On the Trinity, Book 9

In the last book we discussed the indistinguishable nature of God the Father and God the Son, and showed that the words, I and the Father are One, serve to prove not a solitary God, but a unity of the Godhead unbroken by the birth of the Son: for God can be born only of God, and He who is born God from God must be all that God is. We reviewed the sayings of our Lord and the Apostles that teach the inseparable nature and power of the Father and the Son, not exhaustively, but enough to make our meaning clear; and we came to the passage in the Apostle's teaching where he says, Take care that no one leads you astray through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, and not according to Christ; for in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. We pointed out that here the words, in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, prove that He is true and perfect God of His Father's nature, neither separating Him from the Father nor identifying Him with the Father. On the one hand, we are taught that, since the incorporeal God dwelt in Him bodily, the Son, as God begotten of God, is in natural unity with the Father; on the other hand, if God dwelt in Christ, this proves the birth of the personal Christ in Whom He dwelt. In this way, it seems to me, we have more than answered the irreverence of those who explain as a unity or agreement of will such words of the Lord as, He who has seen Me has seen the Father, or, The Father is in Me and I in the Father, or, I and the Father are One, or, All things that the Father has are Mine. Not daring to deny the words themselves, these false teachers, wearing the mask of religion, corrupt the sense of the words. For instance, it is true that where the unity of nature is proclaimed, the agreement of will cannot be denied; but in order to set aside the unity that follows from the birth, they profess merely a relationship of mutual harmony. But the blessed Apostle, after many unquestionable statements of the real truth, cuts short their rash and profane claims by saying, in Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, for the bodily indwelling of the incorporeal God in Christ teaches the strict unity of Their nature. So it is not a matter of words but a real truth that the Son was not alone, but the Father remained in Him; and not only remained, but also worked and spoke; and not only worked and spoke, but also revealed Himself in Him. Through the Mystery of the birth, the Son's power is the power of the Father, His authority the Father's authority, His nature the Father's nature. By His birth the Son possesses the nature of the Father: as the Father's image, He reproduces from the Father all that is in the Father, because He is the reality as well as the image of the Father; for a perfect birth produces a perfect image, and the fullness of the Godhead dwelling bodily in Him shows the truth of His nature.

All this is indeed so: He Who is by nature God from God must possess the nature of His origin, the nature God possesses, and the indistinguishable unity of a living nature cannot be divided by the birth of a living nature. Yet even so, the heretics, under cover of the saving confession of the Gospel faith, are creeping forward to overthrow the truth: by forcing their own interpretations on words spoken with other meanings and intentions, they are robbing the Son of His natural unity. So, to deny the Son of God, they cite the authority of His own words, Why do you call Me good? No one is good except one, God. These words, they say, proclaim the Oneness of God; so anything else that shares the name of God cannot possess the nature of God, for God is One. And from His words, This is eternal life, that they should know You the only true God, they try to establish the theory that Christ is called God by a mere title, not because He is true God. Further, to exclude Him from the proper nature of the true God, they cite, The Son can do nothing of Himself except what He has seen the Father do. They also use the text, The Father is greater than I. Finally, when they repeat the words, No one knows that day or that hour, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only, as though they were an absolute renunciation of His claim to divinity, they boast that they have overthrown the faith of the Church. The birth, they say, cannot raise to equality a nature that the limitation of ignorance degrades. The Father's omniscience and the Son's ignorance reveal unlikeness in the Divinity, for God must be ignorant of nothing, and the ignorant cannot be compared with the omniscient. They neither understand any of these passages rationally, nor distinguish the occasions on which they were spoken, nor grasp them in the light of the Gospel mysteries, nor take them in the strict meaning of the words; and so they attack the divine nature of Christ with crude and senseless rashness, quoting single, detached sayings to catch the ears of the unwary, and holding back either what follows and explains them or the incidents that prompted them, though the meaning of words must be sought in the context before or after them.

Later we will offer an explanation of these texts in the words of the Gospels and Epistles themselves. But first we think it right to remind those who share our common faith that the knowledge of the Eternal is presented in the same confession that gives eternal life. Whoever does not know that Christ Jesus was true God, as He was true man, does not and cannot know his own life. It is equally dangerous to deny that Christ Jesus was God the Spirit or that He was flesh of our body: So everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess before My Father who is in Heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven. So said the Word made flesh; so taught the man Jesus Christ, the Lord of majesty, appointed Mediator in His own person for the salvation of the Church, and, in that very mystery of Mediatorship between men and God, Himself one Person, both man and God. For He, being of two natures united for that Mediatorship, is the full reality of each nature; while remaining in each, He lacks neither; He does not cease to be God because He becomes man, nor fail to be man because He remains God forever. This is the true faith for human blessedness: to preach the Godhead and the manhood together, to confess the Word and the flesh, neither forgetting the God because He is man nor ignoring the flesh because He is the Word.

It runs contrary to our experience of nature that He should be born man and still remain God; but it fits the drift of our expectation that, being born man, He still remained God, for when the higher nature is born into the lower, it is believable that the lower should also be born into the higher. And indeed, according to the laws and habits of nature, the working of our expectation even anticipates the divine mystery. For in everything that is born, nature has the capacity to increase but no power to decrease. Look at the trees, the crops, the cattle. Consider man himself, the possessor of reason. He always expands by growth; he does not shrink by decrease, nor does he ever lose the self into which he has grown. He does waste away with age, or is cut off by death; he undergoes change over time, or reaches the end allotted to the constitution of life; yet it is not in his power to cease to be what he is. I mean that he cannot make a new self by shrinking from his old self, that is, become a child again after being an old man. So the necessity of perpetual increase, which natural law imposes on our nature, gives us good grounds to expect its promotion into a higher nature, since its increase accords with nature and its decrease runs contrary to it. It was God alone Who could become something other than He was before, and yet not cease to be what He had always been; Who could shrink within the limits of womb, cradle, and infancy, yet not depart from the power of God. This is a mystery, not for Himself, but for us. Taking on our nature was no advancement for God, but His willingness to lower Himself is our promotion, for He did not give up His divinity but conferred divinity on man.

So the Only-begotten God, when He was born man of the Virgin and, in the fullness of time, was about to raise humanity to divinity in His own person, always kept to this form of the Gospel teaching. He taught people, that is, to believe that He was the Son of God, and urged them to preach Him as the Son of Man; as man He said and did all that belongs to God, and as God He said and did all that belongs to man. Yet He never spoke without signaling, by the twofold aspect of these very sayings, both His manhood and His divinity. Though He proclaimed one God the Father, He declared Himself to be in the nature of the one God by the truth of His generation. Yet in His office as Son and His condition as man, He subjected Himself to God the Father, since everything that is born must refer itself back to its author, and all flesh must confess itself weak before God. This is where the heretics find an opportunity to deceive the simple and ignorant. They falsely attribute these words, spoken in His human character, to weakness in His divine nature; and because He was one and the same Person in all His sayings, they claim that He always spoke of His entire self.

We do not deny that all His recorded sayings refer to His nature. But if Jesus Christ is man and God, neither becoming God for the first time when He became man, nor ceasing to be God then, nor, after He became Man in God, anything less than perfect man and perfect God, then the mystery of His words must be one and the same as the mystery of His nature. When, according to the time indicated, we separate His divinity from humanity, let us also separate His language as God from the language of man; when we confess Him God and man at the same time, let us distinguish at the same time His words as God and His words as man; when, after His manhood and Godhead, we recognize again the time when His whole manhood is wholly God, let us refer to that time everything that is revealed about it. It is one thing that He was God before He was man, another that He was man and God, and another that, after being man and God, He was perfect man and perfect God. So do not confuse the times and natures in the mystery of the dispensation, for, according to the attributes of His different natures, He must speak of Himself in relation to the mystery of His humanity in one way before His birth, in another while He was still to die, and in another as eternal.

So for our sake Jesus Christ, keeping all these attributes and being born man in our body, spoke in the manner of our nature without concealing that divinity belonged to His own nature. In His birth, His passion, and His death He passed through all the circumstances of our nature, but He bore them all by the power of His own. He was Himself the cause of His birth; He willed to suffer what He could not suffer; He died though He lives forever. Yet God did all this not merely through man, for He was born of Himself, suffered of His own free will, and died of Himself. He did it also as man, for He was really born, suffered and died. These were the mysteries of the secret counsels of heaven, determined before the world was made. The Only-begotten God was to become man of His own will, and man was to remain eternally in God. God was to suffer of His own will, so that the malice of the devil, working in the weakness of human infirmity, might not confirm the law of sin in us, since God had taken on our weakness. God was to die of His own will, so that, once the immortal God had confined Himself within the law of death, no power might raise its head against Him or exert the natural strength that He had created in it. So God was born to take us into Himself, suffered to justify us, and died to avenge us; for our manhood remains forever in Him, the weakness of our infirmity is united with His strength, and the spiritual powers of iniquity and wickedness are subdued in the triumph of our flesh, since God died through the flesh.

The Apostle, who knew this mystery and had received the knowledge of the faith through the Lord Himself, was well aware that neither the world, nor mankind, nor philosophy could contain Him, for he writes, Take care that no one leads you astray through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, and not according to Jesus Christ, for in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and in Him you are made full, Who is the head of all principalities and powers. Right after the announcement that in Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily comes the mystery of our being taken up into Him, in the words, in Him you are made full. As the fullness of the Godhead is in Him, so we are made full in Him. The Apostle does not say merely, you are made full, but, in Him you are made full; for all who are, or will be, reborn through the hope of faith to eternal life remain even now in the body of Christ; and afterward they will be made full no longer in Him but in themselves, at the time of which the Apostle says, Who will refashion the body of our humiliation, so that it may be conformed to the body of His glory. So now we are made full in Him, that is, by His taking on our flesh, for in Him dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And this hope of ours does not rest on slight authority in Him. Our fullness in Him constitutes His headship and sovereignty over all power, as it is written, That in His name every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things below, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord in the glory of God the Father. Jesus will be confessed in the glory of God the Father, born in man, yet now no longer remaining in the infirmity of our body, but in the glory of God. Every tongue will confess this. But though all things in heaven and earth will bow the knee to Him, His headship over all principalities and powers lies in this: that the whole universe will bow the knee in submission to Him in Whom we are made full, Who, through the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in Him bodily, will be confessed in the glory of God the Father.

But after announcing the mystery of Christ's nature and of our being taken up into Him, that is, the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in Christ and ourselves made full in Him by His birth as man, the Apostle continues with the dispensation of human salvation in the words, In Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in the stripping off of the body of the flesh, but with the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. We are circumcised not with a circumcision of the flesh but with the circumcision of Christ; that is, we are born again into a new man; for, being buried with Him in His baptism, we must die to the old man, because the regeneration of baptism has the force of resurrection. The circumcision of Christ does not mean the cutting away of foreskins, but dying entirely with Him and, by that death, living from then on entirely for Him. For we rise again in Him through faith in God, Who raised Him from the dead; so we must believe in God, by Whose Working Christ was raised from the dead, for our faith rises again in and with Christ.

