated in the Father's Godhead; and the Father's Form that is in Him shows the Father in Him; and so the Father is in the Son. And that proper character and Godhead that is from the Father in the Son shows the Son in the Father, and His inseparability from Him; and whoever hears and sees that what is said of the Father is also said of the Son — not as coming to His Essence by grace or participation, but because the very Being of the Son is the proper Offspring of the Father's Essence — will rightly understand the words, as I said before, 'I in the Father, and the Father in Me,' and 'I and the Father are One.' For the Son is such as the Father is, because He has all that is the Father's. That is also why He is implied together with the Father. For if a son does not exist, one cannot say father; whereas when we call God a Maker, we do not necessarily point to the things that have come to be, for a maker exists before his works. But when we call God Father, we indicate the Son's existence together with the Father. Therefore whoever believes in the Son also believes in the Father, for he believes in what is proper to the Father's Essence; and so the faith in one God is one. And whoever worships and honors the Son worships and honors the Father in the Son; for the Godhead is one, and therefore the honor and the worship paid to the Father in and through the Son is one. And whoever worships this way worships one God; for there is one God and no other than He. Accordingly, when the Father is called the only God, and we read that there is one God, and 'I am,' and 'besides Me there is no God,' and 'I am the first and I am the last,' this has a fitting meaning. For God is One and Only and First; but this is not said to deny the Son — perish the thought! — for He is in that One, First, and Only, as the only Word, Wisdom, and Radiance of that One, Only, and First. And He too is the First, as the Fullness of the Godhead of the First and Only, being whole and full God. This, then, is not said on His account, but to deny that there is another such as the Father and His Word.

Now that this is the Prophet's meaning is clear and evident to all; but since the irreligious men also cite such passages to dishonor the Lord and reproach us, saying, 'Look, God is said to be One, Only, and First; how can you say that the Son is God? For if He were God, He would not have said, I Alone, nor God is One,' it is necessary to declare the meaning of these phrases as well, as far as we can, so that all may know from this too that the Arians are really fighting against God. If, then, there is rivalry on the Son's part toward the Father, let such words be spoken against Him; and if the Father looks on the Son as was said to David about Adonijah and Absalom, then let Him speak and press such words against Himself, so that the Son, calling Himself God, may not lead anyone to revolt from the Father. But if, on the contrary, whoever knows the Son knows the Father, since the Son Himself reveals Him to him, and he will rather see the Father in the Word, as has been said; and if the Son, on coming, glorified not Himself but the Father, saying to one who came to Him, 'Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God'; and answering one who asked what the great commandment in the Law was, 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One Lord'; and saying to the crowds, 'I came down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me'; and teaching the disciples, 'My Father is greater than I,' and 'Whoever honors Me honors Him who sent Me' — if the Son is like this toward His own Father, what is the difficulty, that one must take such a view of such passages? And on the other hand, if the Son is the Father's Word, who is so wild, apart from these opponents of Christ, as to think that God has spoken this way to slander and deny His own Word? This is not the mind of Christians — perish the thought! — for it is not written this way with reference to the Son, but to deny those falsely called gods, invented by human beings.

And this account of the meaning of such passages is satisfactory; for since those who are devoted to falsely so-called gods revolt from the True God, God, being good and caring for humankind, calls the wanderers back by saying, 'I am the Only God,' and 'I Am,' and 'Besides Me there is no God,' and the like, so that He may condemn things that do not exist and turn all people to Himself. And suppose that in the daytime, when the sun was shining, someone crudely painted a piece of wood that did not even look like light, and called that image the cause of light; and suppose the sun said with regard to it, 'I alone am the light of the day, and there is no other light of the day but me.' He would be saying this not with regard to his own radiance, but with regard to the error arising from the wooden image and the unlikeness of that empty representation. So it is with 'I am,' and 'I am the Only God,' and 'There is no other besides Me': they are said so that people may renounce falsely so-called gods and recognize Him as the true God instead. Indeed, when God said this, He said it through His own Word — unless, of course, the modern Jews add this too, that He did not say it through His Word; but this is how He spoke, rave as they may, these followers of the devil. For the Word of the Lord came to the Prophet, and this was what was heard; nor is there anything God says or does except in the Word. So this is not said with reference to Him, you enemies of Christ, but to things foreign to Him and not from Him. For, according to the illustration above, if the sun had spoken those words, he would have been correcting the error and spoken this way, not as having his radiance outside himself, but as showing his own light in the radiance. Therefore such passages are not meant to deny the Son, nor do they refer to Him, but to the overthrow of falsehood. Accordingly God did not speak such words to Adam at the beginning, though His Word, through whom all things came to be, was with Him; for there was no need before idols came in. But when people rebelled against the truth and named for themselves whatever gods they wanted, then the need for such words arose, to deny gods that did not exist. Indeed, I would add that they were said even in anticipation of the folly of these opponents of Christ, so that they might know that whatever god they devise outside the Father's Essence is not the True God, nor the Image and Son of the Only and First.

If, then, the Father is called the only true God, this is said not to deny Him who said, 'I am the Truth,' but to deny those, on the other hand, who are not true by nature, as the Father and His Word are. And that is why the Lord Himself at once added, 'And Jesus Christ, whom You sent.' Now if He had been a creature, He would not have added this and ranked Himself with His Creator (for what fellowship is there between the True and the untrue?); but as it is, by adding Himself to the Father, He has shown that He is of the Father's nature, and has given us to know that He is the True Offspring of the True Father. And John too, as he had learned, teaches this, writing in his Epistle, 'And we are in the True, in His Son Jesus Christ; this is the True God and eternal life.' And when the Prophet says about creation, 'who alone stretches out the heavens,' and when God says, 'I alone stretch out the heavens,' it is made plain to everyone that in the Only is also meant the Word of the Only, in whom 'all things were made,' and without whom 'not one thing was made.' Therefore, if they were made through the Word, and yet He says, 'I alone,' and the Son, through whom the heavens were made, is understood together with that Only, then so also, if it is said, 'One God,' and 'I alone,' and 'I the First,' the coexisting Word is understood in that One, Only, and First, as the Radiance is in the Light. And this can be understood of no one other than the Word alone. For all other things came into existence out of nothing through the Son and are very different in nature; but the Son Himself is the natural and true Offspring from the Father. And so the very passage these senseless men have thought fit to cite in defense of their heresy, 'I the First,' rather exposes their perverse spirit. For God says, 'I the First and I the Last.' If, then, He is said to be first of the things after Him as though ranked with them, so that they come next to Him, then certainly you will have shown that He Himself precedes the works only in time, which, to go no further, is extreme irreligion. But if He has said 'I the First' to prove that He is not from anyone, and that no one is before Him, but that He is the Origin and Cause of all things, and to destroy the pagan fables, it is also plain that when the Son is called Firstborn, this is done not to rank Him with creation, but to prove that all things are made and adopted through the Son. For as the Father is First, so He too is First, both as Image of the First and because the First is in Him, and also as Offspring from the Father, in whom the whole creation is created and adopted into sonship.

However, here too they bring in their private fictions and contend that the Son and the Father are not 'one' or 'like' in the way the Church preaches, but as they themselves would have it. For they say that because what the Father wills the Son wills too, and is not contrary either in what He thinks or in what He judges, but is in all respects in agreement with Him, declaring the same doctrines and a word consistent and united with the Father's teaching, therefore He and the Father are One; and some of them have dared to write this as well as say it. Now what could be more improper or irrational than this? For if the Son and the Father are One for this reason, and if the Word is like the Father in this way, it follows immediately that the Angels too, and the other beings above us — Powers and Authorities, Thrones and Dominions — and what we see — Sun, Moon, and Stars — should be sons too, like the Son; and that it should be said of them too that they and the Father are one, and that each is God's Image and Word. For what God wills, they will; and they are not out of harmony with Him either in judgment or in doctrine, but are obedient to their Maker in all things. For they would not have remained in their own glory unless they had willed what the Father willed. The one, for instance, who did not remain but went astray heard the words, 'How you have fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!' But if this is so, how is He alone the Only-begotten Son, Word, and Wisdom? Or how, when so many are like the Father, is He alone an Image? For among human beings too many will be found like the Father: crowds of martyrs, for instance, and before them the Apostles and Prophets, and again before them the Patriarchs. And many now too keep the Savior's command, being merciful 'as their Father who is in heaven,' and following the exhortation, 'Be imitators of God, then, as dear children, and walk in love, as Christ also loved us'; many too have become imitators of Paul, as he was of Christ. And yet none of these is Word or Wisdom or Only-begotten Son or Image; nor did any of them dare to say, 'I and the Father are One,' or 'I in the Father, and the Father in Me'; but it is said of all of them, 'Who is like You among the gods, O Lord? And who will be compared to the Lord among the sons of God?' and of Him, on the contrary, that He alone is the true and natural Image of the Father. For though we have been made after the Image and called both the image and the glory of God, it is still not on our own account, but because of that Image and true Glory of God dwelling in us, which is His Word, who was afterward made flesh for us, that we have the grace of this title.

Since this notion of theirs, then, is evidently improper and irrational like the rest, the likeness and the oneness must be referred to the very Essence of the Son. For unless it is taken this way, He will not be shown to have anything beyond originated things, as has been said, nor will He be like the Father; He will be like the Father's doctrines, and He will differ from the Father in that the Father is Father, while the doctrines and teaching are the Father's. If, then, the Son is like the Father with respect to the doctrines and the teaching, the Father, according to them, will be Father in name only, and the Son will not be an exact Image, or rather will be seen to have no proper character or likeness of the Father at all; for what likeness or proper character does one have who is so completely different from the Father? For Paul taught like the Savior, yet was not like 'Him in essence.' With such notions, then, they speak falsely; whereas the Son and the Father are one in the way that has been described, and the Son is like the Father Himself and from Him in such a way as we may see and understand a son to be toward his father, and as we may see the radiance toward the sun. Since the Son is such, then, when the Son works, the Father is the Worker; and when the Son comes to the Saints, it is the Father who comes in the Son, as He promised when He said, 'I and My Father will come and make Our home with him'; for the Father is contemplated in the Image, and the Light is in the Radiance. So also, as we said just now, when the Father gives grace and peace, the Son gives it too, as Paul indicates in every Epistle, writing, 'Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.' For one and the same grace is from the Father in the Son, just as the light of the sun and of the radiance is one, and the sun's illumination is brought about through the radiance; and so too, when he prays for the Thessalonians, saying, 'Now may God Himself, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, direct our way to you,' he has safeguarded the unity of the Father and the Son. For he has not said, 'May they direct,' as if a double grace were given from two Sources, This one and That one, but 'May He direct,' to show that the Father gives it through the Son — at which these irreligious people will not blush, though they well might.

For if there were no unity, and the Word were not the Father's own Offspring of His Essence, as the radiance is of the light, but the Son were divided in nature from the Father, it would be enough for the Father alone to give, since none of the originated things is a partner with his Maker in His giving; but as it is, such a way of giving shows the oneness of the Father and the Son. No one, for instance, would pray to receive from God and the Angels, or from any other creature, nor would anyone say, 'May God and the Angel give you'; but from the Father and the Son, because of Their oneness and the oneness of Their giving. For what is given is given through the Son; and there is nothing that the Father does not accomplish through the Son; for in this way grace is secure for the one who receives it. And if the Patriarch Jacob, blessing his grandchildren Ephraim and Manasseh, said, 'God, who fed me all my life long to this day, the Angel who delivered me from all evil, bless the boys,' he still did not join any created and natural Angel to God their Creator, nor did he reject God who fed him and ask the blessing for his grandsons from an Angel; but in saying, 'who delivered me from all evil,' he showed that it was no created Angel, but the Word of God, whom he joined to the Father in his prayer, through whom God delivers whomever He wills. For knowing that He is also called the Father's 'Angel of great Counsel,' he said that no one other than He was the Giver of blessing and the Deliverer from evil. Nor was it that he desired a blessing for himself from God but for his grandchildren from the Angel; the one whom he himself had begged, saying, 'I will not let You go unless You bless me' (for that was God, as he says himself, 'I have seen God face to face'), is the one he prayed to bless the sons of Joseph too. It belongs to an Angel, then, to serve at God's command, and he often goes out to drive out the Amorite and is sent to guard the people on the way; but these are not his doings, but those of God, who commanded and sent him, and to whom it belongs to deliver whomever He will. Therefore it was no other than the Lord God Himself whom he had seen, who said to him, 'And look, I am with you, to guard you all the way, wherever you go'; and it was no other than God whom he had seen, who kept Laban from his treachery, ordering him not to speak evil words to Jacob; and he himself begged no other than God, saying, 'Rescue me from the hand of my brother Esau, for I fear him'; for in conversation with his wives too he said, 'God has not allowed Laban to harm me.'

