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ST. HILARY OF POITIERS
ON THE TRINITY, Books IX-X
[Translated by the Rev. S. C. Gayford, late scholar of Exeter; revised by
the Rev. E. W. Watson, M.A., Warden of the Society of St. Andrew,
Salisbury.]
BOOK IX.
1. IN the last book we treated of the indistinguishable nature of God
the Father and God the Son, and demonstrated that the words, I and the
Father are One(1), go to prove not a solitary God, but a unity of the
Godhead unbroken by the birth of the Son: for God can be born only of God,
and He that is born God of God must be all that God is. We reviewed,
although not exhaustively, yet enough to make our meaning clear, the
sayings of our Lord and the Apostles, which teach the inseparable nature
and power of the Father and the Son; and we came to the passage in the
teaching of the Apostle, where he says, Take heed lest there shall be any
one that leadeth you astray through philosophy and vain deceit, after the
tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ;
for in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily(2). We pointed
out that here the words, in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead
bodily, prove Him true and perfect God of His Father's nature, neither
severing Him from, nor identifying Him with, the Father. On the one hand we
are taught that, since the incorporeal God dwelt in Him bodily, the Son as
God begotten of God is in natural unity with the Father: and on the other
hand, if God dwelt in Christ, this proves the birth of the personal Christ
in Whom He dwell(3). We have thus, it seems to me, more than answered the
irreverence of those who refer to a unity or agreement of will such words
of the Lord as, He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father(4), or, The
Father is in Me and I in the Father(5), or, I and the Father are One(6),
or, All things whatsoever the Father hath are Mine(7). Not daring to deny
the words themselves, these false teachers, in the mask of religion,
corrupt the sense of the words. For instance, it is true that where the
unity of nature is proclaimed the agreement of will cannot be denied; but
in order to set aside that unity which follows from the birth, they profess
merely a relationship of mutual harmony. But the blessed Apostle, after
many indubitable statements of the real truth, cuts short their rash and
profane assertions, by saying, in Christ dwelleth all the fulness of the
Godhead bodily, for by the bodily indwelling of the incorporeal God in
Christ is taught the strict unity of Their nature. It is, therefore, not a
matter of words, but a real truth that the Son was not alone, but the
Father abode in Him: and not only abode, but also worked and spoke: not
only worked and spoke, but also manifested Himself in Him. Through the
Mystery of the birth the Son's power is the power of the Father, His
authority the Father's authority, His nature the Father's nature. By His
birth the Son possesses the nature of the Father: as the Father's image, He
reproduces from the Father all that is in the Father, because He is the
reality as well as the image of the Father, for a perfect birth produces a
perfect image, and the fulness of the Godhead dwelling bodily in Him
indicates the truth of His nature.
2. All this is indeed as it is: He, Who is by nature God of God, must
possess the nature of His origin, which God possesses, and the
indistinguishable unity of a living nature cannot be divided by the birth
of a living nature. Yet nevertheless the heretics, under cover of the
saving confession of the Gospel faith, are stealing on to the subversion of
the truth: for by forcing their own interpretations on words uttered with
other meanings and intentions, they are robbing the Son of His natural
unity. Thus to deny the Son of God, they quote the authority of His own
words, Why callest than Me good? None is good, save one, God(8). These
words, they say, proclaim the Oneness of God: anything else, therefore,
which shares the name of God, cannot possess the nature of God, for God is
One. And from His words, This is life eternal, that they should know Thee
the only true God(9), they attempt to establish the theory that Christ is
called God by a mere title, not as being very God. Further, to exclude Him
from the proper nature of the true God, they quote, The Son can do nothing
of Himself except that which He hath seen the Father do(1). They use also
the text, The Father is greater than I(2) Finally, when they repeat the
words, Of that day and that hour knoweth no one, neither the angels in
heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only(3), as though they were the
absolute renunciation of His claim to divinity, they boast that they have
overthrown the faith of the Church. The birth, they say, cannot raise to
equality the nature which the limitation of ignorance degrades. The
Father's omniscience and the Son's ignorance reveal unlikeness in the
Divinity, for God must be ignorant of nothing, and the ignorant cannot be
compared with the omniscient. All these passages they neither understand
rationally, nor distinguish as to their occasions, nor apprehend in the
light of the Gospel mysteries, nor realize in the strict meaning of the
words and so they impugn the divine nature of Christ with crude and
insensate rashness, quoting single detached utterances to catch the ears of
the unwary, and keeping back either the sequel which explains or the
incidents which prompted them, though the meaning of words must be sought
in the context before or after them.
3. We will offer later an explanation of these texts in the words of
the Gospels and Epistles themselves. But first we hold it right to remind
the members of our common faith, that the knowledge of the Eternal is
presented in the same confession which gives eternal life(4). He does not,
he cannot know his own life, who is ignorant that Christ Jesus was very
God, as He was very man. It is equally perilous, whether we deny that
Christ Jesus was God the Spirit, or that He was flesh of our body: Every
one therefore who shall confess Me before men, him will I also confess
before My Father which is in Heaven. But whosoever shall deny Me before
men, him will I also deny before My Father which is in heaven(5). So said
the Word made flesh; so taught the man Jesus Christ, the Lord of majesty,
constituted Mediator in His own person for the salvation of the Church, and
being in that very mystery of Mediatorship between men and God, Himself one
Person, both man and God. For He, being of two natures united for that
Mediatorship, is the full reality of each nature; while abiding in each, He
is wanting in neither; He does not cease to be God because He becomes man,
nor fail to be mall because He remains for ever God. This is the true faith
for human blessedness, to preach at once the Godhead and the manhood, to
confess the Word and the flesh, neither forgetting the God, because He is
man, nor ignoring the flesh, because He is the Word.
4. It is contrary to our experience of nature, that He should be born
man and still remain God; bill it accords with the tenor of our
expectation, that being born man, He still remained God, for when the
higher nature is born into the lower, it is credible that the lower should
also be born into the higher. And, indeed, according to the laws and habits
of nature, the working of our expectation even anticipates the divine
mystery. For in every tiling that is born, nature has the capacity for
increase, but has no power of decrease. Look at the trees, the crops, the
cattle. Regard man himself, the possessor of reason. He always expands by
growth, he does not contract by decrease; nor does he ever lose the self
into which he has grown. He wastes indeed with age, or is cut off by death;
he undergoes change by lapse of time, or reaches the end allotted to the
constitution of life, yet it is not in his power to cease to be what he is;
I mean that he cannot make a new self by decrease from his old self, that
is, become a child again from an old man. So the necessity of perpetual
increase, which is imposed on our nature by natural law, leads us on good
grounds to expect its promotion into a higher nature, since its increase is
according to, and its decrease contrary to, nature. It was God alone Who
could become something other than before, and yet not cease to be what He
had ever been; Who could shrink within the limits of womb, cradle, anti
infancy, yet not depart from the power of God. This is a mystery, not for
Himself, but for us. The assumption of our nature was no advancement for
God, but His willingness to lower Himself is our promotion, for He did not
resign His divinity but conferred divinity on man.
5. The Only-begotten God, therefore, when He was born man of the
Virgin, and in the fulness of time was about in His own person to raise
humanity to divinity, always maintained this form of the Gospel teaching.
He taught, namely, to believe Him the Son of God, and exhorted to preach
Him the Son of Man; man saying and doing all that belongs to God; God
saying and doing all that belongs to man. Yet never did He speak without
signifying by the twofold aspect of these very utterances both His manhood
and His divinity. Though He proclaimed one God the Father, He declared
Himself to be in the nature of the one God, by the truth of His generation.
Yet in His office as Son and His condition as man, He subjected Himself to
God the Father, since everything that is born must refer itself back to its
author, and all flesh must confess itself weak before God. Here,
accordingly, the heretics find opportunity to deceive the simple and
ignorant. These words, uttered in His human character, they falsely refer
to the weakness of His divine nature; and because He was one and the same
Person in all His utterances, they claim that He spoke always of His entire
self.
6. We do not deny that all the sayings which are preserved of His,
refer to His nature. But, if Jesus Christ be man and God, neither God for
the first time, when He became man, nor then ceasing to be God, nor after
He became Man in God less than perfect man and perfect God, then the
mystery of His words must be one and the same with that of His nature. When
according to the time indicated, we disconnect His divinity from humanity,
then let us also disconnect His language as God from the language of man;
when we confess Him God and man at the same time, let us distinguish at the
same time tits words as God and His words as man; when after His manhood
and Godhead, we recognise again the time when His whole manhood is wholly
God, let us refer to that time all that is revealed concerning it(6). It is
one thing, that He was God before He was man, another, that He was man and
God, and another, that after being man and God, He was perfect man and
perfect God. Do not then confuse the times and natures in the mystery of
the dispensation, for according to the attributes of His different natures,
He must speak of Himself in relation to the mystery of His humanity, in one
way before His birth, in another while He was yet to die, and in another as
eternal.
7. For our sake, therefore, Jesus Christ, retaining all these
attributes, and being born man in our body, spoke after the fashion of our
nature without concealing that divinity belonged to His own nature. In His
birth, His passion, and His death, He passed through all the circumstances
of our nature, but He bore them all by the power of His own. He was Himself
the cause of His birth, He willed to suffer what He could not suffer, He
died though He lives for ever. Yet God did all this not merely through man,
for He was born of Himself, He suffered of His own free will, and died of
Himself. He did it also as man, for He was really born, suffered and died.
These were the mysteries of the secret counsels of heaven, determined
before the world was made. The Only-begotten God was to become man of His
own will, and man was to abide eternally in God. God was to suffer of His
own will, that the malice of the devil, working in the weakness of human
infirmity, might not confirm the law of sin in us, since God had assumed
our weakness. God was to die of His own will, that no power, after that the
immortal God had constrained Himself within the law of death, might raise
up its head against Him, or put forth the natural strength which He bad
created in it. Thus God was born to take us into Himself, suffered to
justify us, and died to avenge us; for our manhood abides for ever in Him,
the weakness of our infirmity is united with His strength, and the
spiritual powers of iniquity and wickedness are subdued m the triumph of
our flesh, since God died through the flesh.
8. The Apostle, who knew this mystery, and had received the knowledge
of the faith through the Lord Himself, was not unmindful, that neither the
world, nor mankind, nor philosophy could contain Him, for he writes, Take
heed, lest there shall be any one that leadeth you astray through
philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments
of the world, and not after Jesus Christ, for in Him dwelleth all the
fulness of the Godhead bodily, and in Him ye are made full, Who is the head
of all principalities and powers(7). After the announcement that in Christ
dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, follows immediately the
mystery of our assumption, in the words, in Him ye are made full. As the
fulness of the Godhead is in Him, so we are made full in Him. The Apostle
says not merely ye are made full, but, in Him ye are made full; for all who
are, or shall be, regenerated through the hope of faith to life eternal,
abide even now in the body of Christ; and afterwards they shall be made
full no longer in Him, but in themselves, at the time of which the Apostle
says, Who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be
conformed to the body of His glory(8). Now, therefore, we are made full in
Him, that is, by the assumption of His flesh, for in Him dwelleth the
fullness of the Godhead bodily. Nor has this our hope a light authority in
Him. Our fulness in Him constitutes His headship and principality over all
power, as it is written, That in His name every knee should bow, of things
in heaven, and things on earth, and things below, and every tongue confess
that fester is Lord in the glory of God life Father(1). Jesus shall be
confessed in the glory of God the Father, born in man, yet now no longer
abiding in the infirmity of our body. but in the glory of God. Every tongue
shall confess this. But though all things in heaven and earth shall bow the
knee to Him, yet herein He is head of all principalities and powers, that
to Him the whole universe shall bow the knee in submission, in Whom we are
made full, Who through the fulness of the Godhead dwelling in Him bodily,
shall be confessed in the glory of God the Father.
9. But after the announcement of the mystery of Christ's nature, and
our assumption, that is, the fulness of Godhead abiding in Christ, and
ourselves made full in Him by His birth as man, the Apostle continues the
dispensation of human salvation in the words. In whom ye were also
circumcised with a circumcison not made with hands, in the stripping off of
the body of the flesh, but with the circumcision of Christ, having been
buried with Him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with Him through
faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead(2). We are
circumcised not with a fleshly circumcision but with the circumcision of
Christ, that is, we are born again into a new man; for, being buried with
Him in His baptism, we must die to the old man, because the regeneration of
baptism has the force of resurrection. The circumcision of Christ does not
mean the putting off of foreskins, but to die entirely with Him, and by
that death to live henceforth entirely to Him. For we rise again in Him
through faith in God, Who raised Him from the dead; wherefore we must
believe in God, by Whose Working Christ was raised from the dead, for our
faith rises again in and with Christ.
10. Then is completed the entire mystery of the assumed manhood, And
you being dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your
flesh, you I say, did He quicken together with Him, having, forgiven you
all your trespasses, blotting out the bond written in ordinances, that was
against us, which was contrary to us; and He hath taken it out of the way,
nailing a to the cross, and having put off from Himself His flesh, He hath
made a shew of powers, triumphing over them in Himself(3). The worldly man
cannot receive the faith of the Apostle, nor can any language but that of
the Apostle explain his meaning. God raised Christ from the dead; Christ in
Whom the fulness of the Godhead dwelt bodily. But He quickened us also
together with Him, forgiving us our sins, blotting out the bond of the law
of sin, which through the ordinances made aforetime was against us, taking
it out of the way, and fixing it to His cross, stripping Himself of His
flesh by the law of death, holding up the powers to shew, and triumphing
over them in Himself. Concerning the powers and how He triumphed over them
in Himself, and held them up to shew, and the bond which he blotted out,
and the life which He gave us, we have already spoken(4). But who can
understand or express this mystery? The working of God raises Christ from
the dead; the same working of God quickens us together with Christ,
forgives our sins, blots out the bond, and fixes it to the cross; He puts
off from Himself His flesh, holds up the powers to shew, and triumphs over
them in Himself. We have the working of God raising Christ from the dead,
and we have Christ working in Himself the very things which God works in
Him, for it was Christ who died, stripping from Himself His flesh. Hold
fast then to Christ the man, raised from the dead by God, and hold fast to
Christ the God, working out our salvation when He was yet to die. God works
in Christ, but it is Christ Who strips from Himself His flesh and dies. It
was Christ who died, and Christ Who worked with the power of God before His
death, yet it was the working of God which raised the dead Christ, and it
was none other who raised Christ from the dead but Christ Himself, Who
worked before His death, and put off His flesh to die.
11. Do you understand already the Mysteries of the Apostle's Faith? Do
you think to know Christ already? Tell me, then, Who is it Who strips from
Himself His flesh, and what is that flesh stripped off? I see two thoughts
expressed by the Apostle, the flesh stripped off, and Him Who strips it
off: and then I hear of Christ raised from the dead by the working of God.
If it is Christ Who is raised from the dead, and God Who raises Him; Who,
pray, strips from Himself the flesh? Who raises Christ from the dead, and
quickens us with Him? If the dead Christ be not the same as the flesh
stripped off, tell me the name of the flesh stripped off, and expound me
the nature of Him Who strips it off. I find that Christ the God, Who was
raised from the dead, is the same as He Who stripped from Himself His
flesh, and that flesh, the same as Christ Who was raised from the dead;
then I see Him holding principalities and powers up to shew, and triumphing
in Himself. Do you understand this triumphing in Himself? Do you perceive
that the flesh stripped off, and He Who strips it off, are not different
from one another? He triumphs in Himself, that is in that flesh which He
stripped from Himself. Do you see that thus are proclaimed His humanity and
His divinity, that death is attributed to the man, and the quickening of
the flesh to the God, though He Who dies and He Who raises the dead to life
are not two, but one Person? The flesh stripped off is the dead Christ: He
Who raises Christ from the dead is the same Christ Who stripped from
Himself the flesh. See His divine nature in the power to raise again, and
recognise in His death the dispensation of His manhood. And though either
function is performed by its proper nature, yet remember that He Who died,
and raised to life, was one, Christ Jesus.
12. I remember that the Apostle often refers to God the Father as
raising Christ from the dead; but he is not inconsistent with himself or at
variance with the Gospel faith, for the Lord Himself says:--Therefore doth
the Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I may take it again.
No one shall take it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to
lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command have I
received from the Father(5): and again, when asked to shew a sign
concerning Himself, that they night believe in Him, He says of the Temple
of His body, Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up(6).
By the power to take His soul again and to raise the Temple up, He declares
Himself God, and the Resurrection His own work: yet He refers all to the
authority of His Father's command. This is not contrary to the meaning of
the Apostle, when He proclaims Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of
God(7), thus referring all the magnificence of His work to the glory of the
Father: for whatever Christ does, the power and the wisdom of God does: and
whatever the power and the wisdom of God does, without doubt God Himself
does, Whose power and wisdom Christ is. So Christ was raised from the dead
by the working of God; for He Himself worked the works of God the Father
with a nature indistinguishable from God's. And our faith in the
Resurrection rests on the God Who raised Christ from the dead.
13. It is this preaching of the double aspect of Christ's Person which
the blessed Apostle emphasises. He points out in Christ His human
infirmity, and His divine power and nature. Thus to the Corinthians he
writes, For though He was crucified through weakness, yet He liveth through
the power of God(8), attributing His death to human infirmity, but His life
to divine power: and again to the Romans, For the death, that He died unto
sin, He died once: but the life, that He liveth, He liveth unto God. Even
so reckon ye yourselves also to he dead unto sin, but alive unto God in
Christ Jesus(9), ascribing His death to sin, that is, to our body, but His
life to God, Whose nature it is to live We ought, therefore, he says, to
die to our body, that we may live to God in Christ Jesus, Who after the
assumption of our body of sin, lives now wholly unto God, uniting the
nature He shared with us with the participation of divine immortality.
14. I have been compelled to dwell briefly on this, lest we should
forget our Lord Jesus Christ is being treated of as a Person of two
natures, since He, Who was abiding in the form of God, took the form of a
servant, in which He was obedient even unto death. The obedience of death
has nothing to do with the form of God, just as the form of God is not
inherent in the form of a servant. Yet through the Mystery of the Gospel
Dispensation the I same Person is in the form of a servant and in the form
of God, though it is not the same thing to take the form of a servant and
to be abiding in the form of God; nor could He Who was abiding in the form
of God, take the form of a servant without emptying Himself, since the
combination of the two forms would be incongruous. Yet it was not another
and a different Person Who emptied Himself and Who took the form of a
servant. To take anything cannot be predicated of some one who is not, for
he only can take who exists. The emptying of the form does not then imply
the abolition of the nature: He emptied Himself, but did not lose His self:
He took a new form, but remained what He was. Again, whether emptying or
taking, He was the same Person: there is, therefore, a mystery, in that He
emptied Himself, and took the form of a servant, but He does not come to an
end, so as to cease to exist in emptying Himself, and to be non-existent
when He took. The emptying availed to bring about the taking of the
servant's form, but not to prevent Christ, Who was in the form of God, from
continuing to be Christ, for it was in very deed Christ Who took the form
of a servant. When He emptied Himself to become Christ the man, while
continuing to be Christ the Spirit, the changing of His bodily fashion, and
the assumption of another nature in His body, did not put an end to the
nature of His eternal divinity, for He was one and the same Christ when He
changed His fashion, and when He assumed our nature.
15. We have now expounded the Dispensation of the Mysteries, through
which the heretics deceive certain of the unlearned into ascribing to
infirmity in the divinity, what Christ said and did through His assumed
human nature, and attributing to the form of God what is appropriate only
to the form of the servant. Let us pass on, then, to answer their
statements in detail. We can always safely distinguish the two kinds of
utterances, since the only true faith lies in the confession of Jesus
Christ as Word and flesh, that is, God and Man. The heretics consider it
necessary to deny that our Lord Jesus Christ by virtue of His nature was
divine, because He said, Why callest thou Me good? None is good save one,
God[1]. Now a satisfactory answer must stand in direct relation to the
matter of enquiry, for only in that case will it furnish a reply to the
question put. At the outset, then, I would ask these misinterpreters, "Do
you think that the Lord resented being called good?" Would He rather have
been called bad, as seems to be signified by the words, Why callest thou Me
good? I do not think any one is so unreasonable as to ascribe to Him a
confession of wickedness, when it was He Who said, Come unto Me, all ye
that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you. Take My yoke upon
you, and learn of Me: for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find
rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light[2]. He
says He is meek and lowly: can we believe that He was angry because He was
called good? The two propositions are inconsistent. He Who witnesses to His
own goodness would not repudiate the name of Good. Plainly, then, He was
not angry because He was called good: and if we cannot believe that He
resented being called good, we must ask what was said of Him which He did
resent.
16. Let us see, then, how the questioner styled Him, beside calling Him
good. He said, Good Master, what good thing shall I do[3]? adding to the
title of "good" that of master. If Christ then did not chide because He was
called good, it must have been because He was called "good Master." Further
the manner of His reproof shews that it was the disbelief of the
questioner, rather than the name of master, or of good, which He resented.
A youth, who provides himself upon the observance of the law, but did not
know the end of the law[4], which is Christ, who thought himself justified
by works, without perceiving that Christ came to the lost sheep of the
house of Israel[5], and to those who believe that the law cannot save
through the faith of justification[6], questioned the Lord of the law, tile
Only-begotten God, as though He were a teacher of the common precepts and
the writings of the law. But the Lord, abhorring this declaration of
irreverent unbelief, which addresses Him as a teacher of the law, answered,
Why callest thou Me good? and to shew how we may know, and call Him good,
He added, None is good, save one, God, not repudiating the name of good, if
it be given to Him as God.
17. Then, as a proof that He resents the name "good master," on the
ground of the unbelief, which addresses Him as a man, He replies to the
vain-glorious youth, and his boast that he had fulfilled the law, One thing
thou lackest; go, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou
shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me. There is no shrinking
from the title of "good" in the promise of heavenly treasures, no
reluctance to be regarded as "master" in the offer to lead the way to
perfect blessedness. But there is reproof of the unbelief which draws an
earthly opinion of Him from the teaching, that goodness belongs to God
alone. To signify that He is both good and God, He exercises the functions
of goodness, opening the heavenly treasures, and offering Himself as guide
to them. All the homage offered to Him as man He repudiates, but he does
not disown that which He paid to God; for at the moment when He confesses
that the one God is good, His words and actions are those of the power and
the goodness and the nature of the one God.
18. That He did not shrink from the title of good, or decline the
office of master, but resented the unbelief which perceived no more in Him
than body and flesh, may be proved from the difference of His language,
when the apostles confessed Him their Master, Ye call Me Master, and Lord,
and ye say well, for so I am[7]; and on another occasion, Be yet not called
masters, far Christ is your Master[8]. From the faithful, to whom He is
master, He accepts the title with words of praise, but here He rejects the
name "good master," when He is not acknowledged to be the Lord and the
Christ, and pronounces the one God alone good, but without distinguishing
Himself from God, for He calls Himself Lord, and Christ, and guide to the
heavenly treasures.
