On the Trinity, Book 7

This is the seventh book of our treatise against the wild extravagance of modern heresy. In order of place it must follow the books before it; in order of importance, as an exposition of the mysteries of the right faith, it comes before them all and surpasses them. I know well how hard and steep the path of gospel teaching is that we are climbing. The fears that come from awareness of my own inadequacy are pulling me back, but the warmth of faith urges me on; the attacks of heresy make my blood boil, and the dangers facing the ignorant stir my compassion. I am afraid to speak, and yet I cannot be silent. A double dread overpowers my spirit; either speech or silence may make me guilty of deserting the truth. For this cunning heresy has fenced itself in with marvelous devices of perverted ingenuity. First there is the appearance of devotion; then language carefully chosen to lull the suspicions of an open-minded listener; next, the adapting of their views to secular philosophy; and finally, the drawing of attention away from plain truth by a pretended explanation of how God works. Their loud profession of the unity of God is a fraudulent imitation of the faith; their assertion that Christ is the Son of God is a play on words to deceive their hearers; their saying that He did not exist before He was born is a bid for the support of the world's philosophers; their confession of God as incorporeal and immutable leads, through a show of fallacious logic, to a denial of the birth of God from God. They turn our arguments against us; the Church's faith is made the instrument of its own destruction. They have managed to trap us in the perplexing position of facing an equal danger whether we reason with them or refrain. For they use the fact that we let certain of their assumptions pass unchallenged as an argument in favor of those we do contradict.

We recall that in the earlier books the reader was urged to study the whole of that blasphemous manifesto, and to notice how it is driven throughout by the single aim of spreading the belief that our Lord Jesus Christ is neither God nor Son of God. Its authors argue that He is permitted to use the names of God and of Son by virtue of a kind of adoption, though neither Godhead nor Sonship is His by nature. They use the fact, true in itself, that God is immutable and incorporeal as an argument against the birth of the Son from Him. They value the truth that God the Father is One only as a weapon against our faith in the Godhead of Christ, pleading that an incorporeal nature cannot rationally be conceived as generating another, and that our faith in One God is inconsistent with the confession of God from God. But our earlier books have already refuted and defeated this argument of theirs by appealing to the Law and the Prophets. Our defense has followed the course of their attack step by step. We have set forth God from God and at the same time confessed One true God, showing that this presentation of the faith neither falls short of the truth by ascribing a single Person to the One true God, nor adds to the faith by asserting the existence of a second Deity. For we confess neither an isolated God nor two Gods. So, neither denying that God is One nor maintaining that He is alone, we keep to the straight road of truth. Each Divine Person is in the Unity, yet no Person is the One God. Next, since our purpose is to demonstrate the irrefutable truth of this mystery from the evidence of the Evangelists and Apostles, our first task has been to acquaint our readers with the nature of the Son of God, truly subsisting and truly born; to demonstrate that He has no origin outside God and was not created out of nothing, but is the Son, born from God. This is a truth that the evidence cited in the last book has placed beyond all doubt. The claim that He bears the name of Son by adoption has been silenced, and He stands out as a true Son by a true birth. Our present task is to prove from the Gospels that, because He is the true Son, He is also true God. For unless He is true Son He cannot be true God, nor true God unless He is true Son.

Nothing troubles human nature more than the sense of impending danger. If unknown or unexpected disasters happen to us, we may need pity, but we have been free from worry; no load of anxiety has weighed on us. But someone whose mind is full of possible troubles already suffers torment in his fear. I, who am now setting out to sea, am a sailor no stranger to shipwreck, a traveler who knows from experience how bandits lurk in the forests, an explorer of African deserts aware of the danger from scorpions and asps and basilisks. I never have a moment's relief from knowing and fearing the danger at hand. Every heretic is on the watch, noting every word as it falls from my mouth. The whole course of my argument is infested with ambushes and pitfalls and snares. It is not the road, its hardness or steepness, that I complain about; I am following in the footsteps of the Apostles, not choosing my own path. My trouble is the constant peril, the constant dread, of wandering into some ambush, of stumbling into some pit, of being caught in some net. My purpose is to proclaim the unity of God, in the sense of the Law and Prophets and Apostles. Sabellius is at hand, eager with cruel kindness to welcome me on the strength of this unity and swallow me up in his own destruction. If I resist him and deny that God is One in the Sabellian sense, a fresh heresy is ready to receive me, pointing out that I teach the existence of two Gods. Again, if I undertake to explain how the Son of God was born from Mary, Photinus, the Ebion of our day, will be quick to twist this statement of the truth into a confirmation of his lie. I need mention no other heresies but one; the whole world knows they are foreign to the Church. It is one that has often been denounced, often rejected, yet it still feeds on our vitals. Galatia has raised a large brood of godless champions of the unity of God. Alexandria has sown far and wide, over almost the whole world, her denial, which is really an affirmation, of the doctrine of two Gods. Pannonia upholds her pestilent doctrine that the only birth of Jesus Christ was from the Virgin. And the Church, torn by these rival faiths, is in danger of being led by means of truth into rejecting truth. Doctrines are being forced on her for godless ends, and depending on the use made of them, they will either support or overthrow the faith. For instance, as true believers we cannot assert that God is One if we mean by it that He is alone; for faith in a lonely God denies the Godhead of the Son. If, on the other hand, we assert, as we truly can, that the Son is God, we are in danger, so they foolishly imagine, of abandoning the truth that God is One. We are in peril on either side; we may deny the unity, or we may maintain the isolation. But it is a danger that holds no terrors for the foolish things of the world. Our adversaries are blind to the fact that His assertion that He is not alone is consistent with unity; that though He is One, He is not solitary.

But I trust that the Church, by the light of her doctrine, will so enlighten the world's vain wisdom that, even if it does not accept the mystery of the faith, it will recognize that in our conflict with heretics we, and not they, are the true representatives of that mystery. For the force of truth is great; not only is it its own sufficient witness, but the more it is attacked, the more evident it becomes; the daily shocks it receives only increase its inherent stability. It is the distinctive property of the Church that when she is battered she triumphs, when she is attacked with argument she proves herself right, when her supporters desert her she holds the field. She wishes all people to remain at her side and in her embrace; if it were up to her, no one would become unworthy to stay under the shelter of that revered mother, no one would be cast out or allowed to leave her calm refuge. But when heretics desert her or she expels them, the loss she suffers, since she cannot save them, is made up for by a stronger assurance that she alone can offer bliss. This is a truth that the passionate zeal of rival heresies brings into the clearest view. The Church, ordained by the Lord and established by His Apostles, is one for all; but the frantic folly of quarreling sects has cut them off from her. And it is obvious that these disputes about the faith come from a distorted mind, which twists the words of Scripture to fit its opinion instead of adjusting that opinion to the words of Scripture. And so, amid the clash of mutually destructive errors, the Church is revealed not only by her own teaching but by that of her rivals. All of them are lined up against her; and the very fact that she stands single and alone is a sufficient answer to their godless delusions. The hosts of heresy gather against her; each of them can defeat all the others, but not one can win a victory for itself. The only victory is the triumph that the Church celebrates over them all. Each heresy wields against its adversary some weapon that the Church's condemnation has already shattered in another case. There is no common ground between them, and the outcome of their struggles against one another is the confirmation of the faith.

Sabellius sweeps away the birth of the Son and then preaches the unity of God; but he does not doubt that the mighty Nature that acted in the human Christ was God. He shuts his eyes to the revealed mystery of the Sonship; the works done seem to him so marvelous that he cannot believe that the One who performed them could undergo a true generation. When he hears the words, Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father also, he jumps to the blasphemous conclusion that Father and Son share an inseparable and indistinguishable identity of nature, because he fails to see that the revelation of the birth is the way Their unity of nature is shown to us. For the fact that the Father is seen in the Son proves the Son's Divinity; it does not disprove His birth. So our knowledge of Each of Them depends on our knowledge of the Other, for there is no difference of nature between them, and since in this respect they are One, a reverent study of the character of Either will give us true insight into the nature of Both. For it is certain that He Who was in the form of God must, in revealing Himself, present Himself to us in the exact aspect of the form of God. Again, this perverse and insane delusion draws further encouragement from the words, I and the Father are One. From the fact of unity in the same nature they have impiously deduced a confusion of Persons; their interpretation, that the words mean a single Power, contradicts the sense of the passage. For I and the Father are One does not indicate a solitary God. The use of the conjunction and shows clearly that more than one Person is meant; and are requires a plural subject. Moreover, the One does not rule out a birth. It means that the Two Persons have the one nature in common. The One rules out difference; the are rules out identity.

