Institutes & Conferences 3 part 8/11

And well did the Apostle, saying 'made of a woman,' put 'made' for 'born,' according to the custom of the divine speech, whereby 'made' is put for 'born,' according to that saying: 'Instead of your fathers, sons are made unto you'; or that other: 'Before Abraham was made, I am'—in which He is clearly known to have said 'Before Abraham was born, I am,' showing by the word 'made' the reality of nativity, because whatever no longer needs to come into being has the effect of a thing made. 'Who for our sake, then,' it says, 'came and was born of the Virgin Mary.' If a mere man was born of Mary, why should He be said to have come? For none comes except one who has this very thing in his essence, that he is able to come. But he who had not yet even received this, that he should exist—how could he possess this, that he should come?

You see, therefore, that by the very name of 'coming' the One who comes is designated to have existed beforehand, because He would not have had the power of coming except one to whom, from this very fact that He existed, it could be available that He should come. But the man, before conception, in no way existed at all: therefore he did not have in himself the power to be able to come. It is certain, then, that God came, to whom, being all-powerful in both, it is available both to be and to come; who indeed both came because He existed, and, because He could always come, always existed. But why do we argue about the word, when the realities shine forth, and why do we seek in the text of the Creed the indications of realities, when the very discourse of the realities is in it?

Let us repeat the confession of the Creed, and yours (for its confession is yours, because by confessing its confession you made it your own), so that you may understand that you have prevaricated not only against the Creed, but also against yourself. 'I believe,' says the Creed, 'in the one only true God, the Father Almighty, Creator of all creatures visible and invisible: and in the Lord Jesus Christ, His only-begotten Son and firstborn of all creation, born of Him before all ages and not made, true God of true God, of one substance with the Father, through whom also the ages were framed and all things were made, who for our sake came and was born of the Virgin Mary.'

'For our sake,' says the Creed, 'our Lord Jesus Christ came and was born of the Virgin Mary, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate and was buried, and rose again according to the Scriptures.' The churches are not ashamed to confess this; the apostles were not ashamed to preach it. You yourself, you, I say, you yourself, whose every utterance is now sacrilege, who deny well-nigh everything, nevertheless did not deny all this: that God indeed was born, that God suffered, that God rose again. And what after this? Into what have you slid, what have you become, into what state have you been reduced? What do you say, what do you vomit forth? Such a thing, surely, as, in the words of a certain poet, no sane man could swear to save the madman Orestes. For what do you say? Who then is he that was born of the Christotokos, the Son of God?

Suppose, for instance, we were to say: 'I believe in God the Word, the only-begotten Son of God, born of the Father, of one substance with the Father, who descended and was buried' — does not the very hearer at once receive a wound? 'God dead?' And again you say: 'Can it come to pass that he who was born before all ages should be born a second time, and this a God?' But if all these things could in no way come to pass, how does the Creed of the churches declare that they were done? How too did you yourself declare it? For let us compare with the things now said by you the things that were said by you before. Earlier you said:

'I believe in God, the Father almighty, and in Jesus Christ his Son, true God from true God, of one substance with the Father, who for our sake came and was born of the Virgin Mary, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate and was buried.' But now what do you say? 'If we were to say: I believe in God the Word, the only-begotten Son of God, born of the Father, of one substance with the Father, who descended and was buried — does not the very hearer at once receive a wound?' The bitterness indeed and the impiety of your words might well drive us to an immoderate and hot-blooded onrush of reply; but the reins of a godly grief must be held in a little. You, then, I say, you yourself I consult.

Tell me, I pray you: if some Jew or pagan were to deny the Creed of the catholic faith, would you judge that he ought to be given a hearing? Surely not. What then, if a heretic or an apostate did the very same? Even less, surely, since it is more intolerable to forsake truth once known than to reject it when unknown. Thus we see two men in you, a catholic and an apostate; and formerly indeed a catholic, but now an apostate. Which, then, of the two you think we ought to follow, do you yourself determine: for you cannot set the one before the other within yourself, unless you yourself have condemned the other within you. You say, therefore, that the man you formerly were is condemned by you, that the catholic Creed is condemned by you, that the confession of all is condemned, that the faith is condemned.