Therefore it was none other than God Himself whom David too begged for his deliverance: 'When I was in trouble, I called on the Lord, and He heard me; deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips and from a deceitful tongue.' To Him too, giving thanks, he spoke the words of the Song in the seventeenth Psalm, on the day the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul, saying, 'I will love You, O Lord my strength; the Lord is my strong rock and my defense and deliverer.' And Paul, after enduring many persecutions, gave thanks to none other than God, saying, 'The Lord delivered me out of them all; and He will deliver, in whom we trust.' And none other than God blessed Abraham and Isaac; and Isaac, praying for Jacob, said, 'May God bless you and increase you and multiply you, and you shall become many companies of nations, and may He give you the blessing of Abraham my father.' But if it belongs to none other than God to bless and to deliver, and the deliverer of Jacob was none other than the Lord Himself, and it was the one who delivered him whom the Patriarch begged for his grandsons, then evidently he joined no one to God in his prayer but God's Word, whom he therefore called Angel, because He alone reveals the Father. The Apostle also did this when he said, 'Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.' For in this way the blessing was secure, because of the Son's indivisibility from the Father, and because the grace They give is one and the same. For though the Father gives it, the gift is through the Son; and though the Son is said to grant it, it is the Father who supplies it through and in the Son; for 'I thank my God always on your behalf,' says the Apostle, writing to the Corinthians, 'for the grace of God that is given to you in Christ Jesus.' And one may see this in the case of light and radiance; for what the light enlightens, the radiance shines on; and what the radiance shines on has its enlightenment from the light. So also when the Son is seen, so is the Father, for He is the Father's radiance; and so the Father and the Son are one.

But this is not so with originated things and creatures; for when the Father works, it is not that some Angel or some other creature works; for none of these is an efficient cause, but they are among the things that come to be; and moreover, being separate and divided from the only God, other in nature, and works, they can neither do what God does, nor, as I said before, give grace with Him when God gives grace. Nor would anyone, on seeing an Angel, say that he had seen the Father; for Angels, as it is written, are 'ministering spirits sent out to serve,' and are heralds of gifts given by Him through the Word to those who receive them. And the Angel, on appearing, himself confesses that he has been sent by his Lord, as Gabriel confessed in the case of Zechariah, and also in the case of Mary, bearer of God. And whoever sees a vision of Angels knows that he has seen the Angel and not God. For Zechariah saw an Angel, and Isaiah saw the Lord. Manoah, the father of Samson, saw an Angel, but Moses saw God. Gideon saw an Angel, but God appeared to Abraham. And neither did the one who saw God see an Angel, nor did the one who saw an Angel think that he saw God; for originated things differ greatly, or rather entirely, by nature from God the Creator. But if at any time, when the Angel was seen, the one who saw it heard God's voice, as took place at the bush — for 'the Angel of the Lord was seen in a flame of fire out of the bush, and the Lord called Moses out of the bush, saying, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob' — the Angel was still not the God of Abraham, but God spoke in the Angel. And what was seen was an Angel, but God spoke in him. For as He spoke to Moses in the pillar of cloud in the tabernacle, so God also appears and speaks in Angels. So again He spoke to the son of Nun through an Angel. But what God speaks, it is very plain He speaks through the Word and not through another. And the Word, being neither separate from the Father nor unlike and foreign to the Father's Essence, does works that are the Father's works, and His making of all things is one with the Father's; and what the Son gives is the Father's gift. And whoever has seen the Son knows that, in seeing Him, he has seen not an Angel, nor one merely greater than Angels, nor in short any creature, but the Father Himself. And whoever hears the Word knows that he hears the Father, just as whoever is shone on by the radiance knows that he is enlightened by the sun.

For divine Scripture, wishing us to understand the matter this way, has given such illustrations as we have mentioned above, from which we are able both to press the treacherous Jews and to refute the claim of the Gentiles, who maintain and think that, because of the Trinity, we profess many gods. For, as the illustration shows, we do not introduce three Origins or three Fathers, as the followers of Marcion and Manichæus do; since we have not proposed the image of three suns, but of sun and radiance. And the light from the sun in the radiance is one; and so we know of only one origin; and we profess that the All-creating Word has no other kind of godhead than that of the Only God, because He is born from Him. Rather, it is the Ario-maniacs who will reasonably incur the charge of polytheism, or else of atheism, because they idly talk of the Son as external and a creature, and of the Spirit, again, as from nothing. For either they will say that the Word is not God; or, saying that He is God because it is so written, but not proper to the Father's Essence, they will introduce many gods because of their difference in kind (unless, of course, they dare to say that He, like all other things, is called God only by participation; though if this is their view, their irreligion is the same, since they consider the Word one among all things). But let this never even enter our minds. For there is only one form of Godhead, which is also in the Word; and one God, the Father, existing by Himself insofar as He is above all, appearing in the Son insofar as He pervades all things, and in the Spirit insofar as in Him He acts in all things through the Word. For in this way we confess God to be one through the Triad, and we say that it is much more reverent to hold a belief in the One Godhead in a Triad than in the godhead of the heretics, with its many kinds and many parts.

For if it is not so, but the Word is a creature and a work out of nothing, either He is not True God, because He is Himself one of the creatures; or, if they call Him God out of regard for the Scriptures, they must necessarily say that there are two Gods, one Creator and the other creature, and must serve two Lords, one Unoriginate and the other originated and a creature, and must have two faiths, one in the True God and the other in one who is made and fashioned by themselves and called God. And in such great blindness it necessarily follows that when they worship the Unoriginate, they renounce the originated, and when they come to the creature, they turn away from the Creator. For they cannot see the One in the Other, because their natures and workings are foreign and distinct. And with such views they will certainly go on to more gods, for this is what those who revolt from the One God attempt. Why, then, when the Arians have these speculations and views, do they not rank themselves with the Gentiles? For like them they worship the creature rather than God, the Creator of all; and though they shrink from the name of Gentiles in order to deceive the unskilled, they secretly hold a view like theirs. For their clever saying, which they are in the habit of pressing — 'We do not say two Unoriginates' — they plainly say to deceive the simple; for in their very profession, 'We do not say two Unoriginates,' they imply two Gods, and those with different natures, one originated and one Unoriginate. And though the Greeks worship one Unoriginate and many originated gods, while these men worship one Unoriginate and one originated, this is no difference from them; for the God they call originated is one of many, and again the many gods of the Greeks have the same nature as this one, for both he and they are creatures. Unhappy men — and all the more because their harm comes from thinking against Christ; for they have fallen from the truth, are greater traitors than the Jews in denying the Christ, and wallow with the Gentiles, hateful to God as they are, worshiping the creature and many deities. For there is One God, not many, and His Word is One, not many; for the Word is God, and He alone has the Form of the Father. Being such, then, the Savior Himself troubled the Jews with these words: 'The Father Himself, who has sent Me, has borne witness about Me; you have never heard His voice nor seen His Form; and you do not have His Word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one He has sent.' He has fittingly joined the 'Word' to the 'Form,' to show that the Word of God is Himself the Image, Expression, and Form of His Father, and that the Jews, who did not receive the one who spoke to them, in doing so did not receive the Word, which is the Form of God. This too is what the Patriarch Jacob saw when he received a blessing from Him and the name of Israel instead of Jacob, as divine Scripture bears witness, saying, 'And as he passed by the Form of God, the Sun rose upon him.' And it was This One who said, 'Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father,' and 'I in the Father and the Father in Me,' and 'I and the Father are one'; for so God is One, and the faith in the Father and Son is one; for though the Word is God, the Lord our God is one Lord; for the Son is proper to that One, and inseparable from Him according to the proper and particular character of His Essence.

The Arians, however, not ashamed even by this, reply, 'Not as you say, but as we wish; for since you have overthrown our earlier devices, we have invented a new one, and it is this: the Son and the Father are One, and the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, in the same way that we too may become one in Him. For this is written in the Gospel according to John, and Christ desired it for us in these words: Holy Father, keep through Your own Name those whom You have given Me, so that they may be one, as We are. And shortly after: I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their Word, so that they may all be one, as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, so that they too may be one in Us, so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. And the glory that You gave Me I have given them, so that they may be one, just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me, so that they may be made perfect in one, and so that the world may know that You sent Me.' Then, as if they had found a way out, these crafty men add, 'If He and the Father are one in the same way that we become one in the Father, and so He too is in the Father, how can you claim from His saying, I and the Father are One, and I in the Father and the Father in Me, that He is proper to the Father's Essence and like it? For it follows either that we too are proper to the Father's Essence, or that He is foreign to it, as we are foreign.' So they babble idly; but in this perversity of theirs I see nothing but unreasoning audacity and recklessness from the devil, since it is speaking after his pattern: 'We will ascend to heaven, we will be like the Most High.' For they want to make what is given to man by grace equal to the Godhead of the Giver. So, on hearing that human beings are called sons, they thought themselves equal to the True Son, who is such by nature. And now again, on hearing the Savior say, 'so that they may be one as We are,' they deceive themselves and are arrogant enough to think that they may be such as the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son, not considering the fall of their 'father the devil,' which happened because of such an imagination.

If, then, as we have said many times, the Word of God is the same as we are and differs from us in nothing except time, let Him be like us and have the same place with the Father as we have; and let Him not be called Only-begotten, nor the Only Word or Wisdom of the Father, but let the same name apply in common to all of us who are like Him. For it is right that those who have one nature should have their name in common, though they differ from each other in time. For Adam was a man, and Paul was a man, and the one who is born now is a man, and time is not what alters the nature of the race. If, then, the Word too differs from us only in time, we must be as He is. But in truth, neither are we Word or Wisdom, nor is He a creature or work; otherwise why are we all sprung from one, while He is the Only Word? But though it may be fitting for them to speak this way, it is not fitting for us at least to entertain their blasphemies. And yet, though there is no need to refine on these passages, considering their so clear and reverent meaning and our own orthodox belief, still, so that their irreligion may be shown here too, come, let us briefly expose their heterodoxy from the passage, as we have received it from the fathers. It is a custom of divine Scripture to take the things of nature as images and illustrations for humankind; and it does this so that the moral impulses of human beings may be explained from these physical objects, and their conduct shown to be either bad or righteous. For instance, in the case of the bad, as when it commands, 'Do not be like the horse or mule, which have no understanding.' Or as when it says, complaining of those who have become such, 'Man, being in honor, has no understanding, but is compared to the beasts that perish.' And again, 'They were like lustful horses.' And the Savior, to expose Herod, said, 'Tell that fox'; but, on the other hand, He commanded His disciples, 'Look, I am sending you out like sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.' And He said this not so that we would become beasts of burden by nature, or become serpents and doves; for He has not made us that way Himself, and therefore nature does not allow it; but so that we might avoid the irrational impulses of the one, and, being aware of the wisdom of that other animal, might not be deceived by it, and might take on ourselves the gentleness of the dove.

Again, taking patterns for man from divine subjects, the Savior says, 'Be merciful, as your Father who is in heaven is merciful,' and 'Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.' And He said this too, not so that we might become such as the Father; for to become as the Father is impossible for us creatures, who have been brought into being out of nothing. But just as He commanded us, 'Do not be like the horse,' not for fear that we would become draft animals, but so that we would not imitate their lack of reason; so too He said, 'Be merciful as your Father,' not so that we might become as God, but so that, looking at His acts of kindness, we might do the good we do not for people's sake but for His sake, so that we may have the reward from Him and not from people. For just as, though there is one Son by nature, True and Only-begotten, we too become sons — not as He is, in nature and truth, but according to the grace of the One who calls — and though we are human beings from the earth, we are still called gods — not as the True God or His Word, but as it has pleased God, who has given us that grace — so also we become merciful as God is, not by being made equal to God, nor by becoming benefactors in nature and truth (for benefiting is not our gift, but belongs to God), but so that we may share with others the things that have come to us from God Himself by grace, without making distinctions, but generously extending our kind service to all. For only in this way, and in no other, can we in any sense become imitators: when we pass on to others what comes from Him. And just as we give these texts a fair and right meaning, such again is the meaning of the passage in John. For he does not say that we must become such as the Son is in the Father — how could that be? For He is God's Word and Wisdom, while we were fashioned out of the earth; and He is Word and true God by nature and essence (for so John says, 'We know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding to know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ; this is the true God and eternal life'), while we are made sons through Him by adoption and grace, as sharing in His Spirit (for 'to all who received Him,' he says, 'He gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in His Name'); and therefore He is also the Truth (saying, 'I am the Truth,' and in His address to His Father, 'Sanctify them through Your Truth; Your Word is Truth'), while we become virtuous and sons by imitation. Therefore He did not say 'so that they may be one as We are' so that we might become such as He is; but so that, just as He, being the Word, is in His own Father, we too, taking a model and looking at Him, might become one toward each other in harmony and oneness of spirit, and not be at odds like the Corinthians, but be of the same mind, like those five thousand in the Acts, who were as one.

For it is as 'sons,' not as the Son; as 'gods,' not as He Himself; and not as the Father, but 'merciful as the Father.' And, as has been said, by becoming one in this way, as the Father and the Son are, we will be such, not as the Father is by nature in the Son and the Son in the Father, but according to our own nature, and as far as it is possible for us to be shaped by this and learn how we ought to be one, just as we also learned to be merciful. For like things are naturally one with like; so all flesh is ranked together in kind; but the Word is unlike us and like the Father. And therefore, while He is one with His own Father in nature and truth, we, being of one kind with each other (for all were made from one, and the nature of all people is one), become one with each other in good disposition, having as our model the Son's natural unity with the Father. For just as He taught us gentleness from Himself, saying, 'Learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart,' not so that we may become equal to Him, which is impossible, but so that, looking to Him, we may remain gentle continually, so here too, wishing our good disposition toward each other to be true, firm, and unbreakable, He takes the pattern from Himself and says, 'so that they may be one as We are,' whose oneness is indivisible; that is, so that, learning from Us about that indivisible Nature, they may keep agreement with one another in the same way. And this imitation of natural conditions is especially safe for human beings, as has been said; for since those conditions remain and never change, while human conduct is very changeable, one may look to what is unchangeable by nature, avoid what is bad, and reshape oneself on what is best.