Set our modern heresy in battle order against the equally wild delusion of Sabellius; let each of them make the best case it can. The new heretics will put forward the passage. The Father is greater than I. Ignoring the mystery of the Divine birth, and the mystery of God's emptying Himself and taking flesh, they will argue from His statement that the Father is greater that His nature is inferior. They will plead against Sabellius that Christ is a Son, insofar as One can be a Son Who is inferior to the Father and needs to ask to be restored to His glory, and is afraid to die and in fact did die. In reply Sabellius will cite His deeds as evidence of His Divine nature; and while our new heresy, to avoid admitting Christ's true Sonship, will wholeheartedly agree with him that God is One, Sabellius will emphatically assert the same article of the faith in the sense that no Son exists. One side stresses the action of the Son; the other urges that God is manifest in that action. The one will demonstrate the unity, the other disprove the identity. Sabellius will defend his position like this: The works that were done could have been done by no nature but the Divine. Sins were forgiven, the sick were healed, the lame ran, the blind saw, the dead lived. Only God has power for this. The words I and the Father are One could only have been spoken from self-knowledge; no nature other than the Father's could have uttered them. Why then suggest a second substance and urge me to believe in a second God? These works belong to God alone; the One God performed them. His adversaries, driven by an equally venomous hatred of the faith, will argue that the Son is unlike God the Father in nature: You are ignorant of the mystery of your salvation. You must believe in a Son through Whom the worlds were made, through Whom man was formed, Who gave the Law through Angels, Who was born of Mary, Who was sent by the Father, was crucified, died and was buried, Who rose again from the dead and is at the right hand of God, Who is the Judge of the living and the dead. We must rise again to Him, we must confess Him, we must earn our place in His kingdom. Each of the two enemies of the Church is fighting the Church's battle. Sabellius shows Christ to be God by the witness of the Divine nature displayed in His works; Sabellius' opponents confess Christ to be the Son of God on the evidence of the revealed faith.

Again, what a glorious victory for our faith it is when Ebion — in other words, Photinus — both wins the day and loses it! He rebukes Sabellius for denying that the Son of God is Man, and in turn has to endure the reproaches of Arian fanatics for failing to see that this Man is the Son of God. Against Sabellius he calls on the Gospels for help, with their evidence about the Son of Mary; Arius takes this ally from him by proving that the Gospels make Christ something more than the Son of Mary. Sabellius denies that there is a Son of God; against him Photinus raises man to the place of Son. Photinus will not hear of a Son born before the worlds; against him, Arius denies that the only birth of the Son of God was His human birth. Let them defeat one another to their hearts' content, for every victory that either of them wins is balanced by a defeat. Our present adversaries are routed on the question of the Divine nature of the Son; Sabellius on the question of the Son's revealed existence; Photinus is convicted of ignorance, or else of falsehood, in denying the Son's birth before the worlds. Meanwhile the Church, whose faith rests on the teaching of the Evangelists and Apostles, holds fast to her assertion against Sabellius that the Son exists; against Arius, that He is God by nature; against Photinus, that He created the universe. And she is all the more convinced of her faith because they cannot unite to contradict it. For Sabellius points to the works of Christ as proof of the Divinity of the One Who performed them, though he does not know that the Son was their Author. The Arians grant Him the name of Son, though they do not confess that the true nature of God dwelt in Him. Photinus maintains His manhood, though in maintaining it he forgets that Christ was born as God before the worlds. So, in their various assertions and denials, there are points on which each heresy is right, in defense or in attack; and the result of their conflicts is that the truth of our confession is brought into clearer light.

I felt that I had to spend a little space pointing this out. I have not done it from any love of elaboration, but so that it might serve as a warning. First, I wanted to expose the vague and confused character of this crowd of heresies, whose feuds with one another, as we have seen, work to our advantage. Second, in my warfare against the blasphemous doctrines of modern heresy, that is, in my task of proclaiming that both God the Father and God the Son are God — in other words, that Father and Son are One in name, One in nature, One in the kind of Divinity they possess — I wanted to shield myself from any charge that might be brought against me of advocating either two Gods or one lonely and isolated Deity. For in God the Father and God the Son, as I have presented them, no confusion of Persons can be detected; nor can any difference between the Godhead of the One and of the Other be found in my account of Their common nature. In the previous book I have sufficiently refuted, from the witness of the Gospels, those who deny that God the Son subsists by a true birth from God; my present task is to show that He Who in the truth of His nature is Son of God is also in the truth of His nature God. But this proof must not sink into the fatal profession of a solitary God, or of a second God. It will show God as One yet not alone; but in its care to avoid the error of making Him lonely, it will not fall into the error of denying His unity.

So we have all these different assurances of the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ: His name, His birth, His nature, His power, His own assertion. As for the name, I think no doubt is possible. It is written, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. What reason can there be for suspecting that He is not what His name indicates? And does this name not clearly describe His nature? If a statement is contradicted, there must be some reason for it. What reason, I ask, is there in this case for denying that He is God? The name is given to Him plainly and distinctly, unqualified by any incongruous addition that might raise a doubt. The Word that was made flesh, we read, was none other than God. There is no loophole here for any such conjecture as that He received this name as a favor or took it on Himself, and so possesses a Godhead in title only, which is not His by nature.

Consider the other recorded cases in which this name was given as a favor or assumed. To Moses it was said, I have made you a god to Pharaoh. Does not this addition, to Pharaoh, explain the title? Did God give Moses the Divine nature? Did He not rather make Moses a god in the sight of Pharaoh, who was to be struck with terror when Moses' serpent swallowed the magic serpents and turned back into a rod, when he drove back the venomous flies he had called up, when he stopped the hail by the same power with which he had summoned it, and made the locusts leave by the same might that had brought them; when the magicians saw the finger of God in the wonders he performed? That was the sense in which Moses was appointed to be a god to Pharaoh; he was feared and pleaded with, he punished and healed. It is one thing to be appointed a god; it is another thing to be God. He was made a god to Pharaoh; he did not have the nature and the name in which God consists. I recall another case of the name being given as a title, where it is written, I have said, You are gods. But this is clearly the granting of a favor. I have said proves that it is no definition, only a description by One Who chooses to speak this way. A definition gives us knowledge of the object defined; a description depends on the arbitrary will of the speaker. When a speaker is plainly conferring a title, that title originates only in the speaker's words, not in the thing itself. The title is not the name that expresses its nature and kind.

But in this case the Word is truly God; the essence of the Godhead exists in the Word, and that essence is expressed in the Word's name. For the name Word belongs inherently to the Son of God as a consequence of His mysterious birth, as do the names Wisdom and Power. These, together with the substance that is His by a true birth, were called into existence to be the Son of God; yet, since they are the elements of God's nature, they still remain within Him, undiminished, although they were born from Him to be His Son. For, as we have said so often, the mystery we preach is that of a Son Who owes His existence not to division but to birth. He is not a segment cut off, and so incomplete, but an Offspring born, and therefore perfect; for birth involves no diminishing of the Begetter, and makes perfection possible for the Begotten. And so the titles of those substantive properties are applied to God the Only-begotten, for when He came into existence by birth, it was they that made up His perfection; and this even though in doing so they did not desert the Father, in Whom, by the immutability of His nature, they are eternally present. For instance, the Word is God the Only-begotten, and yet the Unbegotten Father is never without His Word. This does not mean that the nature of the Son is that of a sound that is uttered. He is God from God, subsisting through a true birth; God's own Son, born from the Father, indistinguishable from Him in nature, and therefore inseparable. This is the lesson His title of the Word is meant to teach us. And in the same way Christ is the Wisdom and the Power of God; not that He is, as He is often regarded, the inward activity of the Father's might or thought, but that His nature, which through birth possesses a true substantial existence, is indicated by these names of inward forces. For an object that has by birth an existence of its own cannot be regarded as a property; a property necessarily belongs to some being and can have no independent existence. But it was to keep us from concluding that the Son is foreign to the Divine nature of His Father that He, the Only-begotten from the eternal God His Father, born as God into a substantial existence of His own, has had Himself revealed to us under these names of properties, of which the Father, out of Whom He came into existence, has suffered no loss. So He, being God, is nothing other than God. For when I hear the words, And the Word was God, they do not merely tell me that the Son was called God; they reveal to my understanding that He is God. In those earlier cases, where Moses was called a god and others were called gods, a name was merely added as a title. Here a solid essential truth is stated; The Word was God. That was indicates no accidental title but an eternal reality, a permanent element of His existence, an inherent character of His nature.