And what then — O unworthy deed, O intolerable grief — what are you doing in the catholic Church, you betrayer of catholics? Why do you pollute the assembly of the people, you who have denied the faith of the people? Moreover you have even dared to stand at the altar and to mount the tribunal and to offer your most shameless and most treacherous mouth to the people of God, to occupy the chair, to presume upon the priesthood, to profess yourself a teacher. To teach Christians what? Not to believe in Christ, to deny that he is God in whose temple, being God's, they stand. And after all this — O madness, O frenzy — do you think yourself a teacher and a bishop, when you deny — O wretched blindness — that very one, I say, to be God, whose priest you assert yourself to be? But we are carried away by grief.

What then does the Creed say, or rather what did you yourself say in the Creed? Surely that the Lord Jesus Christ, true God from true God, of one substance with the Father, through whom both the ages were created and all things made — that this same one came for our sake and was born of the Virgin Mary. Since, then, you have said that God was born of Mary, how do you deny that Mary is the Mother of God? Since you have said that God came, how do you now deny that he who came is God? You said in the Creed: 'I believe in Jesus Christ the Son of God, I believe in true God from true God, of one substance with the Father, who for our sake came and was born of the Virgin Mary, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate and was buried.' But now you say: 'If we were to say:'

'I believe in God the Word, the only-begotten Son of God, born of the Father, of one substance with the Father, who descended and was buried — does not the very hearer at once receive a wound?' You see, then, that you utterly destroy and root out the whole faith of the catholic Creed, the whole faith of the catholic mystery. O crime, O monstrous thing, that ought (as one says) to be carried away into the farthest lands — for this is more rightly said of you, that you should pass into those solitudes where you may find no one to destroy. So you think the faith of our salvation, the sacrament of the Church's hope, to be a wound of your hearing and of your ears? And how, then, once, when you were running to baptism, did you hear these sacraments with sound ears?

How was it that, when the teachers of the churches instructed you, your ears were not wounded? Then, surely, without any wound you performed the double office of mouth and ears, when you both repeated what you heard from them, and, as the speaker, heard yourself speaking. Where then were these wounds of your ears, where that blow to your hearing? Why did you not gainsay and cry out against it? But evidently at your own whim and pleasure — when you wish, you are a disciple of the Church; when you wish, an enemy; when you wish, a catholic; when you wish, an apostate. A worthy author indeed, who, to whatever side you betake yourself, would drag the churches after you; whose will is the law of our life; who by your own mutability would change the human race, so that, because you refuse to be what all are, all may be what you wish:

a splendid authority indeed, that because you are not what you were, the world should cease to be what it was! But perhaps you say that you were but a little child when you were born again, and therefore could then neither understand nor cry out. It is true: your infancy stood in the way of your contradicting — you who as a man could have died in contradicting. For what if, in that most faithful and most devoted Church of Christ, when the priest was delivering the Creed to the people of God as they answered and acclaimed, you had attempted to mutter anything or to protest? Perhaps you would have got a hearing, and not rather at once, as a new kind of prodigy and monster, been dispatched to some plague and destruction?

Not that that most pious and most religious people of God would wish to be defiled even with the blood of any most impious man, but because, for the most part in great cities, a people fervent with the love of God, when it has seen anyone rise up against its God, knows not how to restrain the heat of its faith. But be it so: as an infant, if indeed it was so, you could not contradict and cry out against the Creed. Why, then, when you were older and stronger, were you silent? You surely grew up and became a man and were inserted into the ecclesiastical ministry. Through so many ages, then, through so many grades of office and dignity, was the faith never understood by you which you had for so long been teaching before? You know assuredly that you were its deacon and its presbyter:

if the rule of salvation displeased you, why did you accept the honour of that office whose faith you did not approve? But evidently, being a provident man and a simple religious, you wished so to steer yourself between the two, that you might hold both the perfidy of a sacrilegious man and the dignity of a catholic. So the blow to your hearing and the wound of your ears is 'God born and God suffered.' And where is that word of yours, Paul the apostle: 'But we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews indeed a stumbling-block, and to the Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God'? What is the wisdom and the power of God? God, surely. But he preaches Christ, who was crucified, to be the power and wisdom of God.

Therefore if, beyond doubt, Christ is the wisdom of God, then, beyond doubt, Christ is God. 'We therefore,' he says, 'preach Christ crucified, to the Jews indeed a stumbling-block, and to the Gentiles foolishness.' And so the cross of the Lord, which was foolishness to the Gentiles and a stumbling-block to the Jews, is to you both at once. For there is no greater folly than not to believe, nor greater stumbling-block than to be unwilling to hear. Their ears, then, were wounded at the preaching and the passion of God, just as yours are now wounded; they thought this a blow to their hearing, just as you think; and hence it was that at the name of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, while Paul the apostle preached Christ as God, they stopped the ears of their head, just as you stop the ears of your mind.

