For if He names a Son, and the Son shall be none other than He who proceeded from Him, and the Discourse proceeded from Him—this shall be the Son, not He from whom He proceeded: for He did not Himself proceed from Himself. Furthermore, you who say that the same is Father and Son, you also make the same both to have brought forth from Himself and to have proceeded forth—that which is God. Granted He could have done it, yet He did not do it. Either produce the proof which I demand, like to my own—that is, that the Scriptures show the same to be Son and Father in the same way as, with us, the Father and the Son are distinctly demonstrated: distinctly, I say, not dividedly.
As I bring forward the saying spoken by God, 'My heart hath poured forth the best Word,' do you, on the contrary, oppose to this that God has somewhere said, 'My heart hath poured forth Me, the best Word,' so that He Himself is both He who poured forth and that which was poured forth, and He Himself both He who brought forth and He who was brought forth—if He Himself is both Discourse and God. Behold, I set forth that the Father said to the Son, 'Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee': if you would have me believe that He Himself is both Father and Son, show me that it was pronounced thus elsewhere: 'The Lord said unto Himself, I am My own Son, this day have I begotten Myself'; and likewise, 'Before the day-star I begat Myself'; and, 'The Lord founded Me as the beginning of My ways for My works, and before all the hills I begat Myself'; and any other things there may be after this manner.
But whom did God, the Lord of the universe, fear, that He should speak thus, if the matter were so? Or did He fear that He would not be believed if He had declared Himself plainly to be both Father and Son? One thing indeed He did fear: to lie, being Himself the Author of truth and His own truth. And therefore, believing God to be truthful, I know that He pronounced nothing otherwise than He arranged it, nor arranged it otherwise than He pronounced it.
You, moreover, would make Him a liar and a deceiver, and a defrauder of this faith of ours, if, when He Himself was His own Son, He assigned to another the person of the Son—whereas all the Scriptures set forth both the demonstration and the distinction of the Trinity, from which our own rule is also derived: namely, that one and the same cannot be seen to be He who speaks, and He of whom He speaks, and He to whom He speaks; since neither perversity nor deceit befits God, that, when He Himself were the one to whom He was speaking, He should rather speak to another and not to Himself. Take, then, still other utterances of the Father concerning the Son through Isaiah: 「Behold my Son whom I have chosen, my beloved in whom I am well pleased; I will place my Spirit upon Him, and He shall announce judgment to the nations.」 Take also those addressed to the Son Himself:
「It is a great thing for you to be called my Son, to establish the tribes of Jacob and to turn back the dispersion of Israel; I have set you as a light of the nations, that you may be salvation to the ends of the earth.」 Now take also the Son's utterances concerning the Father: 「The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, wherefore He has anointed me to bring good tidings to men.」 Likewise in the Psalm, addressed to the Father concerning the same One: 「Do not forsake me, until I announce your arm to all the generation that is to come.」 Likewise in another: 「Lord, why are they multiplied who press upon me?」 And indeed almost all the Psalms which sustain the person of Christ represent the Son as making His words to the Father—that is, Christ to God. Observe also the Spirit speaking in the third person concerning the Father and the Son:
「The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.」 Likewise through Isaiah: 「Thus says the Lord to my Lord, Christ.」 Likewise through the same, addressed to the Father concerning the Son: 「Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? We announced concerning Him as a little child, as a root in a thirsty land, and there was no form in Him nor glory.」 These are a few out of many; for we do not aim to unroll all the Scriptures, since even in single chapters, attesting the full majesty and authority, we shall have a greater encounter in our detailed treatments. By these few, then, the distinction of the Trinity is plainly set forth:
For there is the Spirit Himself who makes the pronouncement, and the Father to whom He makes it, and the Son concerning whom He makes it. So too the rest, which are now pronounced by the Father concerning the Son or to the Son, now by the Son concerning the Father or to the Father, now by the Spirit—these establish each person in His own property. CHAPTER 12. If the number of the Trinity still scandalizes you, as though it were not knit together in a simple unity, I ask how it is that One who is unique and single speaks in the plural: 「Let us make man to our image and likeness,」 when He ought to have said, 「I will make man to my image and likeness,」 as being unique and single.