Then the entire mystery of the assumed manhood is completed: And you, being dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, you, I say, He made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all your trespasses, blotting out the bond written in ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us; and He has taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross; and having put off His flesh from Himself, He has made a show of powers, triumphing over them in Himself. The worldly man cannot receive the faith of the Apostle, nor can any language but the Apostle's explain his meaning. God raised Christ from the dead; Christ, in Whom the fullness of the Godhead dwelt bodily. But He also made us alive together with Him, forgiving us our sins, blotting out the bond of the law of sin, which through the ordinances made earlier was against us, taking it out of the way and fixing it to His cross, stripping Himself of His flesh by the law of death, holding the powers up for display, and triumphing over them in Himself. We have already spoken about the powers and how He triumphed over them in Himself and held them up for display, and about the bond that he blotted out and the life that He gave us. But who can understand or express this mystery? The working of God raises Christ from the dead; the same working of God makes us alive together with Christ, forgives our sins, blots out the bond, and fixes it to the cross; He puts off His flesh from Himself, holds the powers up for display, and triumphs over them in Himself. We have the working of God raising Christ from the dead, and we have Christ working in Himself the very things that God works in Him, for it was Christ who died, stripping His flesh from Himself. So hold fast to Christ the man, raised from the dead by God, and hold fast to Christ the God, working out our salvation while He was still to die. God works in Christ, but it is Christ Who strips His flesh from Himself and dies. It was Christ who died, and Christ Who worked with the power of God before His death; yet it was the working of God that raised the dead Christ, and it was none other than Christ Himself who raised Christ from the dead, He Who worked before His death and put off His flesh to die.

Do you already understand the Mysteries of the Apostle's Faith? Do you think you already know Christ? Tell me, then, Who is it that strips His flesh from Himself, and what is that flesh that is stripped off? I see two ideas expressed by the Apostle, the flesh stripped off and Him Who strips it off; and then I hear of Christ raised from the dead by the working of God. If it is Christ Who is raised from the dead, and God Who raises Him, Who, I ask, strips the flesh from Himself? Who raises Christ from the dead, and makes us alive with Him? If the dead Christ is not the same as the flesh stripped off, tell me the name of the flesh stripped off, and explain to me the nature of Him Who strips it off. I find that Christ the God, Who was raised from the dead, is the same as He Who stripped His flesh from Himself, and that this flesh is the same as Christ Who was raised from the dead; then I see Him holding principalities and powers up for display, and triumphing in Himself. Do you understand this triumphing in Himself? Do you see that the flesh stripped off and He Who strips it off are not different from one another? He triumphs in Himself, that is, in that flesh which He stripped from Himself. Do you see that in this way His humanity and His divinity are proclaimed, that death is attributed to the man, and the giving of life to the flesh is attributed to the God, though He Who dies and He Who raises the dead to life are not two, but one Person? The flesh stripped off is the dead Christ; He Who raises Christ from the dead is the same Christ Who stripped the flesh from Himself. See His divine nature in the power to raise again, and recognize in His death the dispensation of His manhood. And though each function is performed by its proper nature, remember that He Who died and raised to life was one, Christ Jesus.

I remember that the Apostle often refers to God the Father as raising Christ from the dead; but he is not inconsistent with himself or at odds with the Gospel faith, for the Lord Himself says: For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. No one will take it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. I have received this command from the Father: and again, when asked to show a sign about Himself so that they might believe in Him, He says of the Temple of His body, Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up. By the power to take His soul again and to raise the Temple up, He declares Himself God and the Resurrection His own work; yet He refers it all to the authority of His Father's command. This does not contradict the meaning of the Apostle when he proclaims Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God, so referring all the magnificence of His work to the glory of the Father: for whatever Christ does, the power and the wisdom of God does; and whatever the power and the wisdom of God does, God Himself undoubtedly does, Whose power and wisdom Christ is. So Christ was raised from the dead by the working of God; for He Himself did the works of God the Father with a nature indistinguishable from God's. And our faith in the Resurrection rests on the God Who raised Christ from the dead.

It is this preaching of the double aspect of Christ's Person that the blessed Apostle emphasizes. He points out in Christ His human infirmity, and His divine power and nature. So he writes to the Corinthians, For though He was crucified through weakness, yet He lives through the power of God, attributing His death to human infirmity but His life to divine power; and again to the Romans, For the death He died to sin, He died once; but the life He lives, He lives to God. In the same way, consider yourselves also to be dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus, attributing His death to sin, that is, to our body, but His life to God, Whose nature it is to live. So, he says, we ought to die to our body so that we may live to God in Christ Jesus, Who, after taking on our body of sin, now lives wholly to God, uniting the nature He shared with us with participation in divine immortality.

I have had to dwell briefly on this so that we do not forget that our Lord Jesus Christ is being discussed as a Person of two natures, since He, while remaining in the form of God, took the form of a servant, in which He was obedient even to death. Obedience to death has nothing to do with the form of God, just as the form of God is not inherent in the form of a servant. Yet through the Mystery of the Gospel Dispensation the same Person is in the form of a servant and in the form of God, though taking the form of a servant is not the same thing as remaining in the form of God; nor could He Who was remaining in the form of God take the form of a servant without emptying Himself, since the two forms combined would be incongruous. Yet it was not another, different Person Who emptied Himself and Who took the form of a servant. Taking anything cannot be said of someone who does not exist, for only one who exists can take. So the emptying of the form does not imply the abolition of the nature: He emptied Himself, but did not lose Himself; He took a new form, but remained what He was. Again, whether emptying or taking, He was the same Person. There is, therefore, a mystery in that He emptied Himself and took the form of a servant, yet He does not come to an end, as if He ceased to exist by emptying Himself and did not exist when He took. The emptying served to bring about the taking of the servant's form, but not to stop Christ, Who was in the form of God, from continuing to be Christ, for it was truly Christ Who took the form of a servant. When He emptied Himself to become Christ the man, while continuing to be Christ the Spirit, the change in His bodily appearance and the assumption of another nature in His body did not put an end to the nature of His eternal divinity, for He was one and the same Christ when He changed His appearance and when He assumed our nature.

We have now explained the Dispensation of the Mysteries, which the heretics use to deceive some of the unlearned into ascribing to weakness in the divinity what Christ said and did through His assumed human nature, and attributing to the form of God what belongs only to the form of the servant. So let us go on to answer their statements in detail. We can always safely distinguish the two kinds of statements, since the only true faith lies in confessing Jesus Christ as Word and flesh, that is, God and Man. The heretics think they must deny that our Lord Jesus Christ was divine by nature, because He said, Why do you call Me good? No one is good except one, God. A satisfactory answer must bear directly on the matter in question, for only then will it answer the question asked. So, at the outset, I would ask these misinterpreters, Do you think that the Lord resented being called good? Would He rather have been called bad, as the words Why do you call Me good? seem to indicate? I do not think anyone is so unreasonable as to attribute to Him a confession of wickedness, when it was He Who said, Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will refresh you. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light. He says He is meek and humble: can we believe that He was angry at being called good? The two claims are inconsistent. He Who testifies to His own goodness would not reject the name Good. Plainly, then, He was not angry at being called good; and if we cannot believe that He resented being called good, we must ask what was said of Him that He did resent.

Let us see, then, what else the questioner called Him besides good. He said, Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do? Adding to the title good the title teacher. If Christ, then, did not rebuke him because He was called good, it must have been because He was called good Teacher. Further, the manner of His reproof shows that what He resented was the questioner's unbelief rather than the name teacher or good. A youth who prided himself on keeping the law, but did not know the end of the law, which is Christ; who thought himself justified by works, without perceiving that Christ came to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and to those who believe that the law cannot save through the faith of justification, questioned the Lord of the law, the Only-begotten God, as though He were a teacher of the common precepts and the writings of the law. But the Lord, abhorring this declaration of irreverent unbelief, which addressed Him as a teacher of the law, answered, Why do you call Me good? And to show how we may know Him and call Him good, He added, No one is good except one, God, not rejecting the name good if it is given to Him as God.

Then, as proof that He resents the name good teacher because of the unbelief that addresses Him as a man, He replies to the vainglorious youth and his boast that he had fulfilled the law, One thing you lack: go, sell whatever you have, and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me. There is no shrinking from the title good in the promise of heavenly treasures, no reluctance to be regarded as teacher in the offer to lead the way to perfect blessedness. But there is reproof of the unbelief which, from the teaching that goodness belongs to God alone, forms an earthly opinion of Him. To show that He is both good and God, He performs the functions of goodness, opening the heavenly treasures and offering Himself as guide to them. He rejects all the homage offered to Him as man, but He does not disown the homage paid to God; for at the moment when He confesses that the one God is good, His words and actions are those of the power, the goodness and the nature of the one God.

That He did not shrink from the title good or decline the office of teacher, but resented the unbelief that saw nothing more in Him than body and flesh, can be proved from the difference in His language when the apostles confessed Him as their Teacher: You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for that is what I am; and on another occasion, Do not be called teachers, for Christ is your Teacher. From the faithful, to whom He is teacher, He accepts the title with words of praise, but here He rejects the name good teacher, when He is not acknowledged as the Lord and the Christ, and declares the one God alone good, yet without distinguishing Himself from God, for He calls Himself Lord, and Christ, and guide to the heavenly treasures.

The Lord always kept to this definition of the Church's faith, which teaches that there is one God the Father, yet without separating Himself from the mystery of the one God, for by the nature that is His by birth He declared Himself neither a second God nor the sole God. Since the nature of the One God is in Him, He cannot be God of a different kind from Him; His birth requires that, as Son, His Sonship be perfect. So He can neither be separated from God nor merged in God. That is why He speaks in carefully chosen words, so that whatever He claims for the Father He also indicates, in modest language, as belonging to Himself. Take as an example the command, Believe in God, and believe also in Me. He is identified with God in honor; how, I ask, can He be separated from His nature? He says, Believe in Me also, just as He said, Believe in God. Do not the words in Me signify His nature? Separate the two natures, and you must separate the two beliefs as well. If believing in God without Christ is life, then strip Christ of the name and qualities of God. But if perfect life is given to those who believe in God only when they also believe in Christ, let the careful reader ponder the meaning of the saying, Believe in God, and believe in Me also, for these words, uniting faith in Him with faith in God, unite His nature to God's. He first commands the duty of believing in God, but adds the command that we believe in Him also; this implies that He is God, since those who believe in God must also believe in Him. Yet He rules out the idea of a unity contrary to religion, for the exhortation Believe in God, believe in Me also forbids us to think of Him as alone in solitude.

In many, indeed almost all, of His discourses He offers the explanation of this mystery, never separating Himself from the divine unity when He confesses God the Father, and never describing God as single and solitary when He places Himself in unity with Him. But nowhere does He teach the mystery of His unity and His birth more plainly than when He says, But the witness that I have is greater than that of John, for the works that the Father has given Me to accomplish, the very works that I do, bear witness about Me, that the Father has sent Me; and the Father who sent Me has Himself borne witness about Me. You have never heard His voice or seen His form. And you do not have His word dwelling in you, for you do not believe the One He sent. How can the Father truly be said to have borne witness about the Son, when He Himself was not seen and His voice was not heard? Yet I remember that a voice was heard from Heaven, which said, This is My beloved Son, with Whom I have been well pleased; listen to Him. How can it be said that they did not hear the voice of God, when the voice they heard itself declared that it was the Father's voice? But perhaps the people of Jerusalem had not heard what John had heard in the solitude of the desert. We must ask, then, How did the Father bear witness in Jerusalem? It is no longer the witness given to John, who heard the voice from heaven, but a witness greater than John's. He goes on to say what that witness is: The works that the Father has given Me to accomplish, the very works that I do, bear witness about Me, that the Father has sent Me. We must admit the authority of this testimony, for no one except the Son sent by the Father could do such works. So His works are His testimony. But what follows? And the Father who sent Me has Himself borne witness about Me. You have never heard His voice or seen His form, and you do not have His word dwelling in you. Are they blameless because they did not know the testimony of the Father, Who was never heard or seen among them, and Whose word did not dwell in them? No, for they cannot claim that His testimony was hidden from them; as Christ says, the testimony of His works is the Father's testimony about Him. His works testify that He was sent by the Father; but the testimony of these works is the Father's testimony; since, therefore, the Son's working is the Father's testimony, it necessarily follows that the same nature by which the Father testifies about Him was at work in Christ. So Christ, Who does the works, and the Father, Who testifies through them, are revealed as possessing one inseparable nature through the birth, for Christ's activity is shown to be itself God's testimony about Him.