And for this reason too the words 'so that they may be one in Us' have a right meaning. If, for instance, it were possible for us to become as the Son is in the Father, the words ought to run, 'so that they may be one in You,' as the Son is in the Father; but as it is, He has not said this; by saying 'in Us,' He has pointed out the distance and the difference: that He is alone in the Father alone, as the Only Word and Wisdom, while we are in the Son, and through Him in the Father. And in speaking this way He meant only this: 'By Our unity may they too be one with each other, as We are one in nature and truth; for otherwise they could not be one, except by learning unity in Us.' And we may learn that 'in Us' has this meaning from Paul, who says, 'I have applied these things figuratively to myself and to Apollos, so that you may learn in us not to go beyond what is written and be puffed up.' The words 'in Us,' then, do not mean 'in the Father,' as the Son is in Him, but imply an example and image, instead of saying, 'Let them learn from Us.' For just as Paul was to the Corinthians, so the oneness of the Son and the Father is a pattern and lesson to all, from which they may learn, looking to that natural unity of the Father and the Son, how they themselves ought to be one in spirit toward each other. Or, if the phrase needs to be explained otherwise, the words 'in Us' may mean the same as saying that they may be one in the power of the Father and the Son, speaking the same things; for without God this is impossible. And we may find this way of speaking in the divine writings too, as in 'In God we will do great deeds,' and 'In God I will leap over the wall,' and 'In You we will trample down our enemies.' So it is plain that in the Name of Father and Son we will be able, becoming one, to hold fast the bond of love. For, dwelling still on the same thought, the Lord says, 'And the glory that You gave Me I have given to them, so that they may be one as We are one.' Here too He has fittingly said not 'so that they may be in You as I am,' but 'as We are'; now whoever says 'as' indicates not identity, but an image and example of the matter at hand.

The Word, then, has real and true identity of nature with the Father; but it is given to us to imitate it, as has been said; for He immediately adds, 'I in them, and You in Me, so that they may be made perfect in one.' Here at last the Lord asks something greater and more perfect for us; for it is plain that the Word has come to be in us, for He has put on our body. 'And You, Father, in Me'; 'for I am Your Word, and since You are in Me, because I am Your Word, and I am in them because of the body, and because of You the salvation of humankind is perfected in Me, therefore I ask that they too may become one, according to the body that is in Me and according to its perfection; so that they too may become perfect, having oneness with It and having become one in It; so that, as if all were carried by Me, all may be one body and one spirit, and may grow up into a perfect man.' For all of us, sharing in the Same, become one body, having the one Lord in ourselves. Since the passage has this meaning, the heterodoxy of Christ's enemies is refuted still more plainly. I repeat: if He had said simply and absolutely 'so that they may be one in You,' or 'so that they and I may be one in You,' God's enemies would have had some plea, though a shameless one; but in fact He has not spoken simply, but 'As You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, so that they may all be one.' Moreover, using the word 'as,' He indicates those who become, at a distance, as He is in the Father — at a distance not in place but in nature; for in place nothing is far from God, but in nature only are all things far from Him. And, as I said before, whoever uses the particle 'as' implies neither identity nor equality, but a pattern of the matter in question, viewed in a certain respect.

Indeed, we may also learn this from the Savior Himself, when He says, 'For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.' For Jonah was not like the Savior, nor did Jonah go down to Hades; nor was the whale Hades; nor did Jonah, when swallowed, bring up those who had been swallowed by the whale before; he alone came out when the whale was commanded. Therefore no identity or equality is meant by the term 'as,' but one thing and another; and it shows a certain kind of parallel in the case of Jonah, because of the three days. In the same way, then, when the Lord says 'as,' we too do not become as the Son in the Father, nor as the Father is in the Son. For we become one as the Father and the Son are one in mind and agreement of spirit, and the Savior will be as Jonah in the earth; but just as the Savior is not Jonah, and did not go down to Hades as Jonah was swallowed, but it is only a parallel, so in the same way, if we too become one as the Son is in the Father, we will not be as the Son, nor equal to Him; for He and we are only parallel. That is why the word 'as' is applied to us: since things that differ from others in nature become as they are when viewed in a certain relation. So the Son Himself is in the Father simply and without any condition, for He has this attribute by nature; but for us, to whom it is not natural, an image and example is needed, so that He may say of us, 'As You are in Me, and I in You.' 'And when they are perfected in this way,' He says, 'then the world will know that You have sent Me; for unless I had come and borne this body of theirs, none of them would have been perfected, but all without exception would have remained corruptible. Work in them, then, Father, and as You have given Me to bear this, grant them Your Spirit, so that in It they too may become one and may be perfected in Me. For their perfecting shows that Your Word has lived among them; and the world, seeing them perfect and full of God, will fully believe that You have sent Me and that I have lived here. For where does this perfecting of theirs come from, except that I, Your Word, having borne their body and become man, have completed the work You gave Me, Father? And the work is completed because human beings, redeemed from sin, no longer remain dead, but, being made divine, have the bond of love in each other by looking at Me.'

We, then, in giving a rough account of the expressions in this passage, have been led into many words; but blessed John will show the meaning of the words from his Epistle, concisely and much more perfectly than we can. And he will both disprove the interpretation of these irreligious men and teach how we come to be in God and God in us, how again we become One in Him, and how far the Son differs from us in nature; and he will stop the Arians from thinking any longer that they will be as the Son, so that they do not hear it said to them, 'You are a man and not God,' and 'Do not, being poor, stretch yourself out beside a rich man.' John, then, writes this: 'By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.' Therefore, because of the grace of the Spirit that has been given to us, we come to be in Him and He in us; and since it is the Spirit of God, therefore, through His coming to be in us, we, as having the Spirit, are reasonably considered to be in God, and so God is in us. So we do not come to be in the Father in the way the Son is in the Father; for the Son does not merely share in the Spirit so that He too may therefore be in the Father; nor does He receive the Spirit, but rather supplies It Himself to all; and the Spirit does not unite the Word to the Father, but rather the Spirit receives from the Word. And the Son is in the Father as His own Word and Radiance; but we, apart from the Spirit, are strangers to God and far from Him, and by sharing in the Spirit we are knit into the Godhead; so that our being in the Father is not our own, but is the Spirit's, who is in us and abides in us, while we preserve it in us by the true confession, as John again says, 'Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God.' What, then, is our likeness and equality to the Son? Rather, are not the Arians refuted on every side, and especially by John, that the Son is in the Father in one way, and we come to be in Him in another, and that we will never be as He is, nor is the Word as we are? — unless they dare, as they usually do, to say now that the Son too came to be in the Father by participation in the Spirit and by improvement of conduct. But here again is an excess of irreligion, even in entertaining the thought. For He, as has been said, gives to the Spirit, and whatever the Spirit has, He has from the Word.

The Savior, then, in saying of us, 'As You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, so that they too may be one in Us,' does not mean that we were to have identity with Him; for this was shown from the example of Jonah. It is a request to the Father, as John has written, that the Spirit should be granted through Him to those who believe, through whom we are found to be in God, and in this respect to be joined in Him. For since the Word is in the Father, and the Spirit is given from the Word, He wills that we should receive the Spirit, so that when we receive It, having in this way the Spirit of the Word who is in the Father, we too may be found, because of the Spirit, to become One in the Word, and through Him in the Father. And if He says 'as We are,' this again is only a request that the grace of the Spirit given to the disciples may be without failure or withdrawal. For what the Word has by nature in the Father, as I said, He wishes to be given to us through the Spirit irrevocably. Knowing this, the Apostle said, 'Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?' for 'the gifts of God' and the 'grace of His calling are irrevocable.' It is the Spirit, then, who is in God, and not we viewed in ourselves; and just as we are sons and gods because of the Word in us, so we will be in the Son and in the Father, and will be counted as having become one in the Son and in the Father, because the Spirit who is in the Word, who is in the Father, is in us. So when a person falls from the Spirit through some wickedness, if he repents after his fall, the grace remains irrevocably for those who are willing; otherwise, the one who has fallen is no longer in God (because the Holy Spirit and Paraclete who is in God has deserted him), but the sinner will be in the one to whom he has subjected himself, as happened in Saul's case; for the Spirit of God left him, and an evil spirit was tormenting him. On hearing this, God's enemies ought from now on to be ashamed and no longer pretend to be equal to God. But they neither understand (for 'the irreligious,' he says, 'does not understand knowledge') nor tolerate reverent words, but find them heavy even to hear.

For look: as if not tired of their words of irreligion, but hardened like Pharaoh, while they hear and see the Savior's human attributes in the Gospels, they have completely forgotten, like the Samosatene, the Son's Godhead from the Father, and with arrogant and audacious tongue they say, 'How can the Son be from the Father by nature and be like Him in essence,' who says, 'All authority has been given to Me'; and 'The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son'; and 'The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand; whoever believes in the Son has everlasting life'; and again, 'All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him'; and again, 'All that the Father gives Me will come to Me'? On this they comment, 'If He was Son by nature, as you say, He had no need to receive, but had it by nature as a Son.' Or how can He be the natural and true Power of the Father, who says near the time of the passion, 'Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour? But it was for this that I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your Name. Then a voice came from heaven, saying, I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.' And He said the same at another time: 'Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me'; and 'When Jesus had said this, He was troubled in spirit and testified and said, Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray Me.' Then these perverse men argue, 'If He were Power, He would not have been afraid, but would rather have supplied power to others.' Further they say, 'If He were by nature the true and very Wisdom of the Father,' how is it written, 'And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man'? In the same way, when He had come into the region of Cæsarea Philippi, He asked the disciples who people said He was; and when He was at Bethany He asked where Lazarus lay; and He said besides to His disciples, 'How many loaves do you have?' 'How, then,' they say, 'is He Wisdom, who increased in wisdom and did not know what He asked others?' They press this too: How can He be the very Word of the Father, without whom the Father never was, through whom He makes all things, as you think, when He said on the Cross, 'My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?' and before that had prayed, 'Glorify Your Name,' and 'Father, glorify Me with the glory that I had with You before the world existed'? And He used to pray in desert places and command His disciples to pray so that they would not enter into temptation; and He said, 'The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.' And, 'Of that day and that hour no one knows, not even the Angels, nor the Son.' On this the miserable men say again: If the Son, according to your interpretation, existed eternally with God, He would not have been ignorant of the Day, but would have known it as Word; nor would He have been forsaken, since He coexists; nor would He have asked to receive glory, since He has it in the Father; nor would He have prayed at all; for, being the Word, He would have needed nothing. But since He is a creature and one of the originated things, therefore He spoke this way and needed what He did not have; for it is proper to creatures to require and need what they do not have.

This, then, is what the irreligious men claim in their discourses; and if they argue this way, they might consistently speak more daringly still: 'Why did the Word become flesh at all?' And they might add, 'For how could He, being God, become man?' or 'How could the Immaterial bear a body?' Or they might speak with Caiaphas still more like Jews: 'Why at all did Christ, being a man, make Himself God?' For the Jews then muttered this and the like when they saw, and now the Ario-maniacs disbelieve it when they read, and have fallen away into blasphemies. If, then, someone carefully compares the words of these and those, he will certainly find them both arriving at the same unbelief, with equal daring in their irreligion, and with a common dispute against us. For the Jews said, 'How, being a man, can He be God?' And the Arians say, 'If He were true God from God, how could He become man?' And the Jews were offended then and mocked, saying, 'Had He been the Son of God, He would not have endured the Cross'; and the Arians, standing opposite them, press us: 'How dare you say that He is the Word proper to the Father's Essence, who had a body, so as to endure all this?' Next, while the Jews sought to kill the Lord because He said that God was His own Father and made Himself equal to Him, doing what the Father does, the Arians have not only learned to deny both that He is equal to God and that God is the own and natural Father of the Word, but they seek to kill those who hold this. Again, while the Jews said, 'Is this not the Son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How, then, is it that He says, Before Abraham was, I am, and I came down from heaven?' the Arians on the other hand respond in agreement and say, 'How can He be Word or God, who slept as a man, wept, and asked questions?' So both parties deny the Eternity and Godhead of the Word because of the human attributes the Savior took on Himself on account of the flesh He bore.

Since such error, then, is Jewish, and Jewish after the mind of Judas the traitor, let them openly confess themselves students of Caiaphas and Herod, instead of cloaking Judaism with the name of Christianity, and let them deny outright, as we have said before, the Savior's appearance in the flesh, for this doctrine is akin to their heresy. Or if they are afraid to Judaize openly and be circumcised, out of servility toward Constantius and for the sake of those they have deceived, then let them not say what the Jews say; for if they disown the name, they should in fairness renounce the doctrine. For we are Christians, Arians — we are Christians; it is our privilege to know the Gospels about the Savior well, and neither to stone Him with the Jews if we hear of His Godhead and Eternity, nor with you to stumble at such lowly sayings as He may speak as man for our sake. If, then, you want to become Christians, put off Arius's madness, and cleanse with the words of religion those ears of yours that blasphemy has defiled, knowing that by ceasing to be Arians you will also cease from the malice of the present-day Jews. Then at once the truth will shine on you out of darkness, and you will no longer reproach us with holding two Eternals, but you will yourselves acknowledge that the Lord is God's true Son by nature, and not merely eternal, but revealed as coexisting in the Father's eternity. For there are things called eternal of which He is the Maker; for in the twenty-third Psalm it is written, 'Lift up your gates, you rulers, and be lifted up, you everlasting gates'; and it is plain that these things were made through Him. But if He is the Maker even of everlasting things, who among us will be able from now on to dispute that He is prior to those eternal things, and consequently is proved to be Lord not so much from His eternity as from His being God's Son? For being the Son, He is inseparable from the Father, and there never was a time when He was not, but He always was; and being the Father's Image and Radiance, He has the Father's eternity. Now what has been briefly said above may be enough to show their misunderstanding of the passages they cited then; and we may easily see that they certainly give an unsound interpretation of what they now cite from the Gospels, if we now consider the scope of the faith we Christians hold, and, using it as a rule, apply ourselves to the reading of inspired Scripture, as the Apostle teaches. For Christ's enemies, ignorant of this scope, have strayed from the way of truth and stumbled on a stone of stumbling, thinking otherwise than they should.