On this point the impiety of both of you might seem equal, save that your crime is the greater, in that they denied him in whom his passion still displayed the man, while you deny him whom his resurrection has already proved to be God. And through this they persecuted him on earth, while you persecute him even in heaven. Nor this only, but this surely more cruel and more wicked: that they denied through ignorance, you after the faith; they not knowing the Lord, you having confessed God; they under the zeal of the law, you under the profession of a bishop; they him from whom they judged themselves strangers, you him whose priest you are. An unworthy and unheard-of deed! You persecute with harassment the very one whose dignity you still employ.

But, forsooth, as a great argument of your perfidy and impiety, you use this to deny and persecute the Lord God, saying: 'The birth must be of one substance with her that bears.' I do not yet fully say and declare that in the birth of God this is by no means to be maintained, since the birth itself was not the bearer's but the one born's, and he himself was born as he willed, whose very being it was to be born. Meanwhile, since you say that the birth must be of one substance with her that bears, I say that the Lord Jesus Christ was of one substance with both the Father alike and the mother. For according to the diversity of persons he rendered to each parent his own likeness. For according to divinity he was of one substance with the Father, but according to the flesh he was of one substance with the mother:

not that one being was of one substance with the Father and another of one substance with the mother, but because the same Lord Jesus Christ, being both born as man and God, had in himself the property of each parent, since in that which is man he rendered the likeness of his human mother, and in that which is God he possessed the truth of God the Father.

Otherwise, if the same Christ who was born of Mary is not he who was born of God, then beyond doubt you make two Christs, according to that crime of Pelagian impiety, which, asserting that a mere man was born of the Virgin, said that he was an instructor of the human race rather than its redeemer, because he gave men not a redemption of life but an example of living — namely, that men following him, while they did like deeds, might attain to like ends. One, then, is the origin of your impiety, one and the same the root of your errors. They assert that a mere man was born of Mary, and so do you; they separate the Son of Man from the Son of God, and so do you; they say the Saviour was made Christ through baptism, you say he was made the temple of God in baptism;

they do not deny that he was made God after his passion, you deny it even after his ascension. In one thing only, then, does your perversity so far differ: that they seem to blaspheme the Lord on earth, you both on earth and in heaven. You have surpassed — we do not deny it — those whom you imitate, and gone beyond them: they, as it were, at some point cease to deny God as another does, you never. And yet not even their confession is to be held fully true, who grant to the Saviour the honour of divinity only after his passion, and, since they deny him to be God beforehand, afterward confess him; because, as it seems to me, in God he who has denied a part has denied the whole, and he who has not confessed him to have been always denies him always:

just as you too, even if today you were to call the Lord Jesus Christ, who was born of the Virgin Mary, true God in heaven, nevertheless, unless you were to call him always God, you would not truly confess him. But evidently you are unwilling to change or vary your opinion in any point: him whom you call a mere man born, even today you contend is not God. O strange and singular impiety! Him whom, with the heretics, you assert to be man, you confess to be God not even with the heretics. But nevertheless, as I had begun to say, that two Christs are beyond doubt made by you — this very thing must be made clear. Tell me, I pray, you who separate Christ from the Son of God, how in the Creed do you confess that Christ was born of God? For you say: 'I believe in God the Father and in Jesus Christ his Son.'

You have here, then, Jesus Christ the Son of God. But you say that the same Son of God was not born of Mary. Therefore one Christ is of God, another of Mary. There are, then, two Christs in your opinion, since, while in the Creed you do not deny Christ, you assert the Christ born of Mary to be another than the one you confess in the Creed. But perhaps you say that Christ was not born of God. And how then do you say in the Creed: 'I believe in Jesus Christ the Son of God'? Either, then, you must deny the Creed, or you must confess Christ to be the Son of God. But if you confess in the Creed that Christ is the Son of God, it is necessary that you confess the same one born of Mary to be Christ the Son of God: or if you assert another Christ to be of Mary, you certainly blaspheme that there are two Christs.

But nevertheless, even if your perfidy and perversity be not shut in by this faith of the Creed, will you not, I pray, be overwhelmed by reason itself and by the light of truth? Tell me, I pray, whoever you are, heretic — surely it is a Trinity that we believe, that we confess: Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Of the majesty of the Father and of the Spirit there is no question: on the Son you cast your slander, in that you say he was not brought forth from Mary the same one who was begotten of God the Father. Tell me, then: since you do not deny that the only-begotten Son of God was born of God, this one who was born of Mary, who do you wish him to be? You say a mere man, according to that which he himself said: 'That which is born of the flesh, is flesh.'