So they are not acquitted of blame for failing to recognize the testimony, for the works of Christ are the Father's testimony about Him. Nor can they plead ignorance of the testimony on the grounds that they had not heard the voice of the One Who testified, or seen His form, or had His word dwelling in them. For immediately after the words, You have never heard His voice or seen His form, and you do not have His word dwelling in you, He points out why the voice was not heard, the form was not seen, and the word did not dwell in them, though the Father had testified about Him: For you do not believe the One He sent; that is, if they had believed Him, they would have heard the voice of God and seen the form of God, and His word would have been in them, since through the unity of Their nature the Father is heard and revealed and possessed in the Son. Is He not also the expression of the Father, since He was sent from Him? Does He distinguish Himself from the Father by any difference of nature when He says that the Father, testifying about Him, was neither heard nor seen nor understood, because they did not believe in Him Whom the Father sent? So the Only-begotten God does not separate Himself from God when He confesses God the Father; rather, by declaring through the word Father His relationship to God, He includes Himself in the honor due to God.

For in this very discourse, in which He declares that His works testify that He was sent by the Father, and asserts that the Father testifies that He was sent from Him, He says, You do not seek the honor of Him Who alone is God. This is not, however, a bare statement, made without any preparation for belief in His unity with the Father. Hear what comes before it: You will not come to Me so that you may have life. I do not receive glory from men. But I know you: you do not have the love of God in yourselves. I have come in My Father's name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in His name, you will receive him. How can you believe, you who receive glory from men and do not seek the glory of Him Who alone is God? He disdains the glory of men, for glory should rather be sought from God. It is the mark of unbelievers to receive glory from one another: for what glory can man give to man? He says He knows that the love of God is not in them, and gives as the cause that they do not receive Him coming in His Father's name. Coming in His Father's name: what does that mean but coming in the name of God? Is it not because they rejected Him Who came in the name of God that the love of God is not in them? Is it not implied that He has the nature of God when He says, You will not come to Me so that you may have life? Hear what He said of Himself in the same discourse: Truly, truly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear shall live. He comes in the name of the Father; that is, He is not Himself the Father, yet He is in the same divine nature as the Father, for as Son and God it is natural for Him to come in the name of the Father. Then they will receive another who comes in the same name; but he is one from whom men will expect glory, and to whom they will give glory in return, though he will pretend to have come in the name of the Father. This no doubt means the Antichrist, glorying in his false use of the Father's name. They will glorify him and be glorified by him, but they will not seek the glory of Him Who alone is God.

They do not have the love of God in them, He says, because they rejected Him Who came in the name of the Father, but accepted another who came in the same name, and received glory from one another, but neglected the glory of Him Who is the only true God. Can anyone think that He separates Himself from the glory of the only God, when the reason He gives for their not seeking the glory of the only God is that they receive Antichrist and will not receive Him? To reject Him is to neglect the glory of the only God; is His glory not, then, the glory of the only God, if receiving Him steadfastly was seeking the glory of the only God? This very discourse is our witness, for at its beginning we read, 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. Only things of the same nature are equal in honor; equality of honor shows that there is no separation between those honored. But the demand for equality of honor is combined with the revelation of the birth. Since the Son is to be honored as the Father is, and since they do not seek the honor of Him Who is the only God, He is not excluded from the honor of the only God, for His honor is one and the same as God's: just as whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father either, so whoever does not seek the honor of the only God does not seek the honor of Christ either. Accordingly, the honor of Christ is inseparable from the honor of God. By His words when the news of Lazarus' sickness was brought to Him, He illustrates the complete identification of Father and Son in honor: This sickness does not lead to death, but is for the glory of God, so that the Son of Man may be glorified through him. Lazarus dies for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through him. Is there any doubt that the glory of the Son of God is the glory of God, when the death of Lazarus, which is glorious to God, glorifies the Son of God? So Christ is declared to be one in nature with God the Father through His birth, since the sickness of Lazarus is for the glory of God, and at the same time the Mystery of the faith is not violated, for the Son of God is to be glorified through Lazarus. The Son of God is to be regarded as God, yet He is still to be confessed also as Son of God, for when God is glorified through Lazarus, the Son of God is glorified.

By the mystery of the divine nature we are forbidden to separate the birth of the living Son from His living Father. The Son of God undergoes no change of kind such that the truth of His Father's nature does not dwell in Him. For even where, in confessing one God only, He seems by the word only to disclaim the nature of God for Himself, He nevertheless places Himself in the unity of the Father's nature without destroying belief in one God. So when the Scribe asked Him which is the chief commandment of the law, He answered, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord: you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your spirit, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these. They think that He cuts Himself off from the nature and worship of the One God when He declares as the chief commandment, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and does not even make Himself the object of worship in the second commandment, since the law tells us to love our neighbor just as it tells us to believe in one God. Nor must we pass over the Scribe's answer: Truly, you have spoken well, that God is one, and there is no other but He; and to love Him with all the heart, and all the strength, and all the soul, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is greater than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. The Scribe's answer seems to agree with the Lord's words, for He too proclaims the innermost and deepest love of one God, professes love of one's neighbor to be as real as love of self, and places love of God and love of one's neighbor above all the burnt offerings of sacrifices. But let us see what follows.

And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, He said to him, You are not far from the kingdom of God. What is the meaning of such moderate praise? Believe in one God, and love Him with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself: if this is the faith that makes a man perfect for the Kingdom of God, why is the Scribe not already inside, instead of not far from the Kingdom of Heaven? It is in a different tone that He grants the Kingdom of Heaven to those who clothe the naked, feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, and visit the sick and the prisoner: Come, you who are blessed by My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; or rewards the poor in spirit: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Their gain is perfect, their possession complete, their inheritance of the kingdom prepared for them secure. But did this young man's confession fall short of theirs? His ideal of duty raises love of neighbor to the level of love of self; what more did he lack to reach the perfection of good conduct? Being occasionally charitable and ready to help is not perfect love; but perfect love has fulfilled the whole duty of love when a man leaves no debt to his neighbor unpaid, but gives him as much as he gives himself. But the Scribe was barred from perfection because he did not know the mystery that had been accomplished. He did receive the Lord's praise for his profession of faith, and he heard the reply that he was not far from the kingdom, but he was not put in actual possession of the blessed hope. His course, though ignorant, was a favorable one; he put the love of God before all things, and love of his neighbor on a level with love of self. And when he ranked the love of God even above love of his neighbor, he broke through the law of burnt offerings and sacrifices; and that was not far from the mystery of the Gospel.

We can also see from our Lord's own words why He said, You are not far from the Kingdom of Heaven, rather than, You shall be in the Kingdom of Heaven. Then follows: And after that no one dared to ask Him any question. And Jesus answered and said, as He taught in the Temple, How can the Scribes say that the Christ is the Son of David? David himself says in the Holy Spirit, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at My right hand, until I make Your enemies the footstool of Your feet. David himself calls Him Lord, so how is He his Son? The Scribe is not far from the Kingdom of God when he confesses one God, Who is to be loved above all things. But his own statement of the law reproaches him: the mystery of the law has escaped him, and he does not know that Christ the Lord, the Son of God, is included by the nature of His birth in the confession of the one God. The confession of one God according to the law seemed to leave no room for the Son of God in the mystery of the one Lord; so He asks the Scribe how he can call Christ the Son of David when David calls Him his Lord, since it is against the order of nature for the son of so great a Patriarch to be also his Lord. He wants to tell the Scribe, who regards Him only in terms of His flesh and His birth from Mary, the daughter of David, to remember that in terms of His Spirit He is David's Lord rather than his son; that the words, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, do not cut Christ off from the mystery of the One Lord, since so great a Patriarch and Prophet calls Him his Lord, as the Son begotten of the Lord before the morning star. He does not pass over the law or forget that no other is to be confessed Lord, but without violating the faith of the law He teaches that He is Lord, in that He had His being through the mystery of a natural birth from the substance of the incorporeal God. He is one, born of one, and the nature of the one Lord has made Him Lord by nature.

What room is left for doubt now? The Lord Himself, proclaiming that the chief commandment of the law is to confess and love the one Lord, proves that He is Lord not by His own words but by the Prophet's testimony, while always indicating, however, that He is Lord because He is the Son of God. By virtue of His birth He remains in the mystery of the one God, for since the birth carried the nature of God with it, it is not the issuing forth of another God with a different nature; and because the generation is real, the Father is not degraded from being Lord, nor is the Son born less than Lord. The Father retains His authority, the Son obtains His nature. God the Father is one Lord, but the Only-begotten God the Lord is not separated from the One, since He derives His nature as Lord from the one Lord. So by the law Christ teaches that there is one Lord; by the witness of the prophets He proves that He also is Lord.

May the faith of the Gospel always profit in this way from the rash contentions of the ungodly, defending itself with the weapons of their attack and, conquering with the arms prepared for its destruction, proving that the words of the one Spirit are the doctrine of the one faith! For Christ is nothing other than what He is preached to be, namely the true God, remaining in the glory of the one true God. Just as He proclaims Himself Lord from the law, even when He seems to deny it, so in the Gospels He proves that He is the true God, even when He appears to confess the opposite. To avoid acknowledging that He is the true God, the heretics plead that He said, And this is eternal life, that they should know You, the only true God, and Him Whom You sent, even Jesus Christ. When He says, You, the only true God, they think He excludes Himself from the reality of God by restricting it to a solitary being; for the only true God cannot be understood except as a solitary God. It is true that the Apostolic faith does not allow us to believe in two true Gods, for nothing foreign to the nature of the one God can be put on an equal footing with the truth of that nature; and if, outside the nature of the only true God, there exists a true God of another kind, who does not possess the same nature as He does by virtue of His birth, then there is more than one God in the reality of the one God.

But by these very words He plainly proclaims that He is true God in the nature of the only true God. To understand this, let us begin our answer from statements He made earlier, though the connection runs unbroken right down to these words. We can then establish the faith step by step and let the confidence of our freedom rest at last on the summit of our argument, the true Godhead of Christ. First comes the mystery of His words, Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father; and, Do you not believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own; but the Father, dwelling in Me, Himself does His works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me: or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves. At the close of this discourse, teeming with deep mysteries, comes the disciples' reply, Now we know that You know all things and do not need anyone to ask You: by this we believe that You came from God. They perceived the nature of God in Him through the divine powers He exercised; for to know all things and to read the thoughts of the heart belongs to the Son, not to a mere messenger of God. So they confessed that He had come from God, because the power of the divine nature was in Him.

The Lord praised their understanding, and answered not that He was sent from God but that He had come out from God, indicating by the words come out from the great fact of His birth from the incorporeal God. He had already proclaimed the birth in the same language when He said, You love Me and believe that I came out from the Father, and came from the Father into this world. He had come from the Father into this world because He had come out from God. To show that by the coming out He means His birth, He adds that He has come from the Father; and since He had come out from God because He had come from the Father, that coming out, followed as it is by the confession of the Father's name, is simply and solely the birth. Then to the Apostles, as people who understood this mystery of His coming out, He continues, Now you believe. Behold, the hour is coming, indeed has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own, and will leave Me alone: yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me. He wanted to show that the coming out is not a separation from God the Father but a birth, which, by His being born, continues the nature of God the Father in Him; and so He adds that He is not alone, but the Father is with Him, that is, in power and unity of nature, for the Father was dwelling in Him, speaking in His words and working in His works. Finally, to show the reason for this whole discourse, He adds, I have spoken these things to you so that in Me you may have peace. In this world you will have tribulation: but take heart, for I have overcome the world. He has spoken these things to them so that they may remain in peace in Him, not torn apart by the passion of dissension in debates about the faith. He was left alone, yet was not alone, for He had come out from God, and the God from Whom He had come out still remained in Him. So He told them, when they were harassed in the world, to wait for His promises, for since He had come out from God, and God was still in Him, He had conquered the world.