And now let us see whether the confession of Thomas the Apostle, when he cried out, My Lord and My God, agrees with this assertion of the Evangelist. We see that he speaks of Him, Whom he confesses to be God, as My God. Now Thomas was certainly familiar with those words of the Lord, Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is One. How then could an Apostle's faith become so forgetful of that first command as to confess Christ as God, when life depends on confessing the Divine unity? It was because, in the light of the Resurrection, the whole mystery of the faith had become visible to the Apostle. He had often heard such words as, I and the Father are One, and, All things that the Father has are Mine, and, I in the Father and the Father in Me; and now he can confess that the name of God expresses the nature of Christ without endangering the faith. Without breaking his loyalty to the One God, the Father, his devotion could now regard the Son of God as God, since he believed that everything in the nature of the Son was truly of the same nature as the Father. He no longer needed to fear that a confession like his was the proclamation of a second God, a betrayal of the unity of the Divine nature; for it was not a second God Whom that perfect birth of the Godhead had brought into being. So it was with full knowledge of the mystery of the Gospel that Thomas confessed his Lord and his God. It was not a title of honor; it was a confession of nature. He believed that Christ was God in substance and in power. And the Lord, in turn, shows that this act of worship expressed not mere reverence but faith, when He says, Because you have seen, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and have believed. For Thomas had seen before he believed. But, you ask, What was it that Thomas believed? Beyond a doubt, what is expressed in his words, My Lord and my God. No nature but God's could have risen by its own might from death to life; and it is this fact, that Christ is God, that Thomas confessed with the confidence of an assured faith. Are we, then, to imagine that His name of God is not a substantial reality, when that name has been proclaimed by a faith based on certain evidence? Surely a Son devoted to His Father, One Who did not do His own will but the will of Him Who sent Him, Who did not seek His own glory but the glory of Him from Whom He came, would have rejected the adoration that such a name involves as destructive of the unity of God that had been the central theme of His teaching. Yet in fact He confirms this assertion of the mysterious truth made by the believing Apostle; He accepts as His own the name that belongs to the nature of the Father. And He teaches that those are blessed who, though they have not seen Him rise from the dead, have still believed, on the assurance of the Resurrection, that He is God.

So the name that expresses His nature proves the truth of our confession of the faith. For the name that indicates any single substance also points to any other substance of the same kind; and in this instance there are not two substances but one substance, of the one kind. For the Son of God is God; this is the truth His name expresses. The one name does not include two Gods; for the one name God is the name of one indivisible nature. For since the Father is God and the Son is God, and the name that properly belongs to the Divine nature is inherent in Each, the Two are One. For though the Son subsists through a birth from the Divine nature, He still preserves the unity in His name; and this birth of the Son does not force loyal believers to acknowledge two Gods, since our confession declares that Father and Son are One, both in nature and in name. So the Son of God has the Divine name as the result of His birth. The second step in our demonstration was to show that He is God by virtue of His birth. I still have to bring forward the evidence of the Apostles that the Divine name is used of Him in its exact sense; but for now I intend to continue our inquiry into the language of the Gospels.

And first I ask: what new element, destructive of His Godhead, could birth have brought into the nature of the Son? All reason rejects the idea that a being can become different in nature, through the process of birth, from the being that gave it birth; although we recognize that parents of different kinds may produce an offspring that shares the nature of both, yet differs from either. This is a familiar fact with animals, both tame and wild. But even in this case there is no real novelty; the new qualities already exist, hidden in the two different parental natures, and are only brought out by their union. The birth of their joint offspring is not the cause of that offspring's difference from its parents. The difference is their gift of various distinct traits, which are received and combined in one body. When this is how even bodily differences are passed on and received, is it not a kind of madness to claim that the birth of God the Only-begotten was the birth from God of a nature inferior to Himself? For giving birth is a function of the true nature of the one who passes on life; and without the presence and action of that true nature there can be no birth. The goal of all this heat and passion is to prove that the Son of God was not born but created; that the Divine nature is not His origin and that He does not possess that nature in His personal subsistence, but draws from what did not exist a nature different in kind from the Divine. They are angry because He says, What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is Spirit. For since God is a Spirit, it is clear that in One born from Him there can be nothing foreign to or different from the Spirit from which He was born. So the birth of God makes Him perfect God. And this also makes it clear that we must not say that He began to exist, but only that He was born. For in one sense beginning is different from birth. A thing that begins to exist either comes into existence out of nothing, or develops from one state into another, ceasing to be what it was before; so, for instance, gold forms out of earth, solids melt into liquids, cold changes to warmth, white to red, water breeds moving creatures, and lifeless objects turn into living ones. In contrast to all this, the Son of God did not begin to be God out of nothing, but was born as God; nor did He have an existence of another kind before the Divine. So He Who was born to be God had neither a beginning of His Godhead nor a development up to it. His birth kept for Him the nature out of which He came into being; the Son of God, in His distinct existence, is what God is, and is nothing else.

Again, anyone who is in doubt about this matter may gain an accurate knowledge of Christ's nature from the Jews; or rather, may learn from the Gospel that He was truly born, where it is written, Therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was His own Father, making Himself equal with God. Unlike most others, this passage does not give us the words the Jews spoke, but the Apostle's explanation of their motive for wanting to kill the Lord. We see that no plea of misunderstanding can excuse the wickedness of these blasphemers; for we have the Apostle's evidence that the true nature of Christ was fully revealed to them. They could speak of His birth: He said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God. Was His birth not clearly a birth of nature from nature, when He proclaimed the equality of His nature by calling God, by name, His own Father? Now it is evident that equality consists in the absence of difference between those who are equal. Is it not also evident that birth must result in a nature in which there is no difference between Son and Father? And this is the only possible origin of true equality; birth can bring into existence only a nature equal to its origin. But again, we can no more hold that there is equality where there is confusion than where there is difference. So equality, as of the image, is incompatible with isolation and with diversity; for equality cannot live with difference, nor in solitude.

And now, although we have found the sense of Scripture, as we understand it, in harmony with the conclusions of ordinary reason, the two agreeing that equality is incompatible with either diversity or isolation, we must still look for fresh support for our position in the actual words of our Lord. For only in this way can we check the license of arbitrary interpretation by which these bold slanderers of the faith would dare to quibble even with the Lord's solemn self-revelation. His answer to the Jews was this: The Son can do nothing of Himself but what He sees the Father do; for whatever things He does, the Son also does these likewise. For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does; and He will show Him greater works than these, so that you may marvel. For as the Father raises up the dead and gives them life, so too the Son gives life to whomever He wills. For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him. As I had planned it in my mind, the course of our argument required that each separate point of the debate be handled on its own; that, since we had been taught that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God in name, in birth, in nature, in power, in self-revelation, our demonstration of the faith should establish each point in turn, in that order. But His birth stands in the way of treating the question like this; for considering it includes considering His name and nature and power and self-revelation. For His birth involves all these, and they are His by the fact that He is born. And so our argument about His birth has taken a course that makes it impossible for us to hold these other matters back for separate discussion in their turn.