Now the scope and character of Holy Scripture, as we have often said, is this: it contains a double account of the Savior — that He was always God and is the Son, being the Father's Word, Radiance, and Wisdom; and that afterward, for us, He took flesh from a Virgin, Mary, Bearer of God, and was made man. And this scope is found throughout inspired Scripture, as the Lord Himself has said, 'Search the Scriptures, for it is they that testify about Me.' But so as not to write too much by gathering all the passages on the subject, let it be enough to mention as a sample, first, John saying, 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him not one thing was made'; next, 'And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father'; and next, Paul writing, 'who, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God a prize to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on the Cross.' Anyone who begins with these passages and goes through the whole of Scripture on the interpretation they suggest will see how in the beginning the Father said to Him, 'Let there be light,' and 'Let there be a firmament,' and 'Let us make man'; but in the fullness of the ages He sent Him into the world, not to judge the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him; and how it is written, 'Look, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and they shall call His Name Emmanuel, which means, God with us.'

The reader of divine Scripture, then, may become familiar with these passages from the ancient books; and from the Gospels, on the other hand, he will see that the Lord became man; for 'the Word,' he says, 'became flesh and dwelt among us.' And He became man, and did not come into a man; this must be known, so that these irreligious men do not perhaps fall into this notion too and mislead anyone into thinking that, just as in former times the Word used to come into each of the Saints, so now He stayed in a man, sanctifying him too and revealing Himself as He did in the others. For if it were so, and He only appeared in a man, it would be nothing strange, nor would those who saw Him have been startled, saying, 'Where is He from?' and 'Why do You, being a man, make Yourself God?' For they were familiar with the idea from the words, 'And the Word of the Lord came' to this or that Prophet. But now, since the Word of God, through whom all things came to be, accepted becoming Son of Man as well, and humbled Himself, taking a servant's form, the Cross of Christ is therefore a scandal to the Jews, but to us Christ is 'God's power' and 'God's wisdom'; for 'the Word,' as John says, 'became flesh' (since it is the custom of Scripture to call man by the name of 'flesh,' as it says through Joel the Prophet, 'I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh,' and as Daniel said to Astyages, 'I do not worship idols made with hands, but the Living God, who has created the heavens and the earth and has sovereignty over all flesh'; for both he and Joel call humankind flesh).

In the past He used to come to the Saints individually and sanctify those who received Him rightly; but neither when they were born was it said that He had become man, nor when they suffered was it said that He Himself suffered. But when He came among us from Mary once, at the end of the ages, to abolish sin (for so it pleased the Father, to send His own Son, 'born of a woman, born under the Law'), then it is said that He took flesh and became man, and suffered for us in that flesh (as Peter says, 'Since, then, Christ suffered for us in the flesh'), so that it might be shown, and all might believe, that while He was always God, sanctified those to whom He came, and ordered all things according to the Father's will, afterward, for our sake, He became man, and the Godhead dwelt 'bodily' in the flesh, as the Apostle says; as if to say, 'Being God, He had His own body, and using this as an instrument, He became man for our sake.' And because of this, the properties of the flesh are said to be His, since He was in it — such as to hunger, to thirst, to suffer, to grow tired, and the like, of which the flesh is capable; while, on the other hand, He did through His own body the works proper to the Word Himself, such as raising the dead, restoring sight to the blind, and curing the woman with a flow of blood. And the Word bore the weaknesses of the flesh as His own, for the flesh was His; and the flesh served the works of the Godhead, because the Godhead was in it, for the body was God's. And the Prophet rightly said 'carried,' and did not say, 'He remedied our weaknesses,' so that He would not, as if external to the body and only healing it, as He has always done, leave people still subject to death; but He carries our weaknesses, and He Himself bears our sins, so that it might be shown that He has become man for us, and that the body that bore them in Him was His own body; and while He suffered no harm Himself by 'bearing our sins in His body on the tree,' as Peter says, we human beings were redeemed from our own passions and filled with the righteousness of the Word.

So it was that when the flesh suffered, the Word was not external to it, and therefore the suffering is said to be His; and when He did His Father's works divinely, the flesh was not external to Him, but the Lord did them in the body itself. So, when made man, He said, 'If I do not do the works of the Father, do not believe Me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know that the Father is in Me and I in Him.' And so, when there was need to raise Peter's mother-in-law, who was sick with a fever, He stretched out His hand in a human way, but stopped the illness in a divine way. And in the case of the man blind from birth, the spit He gave from the flesh was human, but He opened the eyes divinely through the clay. And in the case of Lazarus, He gave out a human voice as man, but as God He raised Lazarus from the dead divinely. These things were done and revealed this way because He had a body, not in appearance but in truth; and it was fitting for the Lord, in putting on human flesh, to put it on whole, with the passions proper to it; so that, as we say that the body was His own, we may also say that the passions of the body were proper to Him alone, though they did not touch Him according to His Godhead. If, then, the body had been someone else's, the passions would have been attributed to him too; but if the flesh is the Word's (for 'the Word became flesh'), then the passions of the flesh too must necessarily be attributed to Him whose flesh it is. And the one to whom the passions are attributed — such as being condemned, being scourged, thirsting, the cross, death, and the other weaknesses of the body — is also the one to whom the triumph and the grace belong. For this reason, then, such passions are consistently and fittingly attributed not to another, but to the Lord, so that the grace too may be from Him, and so that we may become not worshipers of anyone else, but truly devoted to God, because we call on no originated thing, no ordinary man, but the natural and true Son from God, who has become man and yet is no less Lord, God, and Savior.

Who will not admire this? Or who will not agree that such a thing is truly divine? For if the works of the Word's Godhead had not taken place through the body, man would not have been made divine; and again, had the properties of the flesh not been attributed to the Word, man would not have been thoroughly delivered from them; but even if they had ceased for a little while, as I said before, sin and corruption would still have remained in him, as was the case with humankind before Him. And here is the reason. Many, for instance, have been made holy and clean from all sin; indeed, Jeremiah was sanctified even from the womb, and John, while still in the womb, leaped for joy at the voice of Mary, Bearer of God; nevertheless 'death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of Adam's transgression'; and so man remained mortal and corruptible as before, subject to the passions proper to human nature. But now that the Word has become man and has made His own what belongs to the flesh, these things no longer touch the body, because of the Word who has come in it; they are destroyed by Him, and from now on people no longer remain sinners and dead according to their own passions, but, having risen by the Word's power, they remain forever immortal and incorruptible. So also, since the flesh is born of Mary, Bearer of God, He Himself, who gives others the origin of their being, is said to have been born, so that He may transfer our origin into Himself, and we may no longer return to earth as mere earth, but, being knit into the Word from heaven, may be carried to heaven by Him. Therefore, in the same way, it is not without reason that He has transferred the other passions of the body to Himself too, so that we may share in eternal life, no longer as human beings merely, but as belonging to the Word. For we no longer die according to our former origin in Adam; from now on, since our origin and every weakness of the flesh have been transferred to the Word, we rise from the earth, the curse of sin being removed because of Him who is in us and who has become a curse for us. And with reason; for as we are all from earth and die in Adam, so, being born again from above of water and Spirit, we are all given life in Christ, the flesh being no longer earthly, but from now on made Word, because of God's Word, who 'became flesh' for our sake.

And so that one may reach a more exact knowledge of the impassibility of the Word's nature and of the weaknesses attributed to Him because of the flesh, it will be well to listen to the blessed Peter; for he will be a trustworthy witness about the Savior. He writes this in his Epistle: 'Since, then, Christ suffered for us in the flesh.' Therefore, when He is said to hunger and thirst, to toil and not to know, to sleep, to weep, to ask, to flee, to be born, to pray to be spared the cup, and in a word to undergo all that belongs to the flesh, let it be said in each case, as is fitting, 'Christ, then, hungering and thirsting for us in the flesh'; and 'saying that He did not know, being struck, and toiling for us in the flesh'; and 'being exalted too, being born, and growing in the flesh'; and 'fearing and hiding in the flesh'; and 'saying, If it is possible, let this cup pass from Me, being beaten, and receiving, for us in the flesh'; and in a word, all such things 'for us in the flesh.' For this is why the Apostle himself said, 'Christ, then, having suffered' — not in His Godhead, but 'for us in the flesh' — so that these passions may be acknowledged as proper not to the Word Himself by nature, but to the flesh itself by nature. Let no one, then, stumble at what belongs to man; rather, let him know that the Word Himself is impassible in nature, and yet, because of the flesh He put on, these things are attributed to Him, since they are proper to the flesh, and the body itself is proper to the Savior. And while He Himself, being impassible in nature, remains as He is, not harmed by these passions but rather wiping them out and destroying them, human beings, their passions as it were changed and abolished in the Impassible, from now on become impassible themselves too and free from them forever, as John taught, saying, 'And you know that He was revealed to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin.' And since this is so, no heretic will object, 'Why does the flesh rise, being mortal by nature? And if it rises, why does it not also hunger and thirst and suffer and remain mortal? For it came from the earth, and how can its natural condition leave it?' For the flesh can now answer this very contentious heretic: 'I am from the earth, mortal by nature, but afterward I became the Word's flesh, and He "carried" my passions, though He is without them; and so I became free from them, no longer abandoned to their service, because of the Lord who has made me free from them. For if you object to my being rid of the corruption that is by nature, see that you do not object to God's Word having taken my form of servitude; for just as the Lord, putting on the body, became man, so we human beings are made divine by the Word, being taken to Him through His flesh, and from now on inherit life everlasting.'

We have found it necessary to examine these points first so that, when we see Him doing or saying anything divinely through the instrument of His own body, we may know that He works this way as God; and also, if we see Him speaking or suffering in a human way, we may not be ignorant that He bore flesh and became man, and so acts and speaks this way. For if we recognize what is proper to each, and see and understand that both these things and those are done by One, we are right in our faith and will never go astray. But if someone looks at what is done divinely by the Word and denies the body, or looks at what is proper to the body and denies the Word's presence in the flesh, or forms low thoughts about the Word from what is human, such a person, like a Jewish wine-seller mixing water with the wine, will count the Cross an offense, or, like a Gentile, will think the preaching foolishness. This, then, is what happens to God's enemies, the Arians; for looking at what is human in the Savior, they have judged Him a creature. So they ought, looking also at the divine works of the Word, to deny the origin of His body as well, and from then on rank themselves with the Manichees. But as for them, let them learn, however late, that 'the Word became flesh'; and let us, holding to the general scope of the faith, acknowledge that what they interpret badly has a right interpretation. For 'The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand,' and 'All things were given to Me by My Father,' and 'I can do nothing on My own, but as I hear, I judge,' and similar passages do not show that the Son once did not have these prerogatives. (For did He not eternally have what the Father has — He who is the Only Word and Wisdom of the Father in essence, who also says, 'All that the Father has is Mine,' and what is Mine is the Father's? For if the things of the Father are the Son's, and the Father always has them, it is plain that what the Son has, being the Father's, was always in the Son.) It was not, then, because He once did not have them that He said this, but because, though the Son eternally has what He has, He still has them from the Father.

For so that no one, seeing that the Son has all that the Father has, should wander into the irreligion of Sabellius because of the exact likeness and identity of what He has, and think Him to be the Father, He has said 'was given to Me,' and 'I received,' and 'were handed over to Me,' only to show that He is not the Father, but the Father's Word and the Eternal Son, who, because of His likeness to the Father, eternally has from Him what He has, and, because He is the Son, has from the Father what He eternally has. Moreover, we may learn from the passages themselves that 'was given' and 'were handed over' and the like do not diminish the Godhead of the Son, but rather show Him to be truly Son. For if all things are handed over to Him, then first, He is other than the 'all' that He has received; and next, being Heir of all things, He alone is the Son and proper to the Essence of the Father. For if He were one of the 'all,' He would not be 'heir of all,' but each would have received according as the Father willed and gave. But as it is, receiving all things, He is other than them all and alone proper to the Father. Moreover, we may conclude from a similar passage, and likewise about all of them, that 'was given' and 'were handed over' do not show that He once did not have them; for the Savior Himself says, 'As the Father has life in Himself, so He has given to the Son also to have life in Himself.' Now by the words 'has given' He indicates that He is not the Father; but in saying 'so' He shows the Son's natural likeness and proper relation to the Father. If, then, the Father once did not have life, plainly the Son once did not have it; for as the Father has it, 'so' the Son also has it. But if it is irreligious to say this, and reverent, on the contrary, to say that the Father always had it, is it not improper of them, when the Son says that 'as' the Father has, 'so' the Son also has, to say that He has it not 'so' but otherwise? Rather, then, the Word is faithful, and all the things He says He has received He has always, yet has them from the Father; and the Father has them from no one, but the Son from the Father. For in the case of the radiance, if the radiance itself should say, 'The light has given me all places to illuminate, and I do not illuminate from myself, but as the light wills,' in saying this it does not imply that it once did not have this, but means, 'I am proper to the light, and all the things of the light are mine'; so, and much more, we must understand it in the case of the Son. For the Father, having given all things to the Son, still has all things in the Son; and since the Son has them, the Father still has them; for the Son's Godhead is the Father's Godhead, and so the Father exercises His Providence over all things in the Son.