Then, finally, to express the whole Mystery in words, He raised His eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour has come: glorify Your Son, so that Your Son may glorify You. Just as You gave Him authority over all flesh, so that He should give eternal life to all whom You have given Him. Do you call Him weak because He asks to be glorified? Very well, if He is not asking to be glorified so that He Himself may glorify the One by Whom He is glorified. We have spoken of the receiving and giving of glory in another book, and it would be superfluous to go over the question again. But of this much at least we are certain: He prays for glory so that the Father may be glorified by granting it. But perhaps He is weak in that He receives power over all flesh. And indeed receiving power might be a sign of weakness if He were not able to give eternal life to those whom He receives. Yet the very fact of receiving is used to prove an inferior nature. It might prove that, if Christ were not true God by birth as truly as the Unbegotten is. But if the receiving of power means neither more nor less than the Birth, by which He received all that He has, that gift does not degrade the Begotten, because it makes Him perfectly and entirely what God is. God Unbegotten brought God Only-begotten to a perfect birth of divine blessedness: so it is the mystery of the Father to be the Author of the Birth, but it is no degradation to the Son to be made the perfect image of His Author by a real birth. The giving of power over all flesh, and that for the purpose of giving eternal life to all flesh, presupposes the Fatherhood of the Giver and the Divinity of the Receiver: for the giving shows that the One is the Father, and in receiving the power to give eternal life, the Other remains God the Son. So all power is natural and innate to the Son of God; and though it is given, that does not separate Him from His Author, for what is given is His Author's own property, the power to bestow eternal life, to change the corruptible into the incorruptible. The Father gave all, the Son received all, as is plain from His words, All things that the Father has are Mine. He is not speaking here of kinds of created things and processes of material change, but He unfolds to us the glory of the blessed and perfect Divinity, and teaches us that God is revealed here as the sum of His attributes, His power, His eternity, His providence, His authority; not that we should think He possesses these as something external to Himself, but that through these qualities of His He Himself has been expressed in terms our senses can partly grasp. So the Only-begotten taught that He had all that the Father has, and that the Holy Spirit would receive from Him, as He says, All things that the Father has are Mine; that is why I said, He will take from what is Mine. All that the Father has is His, delivered and received: but these gifts do not degrade His divinity, since they give Him the same attributes as the Father.

These are the steps by which He advances the knowledge of Himself. He teaches that He has come out from the Father, proclaims that the Father is with Him, and testifies that He has conquered the world. He is to be glorified by the Father and will glorify Him: He will use the power He has received to give eternal life to all flesh. Then hear the crowning point that concludes the whole series, And this is eternal life, that they should know You, the only true God, and Him Whom You sent, even Jesus Christ. Learn, heretic, to confess the faith that gives eternal life, if you cannot believe it. Separate, if you can, Christ from God, the Son from the Father, God over all from the true God, the One from the Only: if, as you say, eternal life is believing in one only true God without Jesus Christ. But if there is no eternal life in a confession of the only true God that separates Christ from Him, how, I ask, can Christ be separated from the true God for our faith, when He is not separable from Him for our salvation?

I know that labored solutions to difficult questions do not find favor with the reader, but it may perhaps benefit the faith if I allow myself to postpone the exposition of the full truth for a while and wrestle with the heretics using these words of the Gospel. You hear the Lord's statement, This is eternal life, that they should know You, the only true God, and Him Whom You sent, even Jesus Christ. What is it, I ask, that suggests to you that Christ is not the true God? No further indication is given to show you what you should think of Christ. There is nothing but Jesus Christ: not Son of Man, as He usually called Himself; not Son of God, as He often declared Himself; not the living bread that comes down from Heaven, as He repeated to the scandal of many. He says, You, the only true God, and Him Whom You sent, even Jesus Christ, leaving out all His usual names and titles, natural and assumed. So if confessing the only true God and Jesus Christ gives us eternal life, then without doubt the name Jesus Christ here carries the full sense of the name God.

But perhaps by saying, You the only, Christ cuts Himself off from communion and unity with God. Yes, but after the words, You the only true God, does He not immediately continue, and Him Whom You sent, even Jesus Christ? I appeal to the reader's judgment: what must we believe Christ to be, when we are commanded to believe in Him as well as in the Father, the only true God? Or perhaps, if the Father is the only true God, there is no room for Christ to be God. That might be so if, because there is one God the Father, Christ were not the one Lord. The fact that God the Father is one still leaves Christ the one Lord: and in the same way the Father's one true Godhead still makes Christ true God: for we can obtain eternal life only if we believe in Christ as well as in the only true God

Come, heretic, what will your fatuous doctrine teach us to believe about Christ, the Christ Who dispenses eternal life, Who is glorified by the Father and glorifies Him, Who overcame the world, Who, though deserted, is not alone but has the Father with Him, Who came out from God and came from the Father? He is born with such divine powers; how much of the nature and reality of God will you allow Him? It is useless for us to believe in the only true God the Father unless we also believe in Him Whom He sent, even Jesus Christ. Why do you hesitate? Tell us, what is Christ to be confessed as? You deny what has been written: what is left but to believe what has not been written? What wretched willfulness! What falsehood, striving against the truth! Christ is united in belief and confession with the only true God the Father: what kind of faith is it, I ask, to deny that He is true God and to call Him a creature, when it is no faith at all to believe in the only true God without Christ? But you are narrow, heretic, and unable to receive the Holy Spirit. The sense of the heavenly words escapes you; stung by the asp's poison of error, you forget that Christ must be confessed as true God in the faith of the only true God if we are to obtain eternal life.

But the faith of the Church, while confessing the only true God the Father, also confesses Christ. It does not confess Christ as true God without the Father, the only true God; nor the Father as the only true God without Christ. It confesses Christ as true God because it confesses the Father as the only true God. So the fact that God the Father is the only true God establishes Christ as true God also. The Only-begotten God underwent no change of nature through His natural birth: and He Who, according to the nature of His divine origin, was born God from the living God is, by the truth of that nature, inseparable from the only true God. So from the true divine nature follows its necessary result: the outcome of true divinity must be a true birth, and the one God could not produce from Himself a God of a second kind. The mystery of God consists neither in simplicity nor in multiplicity: for there is no other God springing from God with qualities of His own nature, nor does God remain a single Person, for the true birth of the Son teaches us to confess Him as Father. So the begotten God did not lose the qualities of His nature: He possesses the natural power of the One Whose nature He retains in Himself through a natural birth. The divinity in Him is not changed or degenerate, for if His birth had brought any defect with it, that defect would more justly cast on the Nature through which He came into being the reproach of having failed to implant its own properties in its offspring. The change would degrade not the Son, Who had passed into a new substance by birth, but the Father, Who had been unable to maintain the constancy of His nature in the birth of the Son and had brought forth something external and foreign to Himself.

But, as we have often said, the inadequacy of human ideas finds no corresponding inadequacy in the unity of God the Father and God the Son: as though there were extension, or series, or flow, like a spring pouring out its stream from the source, or a tree supporting its branch on the trunk, or a fire giving off its heat into space. In these cases we have expansion without any separation: the parts are bound together and do not exist on their own, but the heat is in the fire, the branch in the tree, the stream in the spring. So only the thing itself has an independent existence; the one does not pass into the other, for the tree and the branch are one and the same, as are the fire and the heat, the spring and the stream. But the Only-begotten God is God, subsisting by virtue of a perfect and ineffable birth, true Scion of the Unbegotten God, incorporeal offspring of an incorporeal nature, living and true God from living and true God, God of a nature inseparable from God. The fact of birth does not make Him God with a different nature, nor did the generation that produced His substance change its nature in kind.

Placed in the dispensation of the flesh He assumed, and through the obedience by which He emptied Himself of the form of God, Christ, born man, took to Himself a new nature, not by loss of power or nature but by a change of outward form. He emptied Himself of the form of God and took the form of a servant when He was born. But the Father's nature, with which He was in natural unity, was not affected by this assumption of flesh; while Christ, though remaining in the power of His nature, still lost, with respect to the humanity assumed in this temporal change, the unity with the divine nature together with the form of God. But the Incarnation is summed up in this: the whole Son, that is, His manhood as well as His divinity, was allowed by the Father's gracious favor to continue in the unity of the Father's nature, and retained not only the powers of the divine nature but also that nature itself. For the goal was that man might become God. But the assumed manhood could not in any way remain in the unity of God unless, through unity with God, it attained unity with the nature of God. Then, since God the Word was in the nature of God, the Word made flesh would in turn also be in the nature of God. So, if the flesh were united to the glory of the Word, the man Jesus Christ could remain in the glory of God the Father, and the Word made flesh could be restored to the unity of the Father's nature even in His manhood, since the assumed flesh had obtained the glory of the Word. Therefore the Father had to reinstate the Word in His unity, so that the offspring of His nature might return again to be glorified in Himself: for the unity had been disrupted by the new dispensation, and could be restored as perfect as before only if the Father glorified with Himself the flesh assumed by the Son.

For this reason, having already prepared their minds so well to understand this belief, the Lord follows the words, And this is eternal life, that they should know You, the only true God, and Him Whom You sent, even Jesus Christ, with a reference to the obedience shown in His incarnation, I have glorified You on the earth, I have accomplished the work which You gave Me to do. And then, so that we might know the reward of His obedience and the secret purpose of the whole divine plan, He continued, And now, Father, glorify Me with Your own self, with the glory which I had with You before the world existed. Does anyone deny that Christ remained in the nature of God, or believe Him separable and distinct from the only true God? Let him tell us the meaning of this prayer: And now, Father, glorify Me with Your own self. For what purpose should the Father glorify Him with His own self? What is the meaning of these words? What follows from their meaning? The Father neither needed glory nor had emptied Himself of the form of His glory. How then should He glorify the Son with His own self, and with the glory which He had with Him before the world was made? And what is the sense of which He had with Him? Christ does not say, The glory which I had before the world was made, when I was with You, but, The glory which I had with You. When I was with You would mean, when I lived at Your side: but which I had with You teaches the Mystery of His nature. Further, Glorify Me with Yourself is not the same as Glorify Me. He does not ask merely to be glorified, to have some special glory of His own, but prays to be glorified by the Father with Himself. The Father was to glorify Him with Himself so that He might remain in unity with Him as before, since the unity with the Father's glory had left Him through the obedience of the Incarnation. And this means that the glorifying was to reinstate Him in that nature with which He was united by the Mystery of His divine birth; that He might be glorified by the Father with Himself; that He should resume all that He had previously had with the Father; that taking the servant's form should not estrange the nature of the form of God from Him, but that God should glorify the form of the servant in Himself, so that it might become forever the form of God, since He Who had previously remained in the form of God was now in the form of a servant. And since the form of a servant was to be glorified in the form of God, it was to be glorified in Him in Whose form the appearance of the servant's form was to be honored.

But these words of the Lord are not new, nor are they attested now for the first time in the teaching of the Gospels, for He bore witness to this very mystery of God the Father glorifying the Son with Himself through the noble joy He felt at the fulfillment of His hope, the joy with which He rejoiced at the very moment when Judas went out to betray Him. Filled with joy that His purpose was now about to be fully accomplished, He said, Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him. If God is glorified in Him, He has glorified Him in Himself, and He has glorified Him immediately. How can we, whose souls are weighed down by bodies of clay and whose minds are polluted and stained by a foul consciousness of sin, be so puffed up as to pass judgment on His claim to divinity? How can we set ourselves up to criticize His heavenly nature, rebelling against God with our unholy and blasphemous arguments? The Lord stated the faith of the Gospel in the simplest words that could be found, and fitted His teaching to our understanding as far as the weakness of our nature allowed Him, without saying anything unworthy of the majesty of His own nature. The meaning of His opening words, Now the Son of Man is glorified, cannot, I think, be doubted; that is, all the glory He obtains is not for the Word but for His flesh: not for the birth of His Godhead, but for the dispensation of His manhood, born into the world. What, then, may I ask, does what follows mean: And God is glorified in Him? I hear that God is glorified in Him; but what that could mean by your interpretation, heretic, I do not know. God is glorified in Him, that is, in the Son of Man: tell me, then, is the Son of Man the same as the Son of God? And since the Son of Man is not one person and the Son of God another, but He Who is Son of God is Himself also Son of Man, then who, I ask, is the God Who is glorified in this Son of Man, Who is also Son of God?

