Adversus Praxean

In many ways the devil has set himself against the truth. Sometimes he has tried to shake it by appearing to defend it. He champions the one Lord, the almighty maker of the world, only that out of that very oneness he may forge a heresy. He says that the Father himself came down into the virgin, that he himself was born of her, himself suffered — that he himself, in short, is Jesus Christ. The serpent fell out with himself here, since when he tempted Jesus Christ after the baptism of John, he approached him as the Son of God, being sure that God had a Son, even from those very Scriptures out of which he was then framing the temptation. "If you are the Son of God," he says, "command that these stones become bread." Again: "If you are the Son of God, cast yourself down from here; for it is written, that he has charged his angels concerning you" — the Father, surely — "that they bear you up in their hands, lest at any time you dash your foot against a stone." Or did he perhaps fling the lie back in the Gospels' teeth, saying: "Let Matthew and Luke see to it; for my part I have come to God himself, I have tempted the Almighty himself at close quarters. That is why I came, that is why I tempted. But had he truly been the Son of God, I should perhaps never have thought him worth my pains." No — rather the devil himself is a liar from the beginning, and so is any man he has suborned for his purpose, such as Praxeas. For this Praxeas was the first to bring this kind of perversity from Asia to Rome — a restless man in other respects, and besides puffed up with boasting of martyrdom merely for a single, simple, and short spell of weariness in prison, when, even had he given up his body to be burned, he would have gained nothing, having not the love of God, whose spiritual gifts he also assailed. For at that time the bishop of Rome was already acknowledging the prophecies of Montanus, Prisca, and Maximilla, and on the strength of that acknowledgement was bringing peace to the churches of Asia and Phrygia; but Praxeas, by asserting falsehoods about these very prophets and their churches, and by defending the authority of the bishop's predecessors, compelled him both to recall the letters of peace already sent out and to draw back from his purpose of receiving the spiritual gifts. Thus Praxeas at Rome carried through two pieces of the devil's business: he drove out prophecy and brought in heresy; he put the Paraclete to flight and crucified the Father. The wild oats of Praxeas, sown over the good seed here too, had sprung up while many slept in the simplicity of their doctrine; afterwards, exposed through the man whom God willed, they seemed to be even rooted out. In fact the old teacher had given a written undertaking concerning his own correction, and the document remains among the Psychics, in whose presence the matter was then transacted; from that point, silence. And as for us, the acknowledgement and defence of the Paraclete afterwards separated us from the Psychics. But those wild oats had by then scattered their seed everywhere. So for some time, through hypocrisy and a cunning vitality, the thing lay hidden, and now it has broken out afresh. But afresh too it shall be uprooted, if the Lord wills, during this present passage of time; and if not, then on its own day all the adulterous crops shall be gathered together, and with the rest of the scandals shall be burned in unquenchable fire.

So then, after due interval, the Father is proclaimed as born and the Father as having suffered — God himself, the almighty Lord, Jesus Christ. We, however, always, and now more than ever, as better instructed by the Paraclete, the very guide into all truth, believe in one God indeed, yet under this dispensation which we call the oikonomia, so that of the one God there is also a Son, his own Word, who proceeded from him, through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. This Son we believe to have been sent by the Father into the virgin and born of her — man and God, son of man and Son of God — and to have been surnamed Jesus Christ; we believe him to have suffered, to have died and been buried according to the Scriptures, and to have been raised again by the Father, and taken back into heaven to sit at the Father's right hand, and that he shall come to judge the living and the dead; who thereafter, according to his promise, sent from the Father the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the sanctifier of the faith of those who believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. That this rule has come down from the very beginning of the Gospel, even before any of the earlier heretics, let alone before Praxeas of yesterday, will be proved both by the lateness of all the heretics themselves and by the very novelty of Praxeas of yesterday. By this consideration alike, against every heresy, it is settled in advance that whatever is first is true, and whatever is later is adulterate. Yet, saving this rule of prescription, room must still everywhere be given even to detailed examination, for the instruction and fortifying of certain persons — if only that no perversity may seem to be condemned unexamined, merely prejudged — especially this one, which thinks it possesses the pure truth, when it holds that the one God may not be believed in any other way than by calling him one and the same Father and Son and Holy Spirit; as if even in this way the One were not all things, since all things are from the One, namely through unity of substance, and as if none the less the mystery of the oikonomia were not safeguarded, which arranges the unity into a trinity, setting in their order three — Father and Son and Holy Spirit — three, however, not in condition but in sequence, not in substance but in form, not in power but in aspect, yet of one substance and one condition and one power, because there is one God, from whom these sequences and forms and aspects are accounted under the name of Father and Son and Holy Spirit. How they admit number without division, the discussions that follow will make plain.

For the simple folk — not to call them the unwise and the unlearned, who are always the greater part of believers — since the very rule of faith brings them over from the many gods of the world to the one and true God, not understanding that he is one indeed, yet to be believed together with his own oikonomia, take fright at the oikonomia. They suppose that the number and arrangement of the trinity is a division of the unity, when in fact the unity, deriving the trinity out of itself, is not destroyed by it but administered through it. And so they keep crying out that two and three gods are being preached by us, while they presume that they themselves are worshippers of the one God; as though the unity too, irrationally gathered up, did not make a heresy, and the trinity, rationally weighed, did not constitute the truth. "We hold the monarchy," they say. And they articulate the very sound of it aloud, even the Latins, and so glibly that you would think they understood the monarchy as well as they pronounce it. But the Latins are keen to sound out "monarchy," while even the Greeks refuse to understand "oikonomia." For my part, if I have gleaned anything of either tongue, I know that monarchy signifies nothing other than a single and sole rule; yet the monarchy does not, on the ground that it belongs to one, prescribe that he whose it is must have no son, or must have made himself his own son, or must not administer his monarchy through whomever he wishes. Indeed I say that no sovereignty is so much one man's own, so single, so much a monarchy, as not also to be administered through other persons nearest to him, whom that monarchy has appointed as its own officers. Moreover, if a son too should belong to him whose monarchy it is, it does not at once follow that the monarchy is divided and ceases to be a monarchy if the son also be taken as sharer of it; rather it belongs principally to him from whom it is shared with the son, and so long as it is his, it is just as much a monarchy, since it is held by two so closely one. Therefore, if even the divine monarchy is administered through so many legions and armies of angels — as it is written, "Thousand thousands stood before him, and ten thousand times ten thousand appeared before him" — and yet has not ceased to be one man's so as to cease being a monarchy, because it is carried on through so many thousands of powers: how can it be that God should seem to suffer division and dispersion in the Son and in the Holy Spirit, who hold the second and third place, being such close partakers of the Father's substance, when he suffers nothing of the sort in so vast a number of angels? Do you reckon the members and pledges and instruments born of the Father's substance — the very strength and whole resource of the monarchy — to be its overthrow? You are wrong. I would rather have you exercise yourself upon the sense of the matter than upon the sound of the word. For the overthrow of the monarchy must be understood by you to be this: when another sovereignty, of its own condition and proper standing, and therefore a rival, is brought in over it; when another god is set up against the Creator, as with Marcion, and the many gods of the followers of Valentinus and Prodicus — then there is an overthrow of the monarchy, when there is a destruction of the Creator.

But for me, who derive the Son from no other source than from the substance of the Father — doing nothing without the Father's will, having received all power from the Father — how can I be destroying the faith's monarchy, which, handed over by the Father to the Son, I keep within the Son? Let this be said also for me with regard to the third stage, since I judge the Spirit to be from no other source than from the Father through the Son. See then whether it is not rather you who destroy the monarchy, you who overthrow its disposition and dispensation, established in as many names as God has willed. For the monarchy so remains in its own condition, though the trinity be brought in, that it must even be restored to the Father by the Son, seeing that the Apostle writes of the final end: "When he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God and the Father. For he must reign until God put his enemies under his feet" — that is, according to the psalm: "Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet." "But when all things shall be subjected to him, except him who subjected all things to him, then shall the Son himself also be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all." We see, therefore, that the Son is no hindrance to the monarchy, even though today it is with the Son, since it is also in its own condition while it is with the Son, and with its own condition shall be restored to the Father by the Son. Thus no one shall destroy it under this name, if he admits the Son, to whom it is agreed both that it was handed over by the Father and that by him it is one day to be restored to the Father. By this one chapter of the apostolic epistle we have already been able to show that the Father and the Son are two — apart from the very names of Father and Son — by this also: that he who handed over the kingdom and he to whom it was handed over, likewise he who subjected and he to whom subjection was made, must of necessity be two.

But since they will have the two to be one, so that the same may be reckoned both Father and Son, the whole question of the Son must be examined: whether he exists, and who he is, and how he is; and so the matter itself will lay claim to its own form, with the Scriptures and their interpretations to plead its case. Some say that Genesis in the Hebrew begins thus: "In the beginning God made for himself a son." That this is not firm, other arguments lead me to conclude, drawn from the very ordering of God, by which he existed before the founding of the world, right up to the generation of the Son. For before all things God was alone, being to himself both world and place and all things. He was alone, however, only because there was nothing else outside him. Yet not even then was he truly alone; for he had with him that Reason which he had within himself — his own, that is. For God is rational, and Reason was in him first, and so from him are all things. This Reason is his own consciousness. The Greeks call it Logos, by which word we also signify "discourse" or "the Word"; and so it is now usual among our people, through the simplicity of translation, to say that the Word was in the beginning with God, although it would be more fitting that Reason be held the more ancient, since God is not "verbal" from the beginning but rational even before the beginning, and since the Word itself, subsisting by Reason, shows that Reason was prior, as being its own substance. Yet even so it makes no difference. For although God had not yet sent forth his Word, he none the less had it, together with and within Reason itself, within himself, while silently thinking and arranging within himself the things he was soon to utter by the Word. For while thinking and arranging with his own Reason, he was making that Reason into Word which he was treating by discourse. And that you may understand this more easily, recognize it first from yourself, as from the image and likeness of God, that you too have within yourself Reason, you who are a rational animal, made by a rational Maker, and not only made but animated out of his very substance. Observe, when you commune silently within yourself by reason, this same thing is going on within you, Reason meeting you with discourse at every movement of your thought, at every impulse of your consciousness. Whatever you have thought is discourse; whatever you have felt is reason. You must needs speak it in your mind, and while you speak you make discourse your partner in conversation, in which there inheres this very reason by which you speak as you think with discourse, and through which you think as you speak. Thus the discourse is in a manner a second thing within you, through which you speak by thinking, and through which you think by speaking; the discourse itself is something other. How much more fully, then, is this done in God, whose image and likeness you too are reckoned to be — that he has in himself, even while silent, Reason, and in Reason the Word? I may therefore say, not rashly, that I have established beforehand that even then, before the founding of the universe, God was not alone, having within himself in like manner Reason, and in Reason the Word, which he made a second to himself by setting it in motion within himself.

This power and this disposition of the divine consciousness is set forth in the Scriptures also under the name of Wisdom. For what is wiser than the Reason of God, or his Word? Hear then Wisdom also, established as a second person. "First the Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works, before he made the earth, before the mountains were set in place; before all the hills, moreover, he begot me" — establishing and begetting me, that is, within his own consciousness. Then recognize her as standing beside him by that very act of separation. "When he prepared the heaven," she says, "I was present with him; and when he made strong the powers above the winds, those clouds on high, and when he set firm the springs beneath the heaven, I was with him, fitting all together; I was the one in whom he rejoiced, and daily I delighted in his presence." For as soon as God willed to bring forth into their substances and forms those things which he had arranged within himself together with the Reason and Word of Wisdom, he first brought forth the Word himself, having in himself his own inseparable Reason and Wisdom, that all things might be made through him through whom they had been thought and arranged — nay, already made, so far as concerned the consciousness of God. For this alone was lacking to them: that they should be known and held in their own forms and substances openly as well.

Then, therefore, the Word himself also takes on his appearance and adornment, his sound and voice, when God says, "Let there be light." This is the perfect nativity of the Word, when he proceeds from God: established by him first for thought, under the name of Wisdom — "The Lord established me as the beginning of his ways"; then generated for effect — "When he prepared the heaven, I was present with him"; thereafter making him equal to himself, by proceeding from whom he became the Son, made first-begotten, as begotten before all things, and only-begotten, as alone begotten of God — properly from the womb of his heart, according to what the Father himself testifies: "My heart has belched forth a good Word." To him next, rejoicing, while he likewise rejoices in his person, he says: "You are my Son, today have I begotten you," and "before the morning star have I begotten you." So too the Son, from his own person, professes the Father under the name of Wisdom: "The Lord established me as the beginning of his ways for his works; before all the hills, moreover, he begot me." For if here Wisdom seems to say that she was established by the Lord for his works and his ways, while elsewhere it is shown through the Word that all things were made, and that without him nothing was made — as again: "By his Word the heavens were established, and by his Spirit all their powers," namely by that Spirit which was inherent in the Word — it appears that it is one and the same power, now under the name of Wisdom, now under the title of the Word, which received the beginning of the ways for the works of God, and which established the heaven, through which all things were made, and without which nothing was made. And no more about this, as though it were not himself who is the Word, both under the name of Wisdom and of Reason and of every divine mind and spirit, who became the Son of God, of whom, by his proceeding forth, he was generated. "Therefore," you say, "do you grant that the Word is some substance, framed by the imparting of Spirit and Wisdom?" Plainly. For you would not have him possess a real subsistence through the property of substance, so that he could be seen as a thing and a certain person, and so, being established second from God, might make two — Father and Son, God and the Word. "For what," you will say, "is the Word, but voice and sound of the mouth, and, as the grammarians teach, air struck and made intelligible to the hearing — for the rest, an I-know-not-what, empty and void and incorporeal?" But I, for my part, say that nothing empty and void could come forth from God, so as not to have been brought forth from anything empty and void, nor that what proceeded from so great a substance, and made such great substances, should lack substance; for he too made the things that were made through him. How can it be that he should himself be nothing, without whom nothing was made — that the void should have wrought solid things, and the empty full things, and the incorporeal corporeal things? For although something different from that by which it is made may sometimes come to be, yet nothing can be made through that which is void and empty. Is the Word of God an empty and void thing — he who was called the Son, who was himself surnamed God? "And the Word was with God, and the Word was God." It is written: "You shall not take the name of God in vain." This is surely he who, being established in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God. In what form of God? In some other, assuredly, yet not in none. For who will deny that God is body, even though "God is spirit"? For spirit is a body of its own kind, in its own form. But even if those invisible things, whatever they are, have with God both their own body and their own form, by which they are visible to God alone, how much more shall that which was sent forth from his very substance not be without substance? Whatever, then, was the substance of the Word, that I call a person, and to it I claim the name of Son; and while I acknowledge the Son, I maintain him to be second from the Father.

To this let him answer who shall think that I am introducing some probolē — that is, a bringing forth of one thing out of another, as Valentinus does, producing one Aeon after another from an Aeon. First, indeed, I shall tell you: the truth does not refrain from using this word, and the thing and meaning of it, merely because heresy also uses it; rather heresy took from the truth what it might build up for its own falsehood. Was the Word of God brought forth, or not? Here take your stand with me. If he was brought forth, recognize a probolē of the truth, and let heresy look to it, if it has copied anything from the truth. The question is now only this: who uses anything, and how, and the word for it? Valentinus separates and severs his probolai from their author, and sets them so far from him that the Aeon does not know the Father; in the end it longs to know him, and cannot — nay, it is almost devoured and dissolved into the remaining substance. But with us, the Son alone knows the Father, and has himself unfolded the bosom of the Father, and has heard and seen all things with the Father, and speaks what he was charged by the Father; and he accomplished not his own will but the Father's, which he knew from of old — nay, from the beginning. "For who knows the things that are in God except the Spirit that is in him?" Now the Word is framed by the Spirit, and, so to say, the Spirit is the body of the Word. The Word, then, is always in the Father, as he says, "I am in the Father," and always with God, as it is written, "And the Word was with God," and never separated from the Father, or other than the Father, because "I and the Father are one." This will be the probolē of the truth, the guardian of the unity, by which we say that the Son was brought forth from the Father, but not separated. For God brought forth the Word, just as the Paraclete also teaches, as the root brings forth the shoot, and the spring the river, and the sun the ray. For these kinds too are probolai of the substances from which they proceed. Nor should I hesitate to call the Son both the shoot of the root, and the river of the spring, and the ray of the sun, because every origin is a parent, and everything brought forth from an origin is an offspring — much more the Word of God, who also received properly the name of Son. Yet neither is the shoot severed from the root, nor the river from the spring, nor the ray from the sun, just as neither is the Word from God. Therefore, after the form of these examples, I profess that I say two: God and his Word, the Father and his Son. For both root and shoot are two things, but conjoined; and spring and river are two forms, but undivided; and sun and ray are two shapes, but cohering. Everything that proceeds from another must of necessity be a second to that from which it proceeds, yet it is not therefore separated. But where there is a second, there are two, and where there is a third, there are three. For the Spirit is third from God and the Son, just as the fruit from the shoot is third from the root, and the stream from the river is third from the spring, and the point of light from the ray is third from the sun. Yet nothing is estranged from the mother-source from which it draws its own properties. So the trinity, running down from the Father through joined and connected stages, is no obstacle to the monarchy, while it preserves the standing of the oikonomia.

Hold everywhere to this rule, which I have professed — by which I attest the Father and the Son and the Spirit to be inseparable from one another — and so you will recognize what is said, and how. For look: I say the Father is one, and the Son another, and the Spirit another. Any untaught or perverse person has taken this saying amiss, as though it sounded of diversity and were stretching out, from diversity, a separation of Father and Son and Spirit. But I say this of necessity, when they contend that the same is Father and Son and Spirit, flattering the monarchy at the expense of the oikonomia: yet not by diversity is the Son other than the Father, but by distribution; not by division is he another, but by distinction, because the Father and the Son are not the same, but other than each other even in measure. For the Father is the whole substance, but the Son is a derivation and portion of the whole, as he himself professes: "Because the Father is greater than I." And by him the psalm sings that he was made less, a little lower than the angels. So too the Father is other than the Son, in that he is greater than the Son; in that he who begets is one, he who is begotten another; in that he who sends is one, he who is sent another; in that he who makes is one, he through whom a thing is made another. Well too that the Lord used this word in regard to the person of the Paraclete, signifying not division but disposition. "For I will ask the Father," he says, "and he will send you another advocate, the Spirit of truth." Thus he showed the Paraclete to be another from himself, just as we show the Son to be another from the Father, that he might show a third stage in the Paraclete, as we a second in the Son, for the safeguarding of the oikonomia. Is not the very fact that they are called Father and Son the one being other than the other? For surely all things will be what they are called, and what they are they will be called, and the diversity of the names cannot at all be confounded, since neither can that of the things whose names they will be. "It is, it is; no, no; for whatever is more than this is from the evil one."

So it is either Father or Son, and the same is not both day and night, nor the same both Father and Son, so that both should be one and each be the other — which these most empty-headed Monarchians want. "He made himself," they say, "a son to himself." But the Father makes the Son, and the Son the Father; and those who come into being from one another can in no way be made by themselves to themselves, so that the Father should make himself his own son, and the son provide himself as his own father. What God has instituted, he also himself preserves. The Father must of necessity have a son, in order to be a father, and the son a father, in order to be a son. But it is one thing to have, another to be. For example, that I may be a husband, I must have a wife; I shall not be my own wife. So too, that I may be a father, I have a son; I shall not be my own son: and that I may be a son, I have a father; I shall not be my own father. For the things that make me, if I have them, then I shall be a father, if I have a son; I shall be a son, if I have a father. But if I myself shall be any of these, then I no longer have what I myself shall be — neither a father, because I myself shall be the father, nor a son, because I myself shall be the son. But inasmuch as I must have the one of these, and be the other, to that extent, if I were to be both, I shall not be the one while I do not have the other. For if I myself shall be the son, who am also the father, then I no longer have a son, but I am myself the son. But not having a son, while I am myself the son, how shall I be a father? For I must have a son, in order to be a father. I am not therefore a son, because I have no father who makes a son. Likewise, if I myself am the father, who am also the son, then I no longer have a father, but I am myself the father. But not having a father, while I am myself the father, how shall I be a son? For I must have a father, in order to be a son. Therefore I shall not be a father, because I have no son who makes a father. This will be the whole device of the devil: to exclude the one by means of the other, while, by shutting up both into one under cover of the monarchy, he makes neither be had — so that there is no father, since he has no son, and no son, since he likewise has no father; for while he is father, he will not be son. Thus those hold the monarchy who hold neither Father nor Son. "But nothing is difficult for God." Who does not know this? And who is ignorant that things impossible with the world are possible with God? And, "God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound wisdom." We have read it all. "Therefore," they say, "it was not difficult for God to make himself both Father and Son, against the form handed down to human affairs. For neither was it difficult for God that a barren woman should bear, against nature — as also that a virgin should." Plainly, nothing is difficult for God. But if we use this maxim so abruptly in our presumptions, we shall be able to feign anything we like about God — that he did it, because he could do it. But not because he can do all things, are we therefore also to believe that he did even what he did not do. Whether he did it must be inquired into. God could, had he willed, have furnished man with wings for flying, as he gave them to kites; yet not because he could did he straightway do it. He could too have at once destroyed both Praxeas and all heretics alike; yet not because he could did he destroy them. For there had to be both kites and heretics; there had to be a Father crucified. By this reasoning, something will be even "difficult" for God — namely whatever he has not done — not because he could not, but because he would not. For with God, to be able is to will, and not to be able is not to will; but what he willed, he both could and showed. Therefore, since, if he willed to make himself a son to himself, he could; and since, if he could, he did — then you will prove that he both could and willed, only if you prove that he did it.

But you will have to prove it as plainly from the Scriptures as we prove that he made his own Word a son to himself. For if he calls him "Son," and the Son is no other than he who proceeded from him, and the Word proceeded from him — then this is the Son, not he from whom he proceeded. For he did not himself proceed from himself. Moreover, you who say that the same is both Father and Son, you make him both bring forth himself from himself, and proceed forth — namely that which is God. If he could have done it, yet he did not. Either produce the proof I demand, like to mine — that is, that the Scriptures show the same to be both Son and Father, just as among us the Father and Son are distinctly demonstrated: distinctly, I say, not dividedly — as when I produce God's saying, "My heart has belched forth a good Word," let you likewise oppose me by showing that God said somewhere, "My heart has belched me forth as a good Word," so that the same may be both he who belched forth and that which he belched forth, and the same be both he who brought forth and he who was brought forth, if he himself is both the Word and God. Look: I set down that the Father said to the Son, "You are my Son, today have I begotten you." If you wish me to believe him to be both Father and Son, show that it was pronounced elsewhere thus: "The Lord said to himself, I am my own son, today have I begotten myself"; likewise, "Before the morning star have I begotten myself"; and, "The Lord established me as the beginning of his ways for my works, and before all the hills have I begotten myself," and any others there are of this kind. But whom did God, the Lord of the universe, fear so as to pronounce it thus, if so the matter stood? Was he afraid he would not be believed, if he had simply pronounced himself both Father and Son? One thing only he feared: to lie; but he feared himself and his own truth. And therefore, believing God truthful, I know that he pronounced it in no other way than he disposed it, nor disposed it otherwise than he pronounced it. You, however, would make him a liar, deceiver, and beguiler of this faith, if, while he was himself his own son, he gave to another the person of a son — when all the Scriptures show forth both the demonstration and the distinction of the trinity, from which our prescription too is derived: that one and the same cannot be seen to be both he who speaks, and he of whom he speaks, and he to whom he speaks — since neither perversity nor deceit befits God, that, while he was himself the one to whom he spoke, he should rather speak to another, and not to himself. Receive, then, other utterances of the Father concerning the Son, through Isaiah: "Behold my Son, whom I have chosen, my beloved, in whom I have been well pleased; I will put my Spirit upon him, and he shall declare judgement to the nations." Receive also a word to the Son himself: "It is a great thing for you, that you should be called my Son, to set up the tribes of Jacob and to turn back the dispersion of Israel; I have set you for a light of the nations, that you may be salvation to the end of the earth." Receive now also the utterances of the Son concerning the Father: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, wherefore he has anointed me to preach good tidings to men." Likewise in the psalm, to the Father concerning the same: "Forsake me not, until I declare your arm to all the generation that is to come." Likewise in another: "Lord, how are they multiplied who oppress me." But indeed almost all the psalms which sustain the person of Christ represent the Son as addressing the Father — that is, Christ speaking to God. Note also the Spirit speaking in the third person concerning the Father and the Son: "The Lord said to my lord, Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet." Likewise through Isaiah: "Thus says the Lord to my lord Christ." Likewise through the same, to the Father concerning the Son: "Lord, who has believed our report, and the arm of the Lord, to whom is it revealed? We declared concerning him, as a little child, as a root in a thirsty land; and there was no form in him, nor glory." These few out of many. For we do not aim to unroll all the Scriptures, since in the separate chapters we keep, for the detailed treatises, a fuller encounter, attesting their full majesty and authority. By these few, then, the distinction of the trinity is plainly set forth. For there is he who pronounces, the Spirit; and the Father, to whom he pronounces; and the Son, of whom he pronounces. So too the rest, which are now spoken to the Father concerning the Son, or to the Son, now to the Son concerning the Father, or to the Father, now to the Spirit — they establish each several person in its own property.

If the number of the trinity still scandalizes you, as though it were not knit together in a simple unity, I ask: how does one who is sole and single speak in the plural — "Let us make man after our image and likeness," when he ought to have said, "I will make man after my image and likeness," as being sole and single? But also in what follows: "Behold Adam is become as one of us." Either he is deceiving, or he is playing, when, being one and sole and single, he spoke in the plural. Or was he perhaps speaking to angels, as the Jews interpret, because they too do not acknowledge the Son? Or was it that, because he himself was Father, Son, and Spirit, he therefore made himself plural and spoke to himself plurally? No — rather it was because there already cohered with him the Son, the second person, his own Word, and the third, the Spirit in the Word, that he pronounced plurally, "Let us make," and "our," and "us." For with whom was he making man, and to whom was he making him like? With the Son, surely, who was to put on man, and with the Spirit, who was to sanctify man; as though with ministers and assessors, out of the unity of the trinity he was speaking. Indeed, the following Scripture distinguishes between the persons: "God made man after the image of God." Why not after his own, if there was one who made, and there was not another after whose image he was making? But there was one after whose image he was making — namely after the Son's: who, being to become man more surely and truly, had caused his own image, man, who was then to be formed from clay, to be called an image of the true, and a likeness. But in the preceding works of the world too, how is it written? First indeed, while the Son was not yet apparent: "And God said, Let there be light, and there was." That very Word is at once the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world, and through him the light of the world too. Thereafter, in the Word, with Christ assisting and ministering, God willed it to be done, and God did it. "And God said, Let there be a firmament, and God made the firmament; and God said, Let there be lights, and God made the greater and the lesser light." But the rest too the same one made who made the former — that is, the Word of God, through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. And if he himself is God, according to John — "the Word was God" — you have two: another who says, "let it be made," another who makes. But how you ought to take "another" I have already professed: in the name of person, not of substance; for distinction, not for division. For the rest, everywhere let me hold one substance in three cohering; yet I must of necessity, from the very sense, call him another who commands, and him another who does. For he would not command, if he himself did it — since he commanded it to be done through the other. Yet he was commanding, not being about to command himself, if he were one, nor to do it without command, since he would not have waited to command himself.

"Therefore," you say, "if God spoke and God did, in that way another god spoke and another did; two gods are preached." If you are so hard-headed, think so for the moment; and that you may think this all the more, receive in the psalm too two who are called gods: "Your throne, O God, is for ever; a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore God, your God, has anointed you." If he speaks to God, and affirms a God anointed by God, he would here affirm two gods on account of the rule of the sceptre. Hence Isaiah too, addressing the person of Christ: "And the men of Sheba," he says, "exalted, shall pass over to you, and shall follow after you, bound by the hands, and they shall worship you, because God is in you; for you are our God, and we knew it not, the God of Israel." For here too, by saying "God in you" and "you, God," he sets forth two who were in Christ — God and the Holy Spirit. There is more, which in the Gospel you will find just as many: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." One who was, and another with whom he was. But I read also the name of "Lord" in two: "The Lord said to my lord, Sit at my right hand." And Isaiah says: "Lord, who has believed our report, and the arm of the Lord, to whom is it revealed?" For he would have said simply "your arm," had he not meant the Father to be understood as Lord, and the Son as Lord. Still more ancient, Genesis: "And the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven." Either deny that these things are written, or — who are you, that you should think they ought not to be taken just as they are written, especially those which have their meaning not in allegories and parables but in fixed and simple definitions? But if you are of those who could not then endure the Lord when he showed himself the Son of God, lest they should believe him Lord, remember that it was written for those men: "I said, You are gods, and sons of the Most High"; and, "God stood in the assembly of the gods." So that, if Scripture did not fear to pronounce men who were made sons of God through faith to be gods, you may know that it much more rightly conferred the name of "Lord" upon the true and only Son of God. "Therefore," you say, "I will challenge you to preach steadfastly, even today, on the authority of these same Scriptures, two gods and two lords." Far from it. For we, who, by the grace of God — and chiefly of the Paraclete, not as disciples of men — examine both the seasons and the causes of the Scriptures, do indeed define two, Father and Son, and now three with the Holy Spirit, according to the principle of the oikonomia, which produces the number — so that it may not be supposed, as your perversity infers, that the Father himself was born and suffered, which it is not lawful to believe, since it has not been so handed down. Yet "two gods" and "two lords" we never put forth from our mouth — not as though the Father were not God, and the Son God, and the Holy Spirit God, and each one God; but because formerly two gods and two lords were preached, in order that, when Christ should come, he might both be acknowledged as God and be called Lord, being the Son of God and of the Lord. For if one single person of both God and Lord had been found in the Scriptures, Christ would rightly not have been admitted to the name of God and Lord. For no other but one God and one Lord was preached; and it would have come about that the Father himself would seem to have come down, since one God and one Lord was read, and the whole of his oikonomia would have been overshadowed — that oikonomia which has been foreseen and dispensed as material for faith. But when Christ came, and was recognized by us as the very one who had formerly made the number, made second from the Father, and with the Spirit third, and the Father now more fully manifested through him — the name of God and Lord was then reduced into unity; and because the nations were to pass over from the multitude of idols to the one God, that a difference might be established between the worshippers of the one and of the manifold divinity. For it behoved Christians also to shine in the world, as sons of light, worshipping and naming as the light of the world one God and Lord. For the rest, if from the awareness by which we know that the name of God and of Lord befits both the Father and the Son and the Spirit, we were to name gods and lords, we should be quenching our torches, the more timid even toward martyrdom, with whom an occasion of escaping would lie open on every side, by their swearing at once by gods and lords — as do certain heretics, whose gods are many. Therefore I will not at all say gods, nor lords, but I will follow the Apostle, so that, if Father and Son are to be named together, I may call the Father God and name Jesus Christ Lord. But Christ alone I shall be able to call God, just as the same Apostle: "Of whom is Christ, who is," he says, "God over all, blessed for ever. Amen." For I will call even a ray of the sun "sun" by itself; but when I name the sun, whose the ray is, I will not at once call the ray "sun" too. For although I do not make two suns, yet both the sun and its ray I will reckon as two things and two forms of one and undivided substance, just as God and his Word, just as the Father and the Son.

There assists us further, who claim two — Father and Son — that rule also which determined God to be invisible. For when Moses in Egypt desired the sight of the Lord, saying, "If then I have found favour before you, show yourself to me, that I may see you and know you," "You cannot see my face," he said, "for no man shall see my face and live" — that is, he shall die who has seen it. Yet we find that God was seen by many, and that none of those who had seen him died: God was seen indeed, according to the capacities of men, not according to the fullness of the godhead. For the patriarchs are reported to have seen God, as Abraham and Jacob, and the prophets, as Isaiah, as Ezekiel, and yet they did not die. Therefore either they ought to have died, if they had seen him — for "no man shall see God and live" — or, if they saw God and did not die, the Scripture lies in saying that God said, "If a man see my face, he shall not live"; or else the Scripture lies, whether it presents God as unseen or as seen. Now therefore there will be one who was seen, since the same cannot be defined as invisible who was seen; and it will follow that we should understand the Father as invisible by reason of the fullness of his majesty, but acknowledge the Son as visible by reason of the measure of his derivation — just as it is not permitted us to contemplate the sun as to the very sum of its substance, which is in the heavens, yet we endure his ray with our eyes, according to the temperateness of the portion which is stretched out from there to the earth. Here someone, on the contrary, will want to contend that the Son too is invisible, as Word, as Spirit; and while he claims one condition for Father and Son, he rather affirms one and the same to be Father and Son. But we have said that the Scripture supports the difference through the distinction of visible and invisible. For they add this also to their argument: that, if the Son was then speaking to Moses, he would have pronounced his own face visible to no one, because, namely, he himself was the invisible Father under the name of the Son. And by this they will have the same to be taken both visible and invisible, as the same to be Father and Son — since also a little above, before he denied his face to Moses, it is written that the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as if a man should speak to his friend; no less than Jacob too: "I saw," he says, "the Lord face to face." Therefore, they argue, the visible and the invisible are the same; and whoever is the same in both, he therefore is himself the Father, invisible, who is also Son, visible. As though the exposition of Scripture which is made by us did not suit the Son, the Father being set apart in his own invisibility. For we say that the Son too is in his own name invisible thus far, inasmuch as he is the Word and Spirit of God by the condition of substance even now, and inasmuch as he is God and Word and Spirit of God; but that he was visible before the flesh in that manner in which he says to Aaron and Miriam: "If there be a prophet among you, in vision shall I be known to him, and in a dream shall I speak to him, not as to Moses; mouth to mouth shall I speak to him in form" — that is, in truth, and not in a riddle — that is, not in an image; as the Apostle too: "Now we see as through a mirror in a riddle, but then face to face." Since therefore he reserves for Moses the sight of himself and converse face to face for the future — for this was afterwards fulfilled on the mountain's retreat, as we read in the Gospel that Moses was seen conversing with him — it appears that God, that is the Son of God, was always seen formerly in a mirror and a riddle and a vision and a dream, by prophets and patriarchs, as also by Moses himself still. And the Lord himself, even if perchance he was speaking openly face to face, yet not as a man would Moses see his face, except perhaps in a mirror and in a riddle. In short, if the Lord spoke to Moses so that Moses too knew his face at close hand, how does Moses at once and in the same place desire to see his face, which, because he had seen it, he would not desire? How likewise does the Lord deny that his face can be seen, which he had shown — if indeed he had shown it? Or what is the face of God, the sight of which is denied, if there was one which was seen? "I saw," says Jacob, "God face to face, and my soul was saved." There must be another face which, if it be seen, kills. Or was it that the Son indeed was seen, even as face, but this very thing in vision and dream and mirror and riddle, because Word and Spirit cannot be seen except in an imaginary form? But his own face he calls the invisible Father. For who is the Father? Will he not be the face of the Son by reason of that authority which the begotten obtains from the Father? For it is fitting to say, even of some greater person, "That man is my face, and he lends me his countenance." "The Father," he says, "is greater than I." Therefore the Father will be the face of the Son. For what does the Scripture say? "Christ the Lord is the Spirit of his person." Therefore, if Christ is the Spirit of the Father's person, the Spirit deservedly pronounced him whose person he was — that is, the Father — to be his own face, namely out of unity. A wondrous thing, plainly, whether the Father can be taken as the face of the Son, who is his head. For "the head of Christ is God."

If I do not clear up this point by questions of the Old Scripture, I will take confirmation of our interpretation from the New Testament, lest whatever I reckon to the Son you should likewise defend as belonging to the Father. For lo, both in the Gospels and in the Apostles I catch sight of God visible and invisible, under a manifest and personal distinction of the condition of each. John in a manner cries aloud: "No man has ever seen God." Surely not even formerly. For he removed the question of time by saying God was never seen. The Apostle too confirms, concerning God: "Whom no man has seen, nor indeed can see" — namely because he shall die who sees him. The same Apostles testify that they themselves both saw Christ and handled him. Now if Christ himself is both Father and Son, how was he both seen and unseen? To bring this diversity of seen and unseen into one, who, on the contrary, will not rightly argue that both were said — visible indeed in the flesh, but invisible before the flesh — so that the same is the invisible Father before the flesh who is also the visible Son in the flesh? But if the same is invisible before the flesh, how is he found also formerly seen before the flesh? Likewise, if the same is visible after the flesh, how is he now too pronounced invisible by the Apostles, except because he is another — whom, even formerly seen in a riddle, the flesh made more fully visible, namely the Word, who was also made flesh — another whom no one ever saw, except the Father, namely whose the Word is? In short, let us look at whom the Apostles saw. "What we have seen," says John, "what we have heard, with our eyes we have seen, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life." For the Word of life was made flesh, and was heard, and seen, and handled, because flesh — who before the flesh was Word only, in the beginning with God the Father; not the Father with the Word. For although the Word was God, yet "with God," because God from God, because with the Father at the Father's side. "And we saw his glory, as of the only-begotten of the Father" — that is, of the Son, namely visible, glorified by the invisible Father. And therefore, because he had called the Word of God "God," lest he should aid the presumption of the adversaries, as though John had seen the Father himself, in order to distinguish between the invisible Father and the visible Son, he adds further out of abundance: "No man has ever seen God." What God? The Word? But, "We have seen and heard and handled, of the Word of life" — this was said before. What God, then? Namely the Father, with whom the Word, the only-begotten Son, was God, who has himself declared that he is in the bosom of the Father. He it is who was both heard and seen, and — lest he be thought a phantasm — even handled. Him Paul too beheld, yet did not see the Father. "Have I not," he says, "seen Jesus?" And he too surnamed Christ "God": "Whose are the fathers, and from whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all God blessed for ever." He too shows the visible Son of God — that is, the Word of God, because he who was made flesh was called Christ. But concerning the Father, to Timothy: "Whom no man has seen, nor can see" — exaggerating yet more: "Who alone has immortality, and dwells in light unapproachable"; concerning whom he had also said above: "To the king of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God" — so that we should ascribe the contrary qualities to the Son himself: mortality, approachableness; whom he attests to be dead according to the Scriptures, and seen most recently by himself, through light surely approachable, although even that he himself did not experience without peril to his sight; nor did Peter and John and James, without loss of reason and almost out of their wits — who, if they had seen not the Son's glory to be borne, but the Father, would, I believe, have died on the spot. For "no man shall see God and live." If these things are so, it is agreed that he was always seen from the beginning who was seen at the end, and that he was neither seen at the end who was not seen from the beginning, and so that there are two, the seen and the unseen. The Son therefore was always seen, and the Son always conversed with men, and the Son always wrought, by the authority and will of the Father, because "the Son can do nothing of himself, except he see the Father doing it" — doing it in his consciousness, that is. For the Father acts in his consciousness, but the Son, who is in the Father's consciousness, seeing it, accomplishes it. Thus all things were made through the Son, and without him was nothing made.

Nor think that only the works of the world were made through the Son, but also the things done by God thereafter. For the Father, who loves the Son and has handed over all things into his bosom, surely loves him from the beginning, and has handed over from the beginning. Whence, "from the beginning the Word was with God, and the Word was God," to whom is given all power from the Father in heaven and on earth: "The Father judges no man, but has given all judgement to the Son" — yet from the beginning. For by saying "all power," and "all judgement," and "all things made through him," and "all things handed over into his hand," he allows no exception of time, since they will not be "all" if they have not been of all time. The Son, then, is he who from the beginning judged — dashing down the most arrogant tower and scattering tongues, punishing the whole world with the violence of waters, raining upon Sodom and Gomorrah fire and brimstone — the Lord from the Lord. For he it is who always came down even to converse with men, from Adam right down to the patriarchs and prophets, in vision, in dream, in mirror, in riddle, foreordaining his own course from the beginning, the very course he was to follow through to the end. So God was always learning, even on earth, to converse with men — none other than the Word, who was to be flesh. And he was learning it, that he might lay a path for our faith, that we might more easily believe that the Son of God came down into the world, if we recognized that something of the kind had been done formerly too. For our sake — as they were written, so also were they done — upon whom the ends of the ages have come down. So too he knew even then the affections of men, being to take upon himself the very substances of man, flesh and soul; questioning Adam, as though not knowing, "Where are you, Adam?"; repenting that he had made man, as though without foreknowledge; tempting Abraham, as though ignorant of what is in man; offended, reconciled to the same persons; and whatever else the heretics seize upon as unworthy of God, for the destruction of the Creator, not knowing that these things befit the Son — who was also to undergo human passions, both thirst and hunger and tears and the very nativity and the very death — for which cause he was made a little lower than the angels by the Father. But the heretics indeed will not even reckon as fitting the Son of God what you bring upon the Father himself, as though he himself had diminished himself for our sake, when the Scripture says that one was made less by another, not himself by himself. What if even he who was crowned with glory and honour was one, and he who crowned was another — namely the Father crowning the Son? For the rest, how can it be that that almighty God, the invisible, whom no man has seen nor can see, he who dwells in unapproachable light, he who dwells not in things made with hands, at whose sight the earth trembles, the mountains melt like wax, who grasps the whole world in his hand like a nest, to whom heaven is a throne and earth a footstool, in whom is every place, while he is himself not in place, who is the outermost boundary of the universe — that he, the Most High, should have walked in paradise toward evening, seeking Adam, and shut the ark after the entry of Noah, and rested under the oak with Abraham, and called Moses out of the burning bush, and appeared as the fourth in the furnace of the king of Babylon (although he was called the Son of man) — unless these things had been in image and mirror and riddle? Surely these things too could not have been believed even of the Son of God, had they not been written; perhaps not to be believed of the Father, although written — whom these men bring down into the womb of Mary, and set in the tribunal of Pilate, and shut up in the tomb of Joseph. Hence, then, their error appears. For, being ignorant that from the beginning the whole order of the divine disposition ran its course through the Son, they believe the Father himself to have been seen and met with and to have wrought, and to have suffered thirst and hunger (against the prophet who says, "The eternal God shall neither thirst nor hunger at all" — how much less shall he die or be buried?), and so they hold that one God always did — that is, the Father — the things that were done through the Son.

They have thought it easier that the Father acted in the name of the Son than that the Son acted in the name of the Father — although the Lord himself says, "I am come in my Father's name," and likewise to the Father himself, "I have manifested your name to men," and the Scripture concurs: "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord" — namely the Son in the name of the Father. And the name of the Father is "God Almighty," "Most High," "Lord of hosts," "King of Israel," "He who is." Inasmuch as the Scriptures teach thus, we say that these too befit the Son, and that in these the Son came, and in these always acted, and so manifested them in himself to men. "All things of the Father," he says, "are mine." Why not the names too? When therefore you read "God Almighty," and "Most High," and "God of hosts," and "King of Israel," and "He who is," take heed lest through these the Son too be shown forth in his own right as God Almighty, inasmuch as he is the Word of God Almighty, and inasmuch as he has received all power; "Most High," inasmuch as he is exalted by the right hand of God, as Peter preaches in the Acts; "Lord of hosts," because all things are subjected to him by the Father; "King of Israel," because to him in particular fell the lot of this nation; likewise "He who is," since many are called sons, and are not. But if they wish even the name of Christ to be the Father's, they shall hear in its place. Meanwhile let me have here a ready answer against that which they bring forward also out of the Apocalypse of John: "I am the Lord who is, and who was, and who comes, the Almighty," and wherever else they think that the title "God Almighty" cannot also befit the Son. As though he who is to come were not Almighty, when the Son of the Almighty is as Almighty as God is the Son of God.

But this fellowship of the Father's names in the Son — that they may not readily perceive it — the Scripture disturbs them, whenever it establishes one God, as though it had not likewise set forth two gods and two lords, as we have shown above. "Therefore," they say, "since we find two and one, both are therefore one and the same, both the Son and the Father." But the Scripture is in no danger, so that you should come to its rescue by your argument, lest it should seem self-contradictory. It has its reason both when it establishes one God and when it shows two, Father and Son; and it suffices for itself. That the Son is named by it is agreed. For while the Son is preserved, it can rightly have defined the one God whose the Son is. For he who has a Son does not cease to be himself the one God, in his own name, namely, as often as he is named without the Son. And he is named without the Son when he is determined principally as the first person, who ought to be set forth before the name of the Son, because the Father is recognized first, and after the Father the Son is named. "Therefore there is one God the Father, and besides him no other." And in saying this, he himself denies not the Son, but another god. For the rest, the Son is not "another" from the Father. In fine, look at the sequel of pronouncements of this kind, and you will find that their definition pertains generally to the makers and worshippers of idols, so that the unity of the godhead may expel the multitude of false gods — yet having a Son, who, the more individual and inseparable he is from the Father, the more is he to be reckoned in the Father, even if not named. But indeed, had he named him, he would have separated him, saying thus: "There is no other besides me, except my Son." For he would have made even the Son "another," whom he excepted from the others. Therefore that there is no other god besides himself, this is on account of the idolatry both of the nations and of Israel; also on account of the heretics, who, as the nations with their hands, so they too with their words fashion idols — that is, another god and another Christ. Therefore even when he pronounced himself one, the Father was providing for the Son, that Christ might not be believed to have come from another god, but from him who had foretold: "I am God, and there is no other besides me" — he who showed himself the only one, but together with the Son, with whom he alone stretched out the heaven.

Nay, even this saying of his they will snatch up as an argument of singularity: "I have stretched out the heaven alone," he says. As to the other powers, alone — fortifying himself beforehand against the conjectures of heretics, who will have the world built by angels and diverse powers, who even make the Creator himself either an angel, or subject in respect to other things outside, as the works of the world, and even suborned in his ignorance. Or, if he stretched out the heaven thus alone, how do these heretics presume perversely, as though singular Wisdom were not admitted, who says, "When he prepared the heaven, I was present with him"? And if the Apostle said, "Who has known the mind of the Lord, and who has been his counsellor?" — surely he means, except Wisdom, who was present with him. Yet in himself and with him he was fitting all things together, not ignorant of what he was doing. But by "except Wisdom" he means "except the Son," who is Christ, the wisdom and power of God, according to the Apostle, alone knowing the mind of the Father. "For who knows the things that are in God, except the Spirit which is in him?" — not he who is outside him. There was, then, one who made him not God only, except as alone from the rest. But let the Gospel too be brought in, which says that all things were made by God through the Word, and without him was nothing made. For unless I am mistaken, it is written elsewhere too: "By his Word the heavens were established, and by his Spirit all their powers." And the Word, the power and wisdom, will himself be the Son of God. So, if through the Son are all things, then in stretching out the heaven too through the Son, he did not stretch it out alone, except in that sense in which he is alone from the rest. And indeed he straightway speaks of the Son. Who else "cast down the signs of the ventriloquists and the divinations from the heart, turning the wise backward and making their counsel foolish"? — confirming the words of his Son, by saying, namely, "This is my beloved Son, hear him." So, by subjoining the Son, he himself is the interpreter of how he stretched out the heaven alone — namely with the Son alone, as with the Son one. Accordingly the saying "I have stretched out the heaven alone" will be the Son's voice too, because "by his Word the heavens were established." Since by Wisdom assisting in the Word the heaven was prepared, and all things were made through the Word, it befits the Son too to have stretched out the heaven alone, because he alone ministered to the Father's working. The same will be he who says, "I am the first, and in the things to come I am." First, namely, of all, the Word: "In the beginning was the Word," in which beginning he was brought forth by the Father. For the rest, the Father, having no beginning, as brought forth by none, as unbegotten, cannot be seen. He who alone always was, could have no order. Therefore, if for this reason they have thought that the same is to be believed both Father and Son, that they may vindicate one God, the unity of him is safe who, being one, has also a Son, comprised likewise in the same Scriptures. If they will not have the Son reckoned second from the Father, lest, being second, he should make two be called gods — we have shown that even two gods are reported in Scripture, and two lords; and yet, lest they be scandalized at this, we render the reason why neither two gods nor two lords are said, but why Father and Son are two, and this not from a separation of substance but from a disposition, since we pronounce the Son individual and inseparable from the Father, other not in condition but in sequence; who, even if he be called God, when he is named singly, does not therefore make two gods, but one — by this very fact, that he must be called God out of the unity of the Father.

But we must still take pains to beat back their arguments, in case they should excerpt anything from the Scriptures to suit their view, refusing to look at the rest, which themselves too keep the rule, and that with the unity of the godhead preserved and the monarchy's sound intact. For just as in the old writings they hold nothing else than, "I am God, and there is no other besides me," so in the Gospel they keep to the Lord's answer to Philip, "I and the Father are one," and, "He who has seen me, sees the Father also," and, "I am in the Father, and the Father in me." To these three chapters they would have the whole instrument of both Testaments yield, when in truth the fewer ought to be understood according to the more. But this is the way of all heretics. For because there are few things that can be found in the wood, they defend the few against the many, and they take up the later against the earlier. But the rule, set up from the beginning for every matter in the earlier passages, prescribes also for the later — and surely for the fewer.

See, then, how many things prescribe for you, even in the Gospel, before Philip's inquiry and before all your argumentation. And in the first place, the very preface of John the evangelist at once shows what he was formerly who was to be made flesh. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; this one was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was nothing made." Now if these things may not be taken otherwise than as they are written, then beyond doubt one is shown who was from the beginning, and another with whom he was; one the Word of God, another God (although the Word too is God, but as Son of God, not as Father); one through whom are all things, another from whom are all things. But how we say "another," we have already often set forth. Why we say "another," it is of necessity not the same; not the same, however, not as though separated; another by disposition, not by division. This one, then, was made flesh, not he whose the Word was. The glory of this one was seen, as of the only one from the Father, not as of the Father. This one declared the bosom of the one Father; the Father did not declare his own bosom. For it precedes: "No man has ever seen God." Hence too, if the Lamb of God is designated by John, it is not he whose beloved he is. Certainly the Son of God always — but not he himself, whose Son he is. This Nathanael at once perceived, as also elsewhere Peter: "You are the Son of God." And he himself confirms that they perceived rightly — answering Nathanael, "Because I said, I saw you under the fig tree, you believe"; but pronouncing Peter blessed, to whom neither flesh nor blood had revealed that he perceived the Father too, but the Father who is in heaven. By which saying he established the distinction of both persons: the Son on earth, whom Peter had acknowledged the Son of God, and the Father in heaven, who had revealed to Peter what Peter had acknowledged — that Christ is the Son of God. When he entered the temple, he calls it the house of his Father, as Son. When he says to Nicodemus: "So," he says, "God loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." And again: "For God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him; he who believes in him is not judged; he who believes not in him is already judged, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God." And John, when asked what should befall Jesus, said: "The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into his hand; he who believes in the Son has eternal life; he who believes not in the Son of God shall not see God, but the wrath of God abides upon him." But whom did he show to the Samaritan woman? If the Messiah, who is called Christ, surely he showed himself the Son, not the Father — who elsewhere too is called Christ, the Son of God, not the Father. Thereafter, to the disciples: "It is mine," he says, "to do the will of him who sent me, that I may finish his work." And to the Jews, concerning the healing of the paralytic: "My Father works until now, and I work." "The Father and I" — the Son says it. In fact, on this account the Jews wished the more to kill him, not only because he broke the sabbath, but because he called God his Father, making himself equal with God. Then therefore he said to them: "The Son can do nothing of himself, except he see the Father doing it; for whatever things he does, these the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son, and has shown him all things that he himself does, and greater works than these has he shown him, that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son too gives life to whom he wills. For neither does the Father judge any man, but has given all judgement to the Son, that all may honour the Son, as they honour the Father. He who honours not the Son, honours not the Father, who sent the Son. Verily, verily I say to you, that he who hears my words and believes him who sent me, has eternal life, and shall not come into judgement, but passes from death into life. Verily I say to you, that the hour shall come when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and when they have heard, they shall live. For as the Father has eternal life in himself, so to the Son too he has given to have eternal life in himself, and has given him to do judgement in his power, because he is the Son of man" — namely through the flesh — "as also the Son of God, through his Spirit." He adds further: "But I have a greater testimony than that of John; for the works which the Father gave me to finish, those very works bear witness of me, that the Father sent me; and the Father who sent me, he himself bore witness of me." And by subjoining, "Neither have you heard his voice at any time, nor seen his form," he confirms that formerly it was not the Father, but the Son, who was seen and heard. In fine, he says: "I am come in my Father's name, and you received me not." So always the Son was in the name of God and king and almighty Lord and Most High. But to those who asked what they should do, he answered, "That you believe in him whom God has sent." He affirms himself also to be the bread, which the Father would supply from heaven; therefore that everything which the Father gives him comes to himself, and that he will not reject it, because he came down from heaven, not to do his own will, but the Father's; and that the Father's will is, that whoever sees the Son and believes in him should obtain life and resurrection; and moreover that no one can come to him, except whom the Father draws; that everyone who has heard from the Father and learned comes to him, "not as though anyone has seen the Father" — adding this too, that he might show the Word to be the Father's, through whom they are made learned. But when many depart from him, and he offers his Apostles, if they too wish to depart — what does Simon Peter answer? "To whom shall we go? You have the words of life, and we believe that you are the Christ." That he is the Father, or the Father's Christ?

But whose teaching does he say it is, at which they marvelled — his own or the Father's? Likewise, to those doubting among themselves whether he himself were the Christ — surely not the Father, but the Son — "Neither are you ignorant," he says, "whence I am; and I am not come of myself, but he who sent me is true, whom you know not; I know him, because I am with him." He did not say, "Because I am he," and, "I sent myself," but, "He sent me." Likewise, when the Pharisees had sent to seize him: "Yet a little while," he says, "am I with you, and I go to him who sent me." And when he denies that he is alone: "But I," he says, "and the Father who sent me" — does he not show two, as much two as inseparable? Nay, this was the whole of what he taught — that they were two inseparable; for indeed, setting forth the law too, which confirms the testimony of two men, he subjoins: "I bear witness of myself, and he who sent me, the Father, bears witness of me." But if he were one, while the same is both Son and Father, he would not use the patronage of the law, which imposes belief not on the testimony of one but of two. Likewise, being asked where the Father was, answering that neither he himself nor the Father was known to them, he spoke of two unknown. But if they had known him, they would have known the Father — not indeed as though he himself were both Father and Son, but because, through their indivisibility, neither can be known nor be unknown the one without the other: "He who sent me," he says, "is true, and the things which I have heard from him, those I speak in the world"; the Scripture interpreting from outside that they did not know what he had said about the Father — when in fact they ought to have known that the words of the Father were in the Son, by reading in Jeremiah, "And the Lord said to me, Behold I have given my words in your mouth"; and in Isaiah, "The Lord gives me a tongue of instruction, that I may know when it is fitting to speak the word"; as he himself again, "Then," he says, "shall you know that I am he, and that of myself I speak nothing, but as he taught me, so I speak, because he who sent me is with me." And this for the testimony of two who are individual. Likewise, in his dispute with the Jews, reproaching them that they wished to kill him: "I," he says, "speak what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have seen with your father; and now you wish to kill a man who has spoken to you the truth which he heard from God"; and, "If God were your father, you would love me; for I went forth from God and came" (and yet they are not separated, although he said he "went forth," as some seize the occasion of this saying; but he went forth from the Father as the ray from the sun, as the stream from the spring, as the shoot from the seed); "I have not a demon, but I honour my Father"; and, "If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing; it is the Father who glorifies me, whom you say is your God, and you have not known him; but I know him; and if I should say, I know him not, I should be like you, a liar; but I know him, and keep his word." And when he subjoins, "Abraham saw my day, and rejoiced," surely he shows that the Son was formerly seen by Abraham, not the Father. Likewise, concerning that blind man, he says that he must do the works of his Father; to whom, after the restoration of his sight, "Do you," he says, "believe in the Son of God?" and to him asking who this was, by showing himself he surely showed the Son, in whom he had said belief was due. Then he professes that he is known by the Father, and the Father by him, and that he is loved by the Father because he lays down his soul, since he had received this commandment from the Father. And being asked by the Jews whether he were the Christ — surely God's; for to this day the Jews hope for God's Christ, not the Father himself, because Christ was never written as the Father about to come — "I speak to you," he says, "and you believe not; the works which I do in my Father's name, these bear witness of me." What witness? Namely that he is the very one of whom they were asking — that is, God's Christ. Concerning his sheep too, that no one should snatch them from his hand: "The Father, who is greater than all, gave them to me"; and, "I and the Father are one." Here, then, the foolish — nay, the blind — wish to fix their footing, who do not see, first, that "I and the Father" is a signification of two; then, in the last word, "are," is not of one person, since it is said plurally; then, that it is "we are one thing," not "we are one person." For if he had said, "We are one," he might have aided their view. For "one" seems a signification of the singular number; but here, with two of the masculine gender, he says "one thing" in a neuter word, which pertains not to singularity but to unity, to likeness, to conjunction, to the love of the Father, who loves the Son, and to the obedience of the Son, who obeys the will of the Father. By saying, "I and the Father are one thing," he shows that there are two, whom he makes equal and joins. Indeed he adds that he had shown many works from the Father, for none of which he deserved to be stoned. And lest they should think that they ought to stone him because he had wished himself to be understood as God himself — that is, the Father — because he had said, "I and the Father are one" — showing himself the Son of God to be God, not himself God: "If in the law," he says, "it is written, I said, You are gods, and the Scripture cannot be broken — do you say that he whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world blasphemes, because he said, I am the Son of God? If I do not the works of my Father, do not believe me; but if I do, and you will not believe me, yet believe the works; and know that I am in the Father, and the Father in me." Through the works, then, will the Father be in the Son, and the Son in the Father; and so through the works we understand that the Father is one. So thoroughly did he persevere in maintaining this throughout, that yet two should be believed in one power, because otherwise the Son could not be believed unless two were believed.

But after this, Martha, confessing him the Son of God, erred no more than Peter and Nathanael — although, even had she erred, she would at once have learned. For lo, to raise her brother from the dead, the Lord, looking up to heaven and to the Father, "Father," he says — surely the Son — "I thank you that you always hear me; on account of these crowds standing by I have said it, that they may believe that you sent me." But also in the troubling of his soul: "And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour; but for this I came to this hour; nevertheless, Father, glorify your name" — in which the Son was. "I am come," he says, "in my Father's name." Thence, namely, the Son's voice to the Father had sufficed. Lo, out of abundance the Father answers from heaven, to attest to the Son: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear him." So too in this: "I have glorified, and I will glorify again." How many persons seem to you here, most perverse Praxeas, but as many as there are voices? You have the Son on earth, you have the Father in heaven. This is not a separation, but a divine disposition. For the rest, we know that God is even within the depths, and exists everywhere — but by power and might. The Son too, as individual, is everywhere with him. Yet in the very oikonomia the Father willed the Son to be held on earth, but himself in heaven; to which the Son himself, looking up, both prayed and besought of the Father — to which he also taught us to pray, lifting up our hands: "Our Father, who are in heaven" — although he is also everywhere. This seat the Father willed for himself: he made the Son a little less by sending him down to earth, yet to crown him with glory and honour by taking him back into the heavens. These things he was already supplying him, saying, "I have both glorified, and I will glorify." The Son asks from the earth, the Father promises from the heavens. Why do you make both Father and Son liars? If either the Father was speaking from the heavens to the Son, when he himself was the Son on earth, or the Son was praying to the Father, when he himself was the Son in the heavens: how can it be that the Son likewise asked of himself, in asking of the Father, if the Son was the Father? Or again that the Father promised to himself, in promising to the Son, if he was the Father? So that, even if we said two divided, as you charge us with raving, it were more tolerable to preach two divided than one shifty God. Therefore the Lord now pronounced for the sake of these men: "This voice came not for my sake, but for yours" — that these too might believe both the Father and the Son, each in his own names and persons and places. But still Jesus cries out and says: "He who believes in me, believes not in me, but in him who sent me" — because through the Son one believes in the Father, and the Father is the authority for believing in the Son. "And he who beholds me, beholds him who sent me." How? Because, namely, "I have not spoken of myself, but the Father who sent me, he himself gave me commandment what I should say and what I should speak. For the Lord gives me a tongue of instruction, that I may know when it is fitting to speak the word which I speak. As the Father has said to me, so I speak." How these things were said, the evangelist — and surely so dear a disciple, John, rather than Praxeas — knew; and therefore he himself, from his own understanding, says: "But before the festival of the Passover, Jesus, knowing that all things were given to him by the Father, and that he was from God, and was going to God." But Praxeas would have the Father himself to have gone forth from himself, and to have departed to himself — so that the devil put into the heart of Judas not the betrayal of the Son, but of the Father himself. But it goes well neither with the devil nor with the heretic, since not even in the Son, his own true Son, did the devil work the betrayal. For it was the Son of God who was betrayed, who was in the Son of man, as the Scripture subjoins: "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him." What God? Surely not the Father, but the Word of the Father, who was in the Son of man — that is, in the flesh — in which he was already glorified by power and by word, even before, as Jesus. "And God," he says, "shall glorify him in himself" — that is, the Father the Son, whom, having him in himself, even though stretched out to earth, he shall soon, through the resurrection, with death overcome, glorify.

There were plainly those who even then did not understand. For Thomas too was for a while incredulous. "Lord," he says, "we know not where you go, and how do we know the way?" And Jesus: "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me; if you had known me, you would have known the Father also; but henceforth you know him, and have seen him." And we have now come to Philip, who, roused by the hope of seeing the Father, and not understanding how he had heard that the Father was seen, "Show us the Father," he says, "and it suffices us." And the Lord: "Philip, so long a time have I been with you, and you have not known me?" Whom does he say they ought to have known — for this alone must be discussed — as Father, or as Son? If as Father, let Praxeas teach that Christ, while conversing so long with them, could at any time, I will not say be understood, but even be reckoned, the Father. To us all the Scriptures — the old foretelling Christ as God's, the new as the Son of God — determine it beforehand. This was preached formerly too; this was pronounced by Christ himself; nay, even by the Father himself, openly from the heavens professing the Son and glorifying the Son: "This is my Son"; and, "I have glorified, and I will glorify." This was believed by the disciples, this not believed by the Jews. Wishing this to be believed by them, he named the Father at every hour, and put the Father forward, and honoured the Father. If it is so, then it was not the Father whom they had been ignorant of, though so long conversant with them, but the Son; and the Lord, reproaching them that he himself was unknown, whom they had not known, surely wished to be acknowledged the very one whom for so long he had reproached them with not acknowledging — that is, the Son. And it can now appear in what way it was said: "He who sees me, sees the Father also" — namely just as above, "I and the Father are one." Why? Because, "I went forth from God and came"; and, "I am the way; no one comes to the Father but through me"; and, "No one comes to me except the Father draw him"; and, "All things has the Father given me"; and, "As the Father gives life, so also the Son"; and, "If you have known me, you have known the Father also." For according to these sayings he had shown himself the Father's vicar, through whom the Father was both seen in deeds, and heard in words, and known in the Son — administering the deeds and words of the Father; because the Father is invisible, which Philip too had learned in the law, and ought to have remembered: "No man shall see God, and live." And therefore he is rebuked for desiring to see the Father, as though visible, and is instructed that the Father is made visible in the Son out of his mighty works, not out of a representation of person. In fine, if he would have the Father understood to be the same as the Son by saying, "He who sees me, sees the Father," how does he subjoin, "Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?" For he ought to have subjoined, "Do you not believe that I am the Father?" Or to what purpose did he heighten it, if he did not make plain what he had wished understood — namely that he is the Son? Moreover, by saying, "Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me," he rather heightened it for this very reason: that, because he had said, "He who sees me, sees the Father too," he might not be supposed the Father — which he never wished himself to be supposed, who always professed himself the Son and to have come from the Father. He therefore both made plain the conjunction of the two persons, lest the Father should be desired separately, as though visible, in sight, and that the Son might be held the representative of the Father. And none the less he interpreted this too, how the Father was in the Son, and the Son in the Father. "The words," he says, "which I speak to you, are not mine" — surely because the Father's; "but the Father abiding in me does the works." Through the works, then, of mighty deeds, and the words of teaching, the Father, abiding in the Son, is seen through those things by which he abides, and through him in whom he abides — from this very thing the property of each person appearing, while he says, "I am in the Father, and the Father in me." And indeed, "Believe," he says. What? That I am the Father? I do not think it is written so, but, "That I am in the Father, and the Father in me; or if not, believe even for the works' sake" — those works, surely, through which the Father was in the Son, seen not by sight, but by sense.

After Philip and the whole substance of this question, which is toward the end of the Gospel, they persevere in the same kind of discourse, by which Father and Son are distinguished in their own property. He promises also that he will ask the Paraclete of the Father, when he has ascended to the Father, and will send him — and indeed "another." But we have already explained in what sense "another." For the rest, "He shall take of mine," he says, just as he himself of the Father's. Thus the connection of the Father in the Son and of the Son in the Paraclete makes three cohering, one out of another. These three are one thing, not one person, just as it was said, "I and the Father are one thing" — in reference to unity of substance, not to singularity of number. Run on further, and you will find that the one whom you believe to be the Father (it being said in the Father's place, and you suppose the Father to have been the husbandman on earth) is again acknowledged in the heavens by the Son, when, looking up there, he handed over his disciples to the Father. But even if in this Gospel it is not revealed, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" and, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit," yet after the resurrection and the glory of death overcome, the necessity of all his lowliness being now discharged, when he could now show himself the Father to so faithful a woman, who from love, not from curiosity nor from the unbelief of Thomas, had ventured to touch him, "Touch me not," he says, "for I have not yet ascended to my Father; but go to my brethren" (nay, in this too he shows himself the Son, for he would have called them sons, had he been the Father), "and tell them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and your God." Father to Father, and God to God? Or Son to Father, and Word to God? The very close of the Gospel too — for what does it set its seal upon these things written, but, "That you may believe," it says, "that Jesus Christ is the Son of God"? Therefore, whatever out of these you shall have thought can avail you toward the demonstration of one and the same Father and Son, you strive against the definitive sentence of the Gospel. For they were not written that you should believe Jesus Christ to be the Father, but the Son.

On account of one saying of Philip and the Lord's answer to him, we seem to have run through John's Gospel — lest one saying should subvert so many things plainly pronounced both before and after, and to be interpreted according to all the rest rather than against them all, even against its own sense. For the rest, not to bring in the other Gospels, which confirm faith by the Lord's nativity, it suffices that he who was to be born of the virgin was determined by the angel himself, in his announcement, the Son of God. "The Spirit of God shall come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you; therefore that which shall be born of you holy shall be called the Son of God." They will indeed wish to argue here too, but the truth will prevail. "Surely," they say, "the Son of God is God, and the power of the Most High is the Most High." Nor are they ashamed to throw in what, had it been so, would have been written. For whom did he fear, that he did not openly pronounce, "God shall come upon you, and the Most High shall overshadow you"? But by saying, "the Spirit of God," although it is the Spirit of God, yet not directly naming "God," he wished a portion of the whole to be understood, which was to pass into the name of Son. This Spirit of God will be the same as the Word. For just as, when John says, "The Word was made flesh," we understand the Spirit too in the mention of the Word, so here too we acknowledge the Word in the name of Spirit. For the Spirit is the substance of the Word, and the Word the operation of the Spirit, and the two are one thing. Otherwise John will profess one to have been made flesh, the angel another to be made flesh — unless the Spirit too is the Word, and the Word the Spirit. As, therefore, the Word of God is not he himself whose he is, so neither is the Spirit; and although he is called God, yet he is not himself whose he is called. No thing belonging to another is itself that to which it belongs. Plainly, when something is from another, and so is its own — while it is from it — it can be such a thing as he is too from whom it is and whose it is. And therefore the Spirit is God, and the Word is God, because from God, yet not himself from whom he is. What is "God of God," as a substantive thing, will not be God himself, but God thus far, inasmuch as it is from the substance of God himself, and inasmuch as it is a substantive thing, and as a certain portion of the whole. Much more will "the power of the Most High" not be the Most High himself, because it is not even a substantive thing, as is the Spirit, just as neither is wisdom nor providence; for these too are not substances, but accidents of each substance. Power happens to the Spirit, nor will it itself be Spirit. By these things, then, whatever they are — the Spirit of God, and the Word, and the Power — brought together upon the virgin, that which is born of her is the Son of God. This he himself testifies, even in these Gospels, straightway as a boy: "Know you not," he says, "that I must be in my Father's house?" This too Satan knew in the temptations: "If you are the Son of God." This too the demons thereafter confess: "We know who you are, the Son of God." The Father too he himself adores. He does not deny that he is acknowledged by Peter to be God's Christ. Exulting in spirit to the Father: "I confess to you," he says, "Father, that you have hidden these things from the wise." Here too he affirms that the Father is known to no one but the Son, and that the Father's Son will confess his confessors and deny his deniers before the Father; bringing in the parable of a son, not of a father, sent into the vineyard after several servants, and slain by the wicked husbandmen, and avenged by the father; he himself too being ignorant of the last day and hour, known to the Father alone; disposing the kingdom to his disciples, as he says it was disposed to himself by the Father; having power to ask the Father for legions of angels to his aid, if he would; crying out that God had forsaken him; placing his spirit in the Father's hands; and, after the resurrection, promising to send to his disciples the promise of the Father; and last of all commanding that they should baptize into the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, not into one. For not once, but thrice, at each name, into the several persons, are we baptized.

And why should I linger over things so manifest, when I ought to attack those by which they seek to overshadow the manifest? For, hemmed in on every side concerning the distinction of Father and Son — which, with the conjunction abiding, we so dispose, as of sun and ray, and spring and river, yet through the individual number of two and three — they attempt to interpret it in still another way, to their own view none the less: so that they distinguish both in one person, Father and Son, teaching that the Son is the flesh — that is, man, that is, Jesus — but the Father is the spirit, that is, God, that is, Christ. And they who contend that Father and Son are one and the same, begin now rather to divide them than to unite them. For if Jesus is one, Christ another, then Son will be one, Father another, because Jesus is the Son, and Christ the Father. Such a monarchy they have perhaps learned from Valentinus, to make two — Jesus and Christ. But this thrust of theirs too has already been beaten back by what was treated before — namely that "the Word of God," or "the Spirit of God," and "the power of the Most High," is the name given to him whom they make the Father. For these are not themselves those whose they are called, but from him and his. And yet in another way too they will be refuted in this chapter. "Lo," they say, "it was preached by the angel: Therefore that which is born holy shall be called the Son of God. The flesh, then, was born; the flesh, then, will be the Son of God." Nay, it was said concerning the Spirit of God. For surely the virgin conceived of the Holy Spirit, and what she conceived, that she bore; that therefore was to be born which was conceived and to be brought forth — that is, the Spirit, whose name too shall be called Emmanuel, which is interpreted, "God with us." But the flesh is not God, that of it should be said, "It shall be called the holy Son of God"; rather he who was born in it is God, of whom the psalm too: "Since God was born man in her, and built her up by the will of the Father." What God was born in her? The Word, and the Spirit, who by the Word was born of the Father's will. Therefore the Word in the flesh — while we must also inquire concerning this, in what way the Word was made flesh, whether as transfigured in the flesh, or as having put on the flesh. Nay, as having put it on. For the rest, it is necessary to believe God unchangeable and unformable, as eternal. But transfiguration is the destruction of what was before. For everything, whatever is transfigured into something else, ceases to be what it was, and begins to be what it was not. But God neither ceases to be nor can be anything else. The Word, however, is God, and "the Word of the Lord abides for ever" — by persevering, namely, in his own form. And if it is not in him to be configured, it follows that he should be understood to have been made flesh thus: while he comes to be in flesh, and is manifested and seen and handled through flesh; because the rest too demand to be so taken. For if the Word was made flesh out of a transfiguration and change of substance, then Jesus will be one substance out of two — out of flesh and spirit — a certain mixture, as electrum out of gold and silver; and he begins to be neither gold, that is, spirit, nor silver, that is, flesh, while the one is changed by the other, and a third something is produced. Then neither will Jesus be God; for the Word ceased to be, who was made flesh: nor flesh, that is, man; for the flesh is not properly flesh, because it was the Word. Thus, out of both, he is neither; he is something else, a third far different from either. But in truth we find him directly set forth both God and man — this very psalm suggesting it: "Since God was born man in her, he built her up by the will of the Father" — certainly throughout, both Son of God and Son of man, since both God and man, without doubt distinct according to each substance in its own property, because neither is the Word anything other than God, nor the flesh anything other than man. So too the Apostle teaches concerning each of his substances. "Who was made," he says, "of the seed of David." This will be the man and Son of man, who was determined the Son of God according to the Spirit. This will be the God and the Word, the Son of God. We see a double condition, not confused but conjoined, in one person — God and the man Jesus. (Concerning Christ I defer.) And so the property of each substance is preserved, that the Spirit carried on its own things in him — that is, mighty works and operations and signs — and the flesh discharged its own passions, hungering under the devil, thirsting under the Samaritan woman, weeping for Lazarus, troubled even unto death, and finally even dying. But if it were a third something compounded out of both, like electrum, the documents of each substance would not appear so distinct. But the Spirit would have done fleshly things, and the flesh spiritual, by transference; or neither fleshly nor spiritual, but of some third form out of the mixture; nay, either the Word would have died, or the flesh would not have died, had the Word been turned into flesh — for either the flesh would have been immortal, or the Word mortal. But because both substances acted distinctly, each in its own condition, therefore both their works and their issues befell them. Learn then, with Nicodemus: "Because that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is of the Spirit is spirit." Neither does flesh become spirit, nor spirit flesh. They can plainly be in one. Of these Jesus consists: man of the flesh, God of the Spirit; whom then the angel, from that part by which he was Spirit, pronounced the Son of God, reserving for the flesh to be called the Son of man. So too the Apostle, by calling him a mediator of God and of men, confirmed each substance. Lastly, you who interpret the Son of God as flesh, show who is the Son of man. Or will it perhaps be the Spirit? But you will have the Spirit be the Father himself, because "God is spirit" — as though the Spirit of God were not also "spirit," just as the Word too is God and the Word of God.

So you make Christ the Father, most foolish one, you who do not even inspect the very force of this name — if indeed Christ is a name, and not rather an appellation; for it signifies "the anointed." And "anointed" is no more a name than "clothed" or "shod" — a thing incidental to a name. Or you, if from some argument Jesus were also called "the clothed," as he is called Christ from the sacrament of anointing, would you likewise call Jesus the Son of God, but believe the clothed to be the Father? Now concerning Christ. If the Father is Christ, the Father is anointed, and surely by another. Or, if by himself, prove it. But the Acts of the Apostles do not so teach, in that outcry of the Church to God: "For there gathered together in this city against your holy Son, whom you have anointed, Herod and Pilate with the nations." Thus they attested both that Jesus is the Son of God and that the Son was anointed by the Father. Therefore Jesus will be the same as Christ, who was anointed by the Father — not the Father, who anointed the Son. So too Peter: "Let all the house of Israel therefore know most surely, that God has made him both Lord and Christ — that is, anointed — this Jesus, whom you crucified." And John marks as a liar even him who shall deny that Jesus is the Christ, but, on the contrary, as born of God everyone who shall believe that Jesus is the Christ. Wherefore he also exhorts that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ, that there may be fellowship for us with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ. So too Paul everywhere sets God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. When he writes to the Romans, he gives thanks to God through our Lord Jesus Christ; when to the Galatians, he asserts himself an apostle not from men, nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father. And you have all his writings, which pronounce after this manner, and set forth two — God and the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father; and that Jesus himself is Christ, in the other name too the Son of God. For henceforth, by that right by which each name belongs to one — that is, to the Son of God — the one also without the other belongs to the same. And whether "Jesus" alone is set down, "Christ" too is understood, because Jesus is anointed; or whether "Christ" only, the same is also Jesus, because the anointed is Jesus. Of which names the one is proper, which was imposed by the angel, the other incidental, which befits from the anointing — provided always that Christ is the Son, not the Father. Lastly, how blind is he who does not understand, even in the name of Christ, that another God is portended, if he ascribes the name of Christ to the Father. For if Christ the Father is God, who says, "I ascend to my Father and your Father, and my God and your God" — surely he shows another Father and God above himself. If likewise the Father is Christ, then another is he who "fixes the thunder firm, and frames the spirit, and announces his Christ to men." And if "the kings of the earth stood by, and the rulers were gathered together against his Christ," then another will be the Lord against whose Christ kings and rulers were gathered. And if, "Thus says the Lord to my lord Christ," then another will be the Lord who speaks to the Father of Christ. And when the Apostle writes, "That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ may give you the Spirit of wisdom and knowledge," then another will be the God of Christ Jesus, the bestower of spiritual graces. Certainly, not to wander through all, he who raised Christ is also to raise our mortal bodies; and so another will be the raiser than a dead Father and a raised Father, if Christ, who died, is the Father.

Let it fall silent, let it fall silent, that blasphemy. Let it suffice to say that Christ the Son of God died — and this, because it is so written. For the Apostle too, not without weight, in pronouncing Christ dead, adds, "according to the Scriptures," that he might soften the hardness of the pronouncement by the authority of the Scriptures and avert offence from the hearer. Yet, since two substances are reckoned in Christ Jesus, the divine and the human, and it is agreed that the divine is immortal, as that which is human is mortal, it appears in what sense he calls him dead — that is, as flesh and man and Son of man, not as Spirit and Word and Son of God. By saying, in fine, "Christ died" — that is, "the anointed" — he shows that what was anointed died — that is, the flesh. "Therefore," you say, "we too, saying the same with the same reasoning as you, do not blaspheme the Lord God in respect of the Son; for we say him dead not of the divine, but of the human substance." But you do blaspheme, not only because you say the Father died, but also because you say he was crucified. For by the curse of the crucified, which by the law falls upon the Son (because Christ was made a curse for us, not the Father), by turning Christ into the Father, you blaspheme against the Father. But we, in saying that Christ was crucified, do not curse him, but report the curse of the law — since neither did the Apostle blaspheme in saying this. As, then, what is fitting to be said of one is said without blasphemy, so what is not fitting is blasphemy, if it be said. Therefore the Father did not even suffer-with the Son. Plainly, fearing direct blasphemy against the Father, they hope to diminish it in this way, granting now that Father and Son are two, if the Son indeed thus suffers, but the Father suffers-with him. Foolish in this too. For what is to "suffer-with" but to suffer along with another? Moreover, if the Father is impassible, surely he is also incapable of suffering-with; or, if capable of suffering-with, surely passible. You profit him nothing even by this fear of yours. You are afraid to call passible him whom you call capable of suffering-with. But the Father is as incapable of suffering-with as the Son too is impassible, from that condition by which he is God. But how did the Son suffer, if the Father did not suffer-with him? He is separated from the Son, not from God. For even a river, if it is fouled by some turbulence, although it runs as one substance from the spring, nor is severed from the spring, yet the river's harm will not reach the spring; and although it is the water of the spring that suffers in the river, while it suffers not in the spring but in the river, it is not the spring that suffers, but the river, which is from the spring. So too the Spirit of God, whatever it may suffer in the Son, because it would not suffer in the Father, but in the Son, the Father would not seem to have suffered. But it suffices that the Spirit of God suffered nothing in its own name, because, if it suffered anything, it suffered in the Son. It was indeed another matter that the Father should suffer with the Son in the flesh. This too has been treated. Nor will anyone deny it; since neither can we suffer for God, unless the Spirit of God be in us, who also speaks concerning us the things that belong to confession — not itself, however, suffering, but supplying the power to suffer.

Otherwise, if you go further, I shall be able to answer you more harshly, and to set you at odds with the Lord's own pronouncement, so that I may say: what do you ask about this? You have him crying out in the passion, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Therefore either the Son was suffering, forsaken by the Father, and the Father did not suffer, who forsook the Son; or, if it was the Father who was suffering, to what God was he crying out? But this voice of flesh and soul — that is, of man, not of the Word nor the Spirit, that is, not of God — was uttered for this purpose: to show God impassible, who so forsook the Son, in that he handed over his manhood unto death. This the Apostle too perceived, writing: "If the Father spared not the Son." This Isaiah also pronounced before: "And the Lord handed him over for our offences." So he forsook, in not sparing; so he forsook, in handing over. For the rest, the Father did not forsake the Son, into whose hands the Son committed his own spirit. In fine, he committed it, and at once died; for, the Spirit abiding in the flesh, the flesh cannot die at all. Thus to be forsaken by the Father was, for the Son, to die. The Son therefore both dies and is raised again by the Father, according to the Scriptures. The Son ascended into the heights of the heavens, who also descended into the lower parts of the earth. He sits at the Father's right hand; not the Father at his own. Him Stephen, when he is stoned, sees still standing at the right hand of God — to sit thereafter, until the Father put all his enemies under his feet. He too is to come again upon the clouds of heaven, such as he also ascended. He meanwhile poured out the gift received from the Father, the Holy Spirit, the third name of the godhead and the third stage of the majesty, the proclaimer of the one monarchy, but also the interpreter of the oikonomia, if anyone shall receive the words of his new prophecy, and the guide into all truth, which is in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, according to the Christian mystery.

For the rest, it is a matter of Jewish faith so to believe in one God as to refuse to number the Son with him, and after the Son the Spirit. For what shall there be between us and them but this difference? What is the work of the Gospel, what the substance of the New Testament, setting the law and the prophets up to John, if from that point Father and Son and Spirit, believed as three, do not constitute one God? So God willed to renew the mystery, that the One might be believed in a new way through the Son and the Spirit — that now openly God might be known in his own proper names and persons, who formerly, preached through the Son and the Spirit, was not understood. Let the antichrists, then, look to it, who deny the Father and the Son. For they deny the Father, when they say the same is the Son, and they deny the Son, when they believe the same is the Father — giving to them what they are not, taking away what they are. But whoever shall confess Christ the Son of God, not the Father, God abides in him, and he in God. Unless we believe the testimony of God, by which he testified concerning his Son. He who has not the Son, neither has life. But he has not the Son, who believes him to be other than the Son.