But also in what follows: 「Behold, Adam has become as one of us,」—is He deceiving or jesting, that being one and alone and single He should speak in the plural? Or was He perhaps speaking to angels, as the Jews interpret, because they too do not acknowledge the Son? Or was it because He Himself was Father, Son, and Spirit, that, presenting Himself as plural, He spoke to Himself in the plural? Nay rather, because the Son was already adhering to Him, the second person, His own Word, and the third, the Spirit in the Word, therefore He pronounced in the plural 「Let us make」 and 「Our」 and 「Us.」 For with whom was He making man, and to whom was He making him like?
With the Son indeed, who was to put on man, and with the Spirit truly, who was to sanctify man, He spoke as with ministers and assessors out of the unity of the Trinity. Finally, the following Scripture distinguishes between the persons: 「And God made man; to the image of God He made him.」 Why not to His own image, if there were only one who was making, and there were not another to whose image He made him? But there was One to whose image He was making him, namely the Son, who, being about to become man—the more certain and true—had caused His own image to be called man, the man who was then to be formed of clay, the image of the True One and His likeness. But also in the preceding works of the world, how is it written? First indeed, the Son not yet appearing: 「And God said, Let there be light, and it was made.」
The Word Himself immediately is the true light which enlightens every man coming into this world, and through Him the world's light also. But thereafter, in the Word, with Christ assisting and administering, God willed that it be made, and God made it: 「And God said, Let there be a firmament, and God made the firmament」; 「And God said, Let there be lights, and God made the greater and lesser light.」 But the rest also assuredly He made who made the former things, that is, the Word of God through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made. And if He Himself is God, according to John—「the Word was God」—you have two: one saying that it be made, another making it. But in what sense you ought to understand 「another,」 I have already professed: by the name of person, not of substance; for distinction, not for division.
For the rest, even though everywhere I hold one substance in three who cohere, nevertheless I must, from the very necessity of the sense, call Him who commands and Him who does 「another.」 For He would not even command, if He Himself were doing it while He commanded it to be done. Yet He commanded through Him, not being about to command Himself if He were one, nor about to do it without a command; because He would not have waited to command Himself. CHAPTER 13. Therefore, you say, if God spoke and God made, if one God spoke and another God made, then two Gods are proclaimed. If you are so obstinate, suppose it so for the moment. And that you may suppose this all the more, take also in the Psalm that two are called Gods: 「Your throne, O God, is for ever; the rod of direction is the rod of your kingdom; you have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, therefore God, your God, has anointed you.」
If it speaks to God, and of God anointed by God, here too it affirms two Gods. Thence also Isaiah says, addressed to the person of Christ: 「And the Sabeans, men of stature, shall pass over to you and shall follow after you, bound in their hands, and shall worship you, because God is in you; for you are our God, and we knew it not, the God of Israel.」 For here too, by saying 「God is in you」 and 「You are God,」 it sets forth two: He who was in Christ, and Christ Himself. There is more, which in the Gospel you will find just as many: 「In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God」: one who was, and another with whom He was. But I also read the name of Lord in two: 「The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand.」
And Isaiah says this: 「Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?」 For he would not have said 「your arm」 rather than 「the Lord's,」 if he did not wish both the Father as Lord and the Son as Lord to be understood. Even still more ancient is Genesis: 「And the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah sulphur and fire from heaven, from the Lord.」 Either deny that these things are written, or who are you to think they are not to be received just as they are written—especially those which have their sense not in allegories and parables, but in definite and simple statements? But if you are among those who then would not endure the Lord when He showed Himself to be the Son of God, lest they should believe Him to be Lord, remember that it is written, together with them: 「I said, You are gods, and sons of the Most High;」
and, 「God stood in the assembly of gods」: so that if Scripture did not fear to pronounce as gods men made sons of God through faith, you may know that it much more rightly conferred the name of God and of Lord upon the true and only Son of God and Lord. Therefore, you say, I will challenge you, that even today, on the authority of these Scriptures, you should consistently proclaim two Gods and two Lords. Far from it. For we, who by God's grace examine both the times and the causes of the Scriptures—being disciples especially of the Paraclete, not of men—do indeed define two, the Father and the Son, and now three with the Holy Spirit, according to the principle of the economy which produces number; lest, as your perversity infers, the Father Himself be believed to have been born and to have suffered, which it is not lawful to believe, since it has not been so handed down.