So God is glorified in the Son of Man, Who is also Son of God. Let us see, then, what this third clause that is added means: If God is glorified in Him, God has also glorified Him in Himself. What, I ask, is this hidden mystery? God, in the glorified Son of Man, glorifies a glorified God in Himself! The glory of God is in the Son of Man, and the glory of God is in the glory of the Son of Man. God glorifies in Himself, but man is not glorified through himself. Again, the God Who is glorified in the man, though He receives the glory, is nevertheless Himself none other than God. But since, in the glorifying of the Son of Man, the God Who glorifies glorifies God in Himself, I recognize that the glory of Christ's nature is taken up into the glory of the nature that glorifies His nature. God does not glorify Himself; but He glorifies in Himself the God glorified in man. And this phrase, glorifies in Himself, though it is not a glorifying of Himself, still means that He took the nature He glorified into the glory of His own nature; since the God Who glorifies the God glorified in man glorifies Him in Himself, He proves that the God Whom He glorifies is in Himself, for He glorifies Him in Himself. Come, heretic, whoever you are, bring out the inextricable objections of your twisted doctrine; though they bind themselves in their own tangles, still, marshal them however you like, we will not be in danger of getting stuck in their snares. The Son of Man is glorified; God is glorified in Him; God glorifies in Himself the One Who is glorified in the man. That the Son of Man is glorified is not the same as that God is glorified in the Son of Man, or that God glorifies in Himself the One Who is glorified in the man. Explain in the terms of your unholy belief what you mean by God being glorified in the Son of Man. It must certainly be either Christ Who is glorified in the flesh, or the Father Who is glorified in Christ. If it is Christ, then Christ is clearly God, Who is glorified in the flesh. If it is the Father, we are face to face with the mystery of the unity, since the Father is glorified in the Son. So if you grant that it is Christ, you confess Him as God in spite of yourself; if you understand it to mean God the Father, you cannot deny the nature of God the Father in Christ. Let this be enough about the glorified Son of Man and the God glorified in Him. But when we consider that God glorifies in Himself the God Who is glorified in the Son of Man, through what loophole, I ask, can your profane doctrine escape confessing that Christ is true God according to the truth of His nature? God glorifies in Himself Christ, Who was born a man; is Christ, then, outside Him, when He glorifies Him in Himself? He restores to Christ in Himself the glory that He had with Himself, and now that the servant's form He assumed is in turn assumed into the form of God, the God Who is glorified in man is glorified in Himself; He was in God's own self before the dispensation by which He emptied Himself, and now He is united with God's own self, both in the form of the servant and in the nature that belongs to His birth. For His birth did not make Him God of a new and foreign nature; rather, by generation He was made the natural Son of a natural Father. After His human birth, when He is glorified in His manhood, He shines again with the glory of His own nature; the Father glorifies Him in Himself when He is assumed into the glory of His Father's nature, of which He had emptied Himself in the dispensation.

The words of the Apostle's faith are a barrier against your reckless and frenzied profanity; they forbid you to turn the freedom of speculation into license and wander into error. Every tongue, he says, shall confess that Jesus is Lord in the glory of God the Father. The Father has glorified Him in Himself; therefore He must be confessed in the glory of the Father. And if He is to be confessed in the Father's glory, and the Father has glorified Him in Himself, is He not plainly all that His Father is, since the Father has glorified Him in Himself and He is to be confessed in the Father's glory? He is now not merely in the glory of God, but in the glory of God the Father. The Father glorifies Him, not with a glory from outside, but in Himself. By taking Him back into the glory that belongs to Himself, and that He had with Him before, the Father glorifies Him with Himself and in Himself. So this confession is inseparable from Christ even in the humiliation of His manhood, as He says, And this is eternal life, that they should know You, the only true God, Him Whom You sent, Jesus Christ; for first, there is no eternal life in confessing God the Father without Jesus Christ, and second, Christ is glorified in the Father. Eternal life is precisely this: to know the only true God and Him Whom He sent, Jesus Christ; deny that Christ is true God, if you can have life by believing in God without Him. As for the truth that God the Father is the only true God, let that be untrue of Christ, Who is God, unless Christ's glory is wholly in the only true God, the Father. For if the Father glorifies Him in Himself, and the Father is the only true God, Christ is not outside the only true God, since the Father, Who is the only true God, glorifies in Himself Christ, Who is raised into the glory of God. And because He is glorified by the only true God in Himself, He is not estranged from the only true God, for He is glorified by the true God, the only God, in Himself.

But perhaps the godless unbeliever confronts the devout believer with the claim that we cannot apply to the true God a confession of powerlessness such as, Truly, truly, I say to you, The Son can do nothing of Himself, but only what He has seen the Father doing. If the twofold anger of the Jews had not demanded a twofold answer, it would indeed have been a confession of weakness that the Son could do nothing of Himself except what He had seen the Father doing. But in the same sentence Christ was answering the double charge of the Jews, who accused Him of violating the Sabbath and of making Himself equal with God by calling God His Father. Do you think, then, that by fixing attention on the form of His reply you can withdraw it from the substance? We have already dealt with this passage in another book; yet since the exposition of the faith gains rather than loses by repetition, let us ponder the words once more, as the occasion demands it of us.

Hear how the need for the reply arose: And for this reason the Jews persecuted Jesus and tried to kill Him, because He did these things on the Sabbath. Their anger against Him was so inflamed that they wanted to kill Him, because He did His works on the Sabbath. But let us also see what the Lord answered: My Father works even until now, and I work. Tell us, heretic, what is that work of the Father, since all things, visible and invisible, are through the Son and in the Son? You, who are wiser than the Gospels, have no doubt obtained the knowledge of the Father's work from some other secret source of learning, so as to reveal Him to us. But the Father works in the Son, as the Son Himself says, The words that I say to you I do not speak from Myself, but the Father who dwells in Me does His works. Do you grasp the meaning of the words, My Father works even until now? He speaks so that we may recognize in Him the power of the Father's nature using the nature that has that power to work on the Sabbath. The Father works in Him while He works; without doubt, then, He works together with the working of the Father, and so He says, My Father works even until now, so that this present work of His words and actions may be regarded as the working of the Father's nature in Himself. This phrase, works even until now, fixes the time at the moment of speaking, and so we must take Him to be referring to the very work of the Father that He was then doing, for it implies that the Father was working at the very time He spoke. And so that the Faith, if confined to a knowledge of the Father only, would not fall short of the hope of eternal life, He adds at once, And I work; that is, what the Father works even until now, the Son also works. In this way He sets out the whole of the faith; for the work that is now belongs to the present time; and if the Father works and the Son works, no union exists between them that merges them into a single Person. But now the anger of the bystanders doubles. Hear what follows: For this reason, therefore, the Jews tried all the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but also called God His own Father, making Himself equal with God. Let me repeat here that, by the judgment of the Evangelist and by the common consent of mankind, the Son is equal to the Father's nature; and that equality cannot exist except through identity of nature. The begotten cannot derive what it is except from its source, and what is generated cannot be foreign to what generates it, since it has come to be what it is from that alone. Let us see, then, what the Lord replied to this double outburst of anger: Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but only what He has seen the Father doing; for whatever things He does, the Son also does these in the same way.

Unless we regard these words as an integral part of His statement, we do violence to them by forcing an arbitrary and unbelieving interpretation on them. But if His answer refers to the grounds of their anger, our faith rightly expresses what He meant to teach, and the perversity of the ungodly is left without support for its profane delusion. Let us see, then, whether this reply fits an accusation of working on the Sabbath. The Son can do nothing of Himself, but only what He has seen the Father doing. He has said just before, My Father works even until now, and I work. If, by virtue of the authority of the Father's nature within Him, He works all that He works with the Father in Him, and the Father works even until now on the Sabbath, then the Son, Who appeals to the authority of the Father's working, is cleared of blame. For the words can do nothing refer not to strength but to authority; He can do nothing of Himself except what He has seen. Now, having seen does not confer the power to act, and so He is not weak if He can do nothing without having seen; rather, His authority is shown to depend on seeing. Again, the words unless He has seen signify the consciousness that comes from seeing, as when He says to the Apostles, Behold, I say to you, Lift up your eyes and look at the fields, and see that they are already white for harvest. Conscious that the Father's nature dwells in Him and works in Him when He works, and to forestall the idea that the Lord of the Sabbath has violated the Sabbath, He declares, The Son can do nothing of Himself, but only what He has seen the Father doing. And in this way He demonstrates that every action of His springs from His consciousness of the nature working within Him; when He works on the Sabbath, the Father works even until now on the Sabbath. In what follows, however, He addresses the second cause of their indignation: For whatever things He does, the Son does in the same way. Is it false that the Son does in the same way whatever things the Father does? Does the Son of God acknowledge a distinction between the Father's power and working and His own? Does He shrink from claiming the equal homage fitting for one equal in power and nature? If He does, scorn His weakness, and demote Him from equality of nature with the Father. But He Himself says only a little later, That all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father; he who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him. Find the inferiority, if you can, when Both are equal in honor; point out the weakness, when Both work with the same power.

Why do you misrepresent the occasion of the reply in order to detract from His divinity? To the charge of working on the Sabbath He answers that He can do nothing of Himself, but only what He has seen the Father doing; to demonstrate His equality, He declares that He does whatever things the Father does. Press your charge of weakness on the basis of His answer about the Sabbath, if you can disprove that the Son does in the same way whatever things the Father does. But if whatever things includes all things without exception, in what is He found weak, when there is nothing the Father does that He cannot also do? Where is His claim to equality refuted by any instance of weakness, when one and the same honor is demanded for Him and for the Father? If Both have the same power in operation, and both claim the same reverence in worship, I cannot understand what dishonor of inferiority can exist, since Father and Son possess the same power of operation and equal honor.

Although we have treated this passage as the facts themselves explain it, still, to prove that the Lord's words, The Son can do nothing of Himself, but only what He has seen the Father doing, far from supporting this unholy degrading of His nature, testify to His conscious possession of the nature of the Father, by Whose authority He worked on the Sabbath, let us show them that we can produce another saying of the Lord that bears on the question: I do nothing of Myself, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me. And He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him. Do you sense what is implied in the words, The Son can do nothing, but only what He has seen the Father doing? Or what a mystery is contained in the saying, I can do nothing of myself, and He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him? He does nothing of Himself, because the Father dwells in Him; can you reconcile with this the fact that the Father does not leave Him, because He does the things that are pleasing to Him? Your interpretation, heretic, sets up a contradiction between these two statements: that He does nothing of Himself unless taught by the Father dwelling in Him, and that the Father dwells in Him because He always does the things that are pleasing to Him. For if the Father's dwelling in Him means that He does nothing of Himself, how could He have earned the Father's dwelling in Him by always doing the things that are pleasing to the Father? There is no merit in not doing of oneself what one does. Conversely, how are the Son's deeds pleasing to the Father, if the Father Himself, dwelling in the Son, is their Author? Impiety, you are in a tight spot; the well-armed piety of the faith has hemmed you in. The Son is either an Agent, or He is not. If He is not an Agent, how does He please by his acts? If He is an Agent, in what sense are deeds that are not done of Himself His own? On the one hand, He must have done the things that are pleasing; on the other, there is no merit in having done what one does, yet not of oneself.