The chief reason the Jews wanted to kill the Lord was that, by calling God His Father, He had made Himself equal with God; and so He framed His answer, in which He rebuked their evil passion, as an exposition of the whole mystery of our faith. For just before this, when He had healed the paralytic and they had judged Him worthy of death for breaking the Sabbath, He had said, My Father works until now, and I work. Their jealousy had been inflamed to the utmost because, in this use of the name of Father, He raised Himself to the level of God. And now He wants to assert His birth and to reveal the powers of His nature, and so He says, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do. These opening words of His reply are aimed at that wicked zeal of the Jews, which drove them on even to the desire to kill Him. It is in answer to the charge of breaking the Sabbath that He says, My Father works until now, and I work. He wanted them to understand that His practice was justified by Divine authority; and by the same words He taught them that His work must be regarded as the work of the Father, Who was working in Him all that He did. And again, it was to calm the jealousy stirred up by His calling God His Father that He spoke those words, Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do. So that His making Himself equal to God, as having the name and nature of God's Son, would not draw people's faith away from the truth that He had been born, He says that the Son can do nothing but what He sees the Father do. Next, to confirm the saving harmony of truths in our confession of Father and Son, He displays this nature that is His by birth; a nature that draws its power of action not from successive gifts of strength to do particular deeds, but from knowledge. He shows that this knowledge is not imparted by the Father performing some bodily work as a pattern, so that the Son may imitate what the Father has done before; but that, by the action of the Divine nature, He had come to share the subsistence of the Divine nature, or, in other words, had been born as Son from the Father. He told them that, because the power and the nature of God dwelt consciously within Him, it was impossible for Him to do anything He had not seen the Father doing; that, since God the Only-begotten performs His works in the might of the Father, His freedom of action matches in range His knowledge of the powers of the nature of God the Father; a nature inseparable from Himself, and lawfully His by virtue of His birth. For God does not see in a bodily way, but possesses by His nature the vision of Omnipotence.

The next words are, For whatever things He— the Father — does, the Son also does these likewise. This likewise is added to indicate His birth; whatever and same, to indicate the true Divinity of His nature. Whatever and same make it impossible for there to be any actions of His that are different from, or outside, the actions of the Father. So He, Whose nature has power to do all the same things as the Father, is included in the same nature with the Father. But when, by contrast, we read that all these same things are done by the Son likewise, the fact that the works are like those of Another rules out the idea that He Who does them works in isolation. So the same things that the Father does are all done likewise by the Son. Here we have clear proof of His true birth, and at the same time convincing testimony to the Mystery of our faith, which, founded on the Unity of the nature of God, confesses that an indivisible Divinity resides in Father and Son. For the Son does the same things as the Father, and does them likewise; while acting in like manner, He does the same things. Two truths are combined in one statement: that His works are done likewise proves His birth; that they are the same works proves His nature.

So the progressive revelation in our Lord's reply agrees with the progressive statement of truth in the Church's confession of faith. Neither of them divides the nature, and both declare the birth. For Christ's next words are, For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does; and He will show Him greater works than these, so that you may marvel. For as the Father raises up the dead, and gives them life, so too the Son gives life to whomever He wills. Can this revelation of the way God works have any purpose other than to teach the true birth: the faith in a subsisting Son born from the subsisting God, His Father? The only other explanation is that God the Only-begotten was so ignorant that He needed the instruction conveyed in this showing; but the reckless blasphemy of the suggestion rules out this alternative. For He knows everything He is taught, and so has no need of the teaching. And so, after the words, The Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does, we are next told that all this showing is for our instruction in the faith: so that the Father and the Son may have their equal share in our confession, and so that this statement, that the Father shows all He does to the Son, may save us from the delusion that the Son's knowledge is imperfect. With this aim He goes on to say, And He will show Him greater works than these, so that you may marvel. For as the Father raises up the dead and gives them life, so too the Son gives life to whomever He wills. We see that the Son has full knowledge of the future works that the Father will show Him later. He knows that He will be shown how, following His Father's example, He is to give life to the dead. For He says that the Father will show the Son things at which they will marvel; and He at once goes on to tell them what these things are: For as the Father raises up the dead and gives them life, so too the Son gives life to whomever He wills. The power is equal because the nature is one and the same. The showing of the works is an aid not to ignorance in Him, but to faith in us. It gives the Son no knowledge of unknown things, but it gives us the confidence to proclaim His birth, by assuring us that the Father has shown Him all the works that He Himself can do. The terms used in this Divine discourse have been chosen with the utmost care, so that no vagueness of language would suggest a difference of nature between the Two. Christ says that the Father's works were shown to Him, instead of saying that a mighty nature was given to Him to enable Him to perform them. By this He wants to reveal to us that this showing was an essential part of the process of His birth, since, at the same moment as that birth, the Father's love imparted to Him a knowledge of the works the Father willed Him to do. And again, so that this statement about the showing does not lead us to suppose that the Son's nature is ignorant and therefore different from the Father's, He makes it clear that He already knows the things that are to be shown to Him. Indeed, He is so far from needing the authority of precedent to enable Him to act that He is to give life to whomever He wills. To will implies a free nature, subsisting with power to choose in the blissful exercise of omnipotence.

And next, so that giving life to whomever He wills would not seem to lie beyond the power of One Who has been truly born, and to be only the prerogative of unbegotten Omnipotence, He quickly adds, For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son. The statement that all judgment is given teaches both His birth and His Sonship; for only a nature that is entirely one with the Father's could possess all things; and a Son can possess nothing except by gift. But all judgment has been given Him, for He gives life to whomever He wills. Now we cannot suppose that judgment is taken away from the Father, although He does not exercise it; for the Son's whole power of judgment comes from the Father's, as a gift from Him. And the reason judgment has been given to the Son is not hidden, for the words that follow are, But He has given all judgment to the Son, so that all people may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father Who sent Him. What possible excuse is left for doubt, or for the irreverence of denial? The reason for the gift of judgment is that the Son may receive honor equal to the honor paid to the Father; and so whoever dishonors the Son is guilty of dishonoring the Father as well. After this proof, how can we imagine that the nature given Him by birth is different from the Father's, when He is the Father's equal in work, in power, in honor, in the punishment given to opponents? So this whole Divine reply is nothing other than an unfolding of the mystery of His birth. And the only distinction it is right or possible to make between Father and Son is that the Son was born; yet born in such a way as to be One with His Father.

So the Father works until now, and the Son works. In Father and Son you have the names that express Their nature in relation to Each other. Note also that what is working here is the Divine nature, the nature through which God works. And so that you do not fall into the error of imagining that the operation of two unlike natures is described here, remember what was said about the blind man: But so that the works of God may be revealed in him, I must work the works of Him who sent Me. You see that in his case the work the Son does is the Father's work, and the Son's work is God's work. The rest of the discourse we are considering also deals with works; but for now my defense is concerned only with assigning the whole work to Both, and showing that They are united in Their way of working, since the Son is engaged in the work that the Father does until now. The sanction in this fact, that by virtue of His Divine birth the Father works with Him in all that He does, will keep us from supposing that the Lord of the Sabbath did wrong by working on the Sabbath. His Sonship is not affected, for His Divinity is neither confused with the Father's nor denied; His Godhead is not affected, for His Divine nature is untouched. Their unity is not affected, for no difference appears that would separate Them; and Their unity is not presented in a way that contradicts Their distinct existence. First recognize the Sonship of the Son: The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do. Here His birth is evident; because of it He can do nothing of Himself until He sees it being done. He cannot be unbegotten, because He can do nothing of Himself; He has no power to initiate, and so He must have been born. But the fact that He can see the Father's works proves that He has the understanding that belongs to the conscious Possessor of Divinity. Next, notice that He does possess this true Divine nature: For whatever things He does, the Son also does these likewise. And now that we have seen Him endowed with the powers of that nature, notice how this results in unity, how one nature dwells in the Two: So that all people may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. And then, so that reflecting on this unity does not entangle you in the delusion of a solitary, self-contained God, take to heart the mystery of the faith revealed in these words, Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father Who sent Him. The rage and cunning of heresy may do their worst; our position is impregnable. He is the Son, because He can do nothing of Himself; He is God, because whatever the Father does, He does the same; the Two are One, because He is equal in honor to the Father and does the very same works; He is not the Father, because He is sent. How great is the wealth of mysterious truth contained in this one doctrine of the birth! It includes His name, His nature, His power, His self-revelation; for everything conveyed to Him in His birth must be contained in the nature from which His birth comes. No element of any substance different in kind from that of His Author is introduced into His nature, for a nature that springs from one nature only must be entirely one with the nature that is its parent. A unity is that which contains no discordant elements and is one in kind with itself; a unity constituted through birth cannot be solitary; for solitude can have only a single occupant, while a unity constituted through birth implies the joining of Two.