Nevertheless, we never bring forth from our mouth two Gods and two Lords: not as though the Father were not God and the Son God and the Holy Spirit God, and each one God, but because formerly both two Gods and two Lords used to be proclaimed, so that when Christ should come, He might be acknowledged as God and called Lord, because He is the Son of God and of the Lord. For if one person of both God and Lord were found in the Scriptures, Christ would rightly not have been admitted to the name of God and Lord—for no other besides one God and one Lord was proclaimed—and it would have come about that the Father Himself would seem to have descended, because one God and one Lord was read, and His whole economy would have been overshadowed, which was foreseen and dispensed as the material of faith.
But when Christ came and was recognized by us as being the very One who had formerly made up the number, having been made second from the Father and, with the Spirit, third—the Father also being more fully manifested through Him—then the name of God and of Lord was brought back into a union: so that, because the nations were passing over from the multitude of idols to the one God, a difference too might be established between the worshippers of one and of manifold divinity. For it behoved Christians also to shine in the world as sons of light, worshipping and naming as the light of the world one God and Lord.
For the rest, if out of the awareness by which we know the name of God and of Lord to belong both to the Father and to the Son and to the Spirit, we were to name them Gods and Lords, we would have extinguished our torches, becoming even more timid toward martyrdoms, since an occasion of escaping would open on every side for those who swear at once by gods and lords—as certain heretics do, whose gods are many. Therefore I will not at all say Gods nor Lords, but I will follow the Apostle, so that if the Father and the Son are to be named together, I may call the Father God and name Jesus Christ Lord. But Christ alone I shall be able to call God, just as the same Apostle says: 「Of whom is Christ, who is,」 he says, 「God over all, blessed unto every age.」 For I will also call a ray of the sun, by itself, the sun:
but naming the sun, whose the ray is, I will not straightway also call the ray the sun. For even if I make two suns, nevertheless I will reckon both the sun and its ray as two things and two species of one and undivided substance, just as God and His Word, just as the Father and the Son. CHAPTER 14. There stands by us also that rule which vindicates two, the Father and the Son, which defined God to be invisible. For when Moses in Egypt had desired the sight of the Lord, saying, 「If then I have found grace before you, manifest yourself to me, that I may see you knowingly」: 「You cannot,」 He said, 「see my face; for man shall not see my face and live」—that is, whoever sees it shall die.
For we find that God was seen by many, and yet that none of those who had seen Him died: God being seen indeed according to men's capacities, not according to the fullness of the divinity. For the patriarchs are reported to have seen God, as Abraham and Jacob, and the prophets, as Isaiah, as Ezekiel, and yet they did not die. Therefore either they ought to have died if they had seen Him—for no one shall see God and live; or if they saw God and did not die, the Scripture lies in saying that God said, 「If a man see my face he shall not live」; or the Scripture lies when it sets forth God either as unseen or as seen. Now therefore it will be another who was being seen, because the same who was being seen cannot be defined as invisible:
and it will follow that we understand the Father to be invisible according to the fullness of majesty, but acknowledge the Son to be visible according to the measure of derivation—just as it is not permitted us to contemplate the sun as regards the very sum of its substance which is in the heavens, but we endure its ray with our eyes according to the tempered portion which is thence extended to the earth. Here, on the contrary, someone will wish to contend that the Son also is invisible, as being the Word, as being the Spirit, and, while he vindicates one condition of the Father and the Son, to establish rather one and the same Father and Son. But we have said that the Scripture supports the difference through the distinction of the visible and the invisible.