But, my opponent, the unity of Their nature is such that the separate action of Each implies the joint action of Both, and Their joint activity implies a separate activity of Each. Picture the Son acting, and the Father acting through Him. He does not act of Himself, for we have to explain how the Father dwells in Him. He acts in His own Person, for in keeping with His birth as the Son, He Himself does what is pleasing. His not acting of Himself would prove Him weak, if it were not the case that He acts in such a way that what He does is pleasing to the Father. But He would not be in the unity of the divine nature if the deeds He does, and in which He pleases, were not His own, and He were merely prompted to act by the Father dwelling in Him. So the Father, in dwelling in Him, teaches Him, and the Son, in acting, does not act of Himself; while, on the other hand, the Son, though not acting of Himself, acts Himself, for what He does is pleasing. In this way the unity of Their nature is preserved in Their action, for the One, though He acts Himself, does not act of Himself, while the Other, Who has refrained from action, is still active.

Connect with this the saying you seize on to support the charge of weakness: All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and whoever comes to Me I will by no means cast out; for I have come down from heaven not to do My own will, but the will of the Father who sent Me. But perhaps you say the Son has no freedom of will: the weakness of His nature subjects Him to necessity, and He is denied free will and subjected to necessity so that He may not reject those who are given to Him and come from the Father. Nor was the Lord content to demonstrate the mystery of the Unity by His action in not rejecting those who are given to Him, and in not seeking to do His own will instead of the will of him who sent Him; but when the Jews began to grumble after He repeated the words, Him who sent Me, He confirms our interpretation by saying, Everyone who hears from the Father and learns comes to Me. Not that anyone has seen the Father, except He who is from God; He has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has eternal life. Now tell me first: where has the Father been heard, and where has He taught His hearers? No one has seen the Father except Him Who is from God: has anyone ever heard Him Whom no one has ever seen? He who has heard from the Father comes to the Son; and he who has heard the teaching of the Son has heard the teaching of the Father's nature, for its properties are revealed in the Son. So when we hear the Son teaching, we must understand that we are hearing the teaching of the Father. No one has seen the Father, yet he who comes to the Son hears and learns from the Father to come: it is clear, therefore, that the Father teaches through the words of the Son and, though seen by no one, speaks to us in the manifestation of the Son, because the Son, by virtue of His perfect birth, possesses all the properties of His Father's nature. So the Only-begotten God, desiring to testify to the Father's authority while teaching His own unity with the Father's nature, does not cast out those who are given to Him by the Father, nor does He do His own will instead of the will of Him who sent Him: not that He does not will what He does, or is not Himself heard when He teaches; but in order to reveal Him Who sent Him, and Himself, the One Sent, under the aspect of one indistinguishable nature, He shows all that He wills, says, and does to be the will and works of the Father.

But He proves abundantly that His will is free by the words, As the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son also gives life to whom He wills. When the equality of Father and Son in power and honor is indicated, the freedom of the Son's will is made clear; when Their unity is demonstrated, His conformity to the Father's will is signified, for what the Father wills, the Son does. But to do a will is something more than to obey it: obeying would imply external necessity, while doing another's will requires unity with him, since it is an act of volition. In doing the will of the Father, the Son teaches that through the identity of Their nature His will is the same in nature as the Father's, since all that He does is the Father's will. The Son plainly wills all that the Father wills, for wills of the same nature cannot dissent from one another. It is the will of the Father that is revealed in the words, For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and that I should raise him up at the last day. Hear now whether the will of the Son is at odds with the Father's, when He says, Father, as for those whom You have given Me, I will that they also may be with Me where I am. There is no doubt here that the Son wills: for while the Father wills that those who believe in the Son should have eternal life, the Son wills that the believer should be where He is. For is it not eternal life to dwell together with Christ? And does He not grant the believer in Him all perfection of blessing when He says, No one has known the Son except the Father, nor has anyone known the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him? Does He not have freedom of will, when He wills to impart to us the knowledge of the Father's mystery? Is His will not so free that He can grant the knowledge of Himself and His Father to whomever He wills? So Father and Son are clearly joint Possessors of a nature common to Both through birth and common through unity: for the Son is free in will, but what He does willingly is an act of the Father's will.

Anyone who has not grasped the plain truths of the faith obviously cannot understand its mysteries; because he does not have the doctrine of the Gospel, he is a stranger to the hope of the Gospel. We must confess that the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, by unity of nature, by might of power, as equal in honor as Begetter and Begotten. But perhaps you say that our Lord's own witness contradicts this declaration, for He says, The Father is greater than I. Heretic, is this the weapon of your profanity? Are these the arms of your frenzy? Have you missed the fact that the Church does not admit two Unbegotten, or confess two Fathers? Have you forgotten the Incarnation of the Mediator, with the birth, the cradle, the childhood, the passion, the cross and the death that belong to it? When you were born again, did you not confess the Son of God, born of Mary? If the Son of God, of Whom these things are true, says, The Father is greater than I, can you be unaware that the Incarnation for your salvation was an emptying of the form of God, and that the Father, unaffected by this taking on of human conditions, remained in the blessed eternity of His own incorrupt nature without taking our flesh? We confess that the Only-begotten God, while He remained in the form of God, remained in the nature of God, but we do not immediately reabsorb His unity, which bore the form of a servant, into the substance of the divine unity. Nor do we teach that the Father is in the Son as if He entered into Him bodily; rather, we teach that the nature begotten by the Father, of the same kind as His own, possessed by nature the nature that begot it: and that this nature, remaining in the form of the nature that begot it, took the form of human nature and weakness. Christ possessed all that belonged to His nature: but the form of God had departed from Him, for by emptying Himself of it, He had taken the form of a servant. The divine nature had not ceased to exist; still dwelling in Him, it had taken on the humility of earthly birth, and was exercising its own power in the manner of the humility it had assumed. So God, born of God, found as man in the form of a servant but acting as God in His miracles, was at once God, as His deeds proved, and yet man, for He was found in the fashion of man.

So in the discourse we have explained above, He had borne witness to the unity of His nature with the Father's: He who has seen Me has seen the Father also: The Father is in Me, and I in the Father These two passages agree perfectly, since both Persons are of equal nature; to see the Son is the same as to see the Father; that the One dwells in the One shows that They are inseparable. And so that they would not misunderstand Him, as though in seeing His body they saw the Father in Him, He had added, Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me: or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves. His power belonged to His nature, and His working was the exercise of that power; so in the exercise of that power they could recognize in Him the unity with the Father's nature. To the degree that anyone recognized Him as God in the power of His nature, he would come to know God the Father, present in that mighty nature. The Son, Who is equal with the Father, showed by His works that the Father could be seen in Him, so that we, perceiving in the Son a nature like the Father's in its power, might know that there is no distinction of nature between Father and Son.

So the Only-begotten God, just before He finished His work in the flesh and completed the mystery of taking the servant's form, speaks this way to establish our faith: You heard how I said to you, I am going away, and I came to you. If you loved Me, you would rejoice, because I am going to the Father; for the Father is greater than I. Earlier in this very discourse He has already set out the teaching of His divine nature in all its aspects: can we, then, on the strength of this confession, deprive the Son of the equality that His true birth has perfected in Him? Or is it an indignity to the Only-begotten God that the Unbegotten God is His Father, since His Only-begotten birth from the Unbegotten gives Him the Only-begotten nature? He is not the source of His own being, nor did He, while not yet existing, bring about His own birth out of nothing; rather, existing as a living nature and from a living nature, He possesses the power of that nature and declares the authority of that nature by bearing witness to His honor, and in His honor to the grace that belongs to the birth He received. He pays the Father the tribute of obedience to the will of Him Who sent Him, but the obedience of humility does not dissolve the unity of His nature: He becomes obedient to death, but after death He is above every name.

But if His equality is doubted because the Name is given to Him after He put off the form of God, we dishonor Him by ignoring the mystery of the humility He assumed. The birth of His humanity brought Him a new nature, and His form was changed in His humility by the taking of a servant's form, but now the giving of the Name restores to Him equality of form. Ask yourself what it is that is given. If the gift is something that belongs to God, granting it to the receiving nature does not impair the divinity of the giving nature. Again, the words And gave Him the Name involve a mystery in the giving, but the giving of the Name does not make it a different name. It is given to Jesus that to Him Every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord in the glory of God the Father. The honor given Him is that He should be confessed in the glory of God the Father. Do you hear Him say, The Father is greater than I? Know Him also as the one of Whom it is said, in reward for His obedience, And gave to Him the Name that is above every name; hear Him Who said, I and the Father are one; He who has seen Me has seen the Father also; I am in the Father, and the Father in Me. Consider the honor of the confession granted to Him: that Jesus is Lord in the glory of God the Father. When, then, is the Father greater than the Son? Surely when He gives Him the Name above every name. And on the other hand, when are the Son and the Father one? Surely when every tongue confesses that Jesus is Lord in the glory of God the Father. If, then, the Father is greater through His authority to give, is the Son less through the confession of receiving? The Giver is greater: but the Receiver is not less, for it is given to Him to be one with the Giver. If it is not given to Jesus to be confessed in the glory of God the Father, He is less than the Father. But if it is given to Him to be in the glory in which the Father is, we see in the prerogative of giving that the Giver is greater, and in the confession of the gift that the Two are One. So the Father is greater than the Son: for He is clearly greater Who makes another to be all that He Himself is, Who imparts to the Son, by the mystery of the birth, the image of His own unbegotten nature, Who begets Him from Himself into His own form, and restores Him again from the form of a servant to the form of God, by Whose work Christ, born God according to the Spirit in the glory of the Father, but now Jesus Christ dead in the flesh, is to be God once more in the glory of the Father. So when Christ says that He is going to the Father, He reveals why they should rejoice if they loved Him: because the Father is greater than He.

After explaining that love is the source of this joy, because love rejoices that Jesus is to be confessed in the glory of God the Father, He next states His claim to receive that glory back, in the words, For the prince of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me. The prince of this world has nothing in Him: for, found in fashion as a man, He lived in the likeness of the flesh of sin, yet apart from the sin of the flesh, and in the flesh condemned sin by sin. Then, with obedience to the Father's command as His only motive, He adds, But so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do just as the Father commanded Me. Rise, let us go from here. In His zeal to do the Father's commandment, He rises and hurries to complete the mystery of His bodily passion. But the next moment He unfolds the mystery of His assumption of flesh. Through this assumption we are in Him, as the branches are in the vine; and unless He had become the Vine, we could have borne no good fruit. He urges us to dwell in Himself through faith in His assumed body, so that, since the Word has been made flesh, we may be in the nature of His flesh, as the branches are in the Vine. He separates the form of the Father's majesty from the humiliation of the assumed flesh by calling Himself the Vine, the source of unity for all the branches, and the Father the careful Vinedresser, Who prunes away its useless and barren branches to be burned in the fire. In the words, He who has seen Me has seen the Father also, and The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own, but the Father dwelling in Me does His works, and Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me, He reveals the truth of His birth and the mystery of His Incarnation. He then continues the thread of His discourse until He comes to the saying, The Father is greater than I; and after this, to complete the meaning of these words, He quickly adds the illustration of the vinedresser, the vine and the branches, which directs our attention to His submission to bodily humiliation. He says that because the Father is greater than Himself, He is going to the Father, and that love should rejoice that He is going to the Father, that is, to receive His glory back from the Father: to be glorified with Him and in Him, not with a brand-new honor but with the old, not with some unfamiliar honor but with the one He had with Him before. If, then, Christ will not enter into Him with glory, to remain in the glory of God, you may disparage His nature: but if the glory He receives is the proof of His Godhead, recognize that the Father, as the Giver of this proof, is the greater.