And further, let His own Divine words bear witness to Himself. He says, Those who are My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of My hand. What My Father has given Me is greater than all, and no one will be able to snatch them out of My Father's hand. I and the Father are one. What lethargy can so completely blunt the edge of our understanding as to make so precise a statement obscure to us for even a moment? What proud sophistry can play such tricks on human docility as to persuade those who have learned from these words what God is that they must not recognize God in Him Whose Godhead was revealed to them here? Heresy ought either to bring forward other Gospels to support its doctrine; or else, if our existing Gospels are the only documents that teach about God, why do they not believe the lessons they teach? If they are the only source of knowledge, why not draw faith, as well as knowledge, from them? Yet now we find that their faith is held in defiance of their knowledge; and so it is a faith rooted not in knowledge but in sin; a faith of bold irreverence, instead of reverent humility, toward the truth they admit they know. God the Only-begotten, as we have seen, fully assured of His own nature, reveals the mystery of His birth with the utmost precision of language. He reveals it, ineffable as it is, in such a way that we can believe and confess it; that we can understand that He was born and believe that He has the nature of God and is One with the Father, and One with Him in such a sense that God is not alone, nor is Son another name for Father, but that He truly is the Son. For, first, He assures us of the powers of His Divine nature, saying of His sheep, and no one will snatch them out of My hand. This confession of free and irresistible energy, which will allow no one to snatch His sheep from His hand, is the utterance of conscious power. But more than this: not only does He have the nature of God, but He wants us to know that the nature is His by birth from God, and so He adds, What the Father has given Me is greater than all. He makes no secret of His birth from the Father, for He says that what He received from the Father is greater than all. And He Who received it received it at His birth, not after His birth; and yet it came to Him from Another, for He received it. But He Who received this gift from Another forbids us to suppose that He Himself is different in kind from that Other and does not eternally subsist with the same nature as the One Who gave the gift, by saying, No one will be able to snatch them out of My Father's hand. No one can snatch them out of His hand, for He has received from His Father what is greater than all things. What, then, does this contradictory assertion mean, that no one can snatch them from His Father's hand? It is the Son's hand that received them from the Father, and the Father's hand that gave them to the Son: in what sense is it said that what cannot be snatched from the Son's hand cannot be snatched from the Father's hand? Listen, if you want to know: I and the Father are one. The Son's hand is the Father's hand. For the Divine nature does not deteriorate or cease to be the same in passing through birth; nor does this sameness stand in the way of our faith in the birth, for in that birth no foreign element was admitted into His nature. And here He speaks of the Son's hand, which is the hand of the Father, so that through a bodily likeness you may learn the power of the one Divine nature that is in Both; for the nature and the power of the Father are in the Son. And finally, so that in this mysterious truth of the birth you may discern the true and indistinguishable unity of the nature of God, the words were spoken, I and the Father are One. They were spoken so that in this unity we might see neither difference nor solitude; for They are Two, and yet no second nature came into being through that true birth and generation.

If I read them rightly, these maddened souls still have the same desire, though they have lost the opportunity to fulfill it. Their bitter hearts still nurse a longing to do harm that they can no longer hope to satisfy. The Lord is on His throne in heaven, and the furious hatred of heresy cannot drag Him to the Cross, as the Jews did. But the spirit of unbelief is the same, though now it takes the form of rejecting His Godhead. They defy His words, though they cannot deny that He spoke them. They vent their hatred in blasphemy; instead of stones, they hurl abuse. If they could, they would bring Him down from His throne to be crucified a second time. When the newness of Christ's teaching made the Jews angry, we read, So the Jews took up stones to stone Him. He answered them, I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of those works are you stoning Me? The Jews answered Him, We are not stoning You for a good work, but for blasphemy, and because You, being a man, make Yourself God. Heretic, I ask you to recognize your own deeds and your own words in this. You may be sure that you are their partner, for you have modeled yourself on their unbelief. It was at the words, I and the Father are One, that the Jews took up stones. Their godless irritation at the revelation of that saving mystery drove them on even to try to kill Him. There is no one for you to stone; but is your guilt in denying Him any less than theirs? The will is the same, though His throne in heaven frustrates it. No, you are more impious than the Jew. He raised his stone against the Body; you raise yours against the Spirit. He raised it against a man, as he thought; you, against God. He raised it against a temporary resident on earth; you, against Him Who sits on the throne of majesty. He raised it against One Whom he did not know; you, against Him Whom you confess. He raised it against the mortal Christ; you, against the Judge of the universe. The Jew says, Being a man; you say, 'Being a creature.' You and he raise the same cry, Make Yourself God, with the same blasphemous insolence. You deny that He is God begotten of God; you deny that He is the Son by a true birth; you deny that His words, I and the Father are One, assert one and the same nature in Both. In His place you foist on us a new, a strange, an alien god; you make Him a God of a different kind from the Father, or else not God at all, since you hold that He does not subsist by a birth from God.

The mystery in those words, I and the Father are One, makes you angry. The Jew answered, You, being a man, make Yourself God; your blasphemy matches his: 'You, being a creature, make Yourself God.' In effect you say, 'You are not a Son by birth, and You are not truly God; You are a creature who excels all other creatures. But You were not born to be God, for I refuse to believe that the incorporeal God gave birth to Your nature. You and the Father are not One. What is more: You are not the Son, You are not like God, You are not God.' The Lord had an answer for the Jews, one that fits your blasphemy even better than it fit theirs: Is it not written in the Law, I said, You are gods? So if He called them gods to whom the word of God came, and the Scripture cannot be broken, do you say of Me, Whom the Father has sanctified and sent into this world, that I have blasphemed because I said, I am the Son of God? If I do not do the works of the Father, do not believe Me; but if I do, and you will not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know and be sure that the Father is in Me, and I in Him. The content of this reply was dictated by the content of the blasphemous attack on Him. The accusation was that He, being a man, made Himself God. As proof of this charge they cited His own statement, I and the Father are One. So He sets out to prove that the Divine nature, which is His by birth, gives Him the right to assert that He and the Father are One. He begins by exposing how absurd, as well as how insolent, it was to charge Him with making Himself God although He was a man. The Law had given the title to holy men; the word of God, which allows no appeal, had sanctioned the public use of the name. What blasphemy, then, could there be when He Whom the Father had sanctified and sent into the world took the title of Son of God? The unalterable record of the Word of God has confirmed the title for those to whom the Law assigned it. So the charge that He, being a man, makes Himself God comes to nothing, since the Law gives the name of gods to those who are admittedly men. Further, if other men may use this name without blasphemy, there can obviously be no blasphemy when the Man Whom the Father has sanctified uses it — and note here that throughout this argument He calls Himself Man, for the Son of God is also Son of Man — since He excels the rest, who are nonetheless guilty of no irreverence in calling themselves gods. He excels them in that He has been consecrated to be the Son, as the blessed Paul says when he teaches us about this sanctification: Which He had promised beforehand through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning His Son, Who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, and was appointed to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of sanctification. So the accusation that He blasphemed by making Himself God falls to the ground. For the Word of God has given this name to many men, and He, Whom the Father sanctified and sent, did no more than proclaim Himself the Son of God.

I think there can be no remaining doubt that the words, I and the Father are One, were spoken about the nature that is His by birth. The Jews had rebuked Him because by these words He, being a man, made Himself God. The course of His answer proves that in saying I and the Father are One, He did declare Himself the Son of God, first in name, then in nature, and finally by birth. For I and Father are the names of substantive Beings; One declares Their nature, namely, that it is essentially the same in Both; are forbids us to confuse Them with each other; and are one, while forbidding confusion, teaches that the unity of the Two is the result of a birth. All this truth is drawn from that name, the Son of God, which He, sanctified by the Father, gives to Himself; and His right to that name is confirmed by His statement, I and the Father are One. For birth cannot give the offspring any nature other than the nature of the parent from whom that offspring is born.