For they add this also to their argumentation: that if the Son was then speaking to Moses, He would pronounce His own face visible to no one, because forsooth the invisible Father Himself was under the name of the Son. And through this they wish Him to be so understood as both visible and invisible, in the same way as the same Father and Son, since, a little above—before He had denied His face to Moses—it was written that the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as when a man speaks to his own friend; no less than Jacob also says, 「I saw the Lord face to face」: therefore the visible and the invisible are the same; and because both are the same, therefore the Father Himself is invisible, in the same respect as the Son is visible.
As if the exposition of Scripture which is made by us did not suit the Son, the Father being set apart in His own invisibility. For we say that the Son too, in His own name, is thus far invisible, in so far as He is the Word and Spirit of God, by the condition of substance even now; but that He was visible before the flesh in the manner in which He says to Aaron and Miriam, 「Even if there be a prophet among you, I will be known to him in a vision, and I will speak to him in a dream, not as with Moses will I speak to him mouth to mouth in appearance (that is, in truth) and not in an enigma (that is, not in a figure)」: just as the Apostle also says, 「Now we see as through a mirror in an enigma, but then face to face.」
Therefore, since He reserves for Moses the sight of Himself and the colloquy face to face for the future (for this was afterward fulfilled in the retirement of the mountain, as we read in the Gospel that Moses was seen conversing with Him in a vision), it appears that in the past God (that is, the Son of God) was always seen in a mirror and an enigma and a vision and a dream, both by the prophets and patriarchs and by Moses himself as yet: and even if the Lord perhaps spoke openly face to face, yet not so that man, as he is, might see His face, except perhaps in a mirror and in an enigma. Finally, if the Lord had so spoken to Moses that Moses too knew His face close at hand, how is it that at once and in the same place he desires to see His face, which, because he had seen it, he would not desire?
How likewise does the Lord too deny that His face can be seen, which He had shown—if indeed He had shown it? Or what is the face of God whose sight is denied? If there was one that was seen—「I saw,」 says Jacob, 「God face to face, and my soul was saved」—there must be another face which, if it be seen, slays. Or was the Son indeed being seen—even face to face, but this very thing in a vision and dream and mirror and enigma, because the Word and Spirit cannot be seen except in an imaginary form—while He calls His own face the invisible Father? For who is the Father? Will He not be the face of the Son, by the name of the authority which, begotten by the Father, He obtains?
For it is not fitting, even concerning some greater person, to say, 「That man is my face,」 and 「He furnishes me a face.」 「The Father,」 He says, 「is greater than I」: therefore the Father will be the face of the Son. For what does the Scripture also say? 「Christ the Lord is the Spirit of His person.」 Therefore, if Christ is the Spirit of the paternal person, rightly did the Spirit, whose person He was—that is, the Spirit of His Father—declare His own face out of unity, of course. It is plainly a wondrous thing whether the Father can be understood to be the face of the Son, who is His head: for the head of Christ is God. CHAPTER 15. If I do not resolve this point by questions of the Old Scripture, I shall take confirmation of our interpretation from the New Testament, lest you should defend against the Father in like manner whatever I ascribe to the Son.
For behold, both in the Gospels and in the Apostles I detect a visible and an invisible God, under a manifest and personal distinction of each condition. John exclaims, as it were, 「No one has ever seen God」: not even in the past, of course; for he removed the question of time by saying that God was never seen. The Apostle too confirms concerning God, 「Whom no one of men has seen, nor even can see」: namely because whoever shall see Him will die. Yet these same Apostles testify both that they have seen Christ and have handled Him. Moreover, if Christ Himself is both Father and Son, how has He been both seen and unseen?