Why do you distort the Incarnation into a blasphemy? Why do you pervert the mystery of salvation into a weapon of destruction? The Father, Who glorifies the Son, is greater: the Son, Who is glorified in the Father, is not less. How can He be less, when He is in the glory of God the Father? And how can the Father not be greater? So the Father is greater because He is Father: but the Son, because He is Son, is not less. The birth of the Son makes the Father greater: the nature that is the Son's by birth does not allow Him to be less. The Father is greater, for the Son asks Him to give glory to the manhood He has assumed. The Son is not less, for He receives His glory back with the Father. In this way the mystery of the Birth and the dispensation of the Incarnation are fulfilled together. The Father, as Father and as the one who glorifies Him Who is now Son of Man, is greater: Father and Son are one in that the Son, born of the Father, is taken back to the glory of the Father after assuming an earthly body.

So the birth does not make His nature inferior, for He is in the form of God, since He is born of God. And though by their very meaning 'Unbegotten' and 'Begotten' seem opposed, the Begotten cannot be excluded from the nature of the Unbegotten, for there is no one else from whom He could derive His substance. He does not, it is true, share in the supreme majesty of being unbegotten: but He has received the nature of divinity from the Unbegotten God. So faith confesses the eternity of the Only-begotten God, though it can give no meaning to begetting or beginning in His case. His nature forbids us to say that He ever began to be, for His birth lies beyond the beginnings of time. But while we confess that He existed before all ages, we do not hesitate to declare Him born in timeless eternity, for we believe in His birth, though we know it never had a beginning.

Seeking to disparage His nature, the heretics seize on such sayings as, The Father is greater than I, or, But about that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. They make it a reproach against the Only-begotten God that He did not know the day and the hour: that, though God born of God, He does not have the perfection of the divine nature, since He is subject to the limitation of ignorance; that is, an outside force stronger than Himself, triumphing, so to speak, over His weakness, makes Him captive to this infirmity. And indeed, the heretics in their frenzy would drive us to this blasphemous interpretation with an apparent right to claim that such a confession is unavoidable. The words are the Lord's own, and what, someone may ask, could be more unholy than to corrupt His explicit statement by trying to explain it away?

But before we investigate the meaning and occasion of these words, let us first appeal to the judgment of common sense. Is it believable that He, Who stands to all things as the Author of their present and future, should not know all things? If all things are through Christ and in Christ, and through Christ in such a way that they are also in Him, must not what is both in Him and through Him also be in His knowledge, when that knowledge, by virtue of a nature that cannot be ignorant, habitually grasps what is neither in Him nor through Him? But can what derives its origin from Him alone, and has in Him alone the efficient cause of its present state and future development, be beyond the knowledge of His nature, through which all that it is and will be is brought about, and in which it is contained? Jesus Christ knows the thoughts of the mind as it is now, stirred by present motives, and as it will be tomorrow, roused by the impulse of future desires. Hear the witness of the Evangelist: For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that did not believe, and who it was that would betray Him. By its power His nature could perceive the unborn future and foresee the awakening of passions still dormant in the mind: do you believe that it did not know what is through itself and within itself? He is Lord of all that belongs to others; is He not Lord of His own? Remember what is written of Him, All things have been created through Him and in Him: and He is before all things: or again, For it was the good pleasure of the Father that all the fullness should dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, all fullness is in Him, all things were made through Him and are reconciled in Him, and we wait in expectation for that day of reconciliation; did He not, then, know it, when its time was in His hands and fixed by His mystery? For it is the day of His coming, of which the Apostle wrote, When Christ, Who is your life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. No one is ignorant of what is through himself and within himself: will Christ come, and not know the day of His coming? It is His day, for the same Apostle says, The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night: can we believe, then, that He did not know it? Human natures, as far as they are able, foresee what they decide to do: knowledge of the desired end accompanies the desire to act: does He Who is born God not know what is in Himself and through Himself? The times are through Him, the day is in His hand, for the future is established through Him, and the Dispensation of His coming is in His power: is His understanding so dull that the sense of His sluggish nature does not tell Him what He Himself has determined? Is He like the brute and the beast, which, moved by no reason or foresight, not even aware of acting but driven back and forth by the impulse of irrational desire, move toward their end on a random and uncertain course?

But again, how can we believe that the Lord of glory, because He was capable of not knowing the day of His own coming, had a discordant and imperfect nature, subject to the necessity of coming but ignorant of the day of His coming? This would make God weaker than the power of ignorance, which took the prerogative of knowledge away from Him. And then, how we multiply occasions for blasphemy if we attribute not only weakness to Christ but also a fault to God the Father, saying that He cheated the Only-begotten God, the Son of His love, out of foreknowledge of this day, and maliciously denied Him certainty about the future consummation: that He allowed Him to know the day and hour of His passion but withheld from Him the day of His power and the hour of His glory among His Saints: that He took from Him the knowledge of His blessedness while granting Him foreknowledge of His death? The trembling conscience of man does not dare to presume to think this way of God, or to attribute to Him such a taint of human fickleness that the Father would deny anything to the Son, or that the Son, Who was born as God, would have imperfect knowledge.

But God can never be anything but love, or anything but the Father: and He Who loves does not envy; He Who is Father is wholly and entirely Father. This name allows no compromise: no one can be partly father and partly not. A father is father with respect to his whole person; all that he is is present in the child, for piecemeal paternity is impossible: not that paternity extends to self-generation, but that a father is father altogether, in all his qualities, to the offspring born of him. Given the constitution of human bodies, which are made of dissimilar elements and composed of various parts, the father must be father of the whole, since a perfect birth hands on to the child all the different elements and parts that are in the father. So the father is father of all that is his; the birth proceeds from the whole of himself and makes up the whole of the child. God, however, has no body, but simple essence: no parts, but an all-embracing whole: nothing that is made alive, but everything living. So God is all life and all one, not composed of parts but perfect in His simplicity, and as the Father He must be Father to His begotten in all that He Himself is, for the perfect birth of the Son makes Him perfect Father in all that He has. So if He is Father to the Son in the proper sense, the Son must possess all the properties of the Father. Yet how can this be if the Son lacks the quality of foreknowledge, if anything from His Author is missing in His birth? To say that there is one of God's properties that He lacks is almost the same as saying that He has none of them. And what is proper to God, if not knowledge of the future, a vision that embraces the invisible and unborn world and has within its scope what is not yet but is to be?

Moreover, Paul, the teacher of the Gentiles, heads off the impious falsehood that the Only-begotten God was partly ignorant. Listen to his words: Being instructed in love, to all the riches of the fullness of understanding, to the knowledge of the mystery of God, even Christ, in Whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden. God, even Christ, is the mystery, and all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Him. But a portion is one thing and the whole another: a part is not the same as all, nor can all be called a part. If the Son does not know the day, then not all the treasures of knowledge are in Him; but He has all the treasures of knowledge in Him, so He is not ignorant of the day. But we must remember that those treasures of knowledge were hidden in Him, though being hidden did not mean they were lacking. They are in Him as in God; they are hidden as in the mystery. But Christ, the mystery of God, in Whom all the treasures of knowledge are hidden, is not Himself hidden from our eyes and minds. Since He is Himself the mystery, then, let us see whether He is ignorant when He does not know. If elsewhere His profession of ignorance does not imply that He does not know, here too it will be wrong to call Him ignorant, if He does not know. All the treasures of knowledge are hidden in Him, and so His ignorance is an economy rather than ignorance. So we can give a reason for His ignorance without assuming that He did not know.

Whenever God says that He does not know, He does profess ignorance, but He is not subject to the defect of ignorance. It is not because of the weakness of ignorance that He does not know, but because it is not yet the time to speak, or the time for the divine Plan to act. So He says to Abraham, The cry of Sodom and Gomorrha is full, and their sin is very grave. Therefore I will go down now, and see whether they have done entirely as the cry of it says: and if not, I will know. Here we see God not knowing what He nevertheless knows. He knows that their sins are very grave, but He comes down again to see whether they have done it entirely, and to know if they have not. We see, then, that He is not ignorant, although He does not know, but that, when the time comes for action, He knows. So this knowledge is not a change from ignorance, but the arrival of the fullness of time. He still waits to know, but we cannot suppose that He does not know: so His not knowing what He knows, and His knowing what He does not know, is nothing other than a divine economy in word and deed.

We cannot, then, doubt that God's knowledge depends on the occasion and not on any change on His part: and by the occasion we mean the occasion, not of acquiring knowledge but of declaring it, as we learn from His words to Abraham, Do not lay your hand on the boy, or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear your God, and have not withheld your beloved son, for My sake. God knows now, but that now I know is a profession of previous ignorance: yet it is not true that God did not know the faith of Abraham until now, for it is written, Abraham believed in God, and it was counted to him as righteousness, and so this now I know marks the time when Abraham received this testimony, not when God began to know. By the sacrifice of his son, Abraham had proved the love he had for God, and God knew it at the time He spoke: but since we cannot suppose that He did not know before, we must for this reason suppose that He took note of it then because He spoke. As an example, we have chosen to consider this passage out of many in the Old Testament that deal with the knowledge of God, in order to show that when God does not know, the cause lies not in His ignorance, but in the occasion.

In the Gospels we find our Lord knowing, and yet not knowing, many things. So He does not know the workers of iniquity, who boast of their mighty works and of His name, for He says to them, Then I will swear, I never knew you; depart from Me, all you who work iniquity. He even declares with an oath that He does not know them, and yet He knows them to be workers of iniquity. He does not know them, not because He is without knowledge, but because the iniquity of their deeds makes them unworthy of His knowledge, and He even confirms His denial with the sanctity of an oath. By the power of His nature He could not be ignorant; by the mystery of His will He refused to know. Again, the Unbegotten God does not know the foolish virgins; He is ignorant of those who were too careless to have their oil ready when He entered the chamber of His glorious coming. They come and plead, and far from not knowing them, He cries, Truly, I say to you, I do not know you. Their coming and their prayer compel Him to recognize them, but His profession of ignorance refers to His will, not to His nature: they are unworthy to be known by Him to Whom nothing is unknown. So, to keep us from attributing His ignorance to weakness, He immediately says to the Apostles, Watch, therefore, for you do not know the day or the hour. When He tells them to watch because they do not know the day or the hour, He shows that He did not know the virgins because through sleep and neglect they had no oil, and so were unworthy to enter His chamber.

The Lord Jesus Christ, then, Who searches the heart and the inmost being, has no weakness in His nature that would keep Him from knowing, for, as we see, even the fact of His ignorance comes from the omniscience of His nature. Yet if there are any who attribute ignorance to Him, let them tremble, for fear that He Who knows their thoughts should say to them, Why do you think evil in your hearts? The All-knowing, though not ignorant of thoughts and deeds, sometimes asks questions as if He were, as for instance when He asks the woman who it was that touched the hem of His garment, or asks the Apostles why they quarreled among themselves, or asks the mourners where the sepulchre of Lazarus was: but His ignorance was ignorance in words only. It is unreasonable that He should know from afar the death and burial of Lazarus but not the place of his sepulchre; that He should read the thoughts of the mind and not recognize the faith of the woman; that He should have no need to ask about anything, and yet be ignorant of the dispute among the Apostles. But He Who knows all things sometimes professes ignorance as a matter of economy, even though He is not ignorant. So, in the case of Abraham, God concealed His knowledge for a time; in the case of the foolish virgins and the workers of iniquity, He refused to recognize the unworthy; in the mystery of the Son of Man, His asking as if ignorant expressed His humanity. He adapted Himself to the reality of His birth in the flesh in everything to which the weakness of our nature is subject, not in such a way that He became weak in His divine nature, but so that God, born as man, took on the weaknesses of humanity, yet without reducing His unchangeable nature to a weak nature by doing so, for the unchangeable nature was the one in which He mysteriously assumed flesh. He Who was God is man, but, being man, He has not ceased to be God. So, conducting Himself as one born a man, and proving Himself to be one, though remaining God the Word, He often uses human language (though God, speaking as God, makes frequent use of human terms), and does not know what it is not yet time to declare, or what does not deserve His recognition.