But he cannot be called a mere man who alone was not begotten by the law of human generation: for 'that which is born in her,' says the angel, 'is of the Holy Spirit.' And yet even this you yourself, who deny well-nigh all the sacraments of salvation, do not dare to deny. Since, then, he was born of the Holy Spirit, and he cannot be called a mere man who was conceived by the inbreathing of God — if he is not the one who, according to the apostle, 'emptied himself, taking the form of a servant,' and 'the Word was made flesh,' and 'he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death,' and who 'for our sake became poor, though he was rich' — tell me, then: who is that one who was both brought forth of the Holy Spirit and conceived while God overshadowed? Beyond doubt you say it is another.

There are, then, two, that is, both he who was begotten of God the Father in heaven, and he who was conceived of Mary by the inbreathing of God. And through this the one you introduce is a fourth — one whom, though in words you call a mere man, you in the very fact confirm to have been no mere man, since you confess him, even if not as you ought, yet to be honourable and venerable and adorable. Therefore, since both the Son of God who was born of the Father is surely to be adored, and he who was procreated of Mary through the Holy Spirit is to be adored, you thus make two who are to you both honourable and venerable, whom you so far divide from one another that you venerate each with his own peculiar honour.

And through this you understand that, by denying and separating from himself the Son of God, you overturn — so far as in you lies — the whole sacrament of the divinity. For while you try to insert a fourth person into the Trinity, you see that you have utterly denied the whole Trinity. And since these things are so, by denying the one Jesus Christ, the Son of God, you have denied all. For this is the principle of the ecclesiastical sacrament and of the catholic faith, that he who denies a part of the sacrament cannot avail to confess the part. For all things are so connected and incorporated together, that one cannot stand without the other, and he who has denied any one of them all, it will not profit him to have believed all the rest.

And so, if you deny God the Lord Jesus Christ, it is necessary that, denying the Son of God, you deny also the Father, because, according to the very voice of God, 'He who has not the Son, has not the Father either; but he who has the Son, has the Father also.' Denying, then, the Begotten, you deny also the Begetter. Denying also the Son of God born in the flesh, it follows that you deny him born also in the Spirit, because the same one born in the flesh is he who was first born in the Spirit. Not believing, then, that he was brought forth in the flesh, it is necessary that you also disbelieve that he suffered. And not believing his passion, what remains but that you deny also the resurrection, since faith in the risen one is from faith in the dead one, nor can the reason of the resurrection stand, unless faith in the death has first gone before.

Denying, then, that he suffered and died, and denying also that he rose from the dead, it surely follows that you deny also that he ascended, since ascension without resurrection could not be; and he who is not believed to have risen, must needs not be believed to have ascended, since the apostle says: 'For he who descended is the same also who ascended.' Therefore, so far as in you lies, the Lord Jesus Christ neither rose from the dead nor ascended into heaven, nor sat at the right hand of God the Father, nor will he come to that day of the last examination which is awaited, nor will he judge the living and the dead. You understand, therefore, O wretched and frenzied perversity, that you have utterly emptied out all the faith of the Creed, all the power of the hope and of the sacrament.

And moreover you have dared to stand in the church and think yourself a priest, when you have denied all those things through which you began to be a priest. Return, then, to the right way; recover your former sense; come to your senses at last, if ever you had sense; return to your own self, if indeed you once had within you anything to which you might now return; acknowledge the sacraments of your salvation, through which you were renewed, through which you were reborn. They are no less needful to you now than they were then, that they may now regenerate you through penance, as they once begot you through the font. Hold the full order of the Creed, hold the perfect truth of the faith:

Believe in the Father God, believe in the Son God, in one Begetter and one Begotten, the Lord of all, Jesus Christ, of one substance with the Father, born in Godhead, born in body, of a twofold nativity indeed but of one majesty, who, being the Creator of all creatures, is the same who was born of the Father and who was afterward born of the Virgin. For this, that he came in the flesh and from the flesh, was his rising, not his diminishing; and he was only born, not changed, because, although remaining in the form of God he took the form of a servant, yet the infirmity of the human habit did not weaken the nature of God, but with the power of divinity wholly unimpaired and entire, all that was done in the flesh of man was the advancement of the man, not the failing of the majesty.