And while such is the meaning of expressions like these, those that speak of the Savior in human terms also admit of a reverent meaning. For we have examined them beforehand with this purpose: so that if we hear Him asking where Lazarus is laid, or when, on coming into the region of Cæsarea, He asks, 'Who do people say that I am?' or 'How many loaves do you have?' and 'What do you want Me to do for you?' we may know the right meaning of the passages from what has already been said, and may not stumble like Christ's enemies, the Arians. First, then, we must put this question to the irreligious: why do they consider Him ignorant? For one who asks does not certainly ask out of ignorance; it is possible for one who knows to ask about what He knows. So John was aware that Christ, when asking, 'How many loaves do you have?' was not ignorant, for he says, 'And He said this to test him, for He Himself knew what He would do.' But if He knew what He was doing, then He asked not in ignorance but with knowledge. From this example we may understand similar ones: when the Lord asks, He does not ask in ignorance where Lazarus lies, nor again who people say that He is, but knowing the thing He was asking, and aware of what He was about to do. And so their clever point is easily exploded. But if they still persist because of His asking, then they must be told that in the Godhead there is indeed no ignorance, but ignorance is proper to the flesh, as has been said. And to see that this is really so, notice how the Lord, who asked where Lazarus lay, Himself said, when He was not on the spot but a long way off, 'Lazarus is dead,' and where he had died; and how the one whom they consider ignorant is the same one who foreknew the reasonings of the disciples, was aware of what was in the heart of each and 'of what was in man,' and, what is greater, alone knows the Father and says, 'I in the Father and the Father in Me.'

Therefore this is plain to everyone: that the flesh is indeed ignorant, but the Word Himself, considered as the Word, knows all things even before they come to be. For He did not cease to be God when He became man; nor, since He is God, does He shrink from what is man's — perish the thought! — but rather, being God, He has taken the flesh to Himself, and, being in the flesh, makes the flesh divine. For just as He asked questions in it, so too He raised the dead in it; and He showed everyone that He who gives life to the dead and calls back the soul discerns the secrets of all much more. And He knew where Lazarus lay, and yet He asked; for the All-holy Word of God, who endured all things for our sake, did this so that, carrying our ignorance in this way, He might grant us the knowledge of His own only and true Father, and of Himself, sent for our sake for the salvation of all — and no grace could be greater than this. When, then, the Savior uses the words they cite in their defense, 'Authority is given to Me,' and 'Glorify Your Son,' and Peter says, 'Authority is given to Him,' we understand all these passages in the same sense: He says all this in a human way, because of the body. For though He had no need, He is still said to have received what He received in a human way, so that, on the other hand, since the Lord has received it and the gift is lodged with Him, the grace may remain secure. For while a mere man receives, he can lose it again (as was shown in the case of Adam, for he received and he lost); but so that the grace may be irrevocable and kept secure by human beings, He Himself makes the gift His own; and He says, as man, that He has received authority that He always had as God; and He who glorifies others says, 'Glorify Me,' to show that He has a flesh that needs these things. So, when the flesh receives, since what receives is in Him and He has become man by taking it, He is therefore said to have received Himself.

If, then (as has been said many times), the Word has not become man, attribute to the Word, as you would have it, receiving, needing glory, and being ignorant; but if He has become man (and He has), and receiving, needing, and being ignorant belong to man, why do we consider the Giver a receiver, suspect the one who gives to others of being in need, and divide the Word from the Father as imperfect and needy, while we strip human nature of grace? For if the Word Himself, considered as Word, has received and been glorified for His own sake, and if it is He, according to His Godhead, who is sanctified and has risen again, what hope is there for human beings? For they remain as they were — naked, wretched, and dead — having no share in the things given to the Son. Why, too, did the Word come among us and become flesh? If it was so that He might receive these things He says He has received, He was without them before that, and He will necessarily owe thanks to the body Himself instead, because when He came into it, then He receives from the Father these things He did not have before His descent into the flesh. For on this view He seems rather to be promoted Himself because of the body than the body promoted because of Him. But this notion is Jewish. But if the Word came among us so that He might redeem humankind, and the Word became flesh so that He might sanctify them and make them divine (and this is why He became flesh), who does not see that it follows that what He says He received when He became flesh He mentions not for His own sake but for the flesh's? For the gifts given through Him from the Father belonged to the flesh in which He was speaking. But let us see what He asked, and what exactly the things were that He said He had received, so that in this way too they may be brought to their senses. He asked, then, for glory, yet He had said, 'All things were handed over to Me.' And after the resurrection He says that He has received all authority; but even before He had said, 'All things were handed over to Me,' He was Lord of all, for 'all things were made through Him,' and 'there is One Lord, through whom are all things.' And when He asked for glory, He was as He is, the Lord of glory, as Paul says, 'If they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory'; for He had the glory He asked for when He said, 'the glory that I had with You before the world existed.'

The authority He said He received after the resurrection, He also had before He received it, and before the resurrection. For He rebuked Satan Himself, saying, 'Get behind Me, Satan'; and He gave the disciples authority against him, when on their return He said, 'I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.' And again, that He possessed what He said He had received before receiving it appears from His driving away demons and from His untying what Satan had bound, as He did in the case of the daughter of Abraham; from His forgiving sins, saying to the paralytic and to the woman who washed His feet, 'Your sins are forgiven'; and from His both raising the dead and restoring the original nature of the blind man, granting him sight. And He did all this not waiting until He should receive, but 'possessing authority.' From all this it is plain that what He had as Word He says He received in a human way when He had become man and had risen again, so that for His sake human beings might from then on have authority against demons on earth, as having become partakers of a divine nature, and might reign everlastingly in heaven, as delivered from corruption. So we must acknowledge this once for all: that nothing He says He received did He receive as not having it before; for the Word, being God, always had these things; but in these passages He is said to have received in a human way, so that, since the flesh received in Him, the gift might from then on remain secure for us from it. For what Peter says — 'receiving honor and glory from God, Angels being made subject to Him' — has this meaning. Just as He asked questions in a human way and raised Lazarus divinely, so 'He received' is said of Him in a human way, but the subjection of the Angels marks the Word's Godhead.

Stop, then, you who are hated by God, and do not degrade the Word, nor take away from His Godhead, which is the Father's, as though He were needy or ignorant, or you will be throwing your own arguments at Christ, like the Jews who once stoned Him. For these things do not belong to the Word as the Word, but are proper to human beings. And just as, when He spat, stretched out His hand, and called Lazarus, we did not say that the triumphs were human, though they were done through the body, but that they were God's; so, on the other hand, though human things are attributed to the Savior in the Gospel, let us, considering the nature of what is said and that it is foreign to God, not attribute them to the Word's Godhead, but to His humanity. For though 'the Word became flesh,' the passions are proper to the flesh; and though the flesh is possessed by God in the Word, the grace and the power belong to the Word. He did the Father's works, then, through the flesh; and just as truly, on the other hand, the passions of the flesh were displayed in Him. For instance, He asked questions and He raised Lazarus; He rebuked His Mother, saying, 'My hour has not yet come,' and then at once He made the water wine. For He was true God in the flesh, and He was true flesh in the Word. Therefore by His works He revealed both Himself as Son of God and His own Father, and by the passions of the flesh He showed that He bore a true body and that it was His own.

Since these things are so, come, let us now examine 'But of that day and that hour no one knows, not even the Angels of God, nor the Son'; for being in great ignorance about these words and stupefied by them, they think they have an important argument for their heresy in them. But when the heretics cite it and arm themselves with it, I see in them the giants fighting against God again. For the Lord of heaven and earth, through whom all things were made, has to go to court before them about a day and an hour; and the Word who knows all things is accused by them of ignorance about a day; and the Son who knows the Father is said to be ignorant of an hour of a day. Now what could be said that is more contrary to sense, or what madness could be compared to this? Through the Word all things have been made — times and seasons, night and day, and the whole creation — and is the Maker of all said to be ignorant of His work? And the very context of the passage shows that the Son of God knows that hour and that day, though the Arians fall headlong in their ignorance. For after saying 'nor the Son,' He tells the disciples what comes before the day, saying, 'This and that will happen, and then the end.' But whoever speaks of what comes before the day certainly also knows the day, which will be revealed after the things foretold. But if He had not known the hour, He would not have indicated the events before it, since He would not know when it would be. And just as anyone who, to point out a house or a city to those who did not know it, gave an account of what comes before the house or city, and, having described it all, said, 'Then immediately comes the city' or 'the house,' would of course know where the house or the city was (for had he not known, he would not have described what comes before it, so as not to throw his hearers far off course out of ignorance, or unknowingly go past the place while speaking), so the Lord, telling what comes before that day and that hour, knows exactly, and is not ignorant, when the hour and the day are at hand.

Now as for why, though He knew, He did not tell His disciples plainly at that time, no one may be curious where He has been silent; for 'Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor?' But as for why, though He knew, He said 'not even the Son knows,' I think none of the faithful is ignorant of this: that He made this declaration, like those others, as man, because of the flesh. For this, as before, is not the Word's deficiency, but that of the human nature whose property it is to be ignorant. And this again will be clearly seen by honestly examining the occasion: when and to whom the Savior spoke this way. He did not say it, then, when the heavens were made by Him, nor when He was with the Father Himself, the Word 'arranging all things,' nor before He became man, but when 'the Word became flesh.' For this reason it is reasonable to attribute to His humanity everything He says in a human way after He became man. For it is proper to the Word to know what was made, and not to be ignorant of either the beginning or the end of these things (for the works are His); and He knows how many things He made and the limit of their existence. And knowing the beginning and the end of each, He surely knows the general and common end of all. Certainly, when He says in the Gospel about Himself in His human character, 'Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son,' it is plain that, as the Word, He also knows the hour of the end of all things, though as man He is ignorant of it; for ignorance is proper to man, and especially ignorance of these things. Moreover, this is characteristic of the Savior's love for humankind; for since He was made man, He is not ashamed, because of the flesh, which is ignorant, to say 'I do not know,' so that He may show that, though knowing as God, He is ignorant only according to the flesh. And therefore He did not say, 'not even the Son of God knows,' so that the Godhead would not seem ignorant, but simply 'not even the Son,' so that the ignorance might be the Son's as born from among human beings.

For this reason He mentions the Angels, but He did not go further and say 'not even the Holy Spirit'; He was silent, with a double indication: first, that if the Spirit knew, much more must the Word know, considered as the Word, from whom the Spirit receives; and next, by His silence about the Spirit, He made it clear that He said 'not even the Son' of His human ministry. And here is a proof of it: when He had said in a human way, 'Not even the Son knows,' He still shows that He knew all things divinely. For the Son whom He declares not to know the day, He declares to know the Father; for 'No one,' He says, 'knows the Father except the Son.' And everyone but the Arians would join in confessing that He who knows the Father knows the whole of creation much more, and in that whole, its end. And if the day and the hour have already been determined by the Father, it is plain that they are determined through the Son, and He Himself knows what has been determined through Him; for there is nothing that has not come to be and been determined through the Son. Therefore He, being the Maker of the universe, knows of what nature, of what size, and with what limits the Father has willed it to be made; and its period is included in the 'how much' and 'how far.' And again, if all that is the Father's is the Son's (and He Himself has said this), and knowing the day is the Father's attribute, it is plain that the Son too knows it, having this as His own from the Father. And again, if the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son, and the Father knows the day and the hour, it is clear that the Son, being in the Father and knowing the things of the Father, knows the day and the hour Himself too. And if the Son is also the Father's true Image, and the Father knows the day and the hour, it is plain that the Son also has this likeness to the Father, of knowing them. And it is not surprising if He, through whom all things were made and in whom the universe holds together, Himself knows what has been brought into being and when the end of each and of all together will be; rather, it is surprising that this audacity, suited as it is to the madness of the Ario-maniacs, should have forced us to resort to so long a defense. For by ranking the Son of God, the Eternal Word, among originated things, they are not far from venturing to maintain that the Father Himself is second to creation; for if He who knows the Father does not know the day or the hour, I fear that knowledge of creation, or rather of its lower part, would be greater, as they in their madness would say, than knowledge of the Father.

But as for them, since they blaspheme the Spirit this way, they must expect no forgiveness ever for such irreligion, as the Lord has said. But let us, who love Christ and bear Christ within us, know that the Word said 'I do not know' not as ignorant, considered as Word, for He knows, but as showing His humanity, since being ignorant is proper to man, and He had put on flesh that was ignorant, and being in it He said according to the flesh, 'I do not know.' And for this reason, after saying, 'Not even the Son knows,' and mentioning the ignorance of the people in Noah's day, He immediately added, 'Watch, therefore, for you do not know at what hour your Lord is coming,' and again, 'At an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man is coming.' For I too, having become like you for your sake, said 'not even the Son.' For had He been ignorant divinely, He would have had to say, 'Watch, therefore, for I do not know,' and 'At an hour when I do not expect'; but in fact He has not said this. By saying 'you do not know' and 'when you do not expect,' He has indicated that being ignorant belongs to human beings; and for their sake He too, having a flesh like theirs and having become man, said, 'Not even the Son knows'; for He did not know in the flesh, though knowing as Word. And again, the example of Noah exposes the shamelessness of Christ's enemies; for there too He did not say 'I did not know,' but 'They did not know until the flood came.' For the people did not know, but He who brought the flood (and it was the Savior Himself) knew the day and the hour in which He opened the floodgates of heaven and broke up the great deep, and said to Noah, 'Come into the ark, you and all your household.' For if He were ignorant, He would not have foretold to Noah, 'In seven more days I will bring a flood on the earth.' But if, in describing the day, He uses the parallel of Noah's time, and He did know the day of the flood, then He also knows the day of His own coming.