19. The Lord always maintained this definition of the faith of the
Church, which consists in teaching that there is one God the Father, but
without separating Himself from the mystery of the one God, for He declared
Himself, by the nature which is His by birth, neither a second God, nor the
sole God. Since the nature of the One God is in Him, He cannot be God of a
different kind from Him; His birth requires that, being Son, it should be
with a perfect Sonship(9). So He can neither be separated from God nor
merged in God. Hence He speaks in words deliberately chosen, so that
whatever He claims for the Father, He signifies in modest language to be
appropriate to Himself also. Take as an instance the command, Believe in
God, and believe also in Me(1). He is identified with God in honour; how,
pray, can He be separated from His nature? He says, Believe in Me also,
just as He said Believe in God. Do not the words in Me signify His nature?
Separate the two natures, but you must separate also the two beliefs. If it
be life, that we should believe in God without Christ, strip Christ of the
name and qualities of God. But if perfect life is given to those who
believe in God, only when they believe in Christ also, let the careful
reader ponder the meaning of the saying, Believe in God, and believe in Me
also, for these words, uniting faith in Him with faith in God, unite His
nature to God's. He enjoins first of all the duty of belief in God, but
adds to it the command that we should believe in Himself also; which
implies that He is God, since they who believe in God must also believe in
Him. Yet He excludes the suggestion of a unity contrary to religion(2), for
the exhortation Believe in God, believe in Me also, forbids us to think of
Him as alone in solitude.
20. In many, nay almost all His discourses, He offers the explanation
of this mystery, never separating Himself from the divine unity, when He
confesses God the Father, and never characterising God as single and
solitary, when He places Himself in unity with Him. But nowhere does He
more plainly teach the mystery of His unity and His birth than when He
says, But the witness which I have is greater than that of John, for the
works which the Father hath given Me to accomplish, the very works that I
do, bear witness of Me, that the Father hath sent Me, and the Father which
sent Me, He hath borne witness of Me. Ye have neither heard His voice at
any time nor seen His form. And ye have not His word abiding in you, for
Whom He sent, Him ye believe not[3] How can the Father be truly said to
have borne witness of the Son, when neither He Himself was seen, nor His
voice heard? Yet I remember that a voice was heard from Heaven, which said,
This is My beloved Son, in Whom I have been well pleased; hear ye Him(4).
How can it be said that they did not hear the voice of God, when the voice
which they heard itself asserted that it was the Father's voice? But
perhaps the dwellers in Jerusalem had not heard what John had heard in the
solitude of the desert. We must ask, then, "How did the Father bear witness
in Jerusalem?" It is no longer the witness given to John, who heard the
voice from heaven, but a witness greater than that of John. What that
witness is He goes on to say, The works which the Father hath given me to
accomplish, the very works which I do, bear witness of Me, that the Father
hath sent Me. We must admit the authority of the testimony, for no one,
except the Son sent of the Father, could do such works. His works are
therefore His testimony. But what follows? And the Father, which sent Me,
He hath borne witness of Me. Ye have neither heard His voice at any time,
nor seen His form, and ye have not His word abiding in you. Are they
blameless, in that they did not know the testimony of the Father, Who was
never heard or seen amongst them, and Whose word was not abiding in them?
No, for they cannot plead that His testimony was hidden from them; as
Christ says, the testimony of His works is the testimony of the Father
concerning Him. His works testify of Him that He was sent of the Father;
but the testimony of these works is the Father's testimony; since,
therefore, the working of the Son is the Father's testimony, it follows of
necessity that the same nature was operative in Christ, by which the Father
testifies of Him. So Christ, Who works the works, and the Father Who
testifies through them, are revealed as possessing one inseparable nature
through the birth, for the operation of Christ is signified to be itself
the testimony of God concerning Him.
21. They are not, therefore, acquitted of blame for not recognising the
testimony; for the works of Christ are the Father's testimony concerning
Him. Nor can they plead ignorance of the testimony on the ground that they
had not heard the voice of the Testifier, nor seen His form, nor had His
word abiding in them. For immediately after the words, Ye have neither
heard His voice at any time, nor seen His form, and ye have not His word
abiding in you, He points out why the voice was not heard, nor the form
seen, and the word did not abide in them, though the Father had testified
concerning Him: For Whom He sent, Him ye believe not; that is, if they had
believed Him, they would have heard the voice of God, and seen the form of
God, and His word would have been in them, since through the unity of Their
nature the Father is heard and manifested and possessed in the Son. Is He
not also the expression of the Father, since He was sent from Him? Does He
distinguish Himself by any difference of nature from the Father, when He
says that the Father, testifying of Him, was neither heard, nor seen, nor
understood, because they did not believe in Him, Whom the Father sent? The
Only-begotten God does not, therefore, separate Himself from God when He
confesses God the Father; but, proclaiming by the word "Father" His
relationship to God. He includes Himself in the honour due to God.
22. For, in this very same discourse in which He pronounces that His
works testify of Him that He was sent of the Father, and asserts that the
Father testifies of Him, that He was sent from Him, He says, The honour of
Him, Who alone is God, ye seek not(5). This is not, however, a bare
statement, without any previous preparation for the belief in His unity
with the Father. Hear what precedes it, Ye will not come to Me that ye may
have life. I receive not glory from men. But I know you, that ye have not
the love of God in yourselves. I am come in My Father's name, and ye
receive Me not: if another shall come in His name(6), him ye will receive.
How can ye believe, which receive glory, from men, and the glory of Him,
Who alone is God, ye seek not(7) He disdains the glory of men, for glory
should rather be sought of God. It is the mark of unbelievers to receive
glory of one another: for what glory can man give to man? He says He knows
that the love of God is not in them, and pronounces, as the cause, that
they do not receive Him coming in His Father's name. "Coming in His
Father's name:" what does that mean but "coming in the name of God?" Is it
not because they rejected Him Who came in the name of God, that the love of
God is not in them? Is it not implied that He has the nature of God, when
He says, Ye will not come to Me that ye may have life. Hear what He said of
Himself in the same discourse, Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour
cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God;
and they there hear shall live(8). He comes in the name of the Father: that
is, He is not Himself the Father, yet is in the same divine nature as the
Father: for as Son and God it is natural for Him to come in the name of the
Father. Then, another coming in the same name they will receive: but he is
one from whom men will expect glory, and to whom they will give glory in
return, though he will feign to have come in the name of the Father. By
this, doubtless, is signified the Antichrist, glorying in his false use of
the Father's name. Him they will glorify, and will be glorified of him: but
the glory of Him, Who alone is God, they will not seek.
23. They have not the love of God in them, He says, because they
rejected Him coming in the name of the Father, but accepted another, who
came in the same name, and received glory of one another, but neglected the
glory of Him, Who is the only true God. Is it possible to think that He
separates Himself from the glory of the only God, when He gives as the
reason why they seek not the glory of the only God, that they receive
Antichrist, and Himself they will not receive? To reject Him is to neglect
the glory of the only God; is not, then, His glory the glory of the only
God, if to receive Him steadfastly was to seek the glory of the only God?
This very discourse is our witness: for at its beginning we read, That all
may honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not
the Son, honoureth not the Father which sent Him(9). It is only things of
the same nature that are equal in honour; equality of honour denotes that
there is no separation between the honoured. But with the revelation of the
birth is combined, the demand for equality of honour. Since the Son is to
be honoured as the Father', and since they seek not the honour of Him, Who
is the only God, He is not excluded from the honour of the only God, for
His honour is one and the same as that of God: just as He that honoureth
not the Son, hanoureth not the Father also, so he who seeks not the honour
of the only God, seeks not the honour of Christ also. Accordingly the
honour of Christ is inseparable from the honour of God. By His words, when
the news of Lazarus' sickness was brought to Him, He illustrates the
complete identification of Father and Son in honour: This sickness is not
unto death, but far the glory of God, that the Son of Man may be glorified
through him(2) Lazarus dies for the glory of God, that the Son of God may
be glorified through him. Is there any doubt that the glory of the Son of
God is the glory of God, when the death of Lazarus, which is glorious to
God, glorifies the Son of God? Thus Christ is declared to be one in nature
with God the Father through His birth, since the sickness of Lazarus is for
the glory of God, and at the same time the Mystery of the faith is not
violated, for the Son of God is to be glorified through Lazarus. The Son of
God is to be regarded as God, yet He is none the less to be confessed also
Son of God: for by glorifying God through Lazarus, the Son of God is
glorified.
24. By the mystery of the divine nature we are forbidden to separate
the birth of the living Son from His living Father. The Son of God suffers
no such change of kind, that the truth of His Father's nature does not
abide in Him. For even where, by the confession of one God only, He seems
to disclaim for Himself the nature of God by the term "only," nevertheless,
without destroying the belief in one God, He places Himself in the unity of
the Father's nature. Thus, when the Scribe asked Him, which is the chief
commandment of the law, He answered, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is
one Lord: thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all
thy soul, and with all thy spirit, and with all thy strength. This is the
first commandment. And the second is like unto it, Than shall love thy
neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than
these(3). They think that He severs Himself from the nature and worship of
the One God when He pronounces as the chief commandment, Hear, O Israel,
the Land our God is one Lord, and does not even make Himself the object of
worship in the second commandment, since the law bids us to love our
neighbour, as it bids us to believe in one God. Nor must we pass over the
answer of the Scribe, Of a truth thou hast well said, that God is one, and
there is none other but He: and to love Him with all the heart, and all the
strength and all the soul, and to love his neighbour as himself, this is
greater than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices(4). The answer of the
Scribe seems to accord with the words of the Lord, for He too proclaims the
innermost and inmost love of one God, and professes the love of one's
neighbour as real as the love of self, and places love of God and love of
one's neighbour above all the burnt offerings of sacrifices. But let us see
what follows.
25. And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, He said unto him,
Thou art not far from the kingdom of Gads(5). What is the meaning of such
moderate praise? Believe in one God, and love Him with all thy soul, and
with all thy strength, and with all thy heart, and love thy neighbour as
thyself; if this be the faith which makes man perfect for the Kingdom of
God, why is not the Scribe already within, instead of not far from the
Kingdom of Heaven? It is in another strain that He grants the Kingdom of
Heaven to those who clothe the naked, feed the hungry, give drink to the
thirsty, and visit the sick and the prisoner, Come, ye blessed of My
Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the
world(6); or rewards the poor in spirit, Blessed are the poor in spirit:
far theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven(7). Their gain is perfect, their
possession complete, their inheritance of the kingdom prepared for them is
secured. But was this young man's confession short of theirs? His ideal of
duty raises love of neighbour to the level of love of self; what more did
he want to attain to the perfection of good conduct? To be occasionally
charitable, and ready to help, is not perfect love; but perfect love has
fulfilled the whole duty of charity, when a man leaves no debt to his
neighbour unpaid, but gives him as much as he gives ,himself. But the
Scribe was debarred from perfection, because he did not know the mystery
which had been accomplished. He received, indeed, the praise of the Lord
for his profession of faith, he heard the reply that he was not far from
the kingdom, but he was not put in actual possession of the blessed hope.
His course, though ignorant, was favourable; he put the love of God before
all things, and charity towards his neighbour on a level with love of self.
And when he ranked the love of God even higher than charity towards his
neighbour, he broke through the law of burnt offerings and sacrifices; and
that was not far from the mystery of the Gospel.
26. We may perceive also, from the words of our Lord Himself, why He
said, Thou art not far from the Kingdom of Heaven, rather than, Thou shall
be in the Kingdom of Heaven. Then follows: And no man after that durst ask
Him any question. And Jesus answered and said, as He taught in the Temple,
How say the Scribes that the Christ is the Son of David? David himself
saith in the Holy Spirit, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou an My right
hand, till I make Thine enemies the footstool of Thy feet (Ps. cx. 1).
David himself calleth Him Lord, and whence is He his Son(8)? The Scribe is
not far from the Kingdom of God when he confesses one God, Who is to be
loved above all things. But his own statement of the law is a reproach to
him that the mystery of the law has escaped him, that he does not know
Christ the Lord, the Son of God, by the nature of His birth to be included
in the confession of the one God. The confession of one God according to
the law seemed to leave no room for the Son of God in the mystery of the
one Lord; so He asks the Scribe, how he can call Christ the Son of David,
when David calls Him his Lord, since it is against the order of nature that
the son of so great a Patriarch should be also his Lord. He would bid the
Scribe, who regards Him only in respect of His flesh, and His birth from
Mary, the daughter of David, to remember that, in respect of His Spirit, He
is David's Lord rather than his son; that the words, Hear, O Israel, the
Lord our God is one Lord, do not sever Christ from the mystery of the One
Lord, since so great a Patriarch and Prophet calls Him his Lord, as the Son
begotten of the Lord before the morning star. He does not pass over the
law, or forget that none other is to be confessed Lord, but without
violating the faith of the law, He teaches that He is Lord, in that He had
His being by the mystery of a natural birth from the substance of the
incorporeal God. He is one, born of one, and the nature of the one Lord has
made Him by nature Lord.
27. What room is any longer left for doubt? The Lord Himself
proclaiming that the chief commandment of the law is to confess and love
the one Lord, proves Himself to be Lord not by words of His own, but by the
Prophet's testimony, always signifying, however, that He is Lord, because
He is the Son of God. By virtue of His birth He abides in the mystery of
the one God, for the birth transmitting with it, as it did, the nature of
God is not the issuing forth of another God with a different nature; and,
because the generation is real, neither is the Father degraded from being
Lord, nor is the Son born less than Lord. The Father retains His authority,
the Son obtains His nature. God the Father is one Lord, but the Only-
begotten God the Lord is not separated from the One, since He derives His
nature as Lord from the one Lord. Thus by the law Christ teaches that there
is one Lord; by the witness of the prophets He proves Himself Lord also.
28. May the faith of the Gospel ever profit thus by the rash
contentions of the ungodly to defend itself with the weapons of their
attack, and conquering with the arms prepared for its destruction, prove
that the words of the one Spirit are the doctrine of the one faith! For
Christ is none other than. He is preached, namely the true God, and abiding
in the glory of the one true God. Just as He proclaims Himself Lord out of
the law, even when He seems to deny the fact, so in the Gospels He proves
Himself the true God, even when He appears to confess the opposite. To
escape the acknowledgment that He is the true God, the heretics plead that
He said, And this is life eternal, that they should know Thee, the only
true God. and Him Whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ(9). When He says,
Thee, the only true God, they think He excludes Himself from the reality of
God by the restriction of solitariness; for the only true God cannot be
understood except as a solitary God. It is true the Apostolic faith does
not suffer us to believe in two true Gods, for nothing which is foreign to
the nature of the one God can be put on equality with the truth of that
nature; and there is more than one God in the reality of the one God, if
there exists outside the nature of the only true God a true God of another
kind, not possessing by virtue of His birth the same nature with Him.
29. But by these very words He proclaims Himself plainly to be true God
in the nature of the only true God. To understand this, let our answer
proceed from statements which He made previously, though the connection is
unbroken right down to these words. We can then establish the faith step by
step, and let the confidence of our freedom rest at last on the summit of
our argument, the true Godhead of Christ. There comes first the mystery of
His words, He that hath seen Me, hath seen tire Father; and, Do ye not
believe Me that! am in tire Father and the Father in Me? The words that I
say unto you, I speak not front Myself; but the Father abiding in Me,
Himself doeth His works. Believe Me that I and in the Father and the Father
in Me: or else believe Me for the very works' sake(1). At the close of this
discourse, teeming with deep mysteries, follows the reply of the disciples,
Now know we that Thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man
should ask thee: by this we believe that Thou camest forth front God(2).
They perceived in Him the nature of God l by the divine powers which He
exercised; for to know all things, and to read the thoughts of the heart
belongs to the Son, not to the mere messenger of God. They confessed,
therefore, that He was come from God, because the power of the divine
nature was in Him.
30. The Lord praised their understanding, and answered not that He was
sent from, but that He was come out from, God, signifying by the words
"come out from" the great fact of His birth from the incorporeal God. He
had already proclaimed the birth in the same language, when He said, Ye
love Me, and believe that I came out from the Father, and came from the
Father into this world(3). He had come from the Father into this world,
because He had come out from God. To shew that He signifies His birth by
the coming out, He adds that He has come from the Father; and since He had
come out from God, because He had come from the Father, that "coming out,"
followed, as it is, by the confession of the Father's name, is simply and
solely the birth. To the Apostles, then, as understanding this mystery of
His coming out, He continues, Ye believe now, Behold the hour cometh, yea
is come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave
Me alone: yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me(4). He would
shew that the "coming out" is not a separation from God the Father, but a
birth, which by His being born continues in Him the nature of God the
Father, and therefore He adds that He is not alone, but the Father is with
Him; in power, that is, and unity of nature, for the Father was abiding in
Him, speaking in His words, and working in His works. Lastly to shew the
reason of this whole discourse, He adds, These things I have spoken to you,
that in Me ye may have peace. In this world ye shall have tribulation: but
be of good cheer, for I have overcame the world(5). He has spoken these
things unto them, that in Him they may abide in peace, not torn asunder by
the passion of dissension over debates about the faith. He was left alone,
but was not alone, for He had come out from God, and there abode still in
Him the God, from Whom He had come out. Therefore he bade them, when they
were harassed in the world, to wait for His promises, for since He had come
out from God, and God was still in Him, He had conquered the world.
31. Then, finally, to express in words the whole Mystery, He raised His
eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come: glorify Thy Son, that
Thy Son may glorify Thee. Even as Thou gavest Him authority over all flesh,
that, whatsoever Thou hast given Him, to them He should give eternal
life(6). Do you call Him weak because He asks to be glorified? So be it, if
He does not ask to be glorified in order that He may Himself glorify Him by
Whom He is glorified. Of the receiving and giving of glory we have spoken
in another book(7), and it would be superfluous to go over the question
again. But of this at least we are certain, that He prays for glory in
order that the Father may be glorified by granting it. But perhaps He is
weak in that He receives power over all flesh. And indeed the receiving of
power might be a sign of weakness if He were not able to give to those whom
He receives life eternal. Yet the very fact of receiving is used to prove
inferiority of nature. It might, if Christ were not true God by birth as
truly as is the Unbegotten. But if the receiving of power signifies neither
more nor less than the Birth, by which He received all that He has, that
gift does not degrade the Begotten, because it makes Him perfectly and
entirely what God is. God Unbegotten brought God Only-begotten to a perfect
birth of divine blessedness: it is, then, the mystery of the Father to be
the Author of the Birth, but it is no degradation to the Son to be made the
perfect image of His Author by a real birth. 'The giving of power over all
flesh, and this, in order that to all flesh might be given eternal life,
postulates the Fatherhood of the Giver and the Divinity of the Receiver:
for by giving is signified that the One is the Father, and in receiving the
power to give eternal life, the Other remains God the Son. All power is
therefore natural and congenital to the Son of God; and though it is given,
that does not separate Him from His Author, for that which is given is the
property of His Author, power to bestow eternal life. to change the
corruptible into the incorruptible. The Father gave all, the Son received
all; as is plain from His words, All things, whatsoever the Father hath,
are Mine(8). He is not speaking here of species of created things, and
processes of material change(1), but He unfolds to us the glory of the
blessed and perfect Divinity, and teaches us that God is here manifested as
the sum of His attributes, His power, His eternity. His providence, His
authority; not that we should think that He possesses these as something
extraneous to Himself, but that by these His qualities He Himself has been
expressed in terms partly comprehensible by our sense. The Only-be-gotten,
therefore, taught that He had all that the Father has, and that the Holy
Spirit should receive of Him: as He says, All things, whatsoever the Father
hath, are Mine; therefore I said, He shall take of Mine(2). All that the
Father hath are His, delivered and received: but these gifts do not degrade
His divinity, since they give Him the same attributes as the Father.
32. These are the steps by which He advances the knowledge of Himself.
He teaches that He is come out from the Father, pro-. claims that the
Father is with Him, and testifies that He has conquered the world. He is to
be glorified of the Father, and will glorify Him: He will use the power He
has received, to give to all flesh eternal life. Then hear the crowning
point, which concludes the whole series, ,And this is life eternal, that
they should know Thee, the only true God, and Him Whom Thou didst send,
even Jesus Christ(3). Learn, heretic, to confess, if you cannot believe,
the faith which gives eternal life. Separate, if you can, Christ from God,
the Son from the Father, God over all from the true God, the One from the
Only: if, as you say, eternal life is to believe in one only true God
without Jesus Christ. But if there is no eternal life in a confession of
the only true God, which separates Christ from Him, how, pray, can Christ
be separated from the true God for our faith, when He is not separable for
our salvation?
33. I know that laboured solutions of difficult questions do not find
favour with the reader, but it will perhaps be to the advantage of the
faith if I permit myself to postpone for a time the exposition of the full
truth, and wrestle against the heretics with these wonts of the Gospel. You
hear the statement of the Lord, This is life eternal, that they should know
Thee, the only true God, and Him Whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.
What is it, pray, which suggests to you that Christ is not the true God? No
further indication is given to shew you what you should think of Christ.
There is nothing but Jesus Christ: not Son of Man, as He generally called
Himself: not San of God, as He often declared Himself: not the living bread
which cometh down from Heaven(4), as He repeated to the scandal of many. He
says, Thee, the only true God, and Him Whom Thou didst send, even Jesus
Christ, omitting all His usual names and titles, natural and assumed.
Hence, if the confession of the only true God, and at Jesus Christ, gives
us eternal life, without doubt the name Jesus Christ has here the full
sense of that of God.
34. But perhaps by saying, Thee the only, Christ severs Himself from
communion and unity with God. Yes, but after the words, Thee the only true
God, does He not immediately continue, and Him Whom Thou didst send, even
Jesus Christ? I appeal to the sense of the reader: what must we believe
Christ to be, when we are commanded to believe in Him also, as well as the
Father the only true God? Or, perhaps, if the Father is the only true God,
there is no room for Christ to be God. It might be so, if, because there is
one God the Father, Christ were not the one Lord(5). The fact that God the
Father is one, leaves Christ none the less the one Lord: and similarly the
Father's one true Godhead makes Christ none the less true God: for we can
only obtain eternal life if we believe in Christ, as well as in the only
true God
35. Come, heretic, what will your fatuous doctrine instruct us to
believe of Christ; Christ, Who dispenses eternal life, Who is glorified of,
and glorifies, the Father, Who overcame the world, Who, deserted, is not
alone, but has the Father with Him, Who came out from God, and came from
the Father? He is born with such divine powers; what of the nature and
reality of God will you allow Him? It is in vain that we believe in the
only true God the Father, unless we believe also in Him, Whom He sent, even
Jesus Christ. Why do you hesitate? Tell us, what is Christ to be confessed?
You deny what has been written: what is left, but to believe what has not
been written? O unhappy wilfulness! O falsehood striving against the truth!
Christ is united in belief and confession with the only true God the
Father: what faith is it, pray, to deny Him to be true God, and to call Him
a creature, when it is no faith to believe in the only true God without
Christ? But you are narrow, heretic, and unable to receive the Holy Spirit.
The sense of the heavenly words escapes you; stung with the asp's poison of
error, you forget that Christ is to be confessed true God in the faith of
the only true God, if we would obtain eternal life.