We can now understand why He said that He did not know the day. If we believe that He was really ignorant, we contradict the Apostle, who says, In Whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden. There is knowledge hidden in Him, and because it has to be hidden, it must sometimes be professed as ignorance for this purpose, for once it is declared, it will no longer be secret. So that the knowledge may remain hidden, then, He declares that He does not know. But if He does not know so that the knowledge may remain hidden, this ignorance does not come from His nature, which is omniscient, for He is ignorant only so that it may be hidden. Nor is it hard to see why the knowledge of the day is hidden. He urges us to keep watch continually with unflagging faith, and withholds from us the security of certain knowledge, so that our minds may be kept on the alert by the uncertainty of suspense, and, as they hurry toward the day of His coming and continually look for it, may always keep watch in hope; and so that, though we know the time must come, its very uncertainty may make us careful and vigilant. So the Lord says, Therefore you also must be ready, for you do not know at what hour the Son of Man will come; and again, Blessed is that servant whom His lord, when He comes, will find doing so. So the ignorance is a means not of deceiving but of encouraging perseverance. It is no loss to be denied a knowledge that it is an advantage not to have, for the security of knowledge might breed neglect of the faith, which is now concealed, while the uncertainty of expectation keeps us continually prepared, just as the master of the house, with the fear of loss before his eyes, watches and guards against the dreaded coming of the thief, who chooses the time of sleep for his work.

Clearly, then, God's ignorance is not ignorance but a mystery: in the economy of His actions and words and manifestations, He does not know and at the same time knows, or knows and at the same time does not know. But we must ask whether it might be because of the Son's weakness that He does not know what the Father knows. He might perhaps read the thoughts of the human heart, because His stronger nature can unite itself with a weaker one in all its movements, and by the force of its power pass, so to speak, right through the feeble nature. But a weaker nature is powerless to penetrate a stronger one: light things may be penetrated by heavy, thin by dense, liquid by solid, but heavy things are impenetrable to light ones, dense to thin, and solid to liquid: the strong are not open to the weak, but the weak are penetrated by the strong. Therefore, the heretics say, the Son did not know the thoughts of the Father, because, being weak Himself, He could not approach the more powerful One and enter into Him, or pass through Him.

If anyone dares not only to speak of the Only-begotten God this way in the rashness of his tongue, but even to think so in the wickedness of his heart, let him hear what the Apostle thought of the Holy Spirit, from the words he wrote to the Corinthians, But to us God revealed them through the Spirit: for the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the things of a man that are in him, except the spirit of the man that is in him? In the same way, no one knows the things that are in God except the Spirit of God. But let us cast aside these empty illustrations from material things, and measure God born of God, Spirit of Spirit, by His own powers and not by earthly conditions. Let us measure Him not by our own senses, but by His divine claims. Let us believe Him Who said, He who has seen Me has seen the Father also. Let us not forget that He said, Believe, if only because of My works, that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father, and again, I and the Father are one. If names that correspond to realities, when used intelligibly, give us any true information, then He Who is seen in Another by the eye of understanding is not different in nature from that Other; not different in kind, since He dwells in the Father, and the Father in Him; not separate, since Both are One. See their unity in the indivisibility of their nature, and grasp the mystery of that indivisible nature by regarding the One as the mirror of the Other. But remember that He is the mirror, not as an image reflected by the splendor of a nature outside Himself, but as a living nature, indistinguishable from the Father's living nature, derived wholly from the whole of His Father's, having the Father's in Him because He is the Only begotten, and dwelling in the Father because He is God.

The heretics cannot deny that the Lord used these words to signify the mystery of His birth, but they try to escape them by referring them to a harmony of will. They make the unity of God the Father and God the Son a unity not of divinity but merely of will: as if the divine teaching were poor in expression and the Lord could not have said, I and the Father are one in will; or as if those words could mean the same as I and the Father are one; or as if He meant, He who has seen My will has seen the will of My Father also, but, being unskilled in expression, tried to express that idea in the words, He who has seen Me has seen the Father also: or as if the divine vocabulary did not contain the terms, The will of My Father is in Me, and My will is in the Father, but this thought could be expressed by I in the Father and the Father in Me. All this is nauseating and irreverent nonsense; common sense passes judgment on such silly notions as that the Lord could not say what He wanted, or did not say what He said. True, we find Him speaking in parables and allegories, but it is a different thing to strengthen one's words with illustrations, or to do justice to the dignity of the subject with the help of suggestive proverbs, or to adapt one's language to the needs of the moment. But this passage about the unity we are discussing does not allow us to look for the meaning beyond the plain sound of the words. If Father and Son are one in the sense that They are one in will, and if separable natures cannot be one in will, because their difference of kind and nature must draw them into differences of will and judgment, how can They be one in will if They are not one in knowledge? There can be no unity of will between ignorance and knowledge. Omniscience and ignorance are opposites, and opposites cannot share the same will.

But perhaps someone may hold that His saying that the Father alone knows confirms the Son's confession of ignorance. But unless He had plainly said that the Father alone knows, it would have posed the greatest danger to our understanding, since we might have thought that He Himself did not know. For since His ignorance is due to the economy of hidden knowledge, and not to a nature capable of ignorance, now that He says the Father alone knows, we cannot believe that He does not know; for, as we said above, God's knowledge is not the discovery of what He did not know, but its declaration. The fact that the Father alone knows is no proof that the Son is ignorant: He says that He does not know so that others may not know, and that the Father alone knows to show that He Himself also knows. If we say that God came to know the love of Abraham, when He stopped concealing His knowledge, it follows that the Father can be said to know the day only because He did not conceal it from the Son, for God does not learn by sudden perception, but declares His knowledge as the occasion arises. If, then, the Son, in keeping with the mystery, does not know the day so that He may not reveal it, on the other hand the Father can be shown to know the day only by the fact that He has revealed it.

We must never imagine alternations of bodily change in the Father and the Son, as though the Father sometimes spoke to the Son and sometimes was silent. We do remember that a voice was sometimes uttered from heaven for our sake, so that the power of the Father's words might confirm the mystery of the Son for us, as the Lord says, This voice has not come from Heaven for My sake but for your sake. But the divine nature can do without the various combinations that human functions require: the motion of the tongue, the positioning of the mouth, the forcing of the breath, and the vibration of the air. God is a simple Being: we must understand Him through devotion, and confess Him with reverence. He is to be worshiped, not pursued by our senses, for a conditioned and weak nature cannot grasp, by the guesses of its imagination, the mystery of an infinite and omnipotent nature. In God there is no variability, and there are no parts, as of a composite divinity, so that in Him will should follow inaction, speech silence, or work rest, or that He could not will without passing from some other mental state to volition, or speak without breaking the silence with His voice, or act without going out to labor. He is not subject to the laws of nature, for nature has received its law from Him: He never undergoes weakness or change when He acts, for His power is boundless, as the Lord said, Father, all things are possible for You. He can do more than human sense can conceive. The Lord does not deny even Himself the quality of omnipotence, for He says, Whatever things the Father does, these things the Son also does in the same way. Nothing is difficult where there is no weakness; for only a power too weak to accomplish something knows the need for effort. Difficulty comes from weakness in the moving force; a force of limitless power rises above the conditions of impotence.

We have established this point to rule out the idea that God spoke to the Son after being silent, or that the Son began to know after being ignorant. To reach our understanding, terms suited to our own nature must be used: so we do not understand communication except by word of mouth, or conceive of the opposite of ignorance except as knowledge. So the Son does not know the day because He does not reveal it; the Father, He says, alone knows it because He reveals it to the Son alone. But, as we have said, Christ is aware of no such natural hindrances as an ignorance that must be removed before He can come to know, or a knowledge that is not His until the Father begins to speak. He declares the unity of His nature, as the only-begotten, with the Father in the unmistakable words, All that the Father has is Mine. There is no mention here of coming into possession: it is one thing to be the Possessor of things external to Him; another to be self-contained and self-existent. The former is to possess heaven and earth and the universe; the latter is to be able to describe Himself by His own properties, which are His not as something external and subject to Him, but as that of which He Himself subsists. So when He says that all things the Father has are His, He is referring to the divine nature, and not to a joint ownership of bestowed gifts. For referring to His words that the Holy Spirit would take from what is His, He says, All that the Father has is Mine; therefore I said, He will take from what is Mine: that is, the Holy Spirit takes from what is His, but also takes from what is the Father's: and if He receives from what is the Father's, He also receives from what is His. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, and does not receive from a creature, but teaches us that He receives all these gifts because they are all God's. All that belongs to the Father is the Spirit's; but we must not think that whatever He received from the Son, He did not also receive from the Father; for all that the Father has belongs equally to the Son.

So the nature of Christ needed no change, or question, or answer, as if it had to advance from ignorance to knowledge, or ask One Who had remained silent and wait to receive His answer: rather, remaining perfectly in mysterious unity with Him, it received its whole being from God, just as it derived its origin from Him. And, further, it received all that belonged to the whole being of God, namely, His knowledge and His will. What the Father knows, the Son does not learn by question and answer; what the Father wills, the Son does not will by command. Since all that the Father has is His, it is the property of His nature to will and to know exactly as the Father wills and knows. But to prove His birth He often sets out the doctrine of His Person, as when He says, I did not come to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. He does the Father's will, not His own, and by the will of Him who sent Me He means His Father. But that He Himself wills the same thing is unmistakably declared in the words, Father, it is My will that those whom You have given Me also be with Me where I am. The Father wills that we should be with Christ, in Whom, according to the Apostle, He chose us before the foundation of the world, and the Son wills the same, namely that we should be with Him. So His will is the same in nature as the Father's will, though it is distinguished from the Father's to make the fact of the birth plain.

The Son, then, is ignorant of nothing that the Father knows, nor does it follow, because the Father alone knows, that the Son does not know. Father and Son remain in unity of nature, and the Son's ignorance belongs to the divine Plan of silence, since in Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. The Lord Himself testified to this when He answered the Apostles' question about the times, It is not for you to know times or moments, which the Father has set within His own authority. The knowledge is denied them, and not only that, but the eagerness to learn is forbidden, because it is not for them to know these times. Yet now that He is risen, they ask again, though their question on the earlier occasion had been answered with the reply that not even the Son knew. They cannot possibly have taken it literally that the Son did not know, for they ask Him again as though He did know. They saw a divine Plan of silence in the mystery of His ignorance, and now, after His resurrection, they renew the question, thinking that the time has come to speak. And the Son no longer denies that He knows, but tells them that it is not for them to know, because the Father has set it within His own authority. If, then, the Apostles attributed the Son's not knowing the day to the divine Plan and not to weakness, shall we say that the Son did not know the day for the simple reason that He was not God? Remember, God the Father set the day within His authority so that it might not come to human knowledge, and the Son, when asked before, replied that He did not know, but now, no longer denying His knowledge, replies that it is their part not to know, for the Father has set the times not in His own knowledge, but in His own authority. The day and the moment are included in the word 'times': can it be, then, that He Who was to restore Israel to its kingdom did not Himself know the day and the moment of that restoration? He teaches us to see evidence of His birth in this exclusive prerogative of the Father, yet He does not deny that He knows: and while He proclaims that the possession of this knowledge is withheld from us, He asserts that it belongs to the mystery of the Father's authority. So we must not think, because He said He did not know the day and the moment, that the Son did not know. As man He wept, and slept, and grieved, but God is incapable of tears, or fear, or sleep. In the weakness of His flesh He shed tears, slept, was hungry, was thirsty, grew weary, and was afraid, yet without impairing the reality of His Only-begotten nature; in the same way we must refer the words that He did not know the day or the hour to His human nature.