Moreover, after telling the parable of the Virgins, He again shows more clearly who those are who are ignorant of the day and the hour, saying, 'Watch, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.' He who said shortly before, 'No one knows, not even the Son,' now says not 'I do not know,' but 'you do not know.' In the same way, then, when His disciples asked about the end, He fittingly said 'not even the Son,' according to the flesh, because of the body, so that He might show that as man He does not know; for ignorance is proper to man. If, however, He is the Word, if it is He who is to come, He who is to be Judge, He who is to be the Bridegroom, He knows when and at what hour He comes, and when He is to say, 'Wake up, sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.' For just as, on becoming man, He hungers and thirsts and suffers with human beings, so with human beings, as man, He does not know; though divinely, being Word and Wisdom in the Father, He knows, and there is nothing He does not know. In the same way too He asks in a human way about Lazarus, though He was on His way to raise him and knew where He would call Lazarus's soul back from; and it was a greater thing to know where the soul was than to know where the body lay; but He asked in a human way so that He might raise divinely. So too He asks the disciples, on coming into the region of Cæsarea, though He knew even before Peter answered. For if the Father revealed to Peter the answer to the Lord's question, it is plain that the revelation was through the Son, for 'No one knows the Son,' He says, 'except the Father, nor the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.' But if the knowledge of both the Father and the Son is revealed through the Son, there is no room for doubting that the Lord who asked, having first revealed it to Peter from the Father, then asked in a human way, in order to show that, asking according to the flesh, He knew divinely what Peter was about to say. The Son, then, knew, as knowing all things and knowing His own Father; and no knowledge can be greater or more perfect than that.

This is enough to refute them; but to show still further that they are hostile to the truth and enemies of Christ, I would like to ask them a question. The Apostle writes in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 'I knew a man in Christ more than fourteen years ago — whether in the body I do not know, or whether out of the body I do not know; God knows.' What do you say now? Did the Apostle know what had happened to him in the vision, though he says 'I do not know,' or did he not know? If he did not know, be careful that, being familiar with error, you do not fall into the error of the Phrygians, who say that the Prophets and the other ministers of the Word know neither what they do nor what they are announcing. But if he knew when he said 'I do not know,' for he had Christ within him revealing all things to him, is not the heart of God's enemies truly perverted and 'self-condemned'? For when the Apostle says 'I do not know,' they say that he knows; but when the Lord says 'I do not know,' they say that He does not know. For if Paul, since Christ was within him, knew what he says 'I do not know' about, does not Christ Himself know much more, though He says 'I do not know'? The Apostle, then, knew what happened to him, since the Lord revealed it to him; for this is why he says, 'I knew a man in Christ'; and knowing the man, he also knew how the man was caught up. So Elisha, who saw Elijah, also knew how he was taken up; but though he knew, when the sons of the Prophets thought that Elijah had been thrown on one of the mountains by the Spirit, he, knowing from the first what he had seen, tried to persuade them; but when they pressed it, he was silent and let them go after him. Did he not know, then, because he was silent? He knew indeed, but, as if not knowing, he let them go, so that, once convinced, they might no longer doubt about Elijah's being taken up. Therefore much more did Paul, being himself the person caught up, also know how he was caught up; for Elijah knew, and if anyone had asked, he would have said how. And yet Paul says 'I do not know,' for these two reasons, as I think at least: first, as he has said himself, so that because of the abundance of the revelations no one would think more of him than what he saw; and second, because, since our Savior had said 'I do not know,' it was fitting for him also to say 'I do not know,' so that the servant would not appear above his Lord, nor the disciple above his Master.

Therefore He who gave Paul to know knew much more Himself; for since He spoke of the things that come before the day, He also knew, as I said before, when the Day and the Hour would be; and yet, though He knew, He says, 'Not even the Son knows.' Why, then, did He say at that time 'I do not know' about what He knew as Lord? As far as we may guess by searching, He did this for our benefit, as I think at least; and may He grant a true meaning to what we are now proposing! The Savior secured our advantage on both sides. For He has made known what comes before the end, so that, as He said Himself, we might not be startled or frightened when these things happen, but may expect the end after them. And about the day and the hour He was not willing to say 'I know' according to His divine nature, but 'I do not know' according to the flesh, for the sake of the flesh, which was ignorant, as I have said before; so that they would not ask Him further, and then either He would have to pain the disciples by not speaking, or by speaking would act to the harm of them and of all of us. For whatever He does, He does entirely for our sake, since 'the Word became flesh' for us too. For us, therefore, He said, 'Not even the Son knows'; and He was neither untruthful in saying this (for He said 'I do not know' in a human way, as man), nor did He let the disciples force Him to speak, for by saying 'I do not know' He stopped their questions. And so in the Acts of the Apostles it is written that when He mounted on the Angels, ascending as man and carrying up to heaven the flesh He bore, and the disciples, seeing this, asked again, 'When will the end be, and when will You be present?' He said to them more clearly, 'It is not for you to know the times or the seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority.' And He did not then say 'not even the Son,' as He had said before in a human way, but 'It is not for you to know.' For now the flesh had risen, put off its mortality, and been made divine; and it was no longer fitting for Him to answer according to the flesh when He was going into the heavens, but from then on to teach in a divine way: 'It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority; but you will receive Power.' And what is that Power of the Father but the Son? For Christ is 'God's Power and God's Wisdom.'

The Son, then, did know, being the Word; for He implied this in what He said: 'I know, but it is not for you to know; for it was for your sake that, sitting on the mountain too, I said according to the flesh, Not even the Son knows, for the benefit of you and all. For it is beneficial for you to hear this much both about the Angels and about the Son, because of the deceivers who will come later, so that even if demons disguise themselves as Angels and try to speak about the end, you should not believe them, since they are ignorant; and so that if Antichrist too, disguising himself, should say, I am Christ, and should try in turn to speak of that day and end to deceive his hearers, you, having these words from Me, Not even the Son, may disbelieve him too.' And further, not knowing when the end is, or when the day of the end is, is good for human beings, so that they would not, knowing it, become negligent of the time in between, waiting for the days near the end; for they will argue that only then must they pay attention to themselves. That is also why He has been silent about the time when each will die, so that people would not, puffed up by the knowledge, immediately neglect themselves for most of their time. So the Word has hidden from us both the end of all things and the limit of each of us (for the end of each is in the end of all, and the end of all is contained in the end of each), so that, since it is uncertain and always ahead of us, we may advance day by day as if summoned, reaching forward to the things ahead and forgetting the things behind. For who, knowing the day of the end, would not be slack in the interval? But who, if ignorant, would not be ready day by day? It was for this reason that the Savior added, 'Watch, therefore, for you do not know at what hour your Lord is coming,' and 'At an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man is coming.' He said this, then, for the benefit that comes from ignorance; for in saying it, He wants us always to be prepared: 'For you,' He says, 'do not know; but I, the Lord, know when I am coming, though the Arians do not wait for Me, who am the Word of the Father.'

The Lord, then, knowing what is good for us better than we do, safeguarded the disciples this way; and they, taught this way, corrected those at Thessalonica when they were likely to fall into error on this point. However, since Christ's enemies do not give in even to these considerations, I wish to ask them again about this, though I know that they have a heart harder than Pharaoh's. In Paradise God asks, 'Adam, where are you?' and He also asks Cain, 'Where is Abel your brother?' What, then, do you say to this? For if you think He was ignorant and therefore asked, you are already of the party of the Manichees, for this is their bold idea; but if, fearing the open name, you force yourselves to say that He asks knowing, what is there extravagant or strange in the doctrine that you should fall this way on finding that the Son, in whom God asked then, the same Son who is now clothed in flesh, asks the disciples as man? Unless, of course, having become Manichees, you are willing to find fault with the question put to Adam back then and all the rest, so that you may give full play to your perversity. For, exposed on every side, you still raise a whisper from the words of Luke, which are rightly said but badly understood by you. And we must state what this is, so that their corrupt meaning may be shown here too.

Now Luke says, 'And Jesus advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.' This, then, is the passage; and since they stumble over it, we are forced to ask them, as with the Pharisees and Sadducees, about the person of whom Luke speaks. And the case stands like this. Is Jesus Christ a man like all other men, or is He God bearing flesh? If, then, He is an ordinary man like the rest, let Him advance as a man; this, however, is the view of the Samosatene, which you in effect hold too, though you deny it in name because of people. But if He is God bearing flesh, as He truly is, and 'the Word became flesh,' and, being God, He came down to earth, what advance did He have who existed equal to God? Or how did the Son increase, being always in the Father? For if He who was always in the Father advanced, what, I ask, is there beyond the Father toward which His advance could be made? Next, it is fitting to repeat here what was said on the point of His receiving and being glorified. If He advanced when He became man, it is plain that He was imperfect before He became man; and the flesh became a cause of perfection to Him, rather than He to the flesh. And again, if He advances as the Word, what more does He have to become than Word, Wisdom, Son, and God's Power? For the Word is all these; and if anyone can in any way share in one ray of them, so to speak, such a person becomes all-perfect among human beings and equal to Angels. For Angels and Archangels, Dominions, all the Powers, and Thrones, by sharing in the Word, always see the face of His Father. How, then, does He who supplies perfection to others advance Himself later than they do? For Angels even served at His human birth, and the passage from Luke comes later than the Angels' service. How, then, can this even enter anyone's mind? Or how did Wisdom advance in wisdom? Or how did He who gives grace to others (as Paul says in every Epistle, knowing that grace is given through Him, 'The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all') advance in grace? For either let them say that the Apostle is untruthful and dare to say that the Son is not Wisdom; or else, if He is Wisdom, as Solomon said, and if Paul wrote, 'Christ, God's Power and God's Wisdom,' what further advance could Wisdom admit of?

For human beings, creatures as they are, are capable in a certain way of reaching forward and advancing in virtue. Enoch, for instance, was taken up in this way, Moses increased and was perfected, Isaac 'became great by advancing,' and the Apostle said that he 'reached forward' day by day to what was ahead of him. For each had room for advancing, looking to the step ahead of him. But the Son of God, who is One and Only, what room did He have for reaching forward? For all things advance by looking at Him; and He, being One and Only, is in the Only Father, from whom, again, He does not reach forward, but in whom He always remains. Advance, then, belongs to human beings; but the Son of God, since He could not advance, being perfect in the Father, humbled Himself for us, so that in His humbling we, on the other hand, might be able to increase. And our increase is nothing other than renouncing the things of the senses and coming to the Word Himself; since His humbling is nothing other than His taking our flesh. It was not, then, the Word, considered as the Word, who advanced — He who is perfect from the perfect Father, who needs nothing, and indeed brings others forward to advance — but He is said here too to advance in a human way, since advance belongs to man. So the Evangelist, speaking with careful precision, has mentioned stature in the advance; but being Word and God, He is not measured by stature, which belongs to bodies. The advance, then, is of the body; for as it advanced, the revelation of the Godhead also advanced in it to those who saw it. And the more the Godhead was revealed, the more His favor as man increased before all people. For as a baby He was carried to the Temple; and when He became a boy, He stayed there and questioned the priests about the Law. And as His body gradually grew and the Word revealed Himself in it, He was from then on confessed first by Peter, then by all as well: 'Truly this is the Son of God' — however willfully the Jews, both the ancient ones and these modern ones, shut their eyes tight so as not to see that advancing in wisdom is not the advance of Wisdom Itself, but rather the humanity's advance in It. For 'Jesus advanced in wisdom and favor'; and, if we may say what is explanatory as well as true, He advanced in Himself; for 'Wisdom built herself a house,' and she gave the house advancement in herself.

(Moreover, what is this advance that is spoken of but, as I said before, the deification and grace imparted from Wisdom to human beings, sin and their inward corruption being wiped out in them, according to their likeness and relationship to the flesh of the Word?) For in this way, as the body grew in stature, the revelation of the Godhead also developed in it, and it was displayed to all that the body was God's Temple and that God was in the body. And if they insist that 'the Word made flesh' is called Jesus, and refer the term 'advanced' to Him, they must be told that this does not diminish the Father's Light, which is the Son, either, but still shows that the Word has become man and bore true flesh. And just as we said that He suffered in the flesh, hungered in the flesh, and was tired in the flesh, so too He may reasonably be said to have advanced in the flesh; for the advance, as we have described it, did not take place with the Word external to the flesh either; for the flesh that advanced was in Him and is called His, and that, as before, so that man's advance might remain and not fail, because of the Word who is with it. Neither, then, was the advance the Word's, nor was the flesh Wisdom; but the flesh became the body of Wisdom. Therefore, as we have already said, it was not Wisdom, as Wisdom, that advanced with respect to Itself; but the humanity advanced in Wisdom, gradually rising above human nature, being made divine, and becoming and appearing to all as the instrument of Wisdom for the working and the shining out of the Godhead. That is why he did not say, 'The Word advanced,' but 'Jesus,' the Name by which the Lord was called when He became man; so that the advance belongs to the human nature in the way we explained above.