Once again, God the Only-begotten has summed up for us, in His own words, the whole revealed mystery of the faith. After answering the charge that He, being a man, made Himself God, He set out to show that His words, I and the Father are One, are a clear and necessary conclusion; and so He continued His argument this way — You say that I have blasphemed because I said, I am the Son of God. If I do not do the works of the Father, do not believe Me; but if I do, and you will not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know and be sure that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father. After this, a heresy that still keeps on its course commits a willful outrage in knowing despair; what unbelief asserts is deliberate shamelessness. Those who assert it take pride in folly and are dead to the faith, for contradicting this saying is not ignorance but madness. The Lord had said, I and the Father are One; and the mystery of His birth that He revealed was the unity of Father and Son in nature. Again, when He was accused of claiming the Divine nature, He justified the claim by giving a reason: If I do not do the works of the Father, do not believe Me. We are not to believe His assertion that He is the Son of God unless He does His Father's works. From this we see that His birth has given Him no new or alien nature, for His doing the Father's works is to be our reason for believing that He is the Son. What room is there here for adoption, or for mere permission to use the name, or for denying that He was born from the nature of God, when the proof that He is God's Son is that He does the works that belong to the Father's nature? No creature is equal to God or like Him, and no nature outside His own compares with Him in might; the Son, born from Himself, is the only one we can liken to Him and make His equal without blasphemy. Nothing outside Himself can be compared to God without insulting His exalted majesty. If any being not born from God Himself can be found that is like Him and equal to Him in power, then God, by admitting a partner to share His throne, forfeits His preeminence. God is no longer One, for a second being, indistinguishable from Him, has arisen. On the other hand, there is no insult in making His own true Son His equal. For then what is like Him is His own; what is compared with Him is born from Himself; the Power that can do His own works is not outside Him. What is more, it actually heightens His glory that He has begotten Omnipotence and yet has not severed that Omnipotent nature from Himself. The Son performs the Father's works, and on that basis demands that we believe that He is God's Son. This is not a claim of mere arrogance, for He bases it on His works and tells us to examine them. And He testifies that these works are not His own, but His Father's. He does not want the splendor of the deeds to distract our thoughts from the evidence for His birth. And because the Jews could not see through the mystery of the Body He had taken, the Humanity born of Mary, and recognize the Son of God, He appeals to His deeds to confirm His right to the name — But if I do them, and you will not believe Me, believe the works. First, He does not want them to believe that He is the Son of God except on the evidence of the works of God that He does. Next, if He does the works and yet, in His bodily humility, seems unworthy to bear the Divine name, He demands that they believe the works. Why should the mystery of His human birth keep us from recognizing His birth as God, when He Who is Divinely born fulfills every Divine task through the Manhood He has assumed? If we do not believe the Man when He tells us that He is the Son of God, let us, for the works' sake, believe the works, since they are beyond doubt the works of God and are clearly performed by the Son of God. For by virtue of His birth the Son of God possesses everything that is God's; and so the Son's work is the Father's work, because His birth has not excluded Him from the nature that is His source and in which He remains, and because He has in Himself the nature to which He owes His eternal existence.

And so the Son, Who does the Father's works and demands that, if we do not believe Him, we at least believe His works, is bound to tell us what it is that the works are meant to make us believe. And He does tell us, in the words that follow: But if I do, and you will not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know and be sure that the Father is in Me, and I in Him. It is the same truth that is contained in I am the Son of God and in I and the Father are One. This is the nature that is His by birth; this is the mystery of the saving faith: we must not divide the unity or separate the nature from the birth, but must confess that the living God was truly born from the living God. God, Who is Life, is not a Being built up of various lifeless parts; He is Power, not composed of feeble elements; Light, mixed with no shades of darkness; Spirit, which can be in harmony with nothing incongruous. All that is within Him is One; what is Spirit is Light and Power and Life, and what is Life is Light and Power and Spirit. He Who says, I am, and I do not change, can undergo neither change in detail nor transformation in kind. For the attributes I have named are not attached to different parts of Him, but meet and unite, entirely and perfectly, in the whole being of the living God. He is the living God, the eternal Power of the living Divine nature; and what is born from Him, according to the mysterious truth He reveals, could not be anything but living. For when He said, As the living Father has sent Me, and I live through the Father, He taught that it is through the living Father that He has life in Himself. Moreover, when He said, For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has also granted the Son to have life in Himself, He testified that life in its fullest measure is His gift from the living God. If the living Son was born from the living Father, then that birth took place without any new nature coming into existence. Nothing new comes into existence when the Living is begotten by the Living, for life was not sought out from the nonexistent in order to be born; and Life, which receives its birth from Life, must, because of that unity of nature and because of the mysterious event of that perfect and ineffable birth, always live in Him Who lives and have the life of the Living in Himself.

I recall that at the beginning of our treatise, I warned that human analogies correspond imperfectly to their Divine counterparts, but that comparing the Divine with visible types gives our understanding a real, if incomplete, enlightenment. Now I appeal to human experience of birth: don't parents keep within themselves the source of their children's being? For although the lifeless and lowly matter that sets the beginnings of life in motion passes from one parent into the other, both parents keep their own natural powers. They have brought into existence a nature one with their own, and so the begetter is bound up with the existence of the begotten; and the begotten, born through a force that the begetter transmits and yet does not lose, remains in that begetter. That is enough of an account of what happens in a human birth. It falls short as a parallel to the perfect birth of God the Only-begotten, for humanity is born in weakness and from the union of two unlike natures, and is kept alive by a combination of lifeless substances. Again, humanity does not immediately begin to exercise its appointed life and never fully lives that life, since it is always burdened with a multitude of members that decay and are imperceptibly shed. In God, on the other hand, the Divine life is lived in the fullest sense, for God is Life; and nothing that is not truly living can be born from Life. And His birth does not come by way of emanation but results from an act of power. So, since God's life is perfect in its intensity, and since what is born from Him is perfect in power, God has the power to give birth but not to undergo change. His nature can increase, not diminish, for He continues in the Son and shares the life of the Son, to Whom He gave in birth a nature like His own and inseparable from it. And that Son, the Living born from the Living, is not separated by the event of His birth from the nature that begot Him.

Another analogy that sheds some light on the meaning of the faith is fire, which contains fire in itself and dwells in fire. Fire contains the brightness of light, the heat that is its essential nature, the property of destroying by burning, and the flickering inconstancy of flame. Yet all the while it is fire, and in all these manifestations there is only one nature. Its weakness is that it depends for its existence on flammable matter and dies with the matter it has lived on. A comparison with fire gives us some insight into the incomparable nature of God; finding God's properties present, to a certain extent, in an earthly element helps us believe in them. So I ask whether there is any division or separation in fire derived from fire. When one flame is lit from another, is the original nature cut off from the derived one, so that it does not dwell in it? Doesn't it rather carry on and dwell in the second flame by a kind of increase, as if by birth? For no portion has been cut off from the nature of the first flame, and yet there is light from light. Doesn't the first flame live on in the second, which owes its existence to the first, though not by division? Doesn't the second still dwell in the first, from which it was not cut off, and from which it went out while keeping its unity with the substance its nature belongs to? Aren't the two one, when it is physically impossible to derive light from light by division, and logically impossible to distinguish between them in nature?

I repeat: these illustrations must be used only as aids to understanding the faith, not as standards of comparison for the Divine majesty. Our method is to use bodily examples as a clue to the invisible. Reverence and reason justify our using such help, which we find used in God's witness to Himself, though we do not aspire to find a parallel to the nature of God. But the mad heretical objection that it is wrong to accept a doctrine about God that needs the help of bodily analogies to become intelligible has distressed the minds of simple believers. So, in keeping with the word of our Lord that we have already cited, What is born of the flesh is flesh, but what is born of the Spirit is Spirit, we have thought it useful, since God is Spirit, to give these comparisons a certain place in our argument. In doing so we will defend God against the charge that He has deceived us by using these analogies, since we have shown that such illustrations from the nature of His creatures enable us to grasp the meaning of God's self-revelation to us.