36. But the faith of the Church, while confessing the only true God the
Father, confesses Christ also. It does not confess Christ true God without
the Father the only true God; nor the Father the only true God without
Christ. It confesses Christ true God, because it confesses the Father the
only true God. Thus the fact that God the Father is the only true God
constitutes Christ also true God. The Only-begotten God suffered no change
of nature by His natural birth: and He Who, according to the nature of His
divine origin was born God from the living God, is, by the truth of that
nature, inalienable from the only true God. Thus there follows from the
true divine nature its necessary result, that the outcome of true divinity
must be a true birth, and that the one God could not produce from Himself a
God of a second kind. The mystery of God consists neither in simplicity,
nor in multiplicity: for neither is there another God, Who springs from God
with qualities of His own nature, nor does God remain as a single Person,
for the true birth of the Son teaches us to confess Him as Father. The
begotten God did not, therefore, lose the qualities of His nature: He
possesses the natural power of Him, Whose nature He retains in Himself by a
natural birth. The divinity in Him is not changed, or degenerate, for if
His birth had brought with it any defect, it would more justly cast upon
the Nature, through which He came into being, the reflection of having
failed to implant in its offspring the properties of itself. The change
would not degrade the Son, Who had passed into a new substance by birth,
but the Father, Who had been unable to maintain the constancy of His nature
in the birth of the Son, and had brought forth something external and
foreign to Himself.
37. But, as we have often said, the inadequacy of human ideas has no
corresponding inadequacy in the unity of God the Father and God the Son: as
though there were extension, or series, or flux, like a spring pouring
forth its stream from the source, or a tree supporting its branch on the
stem, or fire giving out its heat into space. In these cases we have
expansion without any separation: the parts are bound together and do not
exist of themselves, but the heat is in the fire, the branch in the tree,
the stream in the spring. So the thing itself alone has an independent
existence; the one does not pass into the other, for the tree and the
branch are one and the same, as also the fire and the heat, the spring and
the stream. But the Only-begotten God is God, subsisting by virtue of a
perfect and ineffable birth, true Scion of the Unbegotten God, incorporeal
offspring of an incorporeal nature, living and true God of living and true
God, God of a nature inseparable from God. The fact of birth does not make
Him God with a different nature, nor did the generation, which produced His
substance, change its nature in kind.
38. Put in the dispensation of the flesh which He assumed, and through
the obedience whereby He emptied Himself of the form of God, Christ, born
man, took to Himself a new nature, not by loss of virtue or nature but by
change of fashion. He emptied Himself of the form of God and took the form
of a servant, when He was born. But the Fathers nature, with which He was
in natural unity, was not affected by this assumption of flesh; while
Christ, though abiding in the virtue of His nature, yet in respect of the
humanity assumed in this temporal change, lost together with the form of
God the unity with the divine nature also. But the Incarnation is summed up
in this, that the whole Son, that is, His manhood as well as His divinity,
was permitted by the Father's gracious favour to continue in the unity of
the Father's nature, and retained not only the powers of the divine nature,
but also that nature's self. For the object to be gained was that man
might become God. But the assumed manhood could not in any wise abide in
the unity of God, unless, through unity with God, it attained to unity with
the nature of God. Then, since God the Word was in the nature of God, the
Word made flesh would in its turn also be in the nature of God. Thus, if
the flesh were united to the glory of the Word, the man Jesus Christ could
abide in the glory of God the Father, and the Word made flesh could be
restored to the unity of the Father's nature, even as regards His manhood,
since the assumed flesh had obtained the glory of the Word. Therefore the
Father must reinstate the Word in His unity, that the offspring of His
nature might again return to be glorified in Himself: for the unity had
been infringed by the new dispensation, and could only be restored perfect
as before if the Father glorified with Himself the flesh assumed by the
Son.
39. For this reason, having already so well prepared their minds for
the understanding of this belief, the Lord follows up the words, And this
is eternal life, that they should know Thee, the only true God, and Him
Whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ, with a reference to the obedience
displayed in His incarnation I have glorified Thee on the earth, I have
accomplished the work which Thou gavest Me to do(6). And then, that we
might know the reward of His obedience, and the secret purpose of the whole
divine plan, He continued, And now, O Father, glorify Thou slate with Thine
own self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was(7).
Does any one deny that Christ remained in the nature of God or believe Him
separable and distinct from the only true God? Let him tell us what is the
meaning of this prayer. And now, 0 Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own
self. For what purpose should the Father glorify Him with His own self?
What is the signification of these words? What follows from their
signification? The Father neither stood in need of glory, nor had He
emptied Himself of the form of His glory. How should He glorify the Son
with His own self, and with that glory which He had with Him before the
world was made? And what is the sense of which He had with Him? Christ does
not say, "The glory which I had before the world was made, when I was with
Thee," but, The glory which I had with Thee. When I was with Thee would
signify, "when I dwelt by Thy side:" but which I had with Thee teaches the
Mystery of His nature. Further, Glorify Me with Thyself is not the same as
"Glorify Me." He does not ask merely that He may be glorified, that He may
have some special glory of His own, but prays that He may be glorified of
the Father with Himself. The Father was to glorify Him with Himself, that
He might abide in unity with Him as before, since the unity with the
Father's glory had left Him through the obedience of the Incarnation. And
this means that the glorifying should reinstate Him in that nature, with
which He was united by the Mystery of His divine birth; that He might be
glorified of the Father with Himself; that He should resume all that He had
had with the Father before; that the assumption of the servant's form
should not estrange from Him the nature of the form of God, but that God
should glorify in Himself the form of the servant, that it might become for
ever the form of God, since He, Who had before abode in the form of God,
was now in the form of a servant. And since the form of a servant was to be
glorified in the form of God, it was to be glorified in Him in Whose form
the fashion of the servant's form was to be honoured.
40. But these words of the Lord are not new, or attested now for the
first time in the teaching of the Gospels, for He testified to this very
mystery of God the Father glorifying the Son with Himself by the noble joy
at the fulfilment of His hope, with which He rejoiced at the very moment
when Judas went forth to betray Him. Filled with joy that His purpose was
now to be fully accomplished. He said, Now is the Son of Man glorified and
God is glorified in Him. If God is glorified in Him, He hath glorified Him
in Himself, and straightway hath He glorified Him(8). How can we whose
souls are burdened with bodies of clay, whose minds are polluted and
stained with foul consciousness of sin, be so puffed up as to judge of His
divine claim? How can we set up ourselves to criticise His heavenly nature,
rebelling against God with our unhallowed and blasphemous disputations? The
Lord enunciated the faith of the Gospel in the simplest words that could be
found, and fitted His discourses to our understanding, so far as the
weakness of our nature allowed Him, without saying anything unworthy of the
majesty of His own nature. The signification of His opening words cannot, I
think, be doubted, Now is the Son of Man glorified; that is, all the glory
which He obtains is not for the Word but for His flesh: not for the birth
of His Godhead, but for the dispensation of His manhood born into the
world. What then, may I ask, is the meaning of what follows, And God is
glorified in Him? I hear that God is glorified in Him; but what that can be
according to your interpretation, heretic, I do not know. God is glorified
in Him, in the Son of Man, that is: tell me, then, is the Son of Man the
same as the Son of God? And since the Son of Man is not one and the Son of
God another, but He Who is Son of God is Himself also Son of Man, Who,
pray, is the God Who is glorified in this Son of Man, Who is also Son of
God?
41. So God is glorified in the Son of Man, Who is also Son of God. Let
us see, then, what is this third clause which is added, If God is glorified
in Him, God hath also glorified Him in Himself. What, pray, is this secret
mystery? God, in the glorified Son of Man, glorifies a glorified God in
Himself The glory of God is in the Son of Man, and the glory of God is in
the glory of the Son of Man. God glorifies in Himself, but man is not
glorified through himself. Again the God Who is glorified in the man,
though He receives the glory, yet is Himself none other than God. But since
in the glorifying of the Son of Man. the God, Who glorifies, glorifies God
in Himself, I recognise that the glory of Christ's nature is taken into the
glory of that nature which glorifies His nature. God does not glorify
Himself; but He glorifies in Himself God glorified in man. And this
"glorifies in Himself," though it is not a glorifying of Himself, yet means
that He took the nature, which He glorified, into the glory of His own
nature Since the God, Who glorifies the God glorified in man, glorifies Him
in Himself, He proves that the God Whom He glorifies is in Himself, for He
glorifies Him in Himself. Come, heretic, whoever you be, produce the
inextricable objections of your tortuous doctrine; though they bind
themselves in their own tangles, yet, marshal them as you will, we shall
not be in danger of sticking in their snares. The Son of Man is glorified;
God is glorified in Him; God glorifies in Himself Him, Who is glorified in
the man. It is not the same that the Son of Man is glorified, as that God
is glorified in the Son of Man, or that God glorifies in Himself Him, Who
is glorified in the man. Express in the terms of your unholy belief, what
you mean by God being glorified in the Son of Man. It must certainly be
either Christ Who is glorified in the flesh, or the Father Who is glorified
in Christ. If it is Christ Christ is manifestly God, Who is glorified in
the flesh. If it is the Father, we are face to face with the mystery of the
unity, since the Father is glorified in the Son. Thus, if you allow it to
be Christ, despite yourself you confess Him God; if you understand it of
God the Father, you cannot deny the nature of God the Father in Christ. Let
this be enough concerning the glorified Son of Man and God glorified in
Him. But when we consider that God glorifies in Himself God, Who is
glorified in the Son of Man, by what loophole, pray, can your profane
doctrine escape from the confession that Christ is very God according to
the verity of His nature? God glorifies in Himself Christ, Who was born a
man; is Christ then outside Him, when He glorifies Him in Himself? He
restores to Christ in Himself the glory which He had with Himself, and now
that the servant's form, which He assumed, is in turn assumed into the form
of God, God Who is glorified in man is glorified in Himself; He was in
God's self before the dispensation, by which He emptied Himself, and now He
is united with God's self, both in the form of the servant, and in the
nature belonging to His birth. For His birth did not make Him God of a new
and foreign nature, but by generation He was made natural Son of a natural
Father. After His human birth, when He is glorified in His manhood, He
shines again with the glory of His own nature; the Father glorifies Him in
Himself, when He is assumed into the glory of His Father's nature, of which
He had emptied Himself in the dispensation.
42. The words of the Apostle's faith are a barrier against your
reckless and frenzied profanity, which forbids you to turn the freedom of
speculation into licence, and wander into error. Every tongue, he says,
shall confess that Jesus is Lord in the glory of God the Father(9). The
Father has glorified Him in Himself, therefore He must be confessed in the
glory of the Father. And if He is to be confessed in the Father's glory,
and the Father has glorified Him in Himself, is He not plainly all that His
Father is, since the Father has glorified Him in Himself and He is to be
confessed in the Father's glory? He is now not merely in the glory of God,
but in the glory of God the Father. The Father glorifies Him. not with a
glory from without, but in Himself. By taking Him back into that glory,
which belongs to Himself, and which He had with Him before, the Father
glorifies Him with Himself and in Himself. Therefore this confession is
inseparable from Christ even in the humiliation of His manhood, as He says,
And this is eternal life, that they should know Thee, the only true God,
Him, Whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ(1); for firstly there is no
life eternal in the confession of God the Father without Jesus Christ, and
secondly Christ is glorified in the Father. Eternal life is precisely this,
to know the only true God and Him, Whom He sent, even Jesus Christ; deny
that Christ is true God, if you can have life by believing in God without
Him. As for the truth that God the Father is the only true God let this be
untrue of the God Christ, unless Christ's glory is wholly in the only true
God the Father. For if the Father glorifies Him in Himself, and the Father
is the only true God, Christ is not outside the only true God, since the
Father, Who is the only true God, glorifies in Himself Christ, Who is
raised into the glory of God. And in that He is glorified by the only true
God in Himself, He is not estranged from the only true God, for He is
glorified by the true God in Himself, the only God.
43. But perhaps the godless unbeliever meets the pious believer with
the assertion that we cannot understand of the true God a confession of
powerlessness, such as, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do
nothing of Himself, but what He hath seen the Father doing(2). If the
twofold angers of the Jews had not demanded a twofold answer, it would
indeed have been a confession of weakness, that the Son could do nothing of
Himself, except what He had seen the Father doing. But Christ was answering
in the same sentence the double charge of the Jews, who accused Him of
violating the Sabbath, and of making Himself equal with God by calling God
His Father. Do you think, then, that by fixing attention upon the form of
His reply you can withdraw it for the substance? We have already treated of
this passage in another book(4); yet as the exposition of the faith gains
rather than loses by repetition, let us ponder once more on the words,
since the occasion demands it of us.
44. Hear how the necessity for the reply arose:-- And for this cause
did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to kill Him, because He did these
things on the Sabbath(5). Their anger was so kindled against Him, that they
desired to kill Him, because He did His works on the Sabbath. But let us
see also what the Lord answered, My Father worketh even until now, and I
work(6). Tell us, heretic, what is that work of the Father; since through
the Son, and in the Son, are all things, visible and invisible? You, who
are wise beyond the Gospels, have doubtless obtained from some other secret
source of learning the knowledge of the Father's work, to reveal Him to us.
But the Father works in the Son, as the Son Himself says, The words that I
say unto you, I speak not from Myself, but the Father who abideth in Me, He
doeth His works(7). Do you grasp the meaning of the words, My Father
worketh even until now? He speaks that we may recognise in Him the power of
the Father's nature employing the nature, which has that power, to work on
the Sabbath. The Father works in Him while He works; without doubt, then,
He works along with the working of the Father, and therefore He says, My
Father worketh even until now, that this present work of His words and
actions may be regarded as the working of the Father's nature in Himself.
This worketh even until now identifies the time with the moment of
speaking, and therefore we must regard Him as referring to that very work
of the Father's which He was then doing, for it implies the working of the
Father at the very time of His words. And lest the Faith, being restricted
to a knowledge of the Father only, should fair of the hope of eternal life,
He adds at once, And I work; that is, what the Father worketh even until
now, the Son also worketh. Thus He expounds the whole of the faith; for the
work which is now, belongs to the present time; and if the Father works,
and the Son works, no union exists between them, which merges them into a
single Person(8). But the wrath of the bystanders is now redoubled. Hear
what follows, For this cause, therefore, the Jews sought the more to kill
Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but because He called God His
own Father, making Himself equal with God(1). Allow me here to repeat that,
by the judgment of the Evangelist and by common consent of mankind, the Son
is in equality with the Father's nature; and that equality cannot exist
except by identity of nature. The begotten cannot derive what it is save
from its source and the thing generated cannot be foreign to that which
generates it, since from that alone has it come to be what it is. Let us
see, then, what the Lord replied to this double outburst of wrath, Verily,
verily, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He hath
seen the Father doing: for what things soever He doeth, these the Son also
doeth in like manner(2).
45. Unless we regard these words as an integral part of His statement,
we do them violence by forcing upon them an arbitrary and unbelieving
interpretation. But if His answer refers to the grounds of their anger, our
faith expresses rightly what He meant to teach, and the perversity of the
ungodly is left without support for its profane delusion. Let us see then
whether this reply is suitable to an accusation of working on the Sabbath.
The Son can do nothing, of Himself, but what He hath seen the Father doing.
He has said just above, My Father worketh even until now, and I work. If by
virtue of the authority of the Father's nature within Him, all that He
works, He works with the Father in Him, and the Father works even until now
on the Sabbath, then the Son, Who pleads the authority of the Father's
working, is acquitted of blame. For the words, can do nothing, refer not to
strength hut to authority; He can do nothing of Himself, except what He has
seen. Now, to have seen does not confer the power to do, and therefore He
is not weak, if He can do nothing without having seen, but His authority is
shewn to depend on seeing. Again the words, unless He hath seen, signify
the consciousness derived from seeing, as when He says to the Apostles,
Behold I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields, that they
are while already unto harvest(3). With the consciousness that the Father's
nature is abiding in Him, and working in Him when He works, to forestall
the idea that the Lord of the Sabbath has violated the Sabbath, He
pronounces that, The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He hath seen
the Father doing. And thus He demonstrates that His every action springs
from His consciousness of the nature working within Him; when He works on
the Sabbath, the Father worketh even until now on the Sabbath. In what
follows, however, He refers to the second cause of their indignation, For
what things soever He doeth, the Son doeth in like manner. Is it false
that, what things soever the Father doeth, the Son doeth in like manner?
Does the Son of God admit a distinction between the Father's power and
working and His own? Does He shrink from claiming the equality of homage
befitting an equal in power and nature? If He does, disdain His weakness,
and degrade Him from equality of nature with the Father But He Himself says
only a little later, That all may honour the Son, even as they honour the
Father, He that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father which sent
Him(4). Discover, if you can, the inferiority, when Both are equal in
honour; make out the weakness, when Both work with the same power.
46. Why do you misrepresent the occasion of the reply in order to
detract from His divinity? To the working on the Sabbath He answers that He
can do nothing of Himself, but what He hath seen the Father doing: to
demonstrate His equality, He professes to do what things soever the Father
doeth. Enforce your charge of weakness, by His answer concerning the
Sabbath, if you can disprove that what things soever the Father doeth, the
Son doeth in like manner. But if what things soever includes all things
without exception; in what is He found weak, when there is nothing that the
Father doeth, which He cannot also do? Where is His claim to equality
refuted by any episode of weakness, when one and the same honour is
demanded for Him and for the Father? If Both have the same power in
operation, and both claim the same reverence in worship, I cannot
understand what dishonour of inferiority can exist, since Father and Son
possess the same power of operation, and equality of honour.
47. Although we have treated this passage as the facts themselves
explain it, yet to prove that the Lord's words, The Son can do nothing of
Himself, but what He hath seen the Father doing, so far from supporting
this unholy degradation of His nature, testify to His conscious possession
of the nature of the Father, by Whose authority He worked on the Sabbath,
let us shew them that we can produce another saying of the Lord, which
bears upon the question, I do nothing of Myself, but as the Father taught
Me, I speak these things. And He that sent Me is with Me: He hath not left
Me alone, for I do always the things that are pleasing to Him(5). Do you
feel what is implied in the words, The San can do nothing, but what He hath
seen the Father doing? Or what a mystery is contained in the saying, I can
do nothing of myself, and He hath not left me alone, far I do always the
things that are pleasing to Him? He does nothing of Himself, because the
Father abides in Him; can you reconcile with this the fact that the Father
does not leave Him, because He does the things which are pleasing to Him?
Your interpretation, heretic, sets up a contradiction between these two
statements, that He does nothing of Himself, unless taught of the Father
abiding in Him, and that the Father abides in Him, because He does always
the things which are pleasing to Him. For if the Father's abiding in Him
means that He does nothing of Himself, how could He have deserved that the
Father should abide in Him, by doing always the things which are pleasing
to the Father. It is no merit, not to do of oneself what one does.
Conversely, how are the Son's deeds pleasing to the Father, if the Father
Himself, abiding in the Son, be their Author? Impiety, thou art in a sore
strait; the well-armed piety of the faith hath hemmed thee in. The Son is
either an Agent, or He is not. If He is not an Agent, how does He please by
his acts? If He is an Agent, in what sense are deeds, done not of Himself,
His own? On the one hand, He must have done the things which are pleasing;
on the other, it is no merit to have done, yet not of oneself, what one
does.
48. But, my opponent, the unity of Their nature is such, that the
several action of Each implies the conjoint action of Both, and Their joint
activity a several activity of Each. Conceive the Son acting, and the
Father acting through Him. He acts not of Himself, for we have to explain
how the Father abides in Him. He acts in His own Person, for in accordance
with His birth as the Son, He does Himself what is pleasing. His acting not
of Himself would prove Him weak, were it not the case that He so acts that
what He does is pleasing to the Father. But He would not be in the unity of
the divine nature, if the deeds which He does, and wherein He pleases, were
not His own, and He were merely prompted to action by the Father abiding in
Him. The Father then in abiding in Him, teaches Him, and the Son in acting,
acts not of Himself; while, on the other hand, the Son, though not acting
of Himself, acts Himself, for what He does is pleasing. Thus is the unity
of Their nature retained in Their action, for the One, though He acts
Himself, does not act of Himself, while the Other, Who has abstained from
action, is yet active.
49. Connect with this that saying, which you lay hold of to support the
imputation of infirmity, All that the Father giveth Me shall come unto Me,
and him that cometh to Me I will in no wise east out; for I am come down
from heaven not to do Mine own will, but the will of the Father that sent
Me(6). But, perhaps you say, the Son has no freedom of will: the weakness
of His nature subjects Him to necessity, and He is denied free-will, and
subjected to necessity that He may not reject those who are given to Him
and come from the Father. Nor was the Lord content to demonstrate the
mystery of the Unity by His action in not rejecting those who are given to
Him, nor seeking to do His own will instead of the will of him that sent
Him, but when the Jews, after the repetition of the words, Him that sent
Me, began to murmur, He confirms our interpretation by saying, Every one
who heareth from the Father and learneth, cometh unto Me. Not that any man
hath seen the Father, save He which is from God, He hath seen the Father.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth in Me hath eternal
life(7). Now, tell me first, where has the Father been heard, and where has
He taught His hearers? No one hath seen the Father, save Him Who is from
God: has any one ever heard Him Whom no one has ever seen? He that has
heard from the Father, comes to the Son: and he that has heard the teaching
of the Son, has heard the teaching of the Father's nature, for its
properties are revealed in the Son. When, therefore, we hear the Son
teaching, we must understand that we are hearing the teaching of the
Father. No one hath seen the Father, yet he who comes to the Son, hears and
learns from the Father to come: it is manifest, therefore, that the Father
teaches through the words of the Son, and, though seen of none, speaks to
us in the manifestation of the Son, because the Son, by virtue of His
perfect birth, possesses all the properties of His Father's nature. The
Only-begotten God desiring, therefore, to testify of the Father's
authority, yet inculcating His own unity with tile Father's nature. does
not cast out those who are given to Him of the Father, or work His own will
instead of the will of Him that sent Him: not that the does not will what
He does, or is not Himself heard when He teaches; but in order that He may
reveal Him Who sent Him, and Himself the Sent, under the aspect of one
indistinguishable nature, He shews all that He wills, and says, and does,
to be the will and works of the Father.
50. But He proves abundantly that His will is free by the words, As the
Father raiseth the dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son also
quickeneth whom He will(8). When the equality of Father and Son in power
and honour is indicated, then the freedom of the Son's will is made
manifest: when Their unity is demonstrated, His conformity to the Father's
will is signified, for what the Father wills, the Son does. But to do is
something more than to obey a will: the latter would imply external
necessity, while to do another's will requires unity with him, being an act
of volition. In doing the will of the Father the Son teaches that through
the identity of Their nature His will is the same in nature with the
Father's, since all that He does is the Father's will. The Son plainly
wills all that the Father wills, for wills of the same nature cannot
dissent from one another. It is the will of the Father which is revealed in
the words, For this is the will of My Father, that every one that beholdeth
the Son and believeth in Him, should have eternal life, and that I should
raise Him up at the last day(9). Hear now, whether the will of the Son is
discordant with the Father's, when He says, Father, those whom Thou hast
given Me, I will that where I am they also may be with Me(1). Here is no
doubt that the Son wills: for while the Father wills that those who believe
in the Son should have eternal life, the Son wills that the believer should
be where He is. For is it not eternal life to dwell together with Christ?