Therefore, just as He is said to have advanced when the flesh advanced, because the body was His own, so also what is said at the time of His death — that He was troubled, that He wept — must be taken in the same sense. For they go up and down citing these, as if recommending their heresy afresh by them: Look, 'He wept,' and said, 'Now My soul is troubled,' and He begged that the cup might pass away; how, then, if He spoke this way, is He God and Word of the Father? Yes, it is written that He wept, you enemies of God, and that He said, 'I am troubled,' and on the Cross He said, 'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani,' that is, 'My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?' and He begged that the cup might pass away. Certainly this is what is written; but again I would ask you (for the same reply must necessarily be made to each of your objections): if the speaker is a mere man, let him weep and fear death, as a man; but if He is the Word in flesh (for one must not be reluctant to repeat it), whom did He have to fear, being God? Or why should He fear death, who was Himself Life and was rescuing others from death? Or how, since He said, 'Do not fear those who kill the body,' should He Himself fear? And how should He who said to Abraham, 'Do not fear, for I am with you,' who encouraged Moses against Pharaoh, and who said to the son of Nun, 'Be strong and courageous,' Himself feel terror before Herod and Pilate? Further, did He who helps others against fear (for 'the Lord,' says Scripture, 'is on my side; I will not fear what man can do to me') fear governors, mortal men? Did He who had come against death Himself feel terror of death? Is it not both improper and irreligious to say that He was terrified of death or Hades, when the gatekeepers of Hades saw Him and shuddered? But if, as you would hold, the Word was in terror, why did He not flee when He spoke long beforehand of the plot of the Jews, but instead said, when He was actually being sought, 'I am He'? For He could have avoided death, as He said: 'I have authority to lay down My life, and I have authority to take it up again'; and 'No one takes it from Me.'

But these passions were not proper to the nature of the Word, insofar as He was Word; rather, the Word was in the flesh that was affected this way, you enemies of Christ and ungrateful Jews! For He did not say all this before the flesh; but when 'the Word became flesh' and became man, then it is written that He said this, that is, in a human way. Surely the one of whom this is written was the one who raised Lazarus from the dead, made the water wine, gave sight to the man born blind, and said, 'I and My Father are one.' If, then, they make His human attributes a ground for low thoughts about the Son of God, and even consider Him altogether a man from the earth and not from heaven, why do they not recognize from His divine works the Word who is in the Father, and from then on renounce their self-willed irreligion? For they are given to see how the one who did the works is the same as the one who showed that His body was capable of suffering, by allowing it to weep and hunger and to show other properties of a body. For while by such means He made it known that, though impassible God, He had taken a flesh capable of suffering, yet by the works He showed Himself to be the Word of God who had afterward become man, saying, 'Even though you do not believe Me, seeing Me clothed in a human body, still believe the works, so that you may know that I am in the Father and the Father in Me.' And Christ's enemies seem to me to show plain shamelessness and blasphemy; for when they hear 'I and the Father are one,' they violently distort the meaning and separate the unity of the Father and the Son; but when they read of His tears, sweat, or sufferings, they do not attend to His body, but because of these they rank Him by whom creation was made among creation. What, then, is left in which they differ from the Jews? For just as the Jews blasphemously attributed God's works to Beelzebub, so these too, ranking among the creatures the Lord who did those works, will undergo the same merciless condemnation as theirs.

But when they hear 'I and the Father are one,' they ought to see in Him the oneness of the Godhead and the proper character of the Father's Essence; and again, when they hear 'He wept' and the like, they ought to say that these are proper to the body, especially since they have an understandable reason on each side: namely, that the one is written of God, and the other with reference to His humanity. For the properties of a body would not have been in the incorporeal unless He had taken a corruptible and mortal body; for Holy Mary, from whom His body came, was mortal. So, necessarily, when He was in a body suffering, weeping, and toiling, these things that are proper to the flesh are attributed to Him together with the body. If, then, He wept and was troubled, it was not the Word, considered as the Word, who wept and was troubled; this was proper to the flesh. And if He also begged that the cup might pass away, it was not the Godhead that was in terror; this passion too was proper to the humanity. And the Evangelists nevertheless declare that the words 'Why have You forsaken Me?' are His, in keeping with the explanations above (though He suffered nothing, for the Word was impassible), since the Lord became man, and these things are done and said as from a man, so that He Himself might lighten these very sufferings of the flesh and free it from them. So the Lord, who is always in the Father, both before He spoke and when He uttered this cry, cannot be forsaken by the Father either. Nor is it right to say that the Lord was in terror, at whom the gatekeepers of hell shuddered and threw hell open, the graves gaped, and many bodies of the saints arose and appeared to their own people. Therefore let every heretic be silent, and not dare to attribute terror to the Lord, from whom death flees like a serpent, at whom demons tremble and the sea is alarmed, for whom the heavens are torn and all the powers are shaken. For look: when He says, 'Why have You forsaken Me?' the Father showed that He was always, and even then, in Him; for the earth, knowing its Lord who spoke, at once trembled, the veil was torn, the sun was hidden, the rocks were split, and the graves, as I have said, gaped, and the dead in them arose; and, what is wonderful, those who were present then and had denied Him before, seeing these signs, confessed that 'truly He was the Son of God.'

And as for His saying, 'If it is possible, let the cup pass,' notice how, though He spoke this way, He rebuked Peter, saying, 'You are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of men.' For He willed what He prayed to be spared, for that was why He had come; but the willing was His (for that was what He came for), while the terror belonged to the flesh. So He speaks this way too as man, and yet both were said by the Same, to show that He was God, willing in Himself, but, having become man, had a flesh that was in terror. For the sake of this flesh He combined His own will with human weakness, so that, destroying this passion, He might in turn make man undaunted in the face of death. Look, then, at a truly strange thing! He to whom Christ's enemies attribute words of terror is the one who by that so-called terror makes people undaunted and fearless. And so the Blessed Apostles after Him conceived from such words of His so great a contempt for death that they did not even mind those who questioned them, but answered, 'We must obey God rather than men.' And the other Holy Martyrs were so bold as to think that they were passing to life rather than undergoing death. Is it not absurd, then, to admire the courage of the servants of the Word, yet say that the Word Himself, through whom they despised death, was in terror? But the unwavering resolve and courage of the Holy Martyrs show that the Godhead was not in terror, but that the Savior took away our terror. For just as He abolished death by death, and all human evils by human means, so by this so-called terror He removed our terror and brought it about that people should never again fear death. His word and deed go together. For the sayings 'Let the cup pass' and 'Why have You forsaken Me?' were human, while the act by which the Same caused the sun to fail and the dead to rise was divine. Again, He said in a human way, 'Now My soul is troubled'; and He said divinely, 'I have authority to lay down My life and authority to take it up again.' For being troubled was proper to the flesh, but having authority to lay down His life and take it up again when He wished was no property of human beings, but of the Word's power. For a man dies not by his own power, but by the necessity of nature and against his will; but the Lord, being immortal Himself but having a mortal flesh, had authority, as God, to separate from the body and to take it up again when He wished. David also speaks of this in the Psalm: 'You will not leave My soul in Hades, nor will You let Your Holy One see corruption.' For it was fitting that the flesh, corruptible as it was, should no longer remain mortal according to its own nature, but should remain incorruptible because of the Word who had put it on. For just as He, having come in our body, was conformed to our condition, so we, receiving Him, share in the immortality that is from Him.

The excuse for stumbling, then, is empty, and the notions of these Ario-maniacs about the Word are petty, because it is written, 'He was troubled' and 'He wept.' For they seem not even to have human feeling, if they are so ignorant of human nature and its properties; and these only make it all the more wonderful that the Word should be in such a suffering flesh, and neither stopped those who were plotting against Him nor took vengeance on those who were putting Him to death, though He was able — He who kept some from dying and raised others from the dead. And He let His own body suffer, for this is why He came, as I said before: so that He might suffer in the flesh, and from then on the flesh might be made impassible and immortal; and so that, as we have said many times, insult and other troubles might end with Him and fall short of others after Him, being completely annulled by Him; and so that from then on people might remain forever incorruptible, as a temple of the Word. Had Christ's enemies dwelt on these thoughts and recognized the Church's scope as an anchor for the faith, they would not have made shipwreck of the faith, nor been so shameless as to resist those who would gladly recover them from their fall, and to treat as enemies those who are urging them to be religious. But, as it seems, a heretic is truly a wicked thing, and his heart is depraved and irreligious in every respect. For look: though refuted on every point and shown to be utterly devoid of understanding, they feel no shame; but just as the hydra of pagan legend, when its former serpents were destroyed, gave birth to fresh ones, fighting the slayer of the old ones by producing new ones, so they too, hostile and hateful to God, like hydras, losing their life in the objections they bring forward, invent for themselves other questions, Jewish and foolish, and new devices, as if the Truth were their enemy, so as to show all the more by this that they are Christ's opponents in all things.

After so many proofs against them, at which even the devil, their father, would himself have been ashamed and retreated, they again mutter other devices as from their perverse heart, sometimes in whispers, sometimes with the drone of gnats: 'Let it be so,' they say; 'interpret these passages this way, and win the victory in reasonings and proofs; still, you must say that the Son received being from the Father by His will and pleasure.' For this is how they deceive many, putting forward the will and the pleasure of God. Now if any of those who believe rightly were to say this in simplicity, there would be no reason to be suspicious of the expression, since the right intention would prevail over that somewhat simple use of words. But since the phrase comes from the heretics, and the words of heretics are suspect — and, as it is written, 'The wicked are deceitful,' and 'The words of the wicked are deceit,' even if they only make signs, for their heart is depraved — come, let us examine this phrase too, so that, though refuted on every side, they may not, like hydras, invent a new word and, by such clever language and plausible evasion, sow that irreligion of theirs again in another way. For whoever says, 'The Son came to be by the Divine will,' means the same as another who says, 'Once He was not,' and 'The Son came to be out of nothing,' and 'He is a creature.' But since they are now ashamed of these phrases, these crafty men have tried to convey their meaning in another way, putting forward the word 'will' as cuttlefish put out their ink, so as to blind the simple with it while keeping their own particular heresy in mind. For where do they get 'by will and pleasure' from? Or from what Scripture? Let them say, they who are so suspect in their words and so inventive of irreligion. For the Father, who revealed His own Word from heaven, declared, 'This is My beloved Son'; and through David He said, 'My heart uttered a good Word'; and He commanded John to say, 'In the beginning was the Word'; and David says in the Psalm, 'With You is the fountain of life, and in Your light we shall see light'; and the Apostle writes, 'who, being the Radiance of Glory,' and again, 'who, being in the form of God,' and 'who is the Image of the invisible God.'

Everywhere all tell us of the being of the Word, but none of His being 'by will,' nor of His being made at all. But where, I ask, did they find will or pleasure 'preceding' the Word of God — unless, of course, leaving the Scriptures, they imitate the perversity of Valentinus? For Ptolemy the Valentinian said that the Unoriginate had a pair of attributes, Thought and Will, and that He first thought and then willed; and what He thought He could not bring forth until the power of the Will was added. The Arians, taking a lesson from this, want will and pleasure to precede the Word. As for them, then, let them rival the doctrine of Valentinus; but we, when we read the divine discourses, found 'He was' applied to the Son, and heard of Him alone as being in the Father and as the Father's Image; while only in the case of originated things, since these too once did not exist by nature but came to be afterward, did we recognize a preceding will and pleasure, as David says in the hundred and thirteenth Psalm, 'As for our God, He is in heaven; He has done whatever pleased Him,' and in the hundred and tenth, 'The works of the Lord are great, sought out for all His good pleasure'; and again in the hundred and thirty-fourth, 'Whatever the Lord pleased, He did in heaven and on earth, in the sea, and in all deep places.' If, then, He is a work and a thing made, and one among others, let Him, like others, be said to have come to be 'by will'; and Scripture shows that these are brought into being this way. And Asterius, the advocate of the heresy, agrees, when he writes this: 'For if it is unworthy of the Maker of all to make at His pleasure, let His being pleased be removed equally in the case of all, so that His Majesty may be kept undiminished. Or if it is fitting for God to will, then let this better way hold in the case of the first Offspring. For it is not possible that it should be fitting for one and the same God to make things at His pleasure, and not also by His will.' Although the Sophist has brought plenty of irreligion into his words — namely, that the Offspring and the thing made are the same, and that the Son is one offspring out of all the offspring that exist — he ends with the conclusion that it is fitting to say that the works are by will and pleasure.

Therefore, if He is other than all things, as has been shown above, and the works came to be through Him instead, let 'by will' not be applied to Him, or He has come to be in the same way as the things that come to be through Him exist. For Paul, though he did not exist before, became an Apostle afterward 'by the will of God'; and our own calling, as something that once did not exist but now takes place afterward, is preceded by will, and, as Paul himself says again, has been made 'according to the good pleasure of His will.' And what Moses relates — 'Let there be light,' 'Let the earth appear,' and 'Let Us make man' — indicates, I think, according to what has gone before, the will of the Agent. For the Maker takes counsel to make things that once did not exist but came about afterward from external causes; but about His own Word, begotten from Him by nature, He did not take counsel beforehand; for it is in Him that the Father makes, in Him that He creates, whatever other things He plans, as James the Apostle also teaches, saying, 'Of His own will He begot us by the Word of truth.' Therefore the Will of God about all things, whether they are born again or brought into being at first, is in His Word, in whom He both makes and regenerates what seems right to Him; as the Apostle again indicates, writing to Thessalonica, 'for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.' But if the will is in the one in whom He makes, and the pleasure of the Father is in Christ, how can He come into being by will and pleasure, like others? For if He too came to be by will, as you maintain, it follows that the will about Him exists in some other Word, through whom He in turn comes to be; for it has been shown that God's will is not in the things He brings into being, but in the one through whom and in whom all things made are brought into being. Next, since it is all the same to say 'by will' and 'Once He was not,' let them make up their minds to say 'Once He was not,' so that, perceiving with shame that times are indicated by the latter, they may understand that to say 'by will' is to place times before the Son; for taking counsel comes before things that once did not exist, as in the case of all creatures. But if the Word is the Maker of the creatures and coexists with the Father, how can taking counsel come before the Everlasting, as if He did not exist? For if counsel comes first, how are all things through Him? For then He too, as one among others, is rather begotten by will to be a Son, as we too were made sons by the Word of Truth; and it remains, as was said, to look for another Word, through whom He too has come to be and was begotten together with all the things that were according to God's pleasure.

If, then, there is another Word of God, let the Son be originated by a word; but if there is not, as is the case, and all things the Father has willed have come to be through Him, does this not expose the many-headed craftiness of these men? For, ashamed to say 'work,' 'creature,' and 'God's Word did not exist before His generation,' they still assert in another way that He is a creature, putting forward 'will' and saying, 'Unless He has come to be by will, then God had a Son by necessity and against His good pleasure.' And who is it, then, who imposes necessity on Him, you most wicked men, who drag everything toward the purpose of your heresy? For they see what is contrary to will; but what is greater than will and goes beyond it has escaped their notice. For as what is against purpose is contrary to will, so what is according to nature goes beyond and comes before taking counsel. A man builds a house by deliberation, but he begets a son by nature; and what is being built began to come into being by will and is external to the builder; but the son is the proper offspring of the father's essence and is not external to him; and so he does not deliberate about him either, or he would appear to be deliberating about himself. As far, then, as the Son surpasses the creature, so far does what is by nature surpass what is by will. And on hearing about Him they ought not to measure what is by nature by will; but, forgetting that they are hearing about God's Son, they dare to apply human opposites — 'necessity' and 'against purpose' — in the case of God, so as to be able to deny that there is a true Son of God. For let them tell us themselves: does it belong to God by will or not that He is good and merciful? If by will, we must consider that He began to be good, and that His not being good is possible; for taking counsel and choosing implies an inclination two ways, and is incidental to a rational nature. But if it is too improper for Him to be called good and merciful by will, then what they have said themselves must be thrown back at them: 'Therefore He is good by necessity and not by His pleasure,' and 'Who is it that imposes this necessity on Him?' But if it is improper to speak of necessity in the case of God, and therefore He is good by nature, much more, and more truly, is He Father of the Son by nature and not by will.

Moreover, let them answer us this (for against their shamelessness I wish to press a further question, bold indeed, but with a reverent intent; be gracious, O Lord!): does the Father Himself exist having first taken counsel and then been pleased, or before taking counsel? For since they are so bold in the case of the Word, they must receive the same answer, so that they may know that this presumption of theirs reaches even to the Father Himself. If, then, they take counsel about will themselves and say that even He is from will, what, then, was He before He took counsel, or what did He gain, as you think, after taking counsel? But if such a question is improper, self-destructive, and shocking even to ask (for it is enough merely to hear God's Name for us to know and understand that He is He who Is), will it not also be against reason to have parallel thoughts about the Word of God and to put forward pretexts of will and pleasure? For in the same way it is enough merely to hear the Name of the Word to know and understand that He who is God not by will has His own Word not by will but by nature. And does it not surpass all conceivable madness even to entertain the thought that God Himself takes counsel, considers, chooses, and goes on to be pleased so that He may not be without Word and without Wisdom, but may have both? For He seems to be deliberating about Himself, who takes counsel about what is proper to His Essence. Since, then, there is much blasphemy in such a thought, it will be reverent to say that originated things have come to be 'by favor and will,' but that the Son is not a work of will, nor has He come afterward like creation, but is by nature the very Offspring of God's Essence. For being the Father's very Word, He does not allow us to think of will as coming before Himself, since He is Himself the Father's Living Counsel and Power, and Maker of the things that seemed good to the Father. And this is what He says of Himself in the Proverbs: 'Counsel is mine, and security; understanding is mine, and strength is mine.' For just as, though He is Himself the 'Understanding' in which He prepared the heavens, and Himself 'Strength and Power' (for Christ is 'God's Power and God's Wisdom'), He has here changed the terms and said, 'Understanding is mine' and 'Strength is mine,' so, while He says, 'Counsel is mine,' He must Himself be the Living Counsel of the Father; as we have also learned from the Prophet, that He becomes 'the Angel of great Counsel' and was called the good pleasure of the Father; for this is how we must refute them, using human illustrations about God.

Therefore, if the works exist 'by will and favor,' and the whole creation is made 'by God's good pleasure,' and Paul was called to be an Apostle 'by the will of God,' and our calling has come about 'by His good pleasure and will,' and all things have come into being through the Word, then He is external to the things that have come to be by will; rather, He is Himself the Living Counsel of the Father, by which all these things have come to be, and for which David also gives thanks in the seventy-second Psalm: 'You have held me by my right hand; You will guide me with Your Counsel.' How, then, can the Word, being the Counsel and Good Pleasure of the Father, come into being Himself 'by good pleasure and will,' like everyone else? Unless, as I said before, in their madness they repeat that He has come into being through Himself, or through someone else. Who, then, is the one through whom He has come to be? Let them fashion another Word, and let them name another Christ, rivaling the doctrine of Valentinus; for it is not Scripture. And even if they fashion another, he too surely comes into being through someone; and so, as we count up and investigate their succession this way, the many-headed heresy of the Atheists is found to end in polytheism and unlimited madness; for in it, wanting the Son to be a creature and from nothing, they imply the same thing in other words by putting forward the words 'will' and 'pleasure,' which rightly belong to originated things and creatures. Is it not irreligious, then, to attribute the characteristics of originated things to the Maker of all? And is it not blasphemous to say that will was in the Father before the Word? For if will comes first in the Father, the Son's words 'I in the Father' are not true; or even if He is in the Father, He will still hold only a second place, and it would not have been fitting for Him to say 'I in the Father,' since will was before Him, in which all things were brought into being and He Himself came to exist, as you hold. For even if He surpasses them in glory, He is no less one of the things that come into being by will. And, as we have said before, if this is so, how is He Lord and they servants? But He is Lord of all, because He is one with the Father's Lordship; and the whole creation is in servitude, since it is external to the Oneness of the Father and, though it once did not exist, was brought into being.

Moreover, if they say that the Son is by will, they should also say that He came to be by understanding; for I consider understanding and will to be the same. For what a person plans, he also has understanding about; and what he has in his understanding, he also plans. Certainly the Savior Himself has made them correspond, as being related, when He says, 'Counsel is mine, and security; understanding is mine, and strength is mine.' For just as strength and security are the same (for they mean one attribute), so we may say that Understanding and Counsel are the same, which is the Lord. But these irreligious men do not want the Son to be Word and Living Counsel; instead they make up a fable that understanding, counsel, and wisdom are with God like a habit, coming and going in the manner of human beings; and they leave nothing undone, and put forward the 'Thought' and 'Will' of Valentinus, if only they may separate the Son from the Father and call Him a creature instead of the proper Word of the Father. To them, then, must be said what was said to Simon Magus: 'May the irreligion of Valentinus perish with you'; and let everyone rather trust Solomon, who says that the Word is Wisdom and Understanding. For he says, 'The Lord founded the earth by Wisdom; by Understanding He established the heavens.' And as here it is by Understanding, so in the Psalms: 'By the Word of the Lord the heavens were made.' And as the heavens were made by the Word, so 'He has done whatever pleased Him.' And as the Apostle writes to the Thessalonians, 'the will of God is in Christ Jesus.' The Son of God, then, is the 'Word' and the 'Wisdom'; He is the 'Understanding' and the Living 'Counsel'; and in Him is the 'Good Pleasure of the Father.' He is the 'Truth,' the 'Light,' and the 'Power' of the Father. But if the Will of God is Wisdom and Understanding, and the Son is Wisdom, whoever says that the Son is 'by will' is in effect saying that Wisdom has come into being in wisdom, the Son is made in a son, and the Word created through the Word; which is incompatible with God and opposed to His Scriptures. For the Apostle proclaims the Son to be the very Radiance and Expression not of the Father's will, but of His Essence Itself, saying, 'who, being the Radiance of His glory and the Expression of His Subsistence.' But if, as we have said before, the Father's Essence and Subsistence is not from will, neither, as is very plain, is what is proper to the Father's Subsistence from will; for as that Blessed Subsistence is, and in the way it is, so must the proper Offspring from It be. And accordingly the Father Himself did not say, 'This is the Son originated by My will,' nor 'the Son whom I have by My favor,' but simply 'My Son,' and more than that, 'in whom I am well pleased,' meaning by this: This is the Son by nature, and 'in Him My will about what pleases Me is lodged.'

Since, then, the Son is by nature and not by will, is He without the pleasure of the Father and not in keeping with the Father's will? No, truly; the Son is in keeping with the pleasure of the Father, and, as He says Himself, 'The Father loves the Son and shows Him all things.' For just as He did not begin to be good 'from will,' and yet is not good without will and pleasure (for His pleasure is also what He is), so too, though the Son's existence did not come 'from will,' it is still not without His pleasure or against His purpose. For just as His own Subsistence is by His pleasure, so also the Son, being proper to His Essence, is not without His pleasure. Let the Son, then, be the object of the Father's pleasure and love; and in this way let everyone think reverently of the pleasure and the willingness of God. For by the good pleasure by which the Son is the object of the Father's pleasure, the Father is the object of the Son's love, pleasure, and honor; and the good pleasure that is from the Father in the Son is one, so that here too we may contemplate the Son in the Father and the Father in the Son. So let no one, with Valentinus, introduce a preceding will; nor let anyone, by this pretext of 'counsel,' intrude between the Only Father and the Only Word; for it would be madness to place will and deliberation between them. For it is one thing to say, 'He came to be by will,' and another to say that the Father has love and good pleasure toward His Son, who is His own by nature. For to say, 'He came to be by will,' in the first place implies that once He did not exist; and next it implies an inclination two ways, as has been said, so that one might suppose that the Father could even not will the Son. But to say of the Son, 'He might not have existed,' is an irreligious presumption reaching even to the Essence of the Father, as if what is His own might not have existed. For it is the same as saying, 'The Father might not have been good.' And as the Father is always good by nature, so He is always generative by nature; and to say, 'The Father's good pleasure is the Son,' and 'The Word's good pleasure is the Father,' implies not a preceding will, but genuineness of nature, and the proper relation and likeness of Essence. For just as, in the case of the radiance and the light, one might say that no will precedes radiance in the light, but that it is its natural offspring, by the pleasure of the light that begot it, not by will and deliberation but in nature and truth, so also in the case of the Father and the Son one might rightly say that the Father has love and good pleasure toward the Son, and the Son has love and good pleasure toward the Father.

Therefore do not call the Son a work of good pleasure, nor bring the doctrine of Valentinus into the Church; let Him be the Living Counsel, and Offspring in truth and nature, as the Radiance is from the Light. For this is how the Father has spoken: 'My heart uttered a good Word'; and the Son in agreement: 'I in the Father and the Father in Me.' But if the Word is in the heart, where is will? And if the Son is in the Father, where is good pleasure? And if He is Will Himself, how is counsel in Will? It is improper, or the Word would come into being in a word, the Son in a son, and Wisdom in a wisdom, as has been said repeatedly. For the Son is the Father's All; and nothing was in the Father before the Word; but will too is in the Word, and through Him the things willed are carried out, as holy Scriptures have shown. And I wish that these irreligious men, having fallen into such lack of reason as to be deliberating about will, would no longer ask their childbearing women, as they used to, 'Did you have a son before conceiving him?' but would ask the fathers, 'Do you become fathers by deliberation, or by the natural law of your will?' or 'Are your children like your nature and essence?' — so that they may learn shame even from fathers, from whom they took this proposition about birth and from whom they hoped to gain knowledge on the point. For they will reply to them, 'What we beget is like not our good pleasure but ourselves; nor do we become parents by prior deliberation, but begetting is proper to our nature; for we too are images of our fathers.' Either, then, let them condemn themselves and stop asking women about the Son of God, or let them learn from them that the Son is begotten not by will, but in nature and truth. A refutation from human examples is fitting and suitable for them, since these perverse-minded men argue about the Godhead in a human way. Why, then, are Christ's enemies still mad? For this, like their other pretexts, is shown and proved to be mere fantasy and fable; and for this reason they ought, however late, seeing the cliff of folly over which they have fallen, to rise again from the depth and flee the snare of the devil, as we urge them. For the Truth loves humankind and cries out continually, 'If you do not believe Me because of My clothing of the body, still believe the works, so that you may know that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, and I and the Father are one, and whoever has seen Me has seen the Father.' But the Lord, as usual, loves humankind and would gladly 'help those who have fallen,' as the praise of David says; but the irreligious men, not wanting to hear the Lord's voice, nor able to bear seeing Him acknowledged by all as God and God's Son, go about like beetles, miserable men, looking with their father the devil for pretexts for irreligion. What pretexts, then, will they be able to find next, and where? Unless they borrow blasphemies from the Jews and Caiaphas, and take atheism from the Gentiles? For the divine Scriptures are closed to them, and they are refuted from every part of them as senseless and enemies of Christ.