For when God was brought forth in human flesh, it was not that he might no longer remain God in himself, but that, with God remaining in himself, a man might be God. And therefore Martha, when with carnal eyes she beheld a man, yet with spiritual eyes confessed God, saying: 'Yes, Lord, I have believed that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God, who have come into this world.' So Peter, when by the revelation of the Holy Spirit he outwardly beheld the Son of Man, yet preached the Son of God, saying: 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.' So Thomas, when he touched the flesh, believed that he had touched God, saying: 'My Lord and my God.' For all confessed one Christ, lest they should make two.

Believe in him, then, and thus believe the Lord of all, Jesus Christ, the only-begotten and firstborn, the same Creator of things who is the Preserver of men, the same first Founder of the whole world who is afterward the Redeemer of the human race: who, remaining with the Father and in the Father, of one substance with the Father, and according to the apostle 'taking the form of a servant, humbled himself even unto death, yea, the death of the cross,' and according to the Creed 'was born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate and buried, and on the third day rose again according to the Scriptures and ascended into heaven, and will come again to judge the living and the dead.'

For this is the true faith, this the true salvation: to believe that God and Lord Jesus Christ, the same, is both before all things and after all things, since, as it is written, 'Jesus Christ, yesterday and today; the same also unto the ages.' For in 'yesterday' he shows all past time, in which before the beginning he was born of the Father; in 'today,' the spaces of this present age, in which again he was born of the Virgin, suffered, rose again; but in that he is said to be 'unto the ages,' all the immensity of the eternity to come is signified.

But perhaps you say: if I call the same one born of the Virgin at the end of times who was born before all things of God the Father, I make God to be fleshly even before the beginnings of the world, since I say that he was afterward man whom I say was ever God, and through this that that man who was afterward born always existed. I would not have you confounded by this blindness of ignorance and this night of errors, so as to think that I assert the man who was born of Mary to have existed before the origins of things, and that I preach God to have been ever corporeal even before the beginnings of the world. Not so, I say, not so do I say — that before he was born, man was in God, but that afterward God was born in man.

For that flesh which was born of the flesh of the Virgin did not always exist, but God, who always existed, came in the flesh of a man from the flesh of the Virgin. For 'the Word was made flesh': he did not bring flesh with him, but united himself to the flesh of a man by the condescension of his divinity. For tell me: when or where was the Word made flesh, or where did he 'empty himself, taking the form of a servant,' or where did he become poor, though he was rich, save in that sacred womb of the Virgin, where, while the Word of God is made flesh, he is said to have become flesh; while he is brought forth, he takes the form of a servant in truth; while by human condition he is affixed to the gibbet, he becomes poor and is rendered destitute by the passion of the flesh, though he was rich in the divine majesty?

Otherwise, if, as you say, divinity came upon him afterward, as upon one of the prophets and saints, then in those also in whom he deigned to dwell the Word was made flesh; then also through each one of them he 'emptied himself, taking the form of a servant'; and through this nothing new nor pre-eminent was done in Christ, nothing singular, nothing wonderful; neither did his conception have anything special, nor his nativity, nor his death. And yet, to return to what went before, since all these things are so as we have said, how is it that Jesus Christ, whom you assert to be man only, is read to have always existed even before he was born of the Virgin, and is preached by prophets and apostles as God even before the ages, Paul saying:

'One Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things'; but also elsewhere: 'For in Christ,' he says, 'were created all things in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible.' The Creed too, woven together by human and divine authority alike, says: 'I believe in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ his Son,' and after other things: 'true God from true God, through whom both the ages were framed and all things made,' and again: 'who for our sake came and was born of the Virgin Mary, and was crucified, and was buried.'

How is it, then, that although — by our very confession — the Lord's manhood in no way existed before the Virgin's childbearing and conceiving, yet Christ, who by you is called a mere man, is preached in the sacred writings as God without beginning, and so great a unity of man and God is read of, that the man is seen to be always coeternal with God before, and afterward God is seen to have suffered together with the man, although surely neither is the man to be believed without beginning, nor God to be passible?

This surely is what we have already attested in the foregoing writings: that God, being united to man, that is, to his own body, suffers no distance to be made by human opinion between man and God, nor would he in any way allow it to be admitted, so that one should be believed to be the Son of Man by anyone, another the Son of God; but he so joins the Lord's manhood to God and incorporates it in all the sacred writings, that one can neither in time distinguish the man at all from God, nor in the passion distinguish God from man. For if you look to time, you will find the Son of Man always with the Son of God; if to the passion, you will find always with the Son of Man the Son of God: