Chapter 3.
Chapter 3.
9. They say then what the others held and dared to maintain before them: “Not always Father, always Son; for the Son was not before His generation, but, as others, came out of nothing; and in consequence God was not always Father of the Son; but when the Son came into being and was created, then was God called His Father. For the Word is a creature and work, and foreign and unlike to the Father in substance; and the Son is neither by nature the Father’s true Word, nor His only and true Wisdom; but being a creature and one of the works, He is by an abuse of words called Word and Wisdom; for by the Word which is in God was He made, as were all things. Wherefore the Son is not true God.”
10. Now it may serve to bring home to them what they are saying, to ask them first this, what a son simply is, and of what is that name significant. In truth, Divine Scripture acquaints us with a double sense of this word:—one which Moses sets before us in the Law, When thou shalt hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, to keep all His commandments which I command thee this day, to do that which is right in the eyes of the Lord thy God, ye shall be children of the Lord your God;[14] as also in the Gospel, John says, But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God[15]:—and the other sense is that in which Isaac is son of Abraham, and Jacob of Isaac, and the Patriarchs of Jacob. Now in which of these two senses, literal or figurative, do they understand the Son of God in such figments as the foregoing? for I feel sure they will issue in the same impiety as the Eusebians.
11. First, let us suppose the word Son to be taken in the figurative, not the literal sense; and this is how they really understand it (as their predecessors did), only many of them shrink from saying so. If this is the sense in which the title “Son of God” is to be taken, then I observe, first of all, that sonship in this sense is a grace gained from above by those who have made progress in goodness, and who receive power to become sons of God; and then, if so, He would surely in nothing differ from us, who are also born of God; no, nor would He be Only-begotten, as having obtained the title of Son, as others have, from His virtue. For granting what they say, that, whereas His qualifications were foreknown, He, on that account, from His very first beginning, by anticipation, received the name, and the glory of the name, still there will be no difference between Him and those who receive the name for their actions, so long as this is the ground on which He as others is recognised as Son. For Adam too, though he received grace from the first, and upon his creation was at once placed in paradise, differed in no respect either from Enoch, who was translated thither after his birth on his pleasing God, or from the Apostle, who also was caught up to paradise after his good actions; nay, nor from the thief, who, by virtue of his confession, received a promise that he should be forthwith in paradise.
12. Next when thus pressed, they will perhaps make an answer which has brought them into difficulty many times already: “We consider that the Son has this prerogative over other beings, and therefore is called Only-begotten, because He alone was brought into being by God alone, and all other things were created by God through the Son.” Now I wonder who it was that suggested to you so futile and novel an idea as that the Father alone wrought with His own hand the Son alone, and that all other things were brought into being by the Son as by an under-worker. If for the toil-sake God was content with making the Son only, instead of making all things at once, this is an impious thought, especially in the case of those who know the words of Esaias, The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, hungereth not, neither is weary; there is no searching of His understanding.[16] Rather it is He who to the hungry gives strength, and through His word refreshes the labouring. On the other hand it is impious to suppose that He disdained, as if a humble task, Himself to form the creatures which came into being after the Son; for there is no pride in that God, who goes down with Jacob into Egypt, and for Abraham’s sake corrects Abimelec in behalf of Sara, and speaks face to face with Moses, who was but a man, and descends upon Mount Sinai, and by His secret grace fights for the people against Amalec. However, you are false in your fact, for we are told, He made us, and not we ourselves.[17] He it is that, through His Word, made all things small and great, and we may not divide the creation, and say this is the Father’s, and this is the Son’s, but all things are of one God, who uses His proper Word as a Hand, and in Him does all things. As God Himself shows us, when He says, All these things hath My Hand made;[18] and Paul taught us as he had been taught, that There is One God, from whom are all things; and One Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things.[19] Thus He, always as now, speaks to the sun and it rises, and commands the clouds and it rains upon one place, and another, where it does not rain, is dried up. And He bids the earth to give its fruit, and fashions Jeremias in the womb. But if He now does all this, assuredly at the beginning also He did not disdain through the Word to make all things Himself; for these are but parts of the whole.
18. But now, thirdly, let us suppose, as sometimes has been said, that the other creatures could not endure to be wrought by the direct Hand of the Ingenerate, and therefore the Son alone was brought into being by the Father alone, and other things by the Son as an under-worker and assistant, for this is what Asterius the sacrificer has written, and what Arius has transcribed and bequeathed to his own friends; and from that time they used this formula, broken reed as it is, being ignorant, the bewildered men, of its rottenness. For if it was impossible for things created to bear the hand of God, and you hold the Son to be one of their number, how was even He equal to this formation by God alone? and if an intermediate was necessary that things that came into being might come, and you hold the Son to be one of such, then must there have been some medium before Him, for His own creation; and, that intermediate himself again being a creature, it follows that he too needed another Mediator for his own framing. And though we were to devise another, we must still first devise his Mediator, so that we shall never come to an end. And thus a Mediator being ever in request, never would the creation be constituted, because nothing that has come into being can, as you say, bear the direct hand of the Ingenerate. And if, on your perceiving the extravagance of this, you begin to say that the Son, though a creature, was made capable of being made immediately by the Ingenerate, then all the other things also, though they are mere creatures, are capable of being framed immediately by the Ingenerate; for the Son too is but a creature in your judgment, as everything else. And consequently the generation of the Word is superfluous, according to your impious and futile imagination, God being sufficient for the immediate formation of all things, and all things that have been brought out of nothing being capable of sustaining His direct hand.
14. These impious men then having so little mind amid their madness, let us see, fourthly, whether this particular sophism will not prove even more irrational than the others. Adam was created alone by God alone (through the Word); yet no one would say that Adam differed from those who came after him in having thereby something in his nature more than all other men (granting that he alone was made by God alone, and that we all spring from Adam and consist by succession of our race) so long as we consider him fashioned from the earth as others, and that, at first not existing, he afterwards came to be. But though we were to allow some prerogative to the Protoplast as having been formed by the very Hand of God, still it must be accounted to him as one of honour, not of nature. For he came of the earth, as all other men; and the Hand which then fashioned Adam, now also and ever is fashioning and giving entire consistence to those who come after him. And God Himself declares this to Jeremias, as I said before: Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee;[20] and so He says of all, All those things hath My hand made;[21] and again by Esaias, Thus saith the Lord, thy Redeemer, and He that formed thee from the womb; I am the Lord that maketh all things, that stretcheth forth the heavens alone, that spreadeth abroad the earth by Myself.[22] And David, knowing this, says in the Psalm, Thy Hands have made me and fashioned me;[23] and he who says in Esaias, Thus saith the Lord who formed me from the womb to be His servant,[24] signifies the same. Therefore, in respect of nature, he differs nothing from us though he precedes us in time, so long as we all consist and are created by the same Hand. If then these be your thoughts, O Arians, about the Son of God also, that thus He subsists and came to be, then in your judgment He will differ nothing on the score of nature from others, supposing He too once was not, and then was brought into being, and the name of Son was, on His creation, for His virtue’s sake, by grace united to Him. For, from what you say, He Himself is one of those of whom the Spirit says in the Psalms, He spake the word and they were made; He commanded and they were created.[25] If so, who was it to whom God gave command for the Son’s creation? for a Word there must be to whom God gave command, and in whom the works are created; but ye have no other to show than the Word whom ye deny, unless indeed you should again devise some new notion.
15. “Yes,” they will say, “we have found another;” (which indeed I have formerly heard from the Eusebians,) “on this score do we consider that the Son of God has a prerogative over others, and is called Only-begotten, because He alone partakes the Father, and all other things partake the Son.” Thus they weary themselves in changing and varying their statements, like so many pigments; however, this shall not save them from an exposure, as men who speak empty words out of the earth, and wallow as if in the mire of their own devices. For if indeed He were called God’s Son, and we the Son’s sons, their fiction were plausible; but if we too are said to be sons of that God, of whom He is Son, then we too partake the Father, who says, I have begotten and exalted children.[26] For, if we did not partake Him, He had not said, I have begotten; but, if He Himself begat us, no other than He is our Father. And, as before, it avails not, whether the Son has something more and was made first, whereas we have something less and were made afterwards, as long as we all partake, and are called sons, of the same Father. For the more or less does not indicate a different nature; but attaches to each according to the practice of virtue; and one is placed over ten cities, another over five; and some sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel; and others hear the words, Come, ye blessed of My Father,[27] and, Well done, good and faithful servant.[28] With these ideas, however, no wonder they imagine that of such a Son God was not always Father, and that such a Son was not always in existence, but was brought into being from nothing, as a creature, and was not before His generation; for such a one is other than the True Son of God.
16. But to persist in thus speaking involves guilt; for it is the tone of thought of Sadducees, and of Samosatene to consider that the Word and Wisdom of the Father is but His Son by grace and adoption: it remains then to say that He is Son in the second of the senses above specified, viz., not by an extreme figure, but in a literal sense, as Isaac was son of Abraham as being begotten of him. In other words, the Son is of the nature of the Father, for nature and nothing short of nature is implied in the idea of sonship, generation, or derivation. A son is a father’s increase, not acquisition; from within not from without. I know the objection which will be made to this doctrine; it will be said that I have proposed a mere human conception of a sacred truth, altogether earthly and utterly unworthy of God, but I cannot accept such an account of it. Such an objection only argues ignorance in those who make it; for analogy does not involve likeness. Spirit is not as body, God is not as man, nor man as God. Men are created of matter, and their substance is liable to increase and loss; but God is immortal and incorporeal. And if so be the same terms are used of God and of man in divine Scripture, yet the clear-sighted, as Paul injoins, will study its text and thereby discriminate, and dispose of what is written there according to the nature of each subject, and will avoid any confusion of sense, so as not to conceive of the attributes of God in a human way, nor again to ascribe the properties of man to God. For this were to mix wine with water, and to place upon the altar strange fire together with that which is divine.
17. For instance, God creates, and man too is said to create, and God has being, and men too are said to be. Yet does God create as man does? or has He being as man has being? Perish the thought; we understand the terms in one sense of God, and in another of men. For God creates in that He calls into being that which is not, needing nothing thereunto: but men create by working some existing material, first praying, and thereby gaining the science to execute from that God who has framed all things by His proper Word. And again, men, being incapable of self-existence, are inclosed in place, and have their consistence in the Word of God; but God is self-existent, inclosing all things, and inclosed by none; within all according to His own goodness and power, yet without all in His proper nature. As then men create not as God creates, as their being is not such as God’s being, so men’s generation is in one way, and the Son is from the Father in another. For the offsprings of men are in some sort portions of their fathers, since the very nature of bodies is to be compounded and dissoluble, and to act by piecemeal; and men lose their substance in begetting, and again they gain substance from the accession of food. And on this account men in their time become fathers of many children; but God, who is individual, is Father of the Son without being parted or affected, for there is neither loss nor gain to the Immaterial, as there is in the case of men, and, being simple in His nature, He gives absolutely and utterly all that He is, and thereby is Father of One Only Son. This is why the Son is Only-begotten, and alone in the Father’s bosom, and alone is acknowledged by the Father to be from Him, as in the words, This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.[29] And therefore also, He is the Father’s Word, a title which suggests that the Divine Nature is beyond liability to affection and division, in that not even a human word is begotten with any such accidents, much less the Word of God. Wherefore, also, He sits, as Word, at the Father’s right hand; for where the Father is, there also is His Word; but we, as being His works, stand in judgment before Him; and He is adored, because He is Son of the adorable Father, but we adore, confessing Him Lord and God, because we are creatures and other than He.
18. If this be so, we come to this question:—supposing by the appellation of Son of God must be meant God’s offspring, the fulness of His very Self, can it be a light sin, to maintain that He was made out of nothing, and was not before His generation? It is of course a subject which transcends the thoughts of men, but, I repeat, God’s nature is not bound by the conditions of ours. We become fathers of our children in time, but God, in that He ever is, is ever Father of His Son. And the generation of mankind is familiarised to us from earthly instances that are parallel; but since no one knoweth the Son but the Father, and no one knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him,[30] therefore the sacred writers, to whom the Son has revealed Him, have given us a sort of image, but nothing more, from things visible, saying, Who is the brightness of His glory and the impress of His Person;[31] and again, For with Thee is the well of life, and in Thy light shall we see light;[32] and when the Word chides Israel, He says, Thou hast forsaken the Fountain of wisdom;[33] and this Fountain it is which says, They have forsaken Me, the Fountain of living waters.[34] And mean indeed and very dim is the illustration compared with what we desiderate; but yet it is possible from it to understand something above man’s nature, instead of thinking the Son’s generation to be on a level with ours. For instance, who can even imagine that the radiance of light “once was not,” so that he should dare to say that “the Son was not always,” or that “the Son was not before His generation”? or who is capable of separating the radiance from the sun, or of conceiving of the Fountain as ever void of life, that he should say, even if mad, “The Son is from nothing,” (who says Himself, I am the life[35]), or “alien to the Father’s substance,” (who says, He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father?[36]) for the sacred writers wishing us thus to understand, have given these illustrations; and it is irrelevant and most impious, when Scripture contains such images, to form ideas concerning our Lord from others which are neither in Scripture, nor have any pious bearing.
19. Let us go by Scripture; then from what teacher or by what tradition have you derived these notions about the Saviour? From what passages of Scripture? “Yes,” they will say, “in the Proverbs we read, The Lord hath created Me a beginning of His ways unto His works.[37] This the Eusebians used to insist upon in former years, and you write me word that the present men also, though overthrown and confuted by an abundance of proof, still are putting about in every quarter this passage, and saying that the Son is one of the creatures, and reckoning Him with things which came into being out of nothing. But I answer first, it cannot mean this, supposing we have already proved Him to be a Son. Son and creature are ideas incompatible with each other. If then Son, therefore not creature: if creature, not Son: for vast is the difference between them, and Son and creature cannot be the same, unless His substance be considered to be at once from God and yet external to God. This at first sight; but, secondly, these men seem to me to have a wrong understanding of this passage. They ask us again and again, like so many noisy gnats, “Has the passage no meaning?” Yes, it has a meaning, a pious and very orthodox meaning, but not theirs, and had they understood it, they would not have blasphemed the Lord of glory.[38] It is true to say that the Son was created, but this took place when He became man; for creation belongs to man. And any one may find this sense duly conveyed in the divine oracles, who, instead of accounting their perusal a secondary matter, investigates the time and persons, and the purpose, and thus studies and ponders what he reads. Now as to the season spoken of, he will find for certain that, whereas the Lord always exists, at length in fulness of the ages He became man; and whereas He is Son of God, He became Son of man also. And as to the need he will understand that, wishing to annul our death, He took on Himself a body from the Virgin Mary; in order that, by offering this unto the Father a sacrifice for all, He might deliver us all, who by fear of death were all our life through subject to bondage.[39] And as to the person, this is indeed the Saviour’s, but it is then said of Him when He took a body and said, The Lord has created Me a beginning of His ways unto His works. For as it properly belongs to Him, as God’s Son, to be everlasting, and to be in the Father’s bosom, so, on His becoming man, the words befitted Him, The Lord created Me. For then they are said of Him, and then He hungered, and thirsted, and asked where Lazarus lay, and suffered, and rose again. And as, when we hear of Him as Lord and God and true Light, we understand Him as being from the Father, so on hearing The Lord created, and Servant, and He suffered, we shall justly ascribe this, not to His Godhead, for it does not belong to It, but we must interpret it of that flesh which He bore for our sakes; for to it these things are proper, and this flesh itself was none other’s than the Word’s. And if we wish to know the advantages we attain by this, we shall find them to be as follows: that the Word was made flesh, not only to offer up this body for all, but that we, partaking of His Spirit, might be made gods, a gift which we could not otherwise have gained than by His clothing Himself in our created body; for hence we derive our name of “men of God” and “men in Christ.” And as we, by receiving the Spirit, do not lose our own proper substance, so the Lord, when made man for us, and bearing a body, was no less God; for He was not lessened by the envelopment of the body, but rather deified it and rendered it immortal.