To bring together into one this diversity of the seen and the unseen, whoever will argue against us from the opposite side will say that both are rightly affirmed: visible indeed in the flesh, but invisible before the flesh, so that the same is the invisible Father before the flesh who is also the visible Son in the flesh. But if the same is invisible before the flesh, how is He found to have been seen even in the past before the flesh? Likewise, if the same is visible after the flesh, how is He also now pronounced invisible by the Apostles—unless because there is one whom, even seen in the past in an enigma, the flesh made more fully visible, namely the Word who was also made flesh; and another whom no one ever saw, namely the Father whose the Word is? Finally, let us inspect whom the Apostles saw.
「What we have seen,」 says John, 「what we have heard, we have seen with our own eyes, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life.」 For the Word of life was made flesh, and was heard and seen and handled because flesh; who before the flesh was Word only, in the beginning with God the Father—not Father with Himself. For even though the Word was God, yet with God, because God of God, because He was with the Father in the Father's presence. 「And we saw His glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father,」 that is, of the Son, of course, visible, glorified by the invisible Father.
And therefore, because he had called the Word of God 「God,」 lest he should aid the presumption of the adversaries, as though he had seen the Father Himself, in order to distinguish between the invisible Father and the visible Son, he adds superabundantly, 「No one has ever seen God.」 What God? The Word? But no—「We have seen and heard and handled concerning the Word of life,」 has been said before. But what God? The Father, of course, with whom the Word was God, the only-begotten Son, who Himself expounded the bosom of the Father. He Himself was both heard and seen, and, lest He be believed a phantasm, also handled. Him also Paul beheld, yet did not see the Father: 「Have I not,」 he says, 「seen Jesus?」 And Christ too he himself surnamed God:
「Whose are the fathers, and from whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all, blessed unto every age.」 He shows also the visible Son of God Himself, that is, the Word of God, because He who was made flesh was called Christ. But concerning the Father, to Timothy: 「Whom no one of men has seen, nor even can see」; exaggerating still further: 「Who alone has immortality and dwells in inaccessible light」; concerning whom he had also said above: 「To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God」; so that we should ascribe the contraries to the Son Himself: mortality, accessibility. Whom he attests to have died according to the Scriptures, and to have been most recently seen by himself, through an accessible light, of course:
although even that light neither he himself experienced without peril to his eyesight, nor did Peter and John and James experience it without something of reason and near-madness; who, if they had seen not the glory of the Son who was to suffer, but the Father, would, I believe, have died there on the spot: for no one shall see God and live. If these things are so, it is established that He was always seen from the beginning who was seen in the end, and that He was not seen even in the end who was not seen from the beginning either, and thus that there are two, the seen and the unseen. The Son therefore was always seen, and the Son was always conversant, and the Son always operated, by the authority and will of the Father; because 「the Son can do nothing of Himself unless He sees the Father doing」—doing in thought, of course.
For the Father acts in thought, but the Son, seeing what is in the Father's thought, brings it to completion. Thus all things were made through the Son, and without Him nothing was made. CHAPTER 16. And do not think that only the works of the world were made through the Son, but also those which have been done by God ever since. For the Father who loves the Son and has delivered all things into His bosom, loves Him surely from the beginning and has delivered all from the beginning. From the time when from the beginning the Word was with God and the Word was God, to whom all power was given by the Father in heaven and on earth, the Father judges no one but has delivered all judgment to the Son—yet from the beginning:
for by saying 「all power,」 and 「all judgment,」 and 「all things made through Him,」 and 「all things delivered into His hand,」 it allows no exception of time, because they will not be 「all」 if they have not been of all time. It is therefore the Son who from the beginning judged, dashing down the most arrogant tower and scattering the tongues, punishing the whole world with the violence of the waters, raining upon Sodom and Gomorrah fire and sulphur, a Lord from the Lord. For He Himself also always descended to converse with humans, from Adam even to the patriarchs and prophets, in vision, in dream, in mirror, in enigma, foreordaining His own order from the beginning, which He was always to carry through to the end.
Thus God was always learning to converse on earth with men—no other than the Word who was to be flesh. And He was learning it in order to pave for us the way of faith, that we might the more easily believe that the Son of God had descended into the world, if we recognized that something of such a kind had also been done in the past. For it is on our account that, just as things were written, so also they were done—on us upon whom the ends of the ages have run down. So too He already knew human affections even then, being about to take on the very substances of man, flesh and soul, when He questioned Adam as if not knowing, 「Where are you, Adam?」
repenting that He had made man as if not foreknowing, tempting Abraham as if ignorant of what is in man, offended and reconciled with the same persons—and whatever the heretics seize upon as unworthy of God, to the destruction of the Creator, being ignorant that these things belonged to the Son, who was also to undergo human sufferings, and thirst and hunger and tears and birth itself and death itself, having on this account been made a little lower than the angels by the Father. But the heretics indeed will not even reckon that those things befit the Son of God which you bring in upon the Father Himself, as though He had lessened Himself for our sake, whereas Scripture says that one was lessened by another, not that He lessened Himself by Himself.
For the rest, what sort of thing is it that God—that Almighty, invisible One whom no one of men has seen nor can see, He who dwells in inaccessible light, He who dwells not in things made by hands, at whose sight the earth trembles and the mountains melt like wax, who grasps the whole world in His hand like a nest, whose throne is heaven and whose footstool is the earth, in whom is every place, He Himself not in a place, who is the outermost boundary of the universe, that Most High One—should have walked in paradise toward evening seeking Adam, and should have closed the ark after Noah's entrance, and should have refreshed Himself with Abraham under the oak, and should have called Moses out of the burning bush, and should have appeared as the fourth in the furnace of the Babylonian king—although He was called the Son of man?
And in image and mirror and enigma, of course—and even these things ought not to have been believed of the Son of God had they not been written, and perhaps ought not to be believed of the Father even though written—whom these men bring down into the womb of Mary and set upon the tribunal of Pilate and shut up again in the tomb of Joseph. Hence, therefore, their error appears. For, being ignorant that from the beginning the whole order of the divine dispensation ran its course through the Son, they believe the Father Himself to have been both seen and met with and to have operated, and to have suffered thirst and hunger—against the prophet who says, 「The eternal God shall not thirst nor hunger at all」—how much more shall He neither die nor be buried—and thus that one God, that is the Father, always did the things which were done through the Son.
the Son acting in the Father's name, the Lord Himself saying, 「I have come in my Father's name」; likewise to the Father Himself, 「I have manifested your name to men」; the Scripture also agreeing, 「Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord」—the Son, of course, in the Father's name. And the name of the Father is God Almighty, the Most High, the Lord of hosts, the King of Israel, He Who Is. In so far as the Scriptures thus teach, we say that these things too were shared in by the Son, and that in these the Son came, and in these He always acted, and thus manifested them in Himself to men. 「All things,」 He says, 「that are the Father's are mine」: why not the names also?
When therefore you read of God Almighty and the Most High and the God of hosts and the King of Israel and Him Who Is, see whether through these the Son too be not shown, in His own right, to be God Almighty inasmuch as He is the Word of Almighty God, and inasmuch as He received all power; the Most High inasmuch as He was exalted at the right hand of God, as Peter proclaims in the Acts; the Lord of hosts because all things were subjected to Him by the Father; the King of Israel because to Him properly fell the lot of that nation; likewise Him Who Is, since many are called sons and are not. But if they wish the name of Christ also to be the Father's, they shall hear in its own place.