We see how the living Son of the living Father, He Who is God from God, reveals in these words, I and the Father are One, both the unity of the Divine nature, indissolubly One and the same, and the mystery of His birth. Because the apparent arrogance of the words stirred up prejudice against Him, He made it clearer that He had spoken in conscious possession of Divinity by saying, You say that I have blasphemed because I said, I am the Son of God; in this way He showed that the oneness of His nature with God's nature was due to His birth from God. Then, to clinch their faith in His birth with a positive assertion, and at the same time to keep them from imagining that the birth involves a difference of nature, He crowns His argument with the words, Believe the works, that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father. Does His birth, as revealed here, show His Divinity to be not His by nature, not His own by right? Each is in the Other; the birth of the Son is from the Father alone; no alien or unlike nature has been raised to Godhead and subsists as God. God from God, eternally existing, owes His Godhead to no one other than God. Bring two gods into the Church's faith, if you see your chance; separate the Son from the Father as far as the birth you admit allows; still the Father is in the Son, and the Son is in the Father, and this not by any interchange of emanations but by the perfect birth of the living nature. So you cannot add God the Father and God the Son together and count Them as two Gods, for the Two of Them are One God. You cannot confuse Them with each other, for the Two of Them are not One Person. And so the Apostolic faith rejects two gods, for it knows nothing of two Fathers or two Sons. In confessing the Father it confesses the Son; in believing in the Father it believes in the Son. For the name Father implies the name Son, since no one can be a father without having a son. Evidence that a son exists is proof that there has been a father, for a son cannot exist except from a father. When we confess that God is One, we deny that He is solitary; for the Son is the complement of the Father, and the Son owes His existence to the Father. But birth brings no change in the Divine nature; in both Father and Son that nature is true to its kind. And the right way for us to express this unity of nature is to confess that They, being Two by birth and generation, are One God, not one Person.

We will leave the preaching of two Gods to anyone who can preach One God without confessing the unity; only someone who can deny that there are two Persons, Each dwelling in the Other by the power of Their nature and the mystery of birth given and received, will proclaim that God is solitary. And only someone who does not know that the unity of Father and Son is a revealed truth may assign a different nature to Each of the Two. Let the heretics blot out this record of the Son's self-revelation, I in the Father and the Father in Me; then, and only then, may they assert that there are two Gods, or one God in loneliness. Nothing we are told about Their possession of the one Divine nature hints at more natures than one. The truth that God is from God does not multiply God into two; the birth destroys the notion of a lonely God. And again, because They are interdependent, They form a unity; and Their being One from One proves that They are interdependent. For the One, in begetting the One, gave Him nothing that was not His own; and the One, in being begotten, received from the One only what belongs to one. So the apostolic faith, in proclaiming the Father, will proclaim Him as One God, and in confessing the Son will confess Him as One God; since one and the same Divine nature exists in Both, and since the Father is God and the Son is God, and the one name of God expresses the nature of Both, the term 'One God?' signifies the Two. God from God, or God in God, does not mean that there are two Gods, for God remains, One from One, eternally with the one Divine nature and the one Divine name; nor does God dwindle to a single Person, for One and One can never be in solitude.

The Lord has not left the teaching conveyed in this great mystery doubtful or obscure; He has not abandoned us to lose our way in dim uncertainty. Listen to Him as He reveals the full knowledge of this faith to His Apostles; I am the Way and the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through Me. If you know Me, you know My Father also; and from now on you shall know Him, and have seen Him. Philip says to Him, Lord, show us the Father, and that is enough for us. Jesus says to him, Have I been with you for so long a time, and you have not known Me, Philip? Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father also. How can you say, Show us the Father? Do you not believe Me, that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own, but the Father who dwells in Me, He does His works. Believe Me, that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me; or else believe because of the works themselves. He Who is the Way does not lead us onto side paths or into trackless wastes; He Who is the Truth does not mock us with lies; He Who is the Life does not betray us into delusions that are death. He Himself has chosen these winning names to indicate the methods He has appointed for our salvation. As the Way, He will guide us to the Truth; the Truth will establish us in the Life. And so it is all-important for us to know the mysterious way of attaining this life that He reveals. No one comes to the Father except through Me. The way to the Father is through the Son. And now we must inquire whether this is to happen by a course of obedience to His teaching, or by faith in His Godhead. For it is conceivable that our way to the Father may lie in adhering to the Son's teaching, rather than in believing that the Godhead of the Father dwells in the Son. So let us next seek out the true meaning of the instruction given to us here. For we will come to possess this faith not by clinging to a preconceived opinion, but by studying the force of the words.

The words that follow those just cited are, If you know Me, you know My Father also. It is the Man, Jesus Christ, Whom they see. How can knowing Him be knowing the Father? For the Apostles see Him in the form of the human nature that belongs to Him; but God is not burdened with body and flesh, and cannot be known by those who live in our weak and fleshly body. The Lord gives the answer, asserting that beneath the flesh He had taken in a mystery, His Father's nature dwells within Him. He sets out the facts in their proper order like this — If you know Me, you know My Father also; and from now on you shall know Him, and have seen Him. He distinguishes between the time of sight and the time of knowledge. He says that from now on they shall know Him Whom they had already seen; and so, from the time of this revelation onward, they shall possess the knowledge of that nature on which they had long gazed in Him.

But the strange sound of these words disturbed the Apostle Philip. A Man is before their eyes; this Man declares Himself the Son of God, and says that when they have known Him they will know the Father. He tells them that they have seen the Father, and that, because they have seen Him, they shall know Him from now on. This truth is too broad for weak humanity to grasp; their faith fails in the face of these paradoxes. Christ says that the Father has been seen already and shall now be known; and He says this although sight is itself knowledge. He says that if the Son has been known, the Father has been known also; and He says this even though the Son has given knowledge of Himself through the bodily senses of sight and hearing, while the Father's nature, altogether different from the nature of the visible Man, a nature they know, could not be learned from their knowledge of the nature of Him Whom they have seen. He has also often testified that no one has seen the Father. And so Philip burst out, with the loyalty and confidence of an Apostle, with the request, Lord, show us the Father, and that is enough for us. He was not tampering with the faith; it was only a mistake made in ignorance. For the Lord had said that the Father had been seen already and would be known from then on; but the Apostle had not understood that He had been seen. So he did not deny that the Father had been seen, but asked to see Him. He did not ask for the Father to be unveiled to his bodily sight, but for some indication that would enlighten him about the Father Who had been seen. For he had seen the Son in the form of a Man, but cannot understand how he could have seen the Father by this. His adding, And that is enough for us, to the prayer, Lord, show us the Father, clearly reveals that it was a mental, not a bodily, vision of the Father that he desired. He did not refuse to believe the Lord's words, but asked for such enlightenment of his mind as would enable him to believe; for the fact that the Lord had spoken was conclusive evidence to the Apostle that faith was his duty. What moved him to ask that the Father be shown was that the Son had said that He had been seen, and would be known because He had been seen. There was no presumption in this prayer that He, Who had already been seen, should now be revealed.

And so the Lord answered Philip like this — Have I been with you for so long a time, and you have not known Me, Philip? He rebukes the Apostle for his defective knowledge of Him; for earlier He had said that when He was known, the Father was known also. But what does this complaint mean, that for so long they had not known Him? It means this: if they had known Him, they would have recognized in Him the Godhead that belongs to His Father's nature. For His works were works proper to God alone. He walked on the waves, commanded the winds, plainly, though no one could tell how, changed the water into wine and multiplied the loaves, put demons to flight, healed diseases, restored injured limbs and repaired the defects of nature, forgave sins and raised the dead to life. And He did all this while wearing flesh; and He accompanied the works with the claim that He was the Son of God. That is why He rightly complains that they did not recognize, in His mysterious human birth and life, the action of the nature of God, performing these deeds through the Manhood He had assumed.

And so the Lord reproached them for not having known Him, though He had been doing these works for so long, and answered their prayer that He show them the Father by saying, Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father also. He was not speaking of a bodily manifestation, of perception by the eye of flesh, but of perception by that eye He had once spoken of — Do you not say, There are still four months, and then the harvest comes? Behold, I say to you, Lift up your eyes and look at the fields; for they are white for harvest. The season of the year and the fields white for harvest are allusions equally incompatible with an earthly, visible view. He was telling them to lift the eyes of their understanding to contemplate the bliss of the final harvest. And so it is with His present words, Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father also. It was not the fleshly body He had received by birth from the Virgin that could show them the image and likeness of God. The human form He wore could give no help toward the mental vision of the incorporeal God. But God was recognized in Christ by those who recognized Christ as the Son on the evidence of the powers of His Divine nature; and recognizing God the Son produces recognition of God the Father. For the Son is the Image in such a sense as to be One in kind with the Father, and yet to indicate that the Father is His Origin. Other images, made of metals or colors or other materials by various arts, reproduce the appearance of the objects they represent. Yet can lifeless copies be put on a level with their living originals? Can painted or carved or cast effigies be put on a level with the nature they imitate? The Son is not the Image of the Father in this kind of way; He is the living Image of the Living. The Son who is born of the Father has a nature in no way different from His; and, because His nature is not different, He possesses the power of that nature, which is the same as His own. The fact that He is the Image proves that God the Father is the Author of the birth of the Only-begotten, Who is Himself revealed as the Likeness and Image of the invisible God. And so the likeness, which is joined in union with the Divine nature, is indelibly His, because the powers of that nature are inalienably His own.

This is the meaning of the passage, Have I been with you for so long a time, and you have not known Me, Philip? Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father also. How can you say, Show us the Father? Do you not believe Me, that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? It is only of the Word of God that we men are enabled to reason in our discourse about Divine things. Everything else that belongs to the Godhead is dark and difficult, dangerous and obscure. If anyone proposes to express what is known in words other than those God supplies, he must inevitably either display his own ignorance or leave his readers' minds in utter perplexity. When the Lord was asked to show the Father, He said, Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father also. Whoever would alter this is an antichrist, whoever would deny it is a Jew, whoever is ignorant of it is a Pagan. If we find ourselves in difficulty, let us blame our own reason; if God's declaration seems wrapped in obscurity, let us assume that our lack of faith is the cause. These words state precisely that God is not solitary, and yet that there are no differences within the Divine nature. For the Father is seen in the Son, and this could not be the case if He were a lonely Being, nor if He were unlike the Son. It is through the Son that the Father is seen: and the mystery the Son reveals is that They are One God, but not one Person. What other meaning can you give this saying of the Lord's, Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father also? This is not a case of identity; the conjunction also shows that the Father is named in addition to the Son. These words, The Father also, are incompatible with the notion of an isolated and single Person. The only possible conclusion is that the Father was made visible through the Son, because They are One and are alike in nature. And so that our faith on this point would not be left in any doubt, the Lord went on, How can you say, Show us the Father? The Father had been seen in the Son; how then could men be ignorant of the Father? What need could there be for Him to be shown?

Again, the unity of Begetter and Begotten, shown in sameness of nature and true oneness of kind, proves that the Father was seen in His true nature. And the Lord's next words show this, Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The fact that Father and Son, being alike in nature, are inseparable cannot be stated in any words other than these, which the Son has used. The Son, Who is the Way and the Truth and the Life, is not deceiving us with some theatrical change of names and appearances when, while wearing Manhood, He calls Himself the Son of God. He is not falsely concealing the fact that He is God the Father; He is not a single Person Who hides His features under a mask so that we may imagine that Two are present. He is not a solitary Being, now posing as His own Son and now calling Himself the Father, dressing up one unchanging nature with different names. The plain honesty of the words is far removed from this. The Father is the Father, and the Son is the Son. But these names, and the realities they represent, introduce no innovation into the Divine nature, nothing inconsistent, nothing alien. For the Divine nature, being true to itself, persists in being itself; what is from God is God. The Divine birth brings neither diminution nor difference into the Godhead, for the Son is born into, and subsists with, a nature that is within the Divine nature and is like it, and the Father sought no alien element to mingle in the nature of His Only-begotten Son, but endowed Him with all things that are His own, and did so without loss to the Giver. And so the Son is not lacking the Divine nature, for, being God, He is from God and from no other; and He is not different from God, but is indeed nothing other than God, for what is begotten from God is the Son, and the Son only, and the Divine nature, in receiving birth as a Son, has not forfeited its Divinity. So the Father is in the Son, the Son is in the Father, God is in God. And this is not by the combination of two harmonious but different kinds of being, nor by a larger substance exerting its power to incorporate a lesser one; for the properties of matter make it impossible for things that enclose others also to be enclosed by them. It is by the birth of living nature from living nature. The substance remains the same; birth causes no deterioration in the Divine nature; God is not born from God to be anything other than God. In this there is no innovation, no estrangement, no division. It is sin to believe that Father and Son are two Gods, sacrilege to assert that Father and Son are one solitary God, blasphemy to deny the unity of God from God, a unity consisting in sameness of kind.

So that those whose faith conforms to the Gospel would not regard this mystery as something vague and obscure, the Lord has explained it in this order — Do you not believe Me, that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own, but the Father who dwells in Me, He does His works. What other words than these could ever have declared, or could declare now, the possession of the Divine nature by Father and Son, while keeping the Son's birth prominent? When He says, The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own, He neither suppresses His personality, nor denies His Sonship, nor conceals the presence in Himself of His Father's Divine nature. While speaking about Himself — and the pronoun I proves that He does so speak — He speaks as one who remains in the Divine substance; while not speaking on His own, He bears witness to the birth of God from God His Father that took place in Him. And He is inseparable and indistinguishable from the Father in unity of nature; for He speaks, though He does not speak on His own. He Who speaks, though He does not speak on His own, must exist, since He speaks; and, since He does not speak on His own, He makes it plain that His words are not His own. For He has added, But the Father who dwells in Me, He does His works. That the Father dwells in the Son proves that the Father is not isolated and alone; that the Father works through the Son proves that the Son is not an alien or a stranger. There cannot be only one Person, for He does not speak on His own; and, conversely, They cannot be separate and divided when the One speaks through the voice of the Other. These words are the revelation of the mystery of Their unity. And again, the Two are not different from One Another, since by Their inherent nature Each is in the Other; and They are One, since He Who speaks does not speak on His own, and He Who does not speak on His own still does speak. And then, having taught that the Father both spoke and worked in Him, the Son establishes this perfect unity as the rule of our faith — But the Father who dwells in Me, He does His works. Believe Me, that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me; or else believe because of the works themselves. The Father works in the Son; but the Son also works the works of His Father.

And therefore, so that we would not believe and say that the Father works in the Son through His own omnipotent energy, and not through the Son's possession of the Divine nature as His birthright, Christ says, Believe Me, that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me. What does this mean, Believe Me? Clearly it refers back to the earlier words, Show us the Father. Their faith — the faith that had demanded that the Father be shown — is confirmed by this command to believe. He was not content to say, Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father also. He goes further and expands our knowledge, so that we can contemplate the Father in the Son, remembering all the while that the Son is in the Father. In this way He would save us from the error of imagining a reciprocal emanation of the One into the Other, by teaching Their unity in the One nature through birth given and received. The Lord wants us to take Him at His word, so that our hold on the faith is not shaken by His condescension in assuming Humanity. If His flesh, His body, His passion seem to make His Godhead doubtful, let us at least believe, on the evidence of the works, that God is in God and God is from God, and that They are One. For by the power of Their nature Each is in the Other. The Father loses nothing that is His by its being in the Son, and the Son receives His whole Sonship from the Father. Bodily natures are not made in such a way that they contain each other, or possess the perfect unity of one enduring nature. For them it would be impossible for an Only-begotten Son to exist eternally, inseparable from the true Divine nature of His Father. Yet this is the distinctive property of God the Only-begotten, this the faith revealed in the mystery of His true birth, this the work of the Spirit's power: that for Christ, to be and to be in God are the same thing; and that this being in God is not the presence of one thing within another, like a body inside another body, but that the life and subsistence of Christ are such that He is within the subsisting God, and within Him, yet has a subsistence of His own. For Each subsists in such a way as not to exist apart from the Other, since They are Two through birth given and received, and so only one Divine nature exists. This is the meaning of the words, I and the Father are One, and Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father also, and I in the Father and the Father in Me. They tell us that the Son Who is born is not different from or inferior to the Father; that His possession, by right of birth, of the Divine nature as Son of God, and so His being nothing other than God, is the supreme truth conveyed in the mysterious revelation of the One Godhead in Father and Son. And so the doctrine of the generation of the Only-begotten is free of ditheism, for the Son of God, in being born into the Godhead, manifested in Himself the nature of God His Begetter.