And does He not grant to the believer in Him all perfection of blessing
when He says, No one hath known the Son save the Father, neither hath any
known the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to
reveal Him(2)? Has He not freedom of will, when He wills to impart to us
the knowledge of the Father's mystery? Is not His will so free that He can
bestow on whom He will the knowledge of Himself and His Father? Thus Father
anti Son are manifestly joint Possessors of a nature common to Both through
birth and common through unity: for the Son is free of will, hut what He
does willingly is an act of the Father's will.
51. He who has not grasped the manifest truths of the faith, obviously
cannot have an understanding of its mysteries; because he has not the
doctrine of the Gospel he is an alien to the hope of the Gospel. We must
confess the Father to be in the Son and the Son in the Father, by unity of
nature, by might of power, as equal in honour as Begetter and Begotten.
But. perhaps you say, the witness of our Lord Himself is contrary to this
declaration, for He says, The Father is greater than I(3). Is this,
heretic, the weapon of your profanity? Are these the arms of your frenzy?
Has it escaped you, that the Church does not admit two Unbegotten, or
confess two Fathers? Have you forgotten the Incarnation of the Mediator,
with the birth, the cradle, the child hood, the passion, the cross and the
death belonging to it? When you were born again, did you not confess the
Son of God, born of Mary? If the Son of God, of Whom these things are true,
says, The Father is greater than I, can you be ignorant that the
Incarnation for your salvation was an emptying of the form of God, and that
the Father, unaffected by this assumption of human conditions, abode in the
blessed eternity of His own incorrupt nature without taking our flesh? We
confess that the Only-begotten God, while He abode in the form of God,
abode in the nature of God, but we do not at once reabsorb into the
substance of the divine unity His unity bearing the form of a servant. Nor
do we teach that the Father is in the Son, as if He entered into Him
bodily; but that the nature which was begotten by the Father of the same
kind as His own, possessed by nature the nature which begot it(4): and that
this nature, abiding in the form of the nature which begot it, took the
form of human nature and weakness. Christ possessed all that was proper to
His nature: but the form of God had departed from Him, for by emptying
Himself of it. He had taken the form of a servant. The divine nature had
not ceased to be, but still abiding in Him, it had taken upon itself the
humility of earthly birth, and was exercising its proper power in the
fashion of the humility it assumed. So God, born of God, being found as man
in the form of a servant, but acting as God in His miracles, was at once
God as His deeds proved, and yet man, for He was found in the fashion of
man
52. Therefore, in the discourse we have expounded above, He had borne
witness to the unity of His nature with the Father's: He that hath seen Me,
hath seen the Father also(5): The Father is in Me, and I in the Father(6).
These two passages perfectly agree, since Both Persons are of equal nature;
to behold the Son is the same as to behold the Father; that the One abides
in the One shows that They are inseparable And. lest they should
misunderstand Him, as though when they beheld His body, they beheld the
Father in Him, He had added, Believe Me, that I am in the Father and the
Father in Me: or else believe Me for the very works' sake(7). His power
belonged to His nature, and His working was the exercise of that power; in
the exercise of that power, then, they might recognise in Him the unity
with the Father's nature. In proportion as any one recognised Him to be God
in the power of His nature, he would come to know God the Father, present
in that mighty nature. The Son, Who is equal with the Father, shewed by His
works that the Father could be seen in Him: in order that we, perceiving in
the Son a nature like the Father's in its power, might know that in Father
and Son there is no distinction of nature.
53. So the Only-begotten God, just before He finished His work in the
flesh, and completed the mystery of taking the servant's form, in order to
establish our faith, thus speaks, Ye heard how I said unto you, I go away,
and I came unto you. If ye loved Me, ye would rejoice, because I go unto
the Father; for the Father is greater than I(8). He has already, in an
earlier part of this very discourse unfolded in all its aspects the
teaching of His divine nature: can we, then, on the strength of this
confession deprive the Son of that equality, which His true birth has
perfected in Him? Or is it an indignity to the Only-begotten God, that the
Unbegotten God is His Father, seeing that His Only-begotten birth from the
Unbegotten gives Him the Only-begotten nature? He is not the source of His
own being, nor did He, being Himself non-existent, bring to pass His own
birth out of nothing; but, existing as a living nature and from a living
nature, He possesses the power of that nature, and declares the authority
of that nature, by bearing witness to His honour, and in His honour to the
grace belonging to the birth He received. He pays to the Father the tribute
of obedience to the will of Him Who sent Him, but the obedience of humility
does not dissolve the unity of His nature: He becomes obedient unto death,
but, after death, He is above every name(9).
54. But if His equality is doubted because the Name is given Him after
He put off the form of God, we dishonour Him by ignoring the mystery of the
humility which He assumed. The birth of His humanity brought to Him a new
nature, and His form was changed in His humility, by the assumption of a
servant's form, but now the giving of the Name restores to Him equality of
form. Ask yourself what it is, which is given. If the gift be something
pertaining to God, the grant to the receiving nature does not impair the
divinity of the giving nature. Again, the words, And gave Him the Name,
involve a mystery in the giving, but the giving of the Name does not make
it another name. To Jesus is given, that to Him, Every knee shall bow of
things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth, and
every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord in the glory of God the Father(1).
The honour is given Him that He should be confessed in the glory of God the
Father. Do you hear Him say, The Father is greater than I? Know Him also,
of Whom it is said in reward of His obedience, And gave unto Him the Name
which is above every name(2); hear Him Who said, I and the Father are one;
He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father also; I am in the Father, and
the Father in Me. Consider the honour of the confession which is granted
Him, that Jesus is Lord in the glory of God the Father. When, then, is the
Father greater than the Son? Surely, when He gives Him the Name above every
name. And on the other hand, when is it that the Son and the Father are
one? Surely, when every tongue confesses that Jesus is Lord in the glory of
God the Father. If, then, the Father is greater through His authority to
give, is the Son less through the confession of receiving? The Giver is
greater: but the Receiver is not less, for to Him it is given to be one
with the Giver. If it is not given to Jesus to be confessed in the glory of
God the Father, He is less than the Father. But if it is given Him to be in
that glory, in which the Father is, we see in the prerogative of giving,
that the Giver is greater, and in the confession of the gift, that the Two
are One. The Father is, therefore, greater than the Son: for manifestly the
is greater, Who makes another to be all that He Himself is, Who imparts to
the Son by the mystery of the birth the image of His own unbegotten nature,
Who begets Him from Himself into His own form, and restores Him again from
the form of a servant to the form of God, Whose work it is that Christ,
born God according to the Spirit in the glory of the Father, but now Jesus
Christ dead in the flesh, should be once more God in the glory of the
Father. When, therefore, Christ says that He is going to the Father, He
reveals the reason why they should rejoice if they loved Him, because the
Father is greater than He.
55. After the explanation that love is the source of this joy, because
love rejoices that Jesus is to be confessed in the glory of God the Father,
He next expresses His claim to receive back that glory, in the words, For
the prince of this world cometh, and he hath nothing in Me(3). The prince
of this world hath nothing in Him: for being found in fashion as a man, He
dwelt in the likeness of the flesh of sin, yet apart from the sin of the
flesh, and in the flesh condemned sin by sin(4). Then, giving obedience to
the Father's command as His only motive, He adds, But that the world may
know that I love the Father, even as the Father gave Me commandment, so I
do. Arise, let us go hence(5). In His zeal to do the Father's commandment,
He rises and hastens to complete the mystery of His bodily passion. But the
next moment He unfolds the mystery of His assumption of flesh. Through this
assumption we are in Him, as the branches in the vinestock(6); and unless
He had become the Vine. we could have borne no good fruit. He exhorts us to
abide in Himself, through faith in His assumed body, that, since the Word
has been made flesh, we may be in the nature of His flesh, as the branches
are in the Vine. He separates the form of the Father's majesty from the
humiliation of the assumed flesh by calling Himself the Vine, the source of
unity for all the branches, and the Father the careful Husbandman, Who
prunes away its useless and barren branches to be burnt in the fire. In the
words, He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father also, and The words that
I say unto you, I speak not of Myself, but the Father abiding in Me, He do
the His works, and Believe Me, that I am in the Father, and the Father in
Me, He reveals the truth of His birth and the mystery of His Incarnation.
He then continues the thread of His discourse, until He comes to the
saying, The Father is greater than I; and after this, to complete the
meaning of these words, He hastens to add the illustration of the
husbandman, the vine, and the branches, which directs our notice to His
submission to bodily humiliation. He says that, because the Father is
greater than Himself, He is going to the Father, and that love should
rejoice, that He is going to the Father, that is, to receive back His glory
from the Father: with Him, and in Him, to be glorified not with a brand-new
honour, but with the old, not with some strange honour but with that which
He had with Him before. If then Christ shall not enter into Him with glory,
to abide in the glory of God, you may disparage His nature: but if the
glory which He receives is the proof of His Godhead, recognise that it as
Giver of this proof that the Father is the greater.
56. Why do you distort the Incarnation into a blasphemy? Why pervert
the mystery of salvation into a weapon of destruction? The Father, Who
glorifies the Son, is greater: The Son, Who is glorified in the Father, is
not less. How can He be less, when He is in the glory of God the Father?
And how can the Father not be greater? The Father therefore is greater,
because He is Father: but the Son, because He is Son, is not less. By the
birth of the Son the Father is constituted greater: the nature that is His
by birth, does not suffer the Son to be less. The Father is greater, for
the Son prays Him to render glory to manhood He has assumed. The Son is not
less, for He receives back His glory with the Father. Thus are consummated
at once the mystery of the Birth, and the dispensation of the Incarnation.
The Father, as Father, and as glorifying Him Who now is Son of Man, is
greater: Father and Son are one, in that the Son, born of the Father, after
assuming an earthly body is taken back to the glory of the Father.
57. The birth, therefore, does not constitute His nature inferior, for
He is in the form of God, as being born of God. And though by their very
signification, 'Unbegotten' and 'Begotten' seem to be opposed, yet the
Begotten cannot be excluded from the nature of the Unbegotten, for there is
none other from whom He could derive His substance. He does not indeed
share in the supreme majesty of being unbegotten: but He has received from
the Unbegotten God the nature of divinity. Thus faith confesses the
eternity of the Only-begotten God, though it can give no meaning to
begetting or beginning in His case. His nature forbids us to say that He
ever began to be, for His birth lies beyond the beginnings of time. But
while we confess Him existent before all ages, we do not hesitate to
pronounce Him born in timeless eternity, for we believe His birth, though
we know it never had a beginning.
58 Seeking to disparage His nature, the heretics lay hold of such
sayings as, The Father is greater than I, or, But of that day and hour
knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the
Father only(7). It is turned to a reproach against the Only-begotten God
that He did not know the day and the hour: that, though God, born of God,
He is not in the perfection of divine nature, since He is subjected to the
limitation of ignorance; that is, an external force stronger than Himself,
triumphing, as it were, over His weakness, makes Him captive to this
infirmity. And, indeed, it is with an apparent right to claim that this
confession is inevitable, that the heretics, in their frenzy, would drive
us to such a blasphemous interpretation. The words are those of the Lord
Himself, and what, it may be asked, could be more unholy than to corrupt
His express assertion by our attempt to explain it away.
59. But, before we investigate the meaning and occasion of these words,
let us first appear to the judgment of common sense. Is it credible, that
He, Who stands to all things as the Author of their present and future,
should not know all things? If all things are through and in Christ, and in
such a way through Christ that they are also in Him, must not that, which
is both in Him and through Him, be also in His knowledge, when that
knowledge, by virtue of a nature which cannot be nescient, habitually
apprehends what is neither in, nor through Him(8)? But that which derives
from Him alone its origin, and has in Him alone the efficient cause of its
present state and future development, can that be beyond the ken of His
nature, through which is effected, and in which is contained, all that it
is and shall be? Jesus Christ knows the thoughts of the mind, as it is now,
stirred by present motives, and as it will be to-morrow, aroused by the
impulse of future desires. Hear the witness of the Evangelist, For Jesus
knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who it was
that should betray Him(9). By its virtue His nature could perceive the
unborn future, and foresee the awakening of passions yet dormant in the
mind: do you believe that it did not know what is through itself, and
within itself? He is Lord of all that belongs to others, is He not Lord of
His own? Remember what is written of Him, All things have been created
through Him, and in Him: and He is before all things(9a): or again, For it
was the good pleasure of the Father, that in Him should all the fulness
dwell, and through Him to reconcile all things unto Himself(1), all fulness
is in Him, all things were made through Him, and are reconciled in Him, and
for that day of reconciliation we wait expectant; did He not, then, know
it, when its time was in His bands, and fixed by His mystery, for it is the
day of His coming, of which the Apostle wrote, When Christ, Who is your
life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also with Him be manifested in
glory(2). No one is ignorant of that which is through himself and Within
himself: shall Christ come, and does He not know the day of His coming? It
is His day, for the same Apostle says, The day of the Lord shall come as a
thief in the night(3): can we believe, then, that He did not know it? Human
natures, so far as in them lies, foresee what they determine to do:
knowledge of the end desired accompanies the desire to act: does not He Who
is born God, know what is in, and through, Himself? The times are through
Him, the day is in His hand, for the future is constituted through Him, and
the Dispensation of His coming is in His power: is His understanding so
dull, that the sense of His torpid nature does not tell Him what He has
Himself determined? Is He like the brute and the beast, which, animated by
no reason or foresight, not even conscious of acting but driven to and fro
by the impulse of irrational desire, proceed to their end with fortuitous
and uncertain course?
60. But, again, how can we believe that the Lord of glory, because He
was able not to know the day of His own coming, was of a discordant and
imperfect nature, subject to the necessity of coming, but ignorant of the
day of His coming? This would make God weaker than the power of ignorance,
which took from Him the prerogative of knowledge. Then, too, how we
redouble occasions of blasphemy, if we impute not only infirmity to Christ,
but also defect to God the Father, saying that He defrauded of
foreknowledge of this day the Only-begotten God, the Son of His love, and
in malice denied Him certainty concerning the future consummation: suffered
Him to know the day and hour of His passion, but withheld from Him the day
of His power, and the hour of His glory among His Saints: took from Him the
knowledge of His blessedness, while He granted Him prescience of His death?
The trembling conscience of man dare not presume to think thus of God, or
ascribe to Him such taint of human fickleness, that the Father should deny
anything to the Son, or the Son, Who was born as God, should possess an
imperfect knowledge.
61. But God can never be anything but love, or anything but the Father:
and He, Who loves, does not envy; He Who is Father, is wholly and entirely
Father. This name admits of no compromise: no one can be partly father, and
partly not. A father is father in respect of his whole personality; all
that he is present in the child, for paternity by piecemeal is impossible:
not that paternity extends to self-generation, but that a father is
altogether father in all his qualities, to the offsprings born of him.
According to the constitution of human bodies, which are made of dissimilar
elements, and composed of various parts, the father must be father of the
whole, since a perfect birth hands on to the child all the different
elements and parts, which are in the father. The father is, therefore,
father of all that is his; the birth proceeds froth the whole of himself,
and constitutes the whole of the child. God, however, has no body, but
simple essence: no parts, but an all-embracing whole: nothing quickened,
but everything living. God is therefore all life, and all one, not
compounded of parts, but perfect in His simplicity, and, as the Father,
must be Father to His begotten in all that He Himself is, for the perfect
birth of the Son makes Him perfect Father in all that He has. So, if He is
proper Father to the Son the Son must possess all the properties of the
Father. Yet how can this be, if the Son has not the quality of prescience,
if there is anything from His Author, which is wanting in His birth? To say
that there is one of God's properties which He has not, is almost
equivalent to saying that He has none of them. And what is proper to God,
if not the knowledge of the future, a vision, which embraces the invisible
and unborn world, and has within its scope that which is not yet, hut is to
be?
62. Moreover Paul, the teacher of the Gentiles, forestalls the impious
falsehood, that the Only-begotten God was partially nescient. Listen to his
words, Being instructed in love, unto all riches of the fulness of
understanding, unto knowledge of the mystery of God, even Christ, in Whom
are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden(4). God, even Christ,
is the mystery, and all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in
Him. But a portion is one thing, the whole another: a part is not the same
as all, nor can all be called a part. If the Son does not know the day, all
the treasures of knowledge are not in Him; but He has all the treasures of
knowledge in Him, therefore He is not ignorant of the day. But we must
remember that those treasures of knowledge were hidden in Him, though not,
because hidden, therefore wanting. As in God, they are in Him: as in the
mystery, they are hidden. But Christ, the mystery of God, in Whom are all
the treasures of knowledge hidden, is not Himself hidden from our eyes and
minds. Since then He is Himself the mystery, let us see whether He is
ignorant when He does not know. If elsewhere His profession of ignorance
does not imply that He does not know, here also it will be wrong to call
Him ignorant, if He does not know. In Him are hidden all the treasures of
knowledge, and so His ignorance is an economy rather than ignorance. Thus
we can assign a reason for His ignorance, without the assumption that He
did not know.
63. Whenever God says that He does not know, He professes ignorance
indeed, but is not under the defect of ignorance. It is not because of the
infirmity of ignorance that He does not know, but because it is not yet the
time to speak, or the divine Plan to act. Thus He says to Abraham, The cry
of Sodom and Gomorrah is full, and their sin is very grievous. Therefore I
will go down now, and see if they have done altogether according to the cry
of it: and if not, I will know(5). Here we perceive God not knowing that
which notwithstanding He knows. He knows that their sins are very grievous,
but He comes down again to see whether they have done altogether, and to
know if they have not. We observe, then, that He is not ignorant, although
He does not know, but that, when the time comes for action, He knows. This
knowledge is not, therefore, a change from ignorance, but the coming of the
fulness of time. He waits still to know, but we cannot suppose that He does
not know: therefore His not knowing what He knows, and His knowing what He
does not know, is nothing else than a divine economy in word and deed.
64. We cannot, then, doubt that the knowledge of God depends on the
occasion and not on any change on His part: by the occasion being meant the
occasion, not of obtaining but of declaring knowledge, as we learn from His
words to Abraham, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything
unto hint, far now I know that thou fearest thy God, and hast not withheld
thy beloved son, for My sake(6). God knows now, but that now I know is a
profession of previous ignorance: yet it is not true, that until now God
did not know the faith of Abraham, for it is written, Abraham believed in
God, and it was counted to him for righteousness(7), and therefore this now
I know marks the time when Abraham received this testimony, not when God
began to know. Abraham had proved, by the sacrifice of his son, the love he
bore to God, and God knew it at the time He spoke: but as we cannot suppose
that He did not know before, we must for this reason suppose that He took
knowledge of it then because He spoke.
By way of example, we have chosen, for our consideration this passage
out of many in the Old Testament, which treat of, the knowledge of God, in
order to skew that when God does not know, the cause lies, not in His
ignorance, but in the occasion.
65. We find our Lord in the Gospels knowing, yet not knowing, many
things. Thus He does not know the workers of iniquity, who glory in their
mighty works and in His name, for He says to them, Then will swear, I never
knew you; depart from all ye that work iniquity(8). He declares with an
oath even, that He does not know them, but nevertheless He knows them to be
workers of iniquity. He does not know them, not because He does not know,
but because by the iniquity of their deeds they are unworthy of His
knowledge, and He even confirms His denial with the sanctity of an oath. By
the virtue of His nature He could not be ignorant, by the mystery of His
will He refused to know. Again the Unbegotten God does not know the foolish
virgins; He is ignorant of those who were too careless to have their oil
ready, when He entered the chamber of His glorious coming. They come and
implore, and so far from not knowing them, He cries, Verily, I say unto
you, I know you not(9). Their coming and their prayer compel Him to
recognize them, but His profession of ignorance refers to His will, not to
His nature they are unworthy to be known of Him to Whom nothing is unknown.
Hence, in order that we should not impute His ignorance to infirmity, He
says immediately to the Apostles, Watch therefore, for ye know not the day
north the hour(1). When He bids them watch, for they know not the day or
the hour, He points out that He knew not the virgins, because through sleep
and neglect they had no oil, and therefore were unworthy to enter into His
is chamber.
66. The Lord Jesus Christ, then, Who searcheth the heart and the
reins(2), has no weakness in His nature, that He should not know, for, as
we perceive, even the fact of His ignorance proceeds from the omniscience
of His nature. Yet if any there be, who impute to Him ignorance, let them
tremble, lest He Who knows their thoughts should say to them, Wherefore
think ye evil in your hearts(3)? The All-knowing, though not ignorant of
thoughts and deeds, sometimes enquires as if He were, as for instance when
He asks the woman who it was that touched the hem of His garment, or the
Apostles, why they quarrelled among themselves, or the mourners, where the
sepulchre of Lazarus was: but His ignorance was not ignorance, except in
words. It is against reason that He should know from afar the death and
burial of Lazarus, but not the place of his sepulchre: that He should read
the thoughts of the mind, and not recognise the faith of the woman: that He
should not need to ask concerning anything(4), yet be ignorant of the
dissension of the Apostles. But He, Who knows all things, sometimes by a
practice of economy professes ignorance, even though He is not ignorant.
Thus, in the case of Abraham, God concealed His knowledge for a time: in
that of the foolish virgins and the workers of iniquity, He refused to
recognise the unworthy: in the mystery of the Son of Man, His asking, as if
ignorant, expressed His humanity. He accommodated Himself to the reality of
His birth in the flesh in everything to which the weakness of our nature is
subject, not in such wise that He became weak in His divine nature, but
that God, born man, assumed the weaknesses of humanity, yet without thereby
reducing His unchangeable nature to a weak nature, for the unchangeable
nature was that wherein He mysteriously assumed flesh. He, Who was God is
man, but, being man, has not ceased to remain God. Conducting Himself then
as one born man, and proving Himself such, though remaining God the Word,
He often uses the language of man (though God, speaking as God, makes
frequent use of human terms), and does not know that which it is not yet
time to declare, or which is not deserving of His recognition.
67. We can now understand why He said that He knew not the day. If we
believe Him to have been really ignorant, we contradict the Apostle, who
says, In Whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden(5).
There is knowledge which is hidden in Him, and because it has to be hidden,
it must sometimes for this purpose be professed as ignorance, for once
declared, it will no longer he secret. In order, therefore, that the
knowledge may remain hidden, He declares that He does not know. But if He
does not know, in order that the knowledge may remain hidden, this
ignorance is not due to His nature, which is omniscient, for He is ignorant
solely in order that it may be hidden. Nor is it hard to see why the
knowledge of the day is hidden. He exhorts us to watch continually with
unrelaxing faith, and withholds from us the security of certain knowledge,
that our minds may be kept on the stretch by the uncertainty of suspense,
and while they hasten towards and continually look for the day of His
coming, may always watch in hope; and that, though we know the time must
come, its very uncertainty may make us careful and vigilant. Thus the Lord
says, Therefore be ye also ready, for ye know not what hour the Son of Man
shall comes; and again, Blessed is that servant whom His lord, when He
cometh, shall find so doing(7). The ignorance is, therefore, a means not to
delude, but to encourage in perseverance. It is no loss to be denied a
knowledge which it is an advantage not to have, for the security of
knowledge might breed negligence of the faith, which now is concealed,
while the uncertainty of expectation keeps us continually prepared, even as
the master of the house, with the fear of loss before his eyes, watches and
guards against the dreaded coming of the thief, who chooses the time of
sleep for his work.
68. Manifestly, therefore, the ignorance of God is not ignorance but a
mystery: in the economy of His actions and words and manifestations, He
does not know and at the same time He knows, or knows and at the same time
does not know. But we must ask, whether it may not be through the Son's
infirmity that He knows not what the Father knows. He could perhaps read
the thoughts of the human heart, because His stronger nature can unite
itself with a weaker in all its movement's, and by the force of its power,
as it were, pass through and through the feeble nature. But a weaker nature
is powerless to penetrate a stronger: light things may be penetrated by
heavy, rare by dense, liquid by solid, but the heavy are impenetrable to
the light, the dense to the rare, and the solid to the liquid: the strong
are not exposed to the weak, but the weak are penetrated by the strong.
Therefore, the heretics say, the Son knew not the thoughts of the Father,
because, being Himself weak, He could not approach tire more powerful and
enter into Him, or pass through Him.
69. Should any one presume, not merely to speak thus of the Only-
begotten God in the rashness of his tongue, but even to think so in the
wickedness of his heart, let him hear what the Apostle thought of the Holy
Ghost, from the words he wrote to the Corinthians, But unto us God revealed
them through the Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea the deep
things of God. For who among men knoweth the things of a man, which are in
him, save the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the things which
are in God, none knoweth, save the Spirit of God(8). But let us cast aside
these empty illustrations of material things, and measure God born of God,
Spirit of Spirit, by His own powers and not by earthly conditions. Let us
measure Him not by our own senses, but by His divine claims. Let us believe
Him Who said, He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father also(9). Let us not
forget that He said, Believe, if only by My works, that the Father is in
Me, and I in the Father, and again, I and the Father are one(2). If the
names which correspond to realities, when intelligibly used, impart to us
any true information, then He Who is seen in Another by the eye of
understanding is not different in nature from that Other; not different in
kind, since He abides in the Father, and the Father in Him; not separate,
since Both are One. Perceive their unity in the indivisibility of their
nature, and apprehend the mystery of that indivisible nature by regarding
the One as the mirror of the Other. But remember that He is the mirror, not
as the image reflected by the splendour of a nature outside Himself, but as
being a living nature, indistinguishable from the Father's living nature,
derived wholly from the whole of His Father's, having the Father's in Him
because He is the Only begotten, and abiding in the Father, because He is
God.
70. The heretics cannot deny that the Lord used these words to signify
the mystery His birth, but they attempt to escape from them by referring
them to a harmony of will. They make the unity of God the Father and God
the Son not one of divinity, but merely of will: as if the divine teaching
were poor in expression and the Lord could not have said, I and the Father
are one in will; or as if those words could have the same meaning as I and
the Father are one; or as if He meant, He that hath seen My will, hath seen
the will of My Father also, but, being unskilled statement, tried to
express that idea in the words, He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father
also: or as if the divine vocabulary did not contain the terms, The will of
My Father is in Me, and My will is in the Father, but this thought could be
expressed by I the Father and the Father in Me. All this is nauseous and
irreverent nonsense; common sense condemns the judgment of such silly
fancies, as that the Lord could not say what He wanted, or did not say what
He said. True, we find Him speaking in parables and allegories, but it is a
different thing to strengthen one's words with illustrations, or satisfy
the dignity of the subject with the help of suggestive proverbs, or adapt
one's language to the needs of the moment. But this passage concerning the
unity, of which we are speaking, does not allow us to look for the meaning
outside the plain sound of the words. If Father and Son are one, in the
sense that They are one in will, and if separable natures cannot be one in
will, because their diversity of kind and nature must draw them into
diversities of will and judgment, how call They be one in will. not being
one in knowledge? There can be no unity of will between ignorance and
knowledge. Omniscience and nescience are opposites, and opposites cannot be
of the same will.
71. But perhaps it may be held to confirm the Son in His confession of
ignorance that He says the Father alone knows. But unless He had plainly
said that the Father alone knows, it would have been a matter of the
greatest danger for our understanding, since we might have thought that He
Himself did not know. For, since His ignorance is due to the economy of
hidden knowledge, and not to a nature capable of ignorance, now that He
says the Father alone knows, we cannot believe that He does not know; for,
as we said above, God's knowledge is not the discovery of what He did not
know, but its declaration. The fact that the Father alone knows, is no
proof that the Son ignorant: He says that He does not know, that others may
not know: that the Father alone knows, to shew that He Himself also knows.
If we say that God came to know the love of Abraham(3), when He ceased to
conceal His knowledge, it follows that only because He did not conceal it
from the Son, can the Father be said to know the day, for God does not
learn by sudden perception, but declares His knowledge with the occasion.
If, then, the Son according to the mystery does not know the day, that He
may not reveal it: on the other hand, only by the fact that He has revealed
it can the Father be proved to know the day.
72. Far be it from us to imagine vicissitudes of bodily change in the
Father and Son, as though the Father sometimes spoke to the Son, and
sometimes was silent. We remember, indeed, that a voice was sometimes
uttered from heaven for us, that the power of the Father's words might
confirm for us the mystery of the Son, as the Lord says, This voice hath
not come from Heaven for My sake but for your sakes(4). But the divine
nature can dispense with the various combinations necessary for human
functions, the motion of the tongue, the adjustment of the mouth, the
forcing of the breath, and the vibration of the air. God is a simple Being:
we must understand Him by devotion, and confess Him by reverence. He is to
be worshipped, not pursued by our senses, for a conditioned and weak nature
cannot grasp with the guesses of its imagination the mystery of an infinite
and omnipotent nature. In God is no variability, no parts, as of a
composite divinity, that in Him will should follow inaction, speech
silence, or work rest, or that He should not will, without passing from
some other mental state to volition, or speak, without breaking the silence
with His voice, or act, without going forth to labour. He is not subject to
the laws of nature, for nature has received its law from Him: He never
suffers weakness or change when He acts, for His power is boundless, as the
Lord said, Father, all things are possible unto Thee(5). He can do more
than human sense can conceive. The Lord does not deprive even Himself of
the quality of omnipotence, for He says, What things soever the Father
doeth, these the Son also doeth in like manner(6). Nothing is difficult,
when there is no weakness; for only a power which is weak to effect, knows
the need of effort. The cause of difficulty is the weakness of the motive
force; a force of limitless power rises above the conditions of impotence.
73. We have established this point to exclude the idea that after
silence God spoke to the Son, or after ignorance the Son began to know. To
reach our intelligence terms must be used applicable to our own nature:
thus we do not understand communication except by word of mouth, or
comprehend the opposite of nescience except as knowledge. Thus the Son does
not know the day for the reason that He does not reveal it: the Father, He
says, alone knows it for the reason that He reveals it to the Son alone.
But, as we have said, Christ is conscious of no such natural impediments as
an ignorance which must be removed before He can come to know, or a
knowledge which is not His before the Father begins to speak. He declares
the unity of His nature, as the only-begotten, with the Father, by the
unmistakable words, All things whatsoever the Father hath, are Mine(7).
There is no mention here of coming into possession: it is one tiring, to be
the Possessor of things external to Him; another, to be self-contained and
self-existent. The former is to possess heaven and earth and the universe,
the latter to be able to describe Himself by His own properties, which are
His, not as something external and subject, but as something of which He
Himself subsists. When He says, therefore, that all things which the Father
has, are His, He alludes to the divine nature, and not to a joint ownership
of gifts bestowed. For referring to His words that the Holy Spirit should
take of His(8), He says, All things whatsoever the Father hath are Mine,
therefore said I, He shall take of Mine: that is, the Holy Spirit takes of
His, but takes also of the Father's: and if He receives of the Father's, He
receives also of His. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, and does not
receive of a creature, but teaches us that He receives all these gifts,
because they are all God's. All things that belong to the Father are the
Spirit's; but we must not think that whatever He received of the Son, He
did not receive of the Father also; for all that the Father hath belongs
equally to the Son.
74. So the nature of Christ needed no change, or question, or answer,
that it should advance from ignorance to knowledge, or ask of One Who had
continued in silence, and wait to receive His answer: but, abiding
perfectly in mysterious unity with Him, it received of God its whole being
as it derived from Him its origin. And, further, it received all that
belonged to the whole being of God, namely, His knowledge and His will.
What the Father knows, the Son does not learn by question and answer; what
the Father wills, the Son does not will by command. Since all that the
Father has, is His, it is the property of His nature to will and know,
exactly as the Father wills and knows. But to prove His birth He often
expounds the doctrine of His Person, as when He says, I came not to do Mine
own will, but, the will of Him that sent Me.(9) He does the Father's will,
not His own, and by the will of Him that sent Me, He means His Father. But
that He Himself wills the same, is unmistakeably declared in the words,
Father, those whom Thou hast given Me, I will, that, where also may be with
Me(1). The Father wills that we should be with Christ, in Whom, according
to the Apostle, He chose us before the foundation of the world(2), and the
Son wills the same, namely that we should be with Him. His will is,
therefore, the same in nature as the Father's will, though to make plain
the fact of the birth it is distinguished from the Father's.
75. The Son is ignorant, then, of nothing which the Father knows, nor
does it follow because the Father alone knows, that the Son does not know.
Father and Son abide in unity of nature, and the ignorance of the Son
belongs to the divine Plan of silence seeing that in Him are hidden all the
treasures of wisdom and knowledge. This the Lord Himself testified, when He
answered the question of the Apostles concerning the times, It is not yours
to know times or moments, which the Father hath set within His own
authority(3). The knowledge is denied them, and not only that, but the
anxiety to learn is forbidden, because it is not theirs to know these
times. Yet now that He is risen, they ask again, though their question on
the former occasion had been met with the reply, that not even the Son
knew. They cannot possibly have understood literally that the Son did not
know, for they ask Him again as though He did know. They perceived in the
mystery of His ignorance a divine Plan of silence, and now, after His
resurrection, they renew the question, thinking that the time has come to
speak. And the Son no longer denies that He knows, but tells them that it
is not theirs to know, because the Father has set it within His own
authority. If then, the Apostles attributed it to the divine Plan, and not
to weakness, that the Son did not know the day, shall we say that the Son
knew not the day for the simple reason that He was not God? Remember, God
the Father set the day within His authority, that it might not come to the
knowledge of man, and the Son, when asked before, replied that He did not
know, but now, no longer denying His knowledge, replies that it is theirs
not to know, for the Father has set the times not in His own knowledge, but
in His own authority. The day and the moment are included in the word
'times': can it be, then, that He, Who was to restore Israel to its
kingdom, did not Himself know the day and the moment of that restoration?
He instructs us to see an evidence of His birth in this exclusive
prerogative of the Father, yet He does not deny that He knows: and while He
proclaims that the possession of this knowledge is withheld from ourselves,
He asserts that it belongs to the mystery of the Father's authority.
(4)We must not therefore think, because He said He did not know the day
and the moment, that the Son did not know. As man He wept, and slept, and
sorrowed, but God is incapable of tears, or fear, or sleep. According to
the weakness of His flesh He shed tears, slept, hungered, thirsted, was
weary, and feared, yet without impairing the reality of His Only-begotten
nature; equally so must we refer to His human nature, the words that He
knew not the day or the hour.
BOOK X
1. It is manifest that there is nothing which men have ever said which
is not liable to opposition. Where the will dissents the mind also
dissents: under the bias of opposing judgment it joins battle, and denies
the assertions to which it objects. Though every word we say be
incontrovertible if gauged by the standard of truth, yet so long as men
think or feel differently, the truth is always exposed, to the cavils of
opponents, because they attack, under the delusion of error or prejudice,
the truth they misunderstand or dislike. For decisions once formed cling
with excessive obstinacy: and the passion of controversy cannot be driven
from the course it has taken, when the will is not subject to the reason.
Enquiry after truth gives way to the search for proofs of what we wish to
believe; desire is paramount over truth. Then the theories we concoct build
themselves on names rather than things the logic of truth gives place to
the logic of prejudice: a logic which the will adjusts to defend its
fancies, not one which stimulates the will through the understanding of
truth by the reason. From these defects of partisan spirit arise all
controversies between opposing theories. Then follows an obstinate battle
between truth asserting itself, and prejudice defending itself: truth
maintains its ground and prejudice resists. But if desire had not
forestalled reason: if the understanding of the truth had moved us to
desire what was true: instead of trying to set up our desires as doctrines,
we should let our doctrines dictate our desires; there would be no
contradiction of the truth, for every one would begin by desiring what was
true, not by defending the truth of that which he desired.
2. Not unmindful of this sin of wilfulness, the Apostle, writing to
Timothy, after many injunctions to bear witness to the faith and to preach
the word, adds, For the time will come when they will not endure sound
doctrine, but having itching ears will heap up teachers to themselves after
their own lusts, and will turn away their ears from the truth, and turn
aside unto fables(1). For when their unhallowed zeal shall drive them
beyond the endurance of sound doctrine, they will heap up teachers for
their lusts, that is, construct schemes of doctrine to suit their own
desires, not wishing to be taught, hut getting together teachers who will
tell them what they wish: that the crowd of teachers whom they have
ferreted out and gathered together, may satisfy them with the doctrines of
their own tumultuous desires. And if these madmen in their godless folly do
not know with what spirit they reject the sound, and yearn after the
corrupt doctrine, let them hear the words of the same Apostle to the same
Timothy, But the Spirit saith expressly that in the last days some shall
away from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of
devils through the hypocrisy of lying talk(2). What advancement of doctrine
is it to discover what one fancies, and not what one ought to learn? Or
what piety in doctrine is it not to desire what one ought to learn, but to
heap up doctrine after our desires? But this is what the promptings of
seducing spirits supply. They confirm the falsehoods of pretended
godliness, for a canting hypocrisy always succeeds to defection from the
faith: so that at least in word the reverence is retained, which the
conscience has lost. Even that pretended piety they make impious by all
manner of lies, violating by schemes of false doctrine the sacredness of
the faith: for they pile up doctrines to suit their desires, and not
according to the faith of the Gospel. They delight, with an uncontrollable
pleasure, to have their itching ears tickled by the novelty of their
favourite preaching; they estrange themselves utterly from the hearing of
the truth, and surrender themselves entirely to fables: so that their
incapacity for either speaking or understanding the truth invests their
discourse with what is, to them, a semblance of truth.
3. We have clearly fallen on the evil times prophesied by the Apostle;
for nowadays teachers are sought after who preach not God but a
creature(3). And men are more zealous for what they themselves desire, than
for what the sound faith teaches. So far have their itching ears stirred
them to listen to what they desire, that for the moment that preaching
alone rules among their crowd of doctors which estranges the Only-begotten
God from the power and nature of God the Father, and makes Him in our faith
either a God of the second order, or not a God at all; in either case a
damning profession of impiety, whether one profess two Gods by making
different grades of divinity; or else deny divinity altogether to Him Who
drew His nature by birth from God. Such doctrines please those whose ears
are estranged from the hearing of the truth and turned to fables, while the
hearing of this our sound faith is not endured, and is driven bodily into
exile with its preachers.
4. But though many may heap up teachers according to their desires, and
banish sound doctrine, yet from the company of the Saints the preaching of
truth can never be exiled. From our exile we shall speak by these our
writings, and the Word of God which cannot be bound will run unhindered,
warning us of this time which the Apostle prophesied. For when men shew
themselves impatient of the true message, and heap up teachers according to
their own human desires, we can no longer doubt about the times, but know
that while the preachers of sound doctrine are banished(4) truth is
banished too. We do not complain of the times: we rejoice rather, that
iniquity has revealed itself in this our exile, when, unable to endure the
truth, it banishes the preachers of sound doctrine, that it may heap up for
itself teachers after its own desires. We glory in our exile, and rejoice
in the Lord that in our person the Apostle's prophecy should be fulfilled.
5. In the earlier books, then, while maintaining the profession of a
faith, I trust, sincere, and a truth uncorrupted, we arranged the method of
our answer throughout, so that (though such are our limitations, that human
language can never be safe from exception) no one could contradict us
without an open profession of godlessness. For so completely have we
demonstrated the true meaning of those texts which they cunningly filch
from the Gospels and appropriate for their own teaching, that if any one
denies it, he cannot escape on the plea of ignorance, but is condemned out
of his own mouth of godlessness. Further, we have, according to the gift of
the Holy Ghost, so cautiously proceeded throughout in our proof of the
faith, that no charge could possibly be trumped up against us. For it is
their way to fill the ears of the unwary with declarations that we deny the
birth of Christ(5), when we preach the unity of the Godhead; and they say
that by the text, I and the Father are one(6), we confess that God is
solitary: thus, according to them, we say that the Unbegotten God descended
into the Virgin, and was born man, and that He refers(7) the opening word
'I' to the dispensation of His flesh, but adds to it the proof of His
divinity, And the Father, as being the Father of Himself as man; and
further, that, consisting of two Persons, human and divine, He said of
Himself, We are one(8).
6. But we have always maintained the birth existing out of time: we
have taught that God the Son is God of the same nature with God the Father,
not co-equal with the Unbegotten, for He was not Himself Unbegotten, but,
as the Only-begotten, not unequal because begotten; that the Two are One,
not by the giving of a double name to one Person, but by a true begetting
and being begotten; that neither are there two Gods, different in kind, in
our faith, nor is God solitary because He is one, in the sense in which we
confess the mystery of the Only-begotten God: but that the Son is both
indicated in the name of, and exists in, the Father, Whose name and Whose
nature are in Him, while the Father by His name implies, and abides in, the
Son, since a son cannot be spoken of, or exist, except as born of a father.
Further, we say that He is the living copy of the living nature, the
impression of the divine seal upon the divine nature, so undistinguished
from God in power and kind, that neither His works nor His words nor His
form are other than the Father's: but that, since the image by nature
possesses the nature of its author, the Author also has worked and spoken
and appeared through His natural image.
7. But by the side of this timeless and ineffable generation of the
Only-begotten, which transcends the perception of human understanding, we
taught as well the mystery of God born to be man from the womb of the
Virgin, shewing how according to the plan of the Incarnation, when He
emptied Himself of the form of God and took the form of a servant, the
weakness of the assumed humanity did not weaken the divine nature, but that
Divine power was imparted to humanity without the virtue of divinity being
lost in the human form. For when God was born to be man the purpose was not
that the Godhead should be lost, but that, the Godhead remaining, man
should be born to be God. Thus Emmanuel is His name, which is God with
us(9), that God might not be lowered to the level of man, but man raised to
that of God. Nor, when He asks that lie may be glorified(1), is it in any
way a glorifying of His divine nature, but of the lower nature He assumed:
for He asks for that glory which He had with God before the world was made.
8. As we are answering all, even their most insensate statements, we
come now to the discussion of the unknown hour(2). Now, I even if, as they
say, the Son had not known it, this could give no ground for an attack upon
His Godhead as the Only-begotten. It was not in the nature of things that
His birth should avail to put His beginning back, until it was equivalent
to the existence which is unbegotten, and had no beginning; and the Farther
reserves as His prerogative, to demonstrate His authority as the
Unbegotten, the fixing of this still undetermined day. Nor may we conclude
that in His Person there is any defect in that nature which contained by
right of birth all the fulness of that nature which a perfect birth could
impart. Nor again could the ignorance of day and hour be imputed in the
Only-begotten God to a lower degree of Divinity. It is to demonstrate
against the Sabellian heretics that the Father's authority is without birth
or beginning, that this prerogative of unbegotten authority is not granted
to the Son(3). But if, as we have maintained, when He said that He knew not
the day, He kept silence not from ignorance, but in accordance with the
Divine Plan, all occasion for irreverent declarations must be removed, and
the blasphemous teachings of heresy thwarted, that the truth of the Gospel
may be illustrated by the very words which seem to obscure it.
9. Thus the greater number of them will not allow Him to have the
impossible nature of God because He feared His Passion and shewed Himself
weak by submitting to suffering(4). They assert that He Who feared and felt
pain could not enjoy that confidence of power which is above fear, or that
incorruption of spirit which is not conscious of suffering: but, being of a
nature lower than God the Father, He trembled with fear at human suffering,
and groaned before the violence of bodily pain. These impious assertions
are based on the words, My soul is sorrowful event unto death(5), and
Father if it be possible let this cup pass away from He(6), and also, My
God, My God, why hast Than forsaken He(7)? to which they also add, Father
into Thy hands I commend My Spirit.(8) All these words of our holy faith
they appropriate to the use of their unholy blasphemy: that He feared, Who
was sorrowful, and even prayed that the cup might be taken away from Him;
that He felt pain, because He complained that God had deserted Him in His
suffering; that He was infirm, because He commended His Spirit to the
Father. His doubts and anxieties preclude us, they say, from assigning to
Him that likeness to God which would belong to a nature equal to God as
being born His Only-begotten. He proclaims His own weakness and inferiority
by the prayer to remove the cup, by the complaint of desertion and the
commending of His Spirit.
10. Now first of all, before we shew from these very texts, that He was
subject to no infirmity of fear or sorrow on His own account, let us ask,
"What can we find for Him to fear, that the dread of an unendurable pain
should have seized Him?" The objects of His fear, which they allege, are, I
suppose, suffering and death. Now I ask those who are of this opinion, "Can
we reasonably suppose that He feared death, Who drove away the terrors of
death from His Apostles, exhorting them to the glory of martyrdom with the
words, He that doth not take his crass and follow after Me is not worth of
Me; and, He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that hath last his
life far My sake shall find it(1)? If to die for Him is life, what pain can
we think He had to suffer in the mystery of death, Who rewards with life
those who die for Him? Could death make Him fear what could be done to the
body, when He exhorted the disciples, Pear not those which kill the
body(2)?
11. Further, what terror had the pain of death for Him, to Whom death
was an act of His own free will? In the human race death is brought on
either by an attack upon the body of an external enemy, such as fever
wound, accident or fall: or our bodily nature is overcome by age, and
yields to death. But the Only-begotten God, Who had the power of laying
down His life, and of taking it up again(3), after the drought of vinegar,
having borne witness that His work of human suffering was finished, in
order to accomplish in Himself the mystery of death, bowed His head and
gave up His Spirit(4). If it has been granted to our mortal nature of its
own will to breathe its last breath, and seek rest in death; if the
buffeted soul may depart, without the breaking up of the body, and the
spirit burst forth and flee away, without being as it were violated in its
own home by the breaking and piercing and crushing of limbs; then fear of
death might seize the Lord of life; if, that is, when He gave up the ghost
and died, His death were not an exercise of His own free will. But if He
died of His own will, and through His own will gave back His Spirit, death
had no terror; because it was in His own power.
12. But perchance with the fearfulness of human ignorance, He feared
the very power of death, which He possessed; so, though He died of His own
accord, He feared because He was to die. If any think so, let them ask "To
which was death terrible, to His Spirit or to His body?" If to His body,
are they ignorant that the Holy One should not see corruption(5), that
within three days He was to revive the temple of His body(6)? But if death
was terrible to H s Spirit, should Christ fear the abyss of hell, while
Lazarus was rejoicing in Abraham's bosom? It is foolish and absurd, that He
should fear death, Who could lay down His soul, and take it up again, Who,
to fulfil the mystery of human life, was about to die of His own free will.
He cannot fear death Whose power and purpose in dying is to die but for a
moment: fear is incompatible with willingness to die, and the power to live
again, for both of these rob death of his terrors.
13. But was it perhaps the physical pain of hanging on the cross, or
the rough cords with which He was bound, or the cruel wounds, where the
nails were driven in, that dismayed Him? Let us see of what body the Man
Jesus was, that pain should dwell in His crucified, bound, and pierced
body.
14. The nature of our bodies is such, that when endued with life and
feeling by conjunction with a sentient soul, they become something more
than inert, insensate matter. They feel when touched, suffer when pricked,
shiver with cold, feet pleasure in warmth, waste with hunger, and grow fat
with food. By a certain transfusion of the soul, which supports and
penetrates them, they feel pleasure or pain according to the surrounding
circumstances. When the body is pricked or pierced, it is the sold which
pervades it that is conscious, and suffers pain. For instance a flesh-wound
is felt even to the bone, while the fingers feel nothing when we cut the
nails which protrude from the flesh. And if through some disease a limb
becomes withered, it loses the feeling of living flesh: it can be cut or
burnt, it feels no pain whatever, because the soul is no longer mingled
with it. Also when through some grave necessity part of the body must be
cut away, the soul can be lulled to sleep by drugs, which overcome the
pain, and produce in the mind a death-like forgetfulness of its power of
sense. Then limbs can be cut off without pain: the flesh is dead to all
feeling, and does not heed the deep thrust of the knife, because the soul
within it is asleep. It is, therefore, because the body lives by admixture
with a weak soul, that it is subject to the weakness of pain.
15. If the Man Jesus Christ began His bodily life with the same
beginning as our body and soul, if He were not, as God, the immediate
Author of His own body and soul alike, when He was fashioned in the
likeness and form of man, and born as man, then we may suppose that He felt
the pain of our body; since by His beginning, a conception like ours, He
had a body animated with a soul like our own. But if through His own act He
took to Himself flesh from the Virgin, and likewise by His own act joined a
soul to the body thus conceived, then the nature of His suffering must have
corresponded with the nature of His body and soul. For when He emptied
Himself of the form of God and received the form of a servant when the Son
of God was born also Son of Man, without losing His own self and power, God
the Word formed the perfect living Man. For how was the Son of God born Son
of Man, how did He receive the form of a servant, still remaining in the
forth of God, unless (God the Word being able of Himself to take flesh from
the Virgin and to give that flesh a soul, for the redemption of our soul
and body), the Man Christ Jesus was born perfect, and made in the form of a
servant by the assumption of the body, which the Virgin conceived? For the
Virgin conceived, what she conceived, from the Holy Ghost alone(7), and
though for His birth in the flesh she supplied from herself that element,
which women always contribute to the seed planted in them, still Jesus
Christ was not formed by an ordinary human conception. In His birth, the
cause of which was transmitted solely by the Holy Ghost, His mother
performed the same part as in all human conceptions: but by virtue of His
origin He never ceased to be God.
16. This deep and beautiful mystery of His assumption of manhood the
Lord Himself reveals in the words, No man hath ascended into heaven, but He
that descended from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven(8).
'Descended from heaven' refers to His origin from the Spirit: for though
Mary contributed to His growth in the womb and birth all that is natural to
her sex, His body did not owe to her its origin. The 'Son of Man' refers to
the birth of the flesh conceived in the Virgin; 'Who is in heaven' implies
the power of His eternal nature: an infinite nature, which could not
restrict itself to the limits of the body, of which it was itself the
source and base. By the virtue of the Spirit and the power of God the Word,
though He abode in the form of a servant, He was ever present as Lord of
all, within and beyond the circle of heaven and earth. So He descended from
heaven and is the Son of Man, yet is in heaven: for the Word made flesh did
not cease to be the Word. As the Word, He is in heaven, as flesh He is the
Son of Man. As Word made flesh, He is at once from heaven, and Son of Man,
and in heaven, for the power of the Word, abiding eternally without body,
was present still in the heaven He had left: to Him and to none other the
flesh owed its origin. So the Word made flesh, though He was flesh, yet
never ceased to be the Word.
17. The blessed Apostle also perfectly describes this mystery of the
ineffable birth of Christ's body in the words, The first man was from the
soil of the ground, the second man from heaven(1). Calling Him 'Man' he
expresses His birth from the Virgin, who in the exercise of her office as
mother, performed the duties of her sex in the conception and birth of man.
And when he says, The second man from heaven he testifies His origin from
the Holy Ghost, Who came upon the Virgin(2). As He is then man, and from
heaven, this Man was born of the Virgin, and conceived of the Holy Ghost.
So speaks the Apostle.
18. Again the Lord Himself revealing this mystery of His birth, speaks
thus: I am the living bread Who have descended from Heaven: if any one
shall eat of My bread he shall live far ever(3): calling Himself the Bread
since He is the origin of His own body. Further, that it may not be thought
the Word left His own virtue and nature for the flesh, He says again that
it is His bread; since He is the bread which descends from heaven, His body
cannot be regarded as sprung from human conception, because it is shewn to
be from heaven. And His language concerning His bread is an assertion that
the Word took a body, for He adds, Unless ye eat the flesh of the Son of
Man and drink His blood, ye have not life in you(4). Hence, inasmuch as the
Being Who is Son of Man descended also as bread from heaven, by the 'Bread
descending from heaven' and by the 'Flesh and Blood of the Son of Man' must
be understood His assumption of the flesh, conceived by the Holy Ghost, and
born of the Virgin.
19. Being, then, Man with this body, Jesus Christ is both the Son of
God and Son of Man, Who emptied Himself of the form of God, and received
the form of a servant. There is not one Son of Man and another Son of God;
nor one in the form of God, and another born perfect man in the form of a
servant: so that, as by the nature determined for us by God, the Author of
our being, man is born with body and soul, so likewise Jesus Christ, by His
own power, is God and Man with flesh and soul, possessing in Himself whole
and perfect manhood, and whole and perfect Godhead.
20. Yet many, with the art by which they seek to prove their heresy,
are wont to delude the ears of the unlearned with the error, that as the
body and soul of Adam both sinned, so the Lord must have taken the soul and
body of Adam from the Virgin, and that it was not the whole Man that she
conceived from the Holy Ghost(5). If they had understood the mystery of the
Incarnation, these men would have understood at the same time the mystery
that the Son of Man is also Son of God. As if in receiving so much from the
Virgin, He received from her His soul also; whereas though flesh is always
born of flesh, every soul is the direct work of God.
21. With a view to deprive of substantive divinity the Only-begotten
God, Who was God the Word with God in the beginning, they make Him merely
the utterance of the voice of God. The Son is related to God His Father,
they say, as the words to the speaker. They are trying to creep into the
position, that it was not God the eternal Word, abiding in the form of God,
Who was born as Christ the Man, Whose life therefore springs from a human
origin, not from the mystery of a spiritual conception; that He was not God
the Word, making Himself man by birth from the Virgin, but the Word of God
dwelling in Jesus as the spirit of prophecy dwelt in the prophets. They
accuse us of saying that Christ was born man with body and soul different
from ours. But we preach the Word made flesh Christ emptying Himself of the
form of God and taking the form of a servant, perfect according to the
fashion of human form, born a man after the likeness of ourselves: that
being true Son of God, He is indeed true Son of Man, neither the less Man
because born of God, nor the less God because Man born of God.
22. But as He by His own act assumed a body from the Virgin, so He
assumed from Himself a soul; though even in ordinary human birth the soul
is never derived from the parents. If, then, the Virgin received from God
alone the flesh which she conceived, far more certain is it that the soul
of that body can have come from God alone. If, too, the same Christ be the
Son of Man, Who is also the Son of God (for the whole Son of Man is the
whole Son of God), how ridiculous is it to preach besides the Son of God,
the Word made flesh, another I know not whom, inspired, like a prophet, by
God the Word; whereas our Lord Jesus Christ is both Son of Man and Son of
God. Yet because His soul was sorrowful unto death, and because He had the
power to lay down His soul and the power to take it up again, they want to
derive it from some alien source, and not from tire Holy Ghost, the Author
of His body's conception: for God the Word became man without departing
from the mystery of His own nature. He was born also not to be at one time
two separate beings, but that it might be made plain, that He Who was God
before He was Man, now that He has taken humanity, is God and Man. How
could Jesus Christ, the Son of God, have been born of Mary, except by the
Word becoming flesh: that is by the Son of God, though in the form of God,
taking the form of a slave? When He Who was in the form of God took the
form of a slave, two contraries were brought together(6). Thus it was just
as true, that He received the form of a slave, as that He remained in the
form of God. The use of the one word 'form' to describe both natures
compels us to recognise that He truly possessed both. He is in the form of
a servant, Who is also in the form of God(7). And though He is the latter
by His eternal nature, and the former in accordance with the divine Plan of
Grace, the word has its true significance equally in both cases, because He
is both: as truly in the form of God as in the form of Man. Just as to take
the form of a servant is none other than to be born a man, so to be in the
form of God is none other than to be God: and we confess Him as one and the
same Person, not by loss of the Godhead, but by assumption of the manhood:
in tire form of God through His divine nature, in the form of man from His
conception by the Holy Ghost, being found in fashion as a man. That is why
alter His birth as Jesus Christ, His suffering, death, and burial, He also
rose again. We cannot separate Him from Himself in all these diverse
mysteries, so that He should be no longer Christ; for Christ, Who took the
form of a servant, was none other than He Who was in the form of God: He
Who died was the same as He Who was born: He Who rose again as He Who died;
He Who is in heaven as He Who rose again; lastly, He Who is in heaven as He
Who before descended from heaven.
23. So the Man Jesus Christ, Only-begotten God, as flesh and as Word at
the same time Son of Man and Son of God, without ceasing to be Himself,
that is, God, took true humanity after the likeness of our humanity. But
when, in this humanity, He was struck with blows, or smitten with wounds,
or bound with ropes, or lifted on high, He felt the force of suffering, but
without its pain. Thus a dart passing through water, or piercing a flame,
or wounding the air, inflicts all that it is its nature to do: it passes
through, it pierces, it wounds; but all this is without effect on the thing
it strikes; since it is against the order of nature to make a hole in
water, or pierce flame, or wound the air, though it is the nature of a dart
to make holes, to pierce and to wound. So our Lord Jesus Christ suffered
blows, hanging, crucifixion and death: but the suffering which attacked the
body of the Lord, without ceasing to be suffering, had not the natural
effect of suffering. It exercised its function of punishment with all its
violence; but the body of Christ by its virtue suffered the violence of the
punishment, without its consciousness. True, the body of the Lord would
have been capable of feeling pain like our natures, if our bodies possessed
the power of treading on the waters, and walking over the waves without
weighing them down by our tread or forcing them apart by the pressure of
our steps, if we could pass through solid substances, and the barred doors
were no obstacle to us. But, as only the body of our Lord could be borne up
by the power of His soul in the waters, could walk upon the waves, and pass
through walls, how can we judge of the flesh conceived of the Holy Ghost on
the analogy of a human body? That flesh, that is, that Bread, is from
Heaven; that humanity is from God. He had a body to suffer, and He
suffered: but He had not a nature(8) which could feel pain. For His body
possessed a unique nature of its own; it was transformed into heavenly
glory on the Mount, it put fevers to flight by its touch, it gave new
eyesight by its spittle.
24. It may perhaps be said, 'We find Him giving way to weeping, to
hunger and thirst: must we not suppose Him liable to all the other
affections of human nature?' But if we do not understand the mystery of His
tears, hunger, and thirst, let us remember that He Who wept also raised the
dead to life: that He did not weep for the death of Lazarus, but
rejoiced(1); that He Who thirsted, gave from Himself rivers of living
water(2). He could not be parched with thirst, if He was able to give the
thirsty drink. Again, He Who hungered could condemn the tree which offered
no fruit for His hunger(3): but how could His nature be overcome by hunger
if He could strike the green tree barren by His word? And if, beside the
mystery of weeping, hunger and thirst, the flesh He assumed, that is His
entire manhood, was exposed to our weaknesses: even then it was not left to
suffer from their indignities. His weeping was not for Himself; His thirst
needed no water to quench it; His hunger no food to stay it. It is never
said that the Lord ate or drank or wept when He was hungry, or thirsty, or
sorrowful. He conformed to the habits of the body to prove the reality of
His own body, to satisfy the custom of human bodies by doing as our nature
does. When He ate and drank, it was a concession, not to His own
necessities, but to our habits.
25. For Christ had indeed a body, but unique, as befitted His origin.
He did not come into existence through the passions incident to human
conception: He came into the form of our body by an act of His own power.
He bore our collective humanity in the form of a servant, but He was free
from the sins and imperfections of the human body: that we might be in Him,
because He was born of the Virgin, and yet our faults might not be in Him,
because He is the source of His own humanity, born as man but not born
under the defects of human conception. It is this mystery of His birth
which the Apostle upholds and demonstrates, when he says, He humbled
Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of a man
and being formed in fashion as a man(4): that is, in that He took the form
of a servant, He was born in the form of a man: in that He was made in the
likeness of a man, and formed in fashion as a man, the appearance and
reality of His body testified His humanity, yet, though He was formed in
fashion as a man, He knew not what sin was. For His conception was in the
likeness of our nature, not in the possession of our faults. For lest the
words, He took the form of a servant, might be understood of a natural
birth, the Apostle adds, made in the likeness of a man, and formed in
fashion as a man. The truth of His birth is thus prevented from suggesting
the defects incident to our weak natures, since the form of a servant
implies the reality of His birth, and found in fashion as a man, the
likeness of our nature. He was of Himself born man through the Virgin, and
found in the likeness of our degenerate body of sin: as the Apostle
testifies in his letter to the Romans, For what the law could not do, in
that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His Son in the likeness of
flesh of sin, condemned sin of sin(5). He was not found in the fashion of a
man: but found in fashion as a man: nor was His flesh the flesh of sin, but
the likeness of the flesh of sin. Thus the fashion of flesh implies the
truth of His birth, and the likeness of the flesh of sin removes Him from
the imperfections of human weakness. So the Man Jesus Christ as man was
truly born, as Christ had no sin in His nature: for, on His human side, He
was born, and could not but be a man; on His divine side, He could never
cease to be Christ. Since then Jesus Christ was man, He submitted as man to
a human birth: yet as Christ He was free from the infirmity of our
degenerate race.
26. The Apostles' belief prepares us for the understanding of this
mystery; when it testifies that Jesus Christ was found in fashion as a man
and was sent in the likeness of the flesh of sin. For being fashioned as a
man, He is in the form of a servant, but not in the imperfections of a
servant's nature; and being in the likeness of the flesh of sin, the Word
is indeed flesh, but is in the likeness of the flesh of sin and not the
flesh of sin itself. In like manner Jesus Christ being man is indeed human,
but even thus cannot be aught else but Christ, born as man by the birth of
His body, but not human in defects, as He was not human in origin. The Word
made flesh could not but be the flesh that He was made; yet He remained
always the Word, though He was made flesh. As the Word made flesh could not
vacate the nature of His Source, so by virtue of the origin of His nature
He could not but remain the Word: but at the same time we must believe that
the Word is that flesh which He was made; always, however, with the
reserve, that when He dwelt among us, the flesh was not the Word, but was
the flesh of the Word dwelling in the flesh.
Though we have proved this, still we will see whether in the whole
range of suffering, which He endured, we can anywhere detect in our Lord
the weakness of bodily pain. We will put off for a time the discussion of
the passages on the strength of which heresy has attributed fear to our
Lord; now let us turn to the facts themselves: for His words cannot signify
fear if His actions display confidence.
27. Do you suppose, heretic, that the Lord of glory feared to suffer?
Why, when Peter made this error through ignorance, did He not call him
'Satan' and a 'stumbling-block(6)? Thus was Peter, who deprecated the
mystery of the Passion, established in the faith by so sharp a rebuke from
the lips of the gentle Christ, Whom not flesh and blood, but the Father in
Heaven had revealed to him(7).
What phantom hope are you chasing when you deny that Christ is God, and
attribute to Him fear of suffering? He afraid, Who went forth to meet the
armed bands of His captors? Weakness in His body, at Whose approach the
pursuers reeled and broke their ranks and fell prone, unable to endure His
Majesty as He offered Himself to their chains? What weakness could enthral
His body, Whose nature had such power?
28. But perhaps He feared the pain of wounds. Say then, What terror had
the thrust of the nail for Him Who merely by His touch restored the ear
that was cut off? You who assert the weakness of the Lord, explain this
work of power at the moment when His flesh was weak and suffering. Peter
drew his sword and smote: the High Priest's servant stood there, lopped of
his ear. How was the flesh of the ear restored from the bare wound by the
touch of Christ? Amidst the flowing blood, and the wound left by the
cleaving sword, when the body was so maimed, whence sprang forth an ear
which was not there? Whence came that which did not exist before? Whence
was restored that which was wanting? Did the hand, which created an ear,
feel the pain of the nails? He prevented another from feeling the pain of a
wound: did He feel it Himself? His touch could restore the flesh that was
cut off; was He sorrowful because He feared the piercing of His own flesh?
And if the body of Christ had this virtue, dare we allege infirmity in that
nature, whose natural force could counteract all the natural infirmities of
man?
29. But, perhaps, in their misguided and impious perversity, they infer
His weakness from the fact that His soul was sorrowful unto death(8). It is
not yet the time to blame you, heretic, for misunderstanding the passage.
For the present I will only ask you, Why do you forget that when Judas went
forth to betray Him, He said, Now is the Son of Man glorified(9)? If
suffering was to glorify Him, how could the fear of it have made Him
sorrowful? How, unless He was so void of reason, that He feared to suffer
when suffering was to glorify Him?
30. But perhaps He may be thought to have feared to the extent that He
prayed that the cup might be removed from Him: Abba, Father, all things are
possible unto Thee: remove this cup from Me(1). To take the narrowest
ground of argument, might you not have refuted for yourself this dull
impiety by your own reading of the words, Put up thy sword into its sheath:
the cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it(2)? Could fear
induce Him to pray for the removal from Him of that which, in His zeal for
the Divine Plan, He was hastening to fulfil? To say He shrank from the
suffering He desired is not consistent. You allow that He suffered
willingly: would it not be more reverent to confess that you had
misunderstood this passage, than to rush with blasphemous and headlong
folly to the assertion that He prayed to escape suffering. though you allow
that He suffered willingly?
31. Yet, I suppose, you will arm yourself also for your godless
contention with these words of the Lord, My God, My God, why hast Thou
forsaken Me(3)? Perhaps you think that after the disgrace of the cross, the
favour of His Father's help departed from Him, and hence His cry that He
was left alone in His weakness. But if you regard the contempt, the
weakness, the cross of Christ as a disgrace, you should remember His words,
Verily I say unto you, From henceforth ye shall see the Son of Man sitting
at the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of Heaven(4).
32. Where, pray, can you see fear in His Passion? Where weakness? Or
pain? Or dishonour? Do the godless say He feared? But He proclaimed with
His own lips His willingness to suffer. Do they maintain that He was weak?
He revealed His power, when His pursuers were stricken with panic and dared
not face Him. Do they contend that He felt the pain of the wounds in His
flesh? But He shewed, when He restored the wounded flesh of the ear, that,
though He was flesh, He did not feel the pain of fleshly wounds. The hand
which touched the wounded ear belonged to His body: yet that hand created
an ear out of a wound: how then can that be the hand of a body which was
subject to weakness?
33. But, they say, the cross was a dishonour to Him; yet it is because
of the cross that we can now see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand
of power, that He Who was born man of the womb of the Virgin has returned
in His Majesty with the clouds of heaven. Your irreverence blinds you to
the natural relations of cause and event: not only does the spirit of
godlessness and error, with which you are filled, hide from your
understanding the mystery of faith, but the obtuseness of heresy drags you
below the level of ordinary human intelligence. For it stands to reason
that whatever we fear, we avoid: that a weak nature is a prey to terror by
its very feebleness: that whatever feels pain possesses a nature always
liable to pain: that whatever dishonours is always a degradation. On what
reasonable principle, then, do you hold that our Lord Jesus Christ feared
that towards which He pressed: or awed the brave, yet trembled Himself with
weakness: or stopped the pain of wounds, yet felt the pain of His own: or
was dishonoured by the degradation of the cross, yet through the cross sat
down by God on high, and returned to His Kingdom?
34. But perhaps you think your impiety has still an opportunity left to
see in the words, Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirits(5), a proof
that He feared the descent into the lower world, and even the necessity of
death. But when you read these words and could not understand them, would
it not have been better to say nothing, or to pray devoutly to be shewn
their meaning, than to go astray with such barefaced assertions, too mad
with your own folly to perceive the truth? Could you believe that He feared
the depths of the abyss, the scorching flames, or the pit of avenging
punishment, when you listen to His words to the thief on the cross, Verily,
I say unto thee, To-day shall thou be with Me in Paradise(6)? Such a nature
with such power could not be shut up within the confines of the nether
world, nor even subjected to fear of it. When He descended to Hades, He was
never absent from Paradise (just as He was always in Heaven when He was
preaching on earth as the Son of Man), but promised His martyr(7) a home
there, and held out to him the transports of perfect happiness. Bodily fear
cannot touch Him Who reaches indeed down as far as Hades, but by the power
of His nature is present in all things everywhere. As little can the abyss
s of Hell and the terrors of death lay hold upon the nature which rules the
world, boundless in the freedom of its spiritual power, confident of the
raptures of Paradise; for the Lord Who was to descend to Hades, was also to
dwell in Paradise. Separate, if you can, from His indivisible nature a part
which could fear punishment: send the one part of Christ to Hades to suffer
pain, the other, you must leave in Paradise to reign: for the thief says,
Remember me when Thou comest in Thy Kingdom. It was the groan he heard, I
suppose, when the nails pierced the hands of our Lord, which provoked in
him this blessed confession of faith: he learnt the Kingdom of Christ from
His weakened and stricken body! He begs that Christ will remember him when
He comes in His Kingdom: you say that Christ feared as He hung dying upon
the cross. The Lord promises him, To-day, shalt thou be with Me in
Paradise; you would subject Christ to Hades and fear of punishment. Your
faith has the opposite expectation. The thief confessed Christ in His
Kingdom as He hung on the cross, and was rewarded with Paradise from the
cross: you who impute to Christ the pain of punishment and the fear of
death, will fail of Paradise and His Kingdom.
35. We have now seen the power that lay in the acts and words of
Christ. We have incontestably proved that His body did not share the
infirmity of a natural body, because its power could expel the infirmities
of the body that when He suffered, suffering laid hold of His body, but did
not inflict upon it the nature of pain: and this because, though the form
of our body was in the Lord, yet He by virtue of His origin was not in the
body of our weakness and imperfection. He was conceived of the Holy Ghost
and born of the Virgin, who performed the office of her sex, but did not
receive the seed of His conception from man(9). She brought forth a body,
but one conceived of the Holy Ghost; a body possessing inherent reality,
but with no infirmity in its nature. That body was truly and indeed body,
because it was born of the Virgin: but it was above the weakness of our
body, because it had its beginning in a spiritual conception.
36. But even now that we have proved what was the faith of the Apostle,
the heretics think to meet it by the text, My soul is sorrowful even. unto
death(1). These words, they say, prove the consciousness of natural
infirmity which made Christ begin to be sorrowful. Now, first, I appeal to
common intelligence: what do we mean by sorrowful unto death? It cannot
signify the same as 'to be sorrowful because of death:' for where there is
sorrow because of death, it is the death that is the cause of the sadness.
But a sadness even to death(2) implies that death is the finish, not the
cause, of the sadness. If then He was sorrowful even to death, not because
of death, we must enquire, whence came His sadness? He was sorrowful, not
for a certain time, or for a period which human ignorance could not
determine, but even unto death. So far from His sadness being caused by His
death, it was removed by it.
37. That we may understand what was the cause of His sadness, let us
see what precedes and follows this confession of sadness: for in the
Passover supper our Lord completely signified the whole mystery of His
Passion and our faith. After He had said that they should all be offended
in Him(3), but promised that He would go before them into Galilee(4), Peter
protested that though all the rest should be offended, he would remain
faithful and not be offended(5). But the Lord knowing by His Divine Nature
what should come to pass, answered that Peter would deny Him thrice: that
we might know from Peter how the others were offended, since even he lapsed
into so great peril to his faith by the triple denial. After that, He took
Peter, James and John, chosen, the first two to be His martyrs, John to be
strengthened for the proclamation of the Gospel, and declared that He was
sorrowful unto death. Then He went before, and prayed, saying, My Father,
if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet, not as I will, but as
Thou wilt(6). He prays that the cup may pass from Him, when it was
certainly already before Him: for even then was being fulfilled that
pouting forth of His blood of the New Testament for the sins of many. He
does not pray that it may not be with Him; but that it may pass away from
Him. Then He prays that His wilt may not be done, and wills that what He
wishes to be effected, may not be granted Him. For He says, Yet not as I
will, but as Thou wilt: signifying by His spontaneous prayer for the cup's
removal His fellowship with human anxiety, yet associating Himself with the
decree of the Will which He shares inseparably with the Father. To shew,
moreover, that He does not pray for Himself, and that He seeks only a
conditional fulfilment of what He desires and prays for, He prefaces the
whole of this request with the words, My Father, if it is possible. Is
there anything for the Father the possibility of which is uncertain? But if
nothing is impossible to the Father, we can see on what depends this
condition, if it is possible(7): for this prayer is immediately followed by
the words, And He came to His disciples and findeth sleeping, and saith to
Peter, Could ye not watch one hour with Me? Watch and pray that ye enter
not into temptation: for the spirit indeed is willing, but the fresh is
weak(8). Is the cause of this sadness and this prayer any longer doubtful?
He bids them watch and pray with Him for this purpose, that they may not
enter into temptation; for the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is
weak. They were under the promise made in the constancy of faithful souls
not to be offended, yet, through weakness of the flesh, they were to be
offended It is not, therefore, for Himself that He is sorrowful and prays:
it is for those whom He exhorts to watchfulness and prayer, lest He cup of
suffering should be their lot: lest that cup which He prays may pass away
from Him, should abide with them.
38. And the reason He prayed that the cup might be removed from Him, if
that were possible, was that, though with God nothing is impossible, as
Christ Himself says, Father, all things are possible to Thee(9), yet for
man it is. impossible to withstand the fear of suffering, and only by trial
can faith be proved. Wherefore, as Man He prays for men that the cup may
pass away, but as God from God, His will is in unison with the Father's
effectual will. He teaches what He meant by If it is possible, in His words
to Peter Lo, Satan hath sought you that He might sift you as wheat: but f
have prayed for thee that thy faith may not fail(1). The cup of the Lord's
Passion was to be a trial for there all, and He prays the Father for Peter
that his faith may not fail: that when he denied through weakness, at
least he might not fail t of penitential sorrow, for repentance would mean
that faith survived.
39. The Lord was sorrowful then unto death s because in presence of the
death, the earthquake, the darkened day, the rent veil, the opened graves,
and the resurrection of the dead, the faith of the disciples would need to
be established which had been so shaken by the terror of tile night arrest,
the scourging, the striking, the spitting upon, the crown of thorns, the
bearing of the cross, and all the insults of the Passion, but most of all
by the condemnation to the accursed cross. Knowing that all this would be
at an end after His Passion, He was sad unto death. He knew, too, that the
cup could not pass away unless He drank it, for He said, My Father, this
cup cannot pass from Me unless I drink it: Thy will be done(2): that is,
with the completion of His Passion, the fear of the cup would pass away
which could not pass away unless He drank it: the end of that fear would
follow only when His Passion was completed and terror destroyed(3), because
after His death, the stumbling-block of the disciples' weakness would be
removed by the glory of His power.
40. Although by His words, Thy will be done, He surrendered the
Apostles to the decision of His Father's will, in regard to the offence of
the cup, that is, of His Passion, still He repeated His prayer a second and
a third time. After that He said, Sleep on now, and take your rest(4). It
is not without the consciousness of some secret reason that He Who had
reproached them for their sleep, now bade them sleep on, add take their
rest. Luke is thought to have given us the meaning of this command. After
He had told us how Satan had sought to sift the Apostles as it were wheat,
and how the Lord had been entreated that the faith of Peter might not
fails, he adds that the Lord prayed earnestly, and then that an angel stood
by Him comforting Him, and as the angel stood by Him, He prayed the more
earnestly, so that the sweat poured from His hotly in drops of blood(6).
The Angel was sent, then, to watch over the Apostles, and when the Lord was
comforted by him, so that He no longer sorrowed for them, He said, without
fear of sadness, Sleep on now, and take your rest. Matthew and Mark are
silent about the angel, and the request of the devil: but after the
sorrowfulness of His soul, the reproach of the sleepers, and the prayer
that the cup may be taken away, there must be some good reason for the
command to the sleepers which follows; unless we assume that He Who was
about to leave them, and Himself had received comfort from the Angel sent
to Him, meant to abandon them to their sleep, soon to be arrested and kept
in durance.
41. We must not indeed pass over the fact hat in many manuscripts, both
Latin and Greek, nothing is said of the angel's coming or the Bloody Sweat.
But while we suspend judgment, whether this is an omission, where it is
wanting, or an interpolation, where it is found (for the discordance of the
copies leaves the question uncertain), let not the heretics encourage
themselves that herein lies a confirmation of His weakness, that He needed
the help and comfort of an angel. Let them remember the Creator of the
angels needs not the support of His creatures. Moreover His comforting must
be explained in the same way as His sorrow. He was sorrowful for us, that
is, on our account; He must also have been comforted for us, that is, on
our account. If He sorrowed concerning us, He was comforted concerning us.
The object of His comfort is the saint as that of His sadness. Nor let any
one dare to impute the Sweat to a weakness, for it is contrary to nature to
sweat blood(7). It was no infirmity, for His power reversed the law of
nature. The bloody sweat does not for one moment support the heresy of
weakness, while it establishes against the heresy which invents an apparent
body(8), the reality all His body. Since, then, His fear was concerning us,
and His prayer on our behalf, we are forced to the conclusion that all this
happened on our account, for whom He feared, and for whom He prayed.
42. Again the Gospels fill up what is lacking in one another: we learn
some things from one, some from another, and so on, because all are the
proclamation of the same spirit. Thus John, who especially brings out the
working of spiritual causes in the Gospel, preserves this prayer of the
Lord for the Apostles, which all the others passed over: how He prayed,
namely, Holy Father, keep them in Thy Name. ... while I was them I kept
them in Thy Name: those whom Thou gavest Me I have kept(9). That prayer was
not for Himself but for His Apostles; nor was He sorrowful for Himself,
since He bids them pray that they be not tempted; nor is the angel sent to
Him, for He could summon down from Heaven, if He would, twelve thousand
angels(1); nor did He fear because of death when He was troubled unto
death. Again, He does not pray that the cup may pass over Himself, but that
it may pass away from Himself, though before it could pass away He must
have drunk it. But, further, 'to pass away' does not mean merely 'to leave
the place,' but 'not to exist any more at all:' which is shewn in the
language of the Gospels and Epistles: for example, Heaven and earth shall
pass away, but My word shall not perish(2): also the Apostle says, Behold
the old things are passed away; they are become new(3). And again, The
fashion of this world shall pass away(4). The cup, therefore, of which He
prays to the Father, cannot pass away unless it be drunk; and when He
prays, He prays for those whom He preserved, so long as He was with them,
whom He now hands over to the Father to preserve. Now that He is about to
accomplish the mystery of death He begs the Father to guard them. The
presence of the angel who was sent to Him (if this explanation be true) is
not of doubtful significance. Jesus shewed His certainty that the prayer
was answered when, at its close, He bade the disciples sleep on. The effect
of this prayer and the security which prompted the command, 'sleep on,' is
noticed by the Evangelist in the course of the Passion, when he says of the
Apostles just before they escaped from the hands of the pursuers, That the
word might be fulfilled which He had spoken, Of those whom Thou hast given
Me I lost not one of them(5). He fulfils Himself the petition of His
prayer, and they are all safe; but He asks that those whom He has preserved
the Father will now preserve in His own Name. And they are preserved: the
faith of Peter does not fail: it cowered, but repentance followed
immediately.
43. Combine the Lord's prayer in John, the request of the devil in
Luke, the sorrowfulness unto death, and the protest against sleep, followed
by the command, Sleep on, in Matthew and Mark, and all difficulty
disappears. The prayer in John, in which He commends the Apostles to His
Father, explains the cause of His sorrowfulness, and the prayer that the
cup may pass away. It is not from Himself that the Lord prays the suffering
may be taken away. He beseeches the Father to preserve the disciples during
His coming passion. In the same way, the prayer against Satan(6) in St.
Luke explains the confidence with which He permitted the sleep He had just
forbidden.
44. There was, then, no place for human anxiety and trepidation in that
nature, which was more than human. It was superior to the ills of earthly
flesh; a body not sprung from earthly elements, although His origin as Son
of Man was due to the mystery of the conception by the Holy Ghost. The
power of the Most High imparted its power to the booty which the Virgin
bare from the conception of the Holy Ghost. The animated body derives its
conscious existence from association with a soul, which is diffused
throughout it, and quickens it to perceive pains inflicted from without.
Thus the soul, warned by the happy glow of its own heavenly faith and hope,
soars above its own origin in the beginnings of an earthly body, and
raises(6a) that body to union with itself in thought and spirit, so that it
ceases to feel the suffering of that which, all the while, it suffers. Why
need we then say more about the nature of the Lord's body, that of the Son
of Man Who came down from heaven? Even earthly bodies can sometimes be made
indifferent to the natural necessities of pain and fear.
45. Did the Jewish children fear the flames blazing up with the fuel
cast upon them in the fiery furnace at Babylon? Did the terror of that
terrible fire prevail over their nature, conceived though it was like
ours(7)? Did they feel pain, when the flames surrounded them? Perhaps,
however, you may say they felt no pain, because they were not burnt: the
flames were deprived of their burning nature. To be sure it is natural to
the body to fear burning, and to be burnt by fire. But through the spirit
of faith their earthly bodies (that is, bodies which had their origin
according to the principles of natural birth) could neither be burnt nor
made afraid. What, therefore, in the case of men was a violation of the
order of nature, produced by faith in God, cannot be judged in God's case
natural, but as an activity of the Spirit commencing with His earthly
origin. The children were bound in the midst of the fire; they had no fear
as they mounted the blazing pile: they felt not the flame as they prayed:
though in the midst of the furnace, they could not be burnt. Both the fire
and their bodies lost their proper natures; the one did not burn, the
others were not burnt. Yet in all other respects, both fire and bodies
retained their natures: for the bystanders were consumed, and the ministers
of punishment were themselves punished. Impious heretic you will have it
that Christ suffered pain from the piercing of the nails, that He felt the
bitterness of the wound, when they were driven through His hands: why,
pray, did not the children fear the flames? Why did they suffer no pain?
What was the nature in their bodies, which overcame that of fire? In the
zeal of their faith and the glory of a blessed martyrdom they forgot to
fear the terrible; should Christ be sorrowful from fear of the cross,
Christ, Who even if He had been conceived with our sinful origin, would
have been still God upon the cross, Who was to judge the world and reign
for ever and ever? Could He forget such a reward, and tremble with the
anxiety of dishonourable fear?
46. Daniel, whose meat was the scanty portion of a prophet(8), did not
fear the lions' den. The Apostles rejoiced in suffering and death for the
Name of Christ. To Paul his sacrifice was the crown of righteousness(9).
The Martyrs sang hymns as they offered their necks to the executioner, and
climbed with psalms the blazing logs piled for them. The consciousness of
faith takes away the weakness of nature, transforms the bodily senses that
they feel no pain, and so the body is strengthened by the fixed purpose of
the soul, and feels nothing except the impulse of its enthusiasm. The
suffering which the mind despises in its desire of glory, the body does not
feel, so long as the soul invigorates it. It is, then, a natural effect in
man, that the zeal of the soul glowing for glory should make him
unconscious of suffering, heedless of wounds, and regardless of death. But
Jesus Christ the Lord of glory, the hem of Whose garment can heal, Whose
spittle and word can create; for the than with the withered hand at His
command stretched it forth whole, he who was born blind felt no more the
defect of his birth, and the smitten ear was made sound as the other; dare
we think of His pierced body in that pain and weakness, from which the
spirit of faith in Him rescued the glorious and blessed Martyrs?
47. The Only-begotten God, then, suffered in His person the attacks of
all the infirmities to which we are subject; but He suffered them in the
power of His own nature, just as He was born in the power of His own
nature, for at His birth He did not lose His omnipotent nature by being
born. Though born under human conditions, He was not so conceived: His
birth was surrounded by human circumstances, but His origin went beyond
them. He suffered then in His body alter the manner of our infirm body, yet
bore the sufferings of our body in the power of His own body. To this
article of our faith the prophet bears witness when he says, He beareth our
sins and grieveth for us: and we esteemed Him stricken, smitten, and
afflicted: He was wounded for our transgressions and made weak for our
sins(1). It is then a mistaken opinion of human judgment, which thinks He
felt pain because He suffered. He bore our sins, that is, He assumed our
body of sin, but was Himself sinless. He was sent in the likeness of the
flesh of sin, bearing sin indeed in His flesh but our sin. So too He felt
pain for us, but not with our senses; He was found in fashion as a man,
with a body which could feel pain, but His nature could not feel pain; for,
though His fashion was that of a man, His origin was not human, but He was
born by conception of the Holy Ghost.
For the reasons mentioned, He was esteemed 'stricken, smitten and
afflicted.' He took the form of a servant: and 'man born of a Virgin'
conveys to us the idea of One Whose nature felt pain when He suffered. But
though He was wounded it was 'for our transgressions.' The wound was not
the wound of His own trangressions: the suffering not a suffering for
Himself. He was not born man for His own sake, nor did He transgress in His
own action. The Apostle explains the principle of the Divine Plan when he
says, We beseech you through Christ to be reconciled to God. Him, Who knew
no sin, He made to be sin on our behalf(2). To condemn sin through sin in
the flesh, He Who knew no sin was Himself made sin; that is, by means of
the flesh to condemn sin in the flesh, He became flesh on our behalf but
knew not flesh(3): and therefore was wounded because of our transgressions.
48. Again, the Apostle knows nothing in Christ about fear of pain. When
He wishes to speak of the dispensation of the Passion, He includes it in
the mystery of Christ's Divinity. Forgiving us all our trespasses, blotting
out the band written in ordinances, that was against us, which was contrary
to us: taking it away, and nailing it to the cross; stripping off from
Himself His flesh, He made a shew of principalities and towers openly
triumphing over them in Himself(4). Was that the power, think you, to yield
to the wound of the nail, to wince under the piercing blow, to convert
itself into a nature that can feel pain? Yet the Apostle, who speaks as the
mouthpiece of Christ(5), relating the work of our salvation through the
Lord, describes the death of Christ as 'stripping off from Himself His
flesh, boldly putting to shame the powers and triumphing over them in
Himself.' If His passion was a necessity of nature and not the free gift of
your salvation: if the cross was merely the suffering of wounds, and not
the fixing upon Himself of the decree of death made out against you: if His
dying was a violence done by death, and not the stripping off of the flesh
by the power of God: lastly, if His death itself was anything but a
dishonouring of powers, an act of boldness, a triumph: then ascribe to Him
infirmity, because He was therein subject to necessity and nature, to
force, to If ear and disgrace. But if it is the exact opposite in the
mystery of the Passion, as it was preached to us, who, pray, can be so
senseless as to repudiate the faith taught by the Apostles, to reverse all
feelings of religion, to distort into the dishonourable charge of natural
weakness, what was an act of free-will, a mystery, a display of power and
boldness, a triumph? And what a triumph it was, when He offered Himself to
those who sought to crucify Him, and they could not endure His presence:
when He stood under sentence of death, Who shortly was to sit on the right
hand of power: when He prayed for His persecutors while the nails were
driven through Him: when He completed the mystery as He drained the draught
of vinegar; when He was numbered among the transgressors and meanwhile
granted Paradise: that when He was lifted on the tree, the earth quaked:
when He hung on the cross, sun and day were put to flight: that He left His
own body, yet cubed life back to the bodies of others(6): was buffed a
corpse and rose again God: as man suffered all weaknesses for our sakes, as
God triumphed in them all.
49. There is still, the heretics say, another serious and far reaching
confession of weakness, all the more so because it is in the mouth of the
Lord Himself, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me(7)? They construe
this into the expression of a bitter complaint, that He was deserted and
given over to weakness. But what a violent interpretation of an irreligious
mind! how repugnant to the whole tenor of our Lord's words! He hastened to
the death, which was to glorify Him, and after which He was to sit on the
right hand of power; with all those blessed expectations could He fear
death, and therefore complain that His God had betrayed Him to its
necessity, when it was the entrance to eternal blessedness?
50. Further their heretical ingenuity presses on in the path prepared
by their own godlessness, even to the entire absorption of God the Word
into the human soul, and consequent denial that Jesus Christ, the Son of
Man, was the same as the Son of God. So either God the Word ceased to be
Himself while He performed the function of a soul in giving life to a
body(8), or the man who was born was not the Christ at all, but the Word
dwelt in him, as the Spirit dwelt in the prophets(9). These absurd and
perverse errors have grown in boldness and godlessness till they assert
that Jesus Christ was not Christ until He was born of Mary. He Who was born
was not a pre-existent Being, but began at that moment to exist(9a).
Hence follows also the error that God the Word, as it were some part of
the Divine power extending itself in unbroken continuation, dwelt within
that man who received from Mary the beginning of his being, and endowed him
with the power of Divine working: though that man lived and moved by the
nature of his own soul(1).
51. Through this subtle and mischievous doctrine they are drawn into
the error that God the Word became soul to the body, His nature by self-
humiliation working the change upon itself, and thus the Word ceased to be
God; or else, that the Man Jesus, in the poverty and remoteness from God of
His nature, was animated only by the life and motion of His own human soul,
wherein the Word of God, that is, as it were, the might of His uttered
voice, resided. Thus the way is opened for all manner of irreverent
theorising: the sum of which is, either that God the Word was merged in the
soul and ceased to be God: or that Christ had no existence before His birth
from Mary, since Jesus Christ, a mere man of ordinary body and soul, began
to exist only at His human birth anti was raised to the level of the Power,
which worked within Him, by the extraneous force of the Divine Word
extending itself into Him. Then when God the Word, after this extension,
was withdrawn, He cried, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? or at
least when the divine nature of the Word once more gave place within Him to
a human soul, He Who had hitherto relied on His Father's help, now
separated from it, and abandoned to death, bemoaned His solitude and chid
His deserter. Thus in every way arises a deadly danger of error in belief,
whether it be thought that the cry of complaint denotes a weakness of
nature in God the Word, or that God the Word was not pre-existent because
the birth of Jesus Christ from Mary was the beginning of His being.
52. Amid these irreverent and ill-grounded theories the faith of the
Church, inspired by the teaching of the Apostles, has recognised a birth of
Christ, but no beginning. It knows of the dispensation, but of no
division(2): it refuses to make a separation in Jesus Christ(3); whereby
Jesus is one and Christ another; nor does it distinguish the Son of Man
from the Son of God, lest perhaps the Son of God be not regarded as Son of
Man also. It does not absorb the Son of God in the Son of Man; nor does it
by a tripartite belief(3a) tear asunder Christ, Whose coat woven from the
top throughout was not parted, dividing Jesus Christ into the Word, a body
and a soul; nor, on the other hand, does it absorb the Word in body and
soul. To it He is perfectly God the Word, and perfectly Christ the Man. To
this alone we hold fast in the mystery of our confession, namely, the faith
that Christ is none other than Jesus, and the doctrine that Jesus is none
other than Christ.
53. I am not ignorant how much the grandeur of the divine mystery
baffles our weak understanding, so that language can scarcely express it,
or reason define it, or thought even embrace it. The Apostle, knowing that
the most difficult task for an earthly nature is to apprehend, unaided,
God's mode of action (for then our judgment were keener to discern than God
is mighty to effect), writes to his true son according to the faith, who
had received the Holy Scripture from his childhood, As I exhorted thee to
tarry at Ephesus, when I was going into Macedonia, that thou mightest
charge certain men not to teach a different doctrine, neither to give heed
to fables and endless genealogies, the which minister questionings, rattler
than the edification of God which is in faith(4). He bids him forbear to
handle wordy genealogies and fables, which minister endless questionings.
The edification of God, he says, is in faith: he limits human reverence to
the faithful worship of the Almighty, and does not suffer our weakness to
strain itself in the attempt to see what only dazzles the eye. If we look
at the brightness of the sun, the sight is strained and weakened: and
sometimes when we scrutinise with too curious gaze the source of the
shining light, the eyes lose their natural power, and the sense of sight is
even destroyed. Thus it happens that through trying to see too much we see
nothing at all. What must we then expect in the case of God, the Sun of
Righteousness? Will not foolishness be their reward, who would be over
wise? Will not dull and brainless stupor usurp the place of the burning
light of intelligence? A lower nature cannot understand the principle of a
higher: nor can Heaven's mode of thought be revealed to human conception,
for whatever is within the range of a limited consciousness, is itself
limited. The divine power exceeds therefore the capacity of the human mind.
If the limited strains itself to reach so far, it becomes even feebler than
before. It loses what certainty it had: instead of seeing heavenly things
it is only blinded by them. No mind can fully comprehend the divine: it
punishes the obstinacy of the curious by depriving them of their power.
Would we look at the sun we must remove as much of his brilliancy as we
need, in order to see him: if not, by expecting too much, we fall short of
the possible. In the same way we can only hope to understand the purposes
of Heaven, so far as is permitted. We must expect only what He grants to
our apprehension: if we attempt to go beyond the limit of His indulgence,
it is withdrawn altogether. There is that in God which we can perceive: it
is visible to all if we are content with the possible. Just as with the sun
we can see something, if we are content to see what can be seen, but if we
strain beyond the possible we lose all: so is it with the nature of God.
There is that which we can understand if we are content with understanding
what we can: but aim beyond your powers and you will lose even the power of
attaining what was within your reach.
54. The mystery of that other timeless birth I will not yet touch upon:
its treatment demands an ampler space than this. For the present I will
speak of the Incarnation only. Tell me, I pray, ye who pry into secrets of
Heaven, the mystery of Christ born of a Virgin and His nature; whence will
you explain that He was conceived and born of a Virgin? What was the
physical cause of His origin according to your disputations? How was He
formed within His mother's womb? Whence His body and His humanity? And
lastly, what does it mean that the Son of Man descended from heaven Who
remained in heaven(5)? It is not possible by the laws of bodies for the
same object to remain and to descend: the one is the change of downward
motion; the other the stillness of being at rest. The Infant wails but is
in Heaven: the Boy grows but remains ever the immeasurable God. By what
perception of human understanding can we comprehend that He ascended where
He was before, and He descended Who remained in heaven? The Lord says, What
if ye should behold the Son of Man ascending thither where He was
before(6)? The Son of Man ascends where He was before: can sense apprehend
this? The Son of Man descends from heaven, Who is in heaven: can reason
cope with this? The Word was made flesh: can words express this? The Word
becomes flesh, that is, God becomes Man: the Man is in heaven: the God is
from heaven. He ascends Who descended: but He descends and yet does not
descend. He is as He ever was, yet He was not ever what He is. We pass in
review the causes, but we cannot explain the manner: we perceive the
manner, and we cannot understand the causes. Yet if we understand Christ
Jesus even thus, we shall know Him: if we seek to understand Him further we
shall not know Him at all.
55. Again, how great a mystery of word and act it is that Christ wept,
that His eyes filled with tears from the anguish of His mind(7). Whence
came this defect in His soul that sorrow should wring tears from His body?
What bitter fate, what unendurable pain, could move to a flood of tears the
Son of Man Who descended from heaven? Again, what was it in Him which wept?
God the Word? or His human soul? For though weeping is a bodily function,
the body is but a servant; tears are, as it were, the sweat of the agonised
soul. Again, what was the cause of His weeping? Did He owe to Jerusalem the
debt of His tears, Jerusalem, the godless parricide, whom no suffering
could requite for the slaughter of Apostles and Prophets, and the murder of
her Lord Himself? He might weep for the disasters and death which befall
mankind: but could He grieve for the fall of that doomed and desperate
race? What, I ask, was this mystery of weeping? His soul wept for sorrow;
was not it the soul which sent forth the Prophets? Which would so often
have gathered the chickens together under the shadow of His wings(8)? But
God the Word cannot grieve, nor can the Spirit weep: nor could His soul
possibly do anything before the body existed. Yet we cannot doubt that
Jesus Christ truly wept(9).
56. No less real were the tears He shed for Lazarus(1). The first
question here is, What was there to weep for in the case of Lazarus? Not
his death, for that was not unto death, but for the glory of God: for the
Lord says, That sickness is not unto death, but far the glory of God, that
the Son of God may be honoured through him(2). The death which was the
cause of God's being glorified could not bring sorrow and tears. Nor was
there any occasion for tears in His absence from Lazarus at the time of his
death. He says plainly, Lazarus is dead, and I rejoice for your sakes that
I was not there, to the intent that ye may believe(3). His absence then,
which aided the Apostles' belief, was not the cause of His sorrow: for with
the knowledge of Divine omniscience, He declared the death of the sick man
from afar. We can find, then, no necessity for tears, yet He wept. And
again I ask, To whom must we ascribe the weeping? To God, or the soul, or
the body? The body, of itself, has no tears except those it sheds at the
command of the sorrowing soul. Far less can God have wept, for He was to be
glorified in Lazarus. Nor is it reason to say His soul recalled Lazarus
from the tomb: can a soul linked to a body, by the power of its command,
call another soul back to the dead hotly from which it has departed? Can He
grieve Who is about to be glorified? Can He weep Who is about to restore
the dead to life? Tears are not for Him Who is about to give life, or grief
for Him Who is about to receive glory. Yet He Who wept and grieved was also
the Giver of life.
57. If there are many points which we treat scantily it is not because
we have nothing to say, or do not know what has already been said; our
purpose is, by abstaining from too laborious a process of argument, to
render the results as attractive as possible to the reader. We know the
deeds and words of our Lord, yet we know them not: we are not ignorant of
them, yet they cannot be understood. The facts are real, but the power
behind them is a mystery. We will prove this from His own words, For thus
reason doth the Father love Me, because I lay down My life that I may take
it up again. No one taketh it from Me, but l lay it down of Myself. I have
power to lay it down and I have power to take it up again. This commandment
received I from the Father(4). He lays down His life of Himself, but I ask
who lays it down? We confess without hesitation, that Christ is God the
Word: but on the other hand, we know that the Son of Man was composed of a
soul and a body: compare the angel's words to Joseph, Arise and take the
child and His mother, and go into the land of Israel; for they are dead who
sought the soul of the child(5). Whose soul is it? His body's, or God's? If
His body's, what power has the body to lay down the soul, when it is only
by the working of the soul that it is quickened into life? Again, how could
the body, which apart from the soul is inert and dead, receive a command
from the Father? But if, on the other hand, any man suppose that God the
Word laid aside His soul, that He might take it up again, he must prove
that God the Word died, that is, remained without life and feeling like a
dead body, and took up His soul again to be quickened once more into life
by it.
58. But, further, no one who is endued with reason can impute to God a
soul; though it is written in many places that the soul of God hates
sabbaths and new moons: and also that it delights in certain things(6). But
this is merely a conventional expression to be understood in the same way
as when God is spoken of as possessing body, with hands, and eyes, and
fingers, and arms, and heart. As the Lord said, A Spirit hath not flesh and
bones(7): He then Who is, and changeth not(8), cannot have the limbs and
parts of a tangible body. He is a simple and blessed nature, a single,
complete, all-embracing Whole. God is therefore not quickened into life,
like bodies, by the action of an indwelling soul, but is Himself His own
life.
59. How does He then lay down His soul, or take it up again? What is
the meaning of this command He received? God could not lay it down that is,
die, or take it up again, that is, come to life. But neither did the body
receive the command to take it up again; it could not do so of itself, for
He said of the Temple of His body, Destroy this temple and after three days
I will raise it up(9). Thus it is God Who raises up the temple of His body.
And Who lays down His soul to take it again? The body does not take it up
again of itself: it is raised up by God. That which is raised up again must
have been dead, and that which is living does not lay down its soul. God
then was neither dead nor buried: and yet He said, In that she has poured
this ointment upon My body she did it for My burial(1). In that it was
poured upon His body it was done for His burial: but the His is not the
same as Him. It is quite another use of the pronoun when we say, 'it was
done for the burial of Him,' and when we say, 'His body was anointed:' nor
is the sense the same in 'His body was buried,' and 'He was buried.'
60. To grasp this divine mystery we must see the God in Him without
ignoring the Man; and the Man without ignoring the God. We must not divide
Jesus Christ, for the Word was made flesh: yet we must not call Him buried,
though we know He raised Himself again: must not doubt His resurrection,
though we dare not deny He was buried(2). Jesus Christ was buried, for He
died: He died, and even cried out at the moment of death, My God, My God,
why hast Thou forsaken Me? Yet He, Who uttered these words, said also:
Verily I say unto thee, This day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise(3), and
He Who promised Paradise to the thief cried aloud, Father, into Thy hands I
commend My Spirit; and having said this He gave up the Ghost(4).
61. Ye who trisect Christ into the Word, the soul and the body, or
degrade the whole Christ, even God the Word, into a single member of our
race, unfold to us this mystery of great godliness which was manifested in
the flesh(4a). What Spirit did Christ give up? Who commended His Spirit
into the hands of His Father? Who was to be in Paradise that same day? Who
complained that He was deserted of God? The cry of the deserted betokens
the weakness of the dying: the promise of Paradise the sovereign power of
the living God. To commend His Spirit denoted confidence: to give up His
Spirit implied His departure by death. Who then, I demand, was it Who died?
Surely He Who gave up His Spirit? but Who gave up His Spirit? Certainly He
Who commended it to His Father. And if He Who commended His Spirit is the
same as He Who gave it up and died, was it the body which commended its
soul, or God Who commended the body's soul? I say 'soul,' because there is
no doubt it is frequently synonymous with 'spirit,' as might be gathered
merely from the language here: Jesus gave up His 'Spirit' when He was on
the point of death. If, therefore, you hold the conviction that the body
commended the soul, that the perishable commended the living, the
corruptible the eternal, that which was to be raised again, that which
abides unchanged, then, since He Who commended His Spirit to the Father was
also to be in Paradise with the thief that same day, I would fain know if,
while the sepulchre received Him, He was abiding in heaven, or if He was
abiding in heaven, when He cried out that God had deserted Him.
62. It is one and the same Lord Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, Who
expresses Himself in all these utterances, Who is man when He says He is
abandoned to death: yet while man still rules in Paradise as God, and
though reigning in Paradise, as Son of God commends His Spirit to His
Father, as Son of Man gives up to death the Spirit He commended to the
Father. Why do we then view as a disgrace that which is a mystery? We see
Him complaining that He is left to die, because He is Man: we see Him, as
He dies, declaring that He reigned in Paradise, because He is God. Why
should we harp, to support our irreverence, on what He said to make us
understand His death, and keep back what He proclaimed to demonstrate His
immortality? The words and the voice are equally His, when He complains of
desertion, and when He declares His rule: by what method of heretical logic
do we split up our belief and deny that He Who died was at the same time He
Who rules? Did He not testify both equally of Himself, when He commended
His Spirit, and when He gave it up? But if He is the same, Who commended
His Spirit, and gave it up, if He dies when ruling and rides when dead:
then the mystery of the Son of God and Son of Man means that He is One, Who
dying reigns, and reigning dies.
63. Stand aside then, all godless unbelievers, for whom the divine
mystery is too great, who do not know that Christ wept not for Himself but
for us, to prove the reality of His assumed manhood by yielding to the
emotion common to humanity: who do not perceive that Christ died not for
Himself, but for our life, to renew human life by the death of the
deathless God: who cannot reconcile the complaint of the deserted with the
confidence of the Ruler: who would teach us that because He reigns as God
and complains that He is dying, we have here a dead man and the reigning
God. For He Who dies is none other than He Who reigns, He Who commends His
spirit than He Who gives it up: He Who was buried, rose again: ascending or
descending He is altogether one.
64. Listen to the teaching of the Apostle and see in it a faith
instructed not by the understanding of the flesh but by the gift of the
Spirit. The Greeks seek after wisdom, he says, and the Jews ask for a sign;
but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block, and unto
Gentiles foolishness; but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks,
Christ Jesus, the power of God, and the wisdom of God(5). Is Christ divided
here so that Jesus the crucified is one, and Christ, the power and wisdom
of God, another? This is to the Jews a stumbling-block and unto the
Gentiles foolishness; but to us Christ Jesus is the power of God, and the
wisdom of God: wisdom, however, not known of the world, nor understood by a
secular philosophy. Hear the same blessed Apostle when he declares that it
has not been understood, We speak the wisdom of God, which hath been hidden
in a mystery, which God foreordained before the world for our glory: which
none of the rulers of this world has known: for had they known it, they
would not have crucified the Lord of Glory(6). Does not the Apostle know
that this wisdom of God is hidden in a mystery, and cannot be known of the
rulers of this world? Does he divide Christ into a Lord of Glory and a
crucified Jesus? Nay, rather, he contradicts this most foolish and impious
idea with the words, For I determined to know nothing among you, save Jesus
Christ, and Him crucified(7).
65. The Apostle knew nothing else, and he determined to know nothing
else: we men of feebler wit, and feebler faith, split up, divide and double
Jesus Christ, constituting ourselves judges of the unknown, and blaspheming
the hidden mystery. For us Christ crucified is one, Christ the wisdom of
God another: Christ Who was buried different from Christ Who descended from
Heaven: the Son of Man not at the same time also Son of God. We teach that
which we do not understand: we seek to refute that which we cannot grasp.
We men improve upon the revelation of God: we are not content to say with
the Apostle, Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God
that justifieth, who is he that condemneth? It is Christ Jesus, that died,
yea, rather, that was raised front the dead, Who is at the right hand of
God, Who also maketh intercession far us(8). Is He Who intercedes for us
other than He Who is at the right hand of God? Is not He Who is at the
right hand of God the very same Who rose again? Is He Who rose again other
than He Who died? He Who died than He Who condemns us? Lastly, is not He
Who condemns us also God Who justifies us? Distinguish, if you can, Christ
our accuser from God our defender, Christ Who died from Christ Who
condemns, Christ sitting at the right hand of God and praying for us from
Christ Who died. Whether, therefore, dead or buried, descended into Hades
or ascended into Heaven, all is one and the same Christ: as the Apostle
says, Now this 'He ascended' what is it, but that He also descended to the
lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended
far above all heavens, that He may fill all things(9). How far then shall
we push our babbling ignorance and blasphemy, professing to explain what is
hidden in the mystery of God? He that descended is the same also that
ascended. Can we longer doubt that the Man Christ Jesus rose from the dead,
ascended above the heavens and is at the right hand of God? We cannot say
His body descended into Hades, which lay in the grave. If then He Who
descended is one with Him, Who ascended; if His body did not go down into
Hades, yet really arose from the dead, and ascended into heaven, what
remains, except to believe in the secret mystery, which is hidden from the
world and the rulers of this age, and to confess that, ascending or
descending, He is but One, one Jesus Christ for us, Son of God and Son of
Man, God the Word and Man in the flesh, Who suffered, died, was buried,
rose again, was received into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God:
Who possesses in His one single self, according to the Divine Plan and
nature, in the form of God and in the form of a servant, the Human and
Divine without separation or division.
66. So the Apostle moulding our ignorant and haphazard ideas into
conformity with truth says of this mystery of the faith, For He was
crucified through weakness but He liveth through the power of God(1).
Preaching the Son of Man and Son of God, Man through the Divine Plan, God
through His eternal nature, he says, that He Who was crucified through
weakness is He Who lives through the power of God. His weakness arises from
the form of a servant, His nature remains because of the form of God. He
took the form of a servant, though He was in form of God: therefore there
can be no doubt as to the mystery according to which He both suffered and
lived. There existed in Him both weakness to suffer, and power of God to
give life: and hence He Who suffered and lived cannot be more than One, or
other than Himself.
67. The Only-begotten God suffered indeed all that men can suffer: but
let us express ourselves in the words anti faith of the Apostle. He says,
For I delivered unto you first of all how that Christ died for our sins,
according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again
the third day according to the Scriptures(2). This is no unsupported
statement of his own, which might lead to error, but a warning to us to
confess that Christ died and rose after a real manner, not a nominal, since
the tact is certified by the full weight of Scripture authority; and that
we must understand His death in that exact sense in which Scripture
declares it. In his regard for the perplexities and scruples of the weak
and sensitive believer, he adds these solemn concluding words, according to
the Scriptures, to his proclamation of the death and the resurrection. He
would not have us grow weaker, driven about by every wind of vain doctrine,
or vexed by empty subtleties and false doubts: he would summon faith to
return, before it were shipwrecked, to the haven of piety, believing and
confessing the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Son of Man and Son
of God, according to the Scriptures, this being the safeguard of reverence
against the attack of the adversary, so to understand the death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ, as it was written of Him. There is no danger
in faith: the reverent confession of the hidden mystery of God is always
safe. Christ was born of the Virgin, but conceived of the Holy Ghost
according to the Scriptures. Christ wept, but according to the Scriptures:
that which made Him weep was also a cause of joy. Christ hungered; but
according to the Scriptures, He used His power as God against the tree
which bore no fruit, when He had no loath Christ suffered: but according to
the Scriptures, He was about to sit at the right hand of Power. He
complained that He was abandoned to die: but according to the Scriptures,
at the same moment He received in His kingdom in Paradise the thief who
confessed Him. He died: but according to the Scriptures, He rose again and
sits at the right hand of God. In the belief of this mystery there is life:
this confession resists all attack.
68. The Apostle is careful to leave no room for doubt: we cannot say,
"Christ was born, suffered, was dead and buried, and rose again but how, by
what power, by what division of parts of Himself? Who wept? Who rejoiced?
Who complained? Who descended? and Who ascended?" He rests the merits of
faith entirely on the confession of unquestioning reverence. The
righteousness, he says, which is of faith saith thus, Say not in thy heart,
Who hath ascended into heaven, that is, to bring Christ down: or Who hath
descended into the abyss: that is, to bring Christ up from the dead? But
what saith the Scripture? Thy word is nigh, in thy mouth, and in thy heart;
that is, the word of faith which we preach: because if thou shalt confess
with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart, that God hath
raised Him up from the dead, thou shalt be saved(3). Faith perfects the
righteous man: as it is written, Abraham believed God and it was reckoned
unto him for righteousness(4). Did Abraham impugn the word of God, when he
was promised the inheritance of the Gentiles, and an abiding posterity as
many as the sand or the stars for multitude? To the reverent faith, which
trusts implicitly on the omnipotence of God, the limits of human weakness
are no barrier. Despising all that is feeble and earthly in itself, it
believes the divine promise, even though it exceeds the possibilities of
human nature. It knows that the laws which govern man are no hindrance to
the power of God, Who is as bountiful in the performance as He is gracious
in the promise. Nothing is more righteous than Faith. For as in human
conduct it is equity and self-restraint that receive our approval, so in
the case of God, what is more righteous for man than to ascribe omnipotence
to Him, Whose Power He perceives to be without limits?
69. The Apostle then looking in us for the righteousness which is of
Faith, cuts at the root of incredulous doubt and godless unbelief. He
forbids us to admit into our hearts the cares of anxious thought, and
points to the authority of the Prophet's words, Say not in thy heart, Who
hath ascended into heaven(5)? Then He completes the thought of the
Prophet's words with the addition, That is to bring Christ down. The
perception of the human mind cannot attain to the knowledge of the divine:
but neither can a reverent faith doubt the works of God. Christ needed no
human help, that any one should ascend into heaven to bring Him down from
His blessed Home to His earthly body. It was no external force which drove
Him down to the earth. We must believe that He came, even as He did come:
it is true religion to confess Jesus Christ not brought down, but
descending. The mystery both of the time and the method of His coming,
belongs to Him alone. We may not think because He came but recently, that
therefore He must have been brought down, nor that His coming in time
depended upon another, who brought Him down.
Nor does the Apostle give room for unbelief in the other direction. He
quotes at once the words of the Prophet, Or Who hath descended into the
abyss(6), and adds immediately the explanation, That is to bring Christ
back from the dead. He is free to return into heaven, Who was free to
descend to the earth. All hesitation and doubt is then removed. Faith
reveals what omnipotence plans: history relates the effect, God Almighty
was the cause.
70. But there is demanded from us an unwavering certainty. The Apostle
expounding the whole secret of the Scripture passes on, Thy word is nigh,
in thy mouth and in thy heart(7). The words of our confession must not be
tardy or deliberately vague: there must be no interval between heart and
lips, lest what ought to be the confession of true reverence become a
subterfuge of infidelity. The word must be near us, and within us; no delay
between the heart and the lips; a faith of conviction as well as of words.
Heart and lips must be in harmony, and reveal in thought and utterance a
religion which does not waver. Here too, as before, the Apostle adds the
explanation of the Prophet's words, That is the word of Faith, which we
preach; because if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and
shalt believe in thy heart that God hath raised Him up from the dead, thou
shalt be saved. Piety consists in rejecting doubt, righteousness in
believing, salvation in confessing. Trifle not with ambiguities, be not
stirred up to vain babblings, do not debate in any way the powers of God,
or impose limits upon His might, cease searching again and again for the
causes of unsearchable mysteries: confess rather that Jesus is the Lord,
and believe that God raised Him from the dead; herein is salvation. What
folly is it to depreciate the nature and character of Christ, when this
alone is salvation, to know that He is the Lord. Again, what an error of
human vanity to quarrel about His resurrection, when it is enough for
eternal life to believe that God raised Him up. In simplicity then is
faith, in faith righteousness, and in confession true godliness. For God
does not call us to the blessed life through arduous investigations. He
does not tempt us with the varied arts of rhetoric. The way to eternally is
plain and easy; believe that Jesus was raised from the dead by God and
confess that He is the Lord. Let no one therefore wrest into an occasion
for impiety, what was said because of our ignorance. It had to be proved to
us, that Jesus Christ died, that we might live in Him.
71. If then He said, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me(8), and
Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit(9), that we might be sure that
He did die, was not this, in His care for our faith, rather a scattering of
our doubts, than a confession of His weakness? When He was about to restore
Lazarus, He prayed to the Father: but what need had He of prayer, Who said,
Father, I thank Thee, that Thou hast heard Me; and I know that Thou hearest
Me always, but because of the multitude I said it, that they may believe
that Thou didst send Me(1)? He prayed then for us, that we may know Him to
be the Son; the words of prayer availed Him nothing, but He said them for
the advancement of our faith. He was not in want of help, but we of
teaching. Again He prayed to be glorified; and immediately was heard from
heaven the voice of God the Father glorifying Him: but when they wondered
at the voice, He said, This voice hath not come for My sake, but for your
sakes(2). The Father is besought for us, He speaks for us: may all this
lead us to believe and confess! The answer of the Glorifier is granted not
to the prayer for glory, but to the ignorance of the bystanders: must we
not then regard the complaint of suffering, when He found His greatest joy
in suffering, as intended for the building up of our faith? Christ prayed
for His persecutors, because they knew not what they did. He promised
Paradise from the cross, because He is God the King. He rejoiced upon the
cross, that all was finished when He drank the vinegar, because He had
fulfilled all prophecy before He died. He was born for us, suffered for us,
died for us, rose again for us. This alone is necessary for our salvation,
to confess the Son of God risen from the dead: why then should we die in
this state of godless unbelief? If Christ, ever secure of His divinity,
made clear to us His death, Himself indifferent to death, yet dying to
assure that it was true humanity that He had assumed: why should we use
this very confession of the Son of God that for us He became Son of Man and
died as the chief weapon to deny His divinity?
Taken from "The Early Church Fathers and Other Works" originally published
by Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. in English in Edinburgh, Scotland, beginning in
1867. (LNPF II/IX, Schaff and Wace). The digital version is by The
Electronic
Bible Society, P.O. Box 701356, Dallas, TX 75370, 214-407-WORD.
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