Works 2 part 7/8

But that He was made less also than men, hear Isaiah saying: 'We saw Him, and there was no beauty in Him, nor comeliness; but His appearance was despised, and lacking above the sons of men' (Isa. 53:2–3). And Luke the evangelist also says of Him: 'And He was subject to His parents' (Luke 2:51). All of which, if they be taken according to the form of humanity, His divinity is found inferior not only to the Father, but also to the angels and men. But because He had in Himself both natures, namely of God and of man, He speaks and acts the things of each nature. For it is not of the same nature to say, 'The Father is greater than I' (John 14:28), and to say, 'I and the Father are one' (John 10:30).

To say, 'The Son can do nothing of Himself' (John 5:19); and to say, 'Whatever the Father doeth, these also the Son doeth likewise.' To say, 'I came not to do my own will' (John 6:38); and to say, 'As the Father raiseth up the dead and giveth them life, so also the Son giveth life to whom He will' (John 5:21). Whence also, with the authority of free will, He says to the leper: 'I will; be thou made clean' (Mark 1:41). XLIX. It is not therefore, I say, of one nature, to be contained in the lap of a manger, and to be proclaimed by the signs of the stars; to be subjected to men, and to be ministered to by angels; to flee from place to place, and to exhibit His presence everywhere; to dwell in earthly things, and not to forsake the heavenly; to be tempted by the devil, and to cast his legions into the abyss;

to endure hunger, and to satisfy many thousands of men; to thirst for water, and to change the streams of liquid into the nature of wine; in a single moment, for the quenching of thirst, to ask for cups from a well, and to grant the perennial courses of a billowing river; to cross the seas in a boat, and by a marvellous gait to tread those same seas with a dry footstep; to be ignorant of the day, and to know the Father; not to grant two seats to those who asked, and of His own accord to promise twelve thrones together; to dread death, and to mock death; to fear to be seized, and to bring back the captives, and utterly to despoil all the rights of hell; to complain of being forsaken, and presently to admit the thief into the fellowship of the patriarchs; to have founded all things out of nothing, and to receive power over them when death was triumphed over.

Thou seest therefore, most excellent Probus, examiner, that in this dispensation of the assumed flesh nothing whatever was detracted from the divinity, while where the office of humility is fulfilled in the body, there the miracles of divine powers flash forth. Therefore He is equal to the Father according to that which He is God, and greater is the Father according to that which He was made man. L. These things I have therefore briefly heaped all together into one mass of response, since concerning all these chapters of questions our blessed Ambrose disputed more widely and more fully. Against whom Palladius, a bishop of Arian treachery, while now, I believe, that holy man had been taken away from human affairs, believed that certain things ought to be written down in refutation of his sayings.

If therefore anything could now be objected by thee, he has already forestalled it with his own objections. Since I have already responded to him in one book, I think it better, if perhaps anything here seems to have been omitted, to explain it there more fully, by the help of divine grace; so that in that book too Arius may acknowledge himself to be overcome. Wherefore deign, most excellent Probus, to bring forth the final sentence concerning what has been ascertained. The judge Probus said: If, after innumerable testimonies promulgated by heavenly teaching, anything seems to have remained to Arius, let him not be loath to propose it. Although, as I judge, nothing of reply has remained to him—by which replies, namely, he might be able to drive Athanasius from the reasoning of one substance, that is, of the homoousion.

But lest afterward he should complain of any oppression by us, let no place for responding be taken from him. Arius said: It is doubtful to none that Athanasius does not cease, by magical arts, to pervert the sense of the judges; so that they cannot keep to the path of the right faith toward those who follow and worship it more religiously. And therefore that which I am not able to explain in the examination of thy eminence, I will reserve for the judgment of the prince, where the searching out of truth prevails, and it is to be believed that magical arts cannot prevail against the observance of the true faith. Athanasius said:

They who cannot be present to support their own assertions do not cease to find for themselves an excuse by any deceitful arguments or cavils whatever, just as your magnitude now perceives Arius to be doing more fully. But for me, who vindicate the true faith, let it suffice to have responded to all the things which have been proposed by him in the presence of your eminence. THE SENTENCE OF THE JUDGE PROBUS. 1. The judge Probus said: From love of truth and faith, I have sat as arbiter among the followers of the Christian religion, that is, Athanasius, Sabellius, Arius, and Photinus.

Since they, by the diversity of their dogmas and the variety of their opinions, are separated from one another by a long interval of difference, I took care to explore more studiously whose faith among them might be marked out by true assertions. That I might know this the better, I caused them one by one to bring forth the opinions of their own faith, and by my interlocution I demanded that they corroborate these same opinions with probable proofs; with those, namely, who came against them and refuted them objecting, so that, with some defending and others striving against, the recognition of the most lucid truth might be opened up. That they did this thus, is demonstrated by the reading of the proceedings themselves. II.

When therefore I had first granted to Sabellius the license of disputing, by consultation rather than by authority, he brought forth such a sentence of faith concerning God, that he said the Father subsists so solitary and singular, without any person of an existing Son or Holy Spirit, that He Himself is rather reckoned under the name of Son and Spirit: asserting a God of three names, that is, as if one species or person were called by the three names of the appellations, not by distinction of kind, but by change of office, so that the Father be held to be such not because He begot, but because He created: and that this same one, falling from the dignity of paternal honor through certain increases, or rather decreases, of nature, passed over into the name of Son by the nativity of a virgin birth.

But that these things are foolish, and impious, and devoid of all truth of faith, became most manifestly clear by the prosecutions of those who came against him. For it was shown by many and copious proofs of the divine readings, that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit subsist specially and properly in their own persons: that one is the begetter, another the begotten, another the Holy Spirit of the begotten and the unbegotten; although, according to the probable truth of faith of Athanasius, they cannot be something else, since they can be believed to be one and another, and indeed are. For truly it is a kind of extreme and profound folly to name him Father who did not beget, and to believe him Son who was not begotten;

or, by means of empty and void inventions of false names, to lead astray the senses of human minds, and by ludicrous objections of opinions to mock the Christian faith. III. After therefore the deceits of this error had been betrayed and laid open, I commanded Photinus also to be present for his faith, if he were able, by my interlocution. He, in the very beginning of his prosecution, asserted that our Lord Jesus Christ was a mere man, and void of the divinity of the Word; and that He so far advanced, through certain progresses of a blessed life, as to stand out more illustriously, so that He passed by right into the appellation of God and Lord—not by the natural privilege of dignity, but by the merit of an upright and most worthy life and action.

He says that it is impious to grant that a divine nature resided in one who was both carried by the burden of a mother's womb and passed through the customary conditions of feminine modesty; who experienced the cradle and infant cries, and also obtained the increases of age; who, far from escaping what is common to our frailty, both hungered and thirsted, was ignorant of things, was tempted, feared to die, and indeed died. But those deeds related as full of miracles in his life he asserted were performed not as God (which he claimed Christ was not), but were obtained from God through the gift of patronizing merits. Yet this doctrine too, born of shameful unbelief, was shown by numerous and manifold proofs to be impious and empty.

And that he whom Photinus despised as a mere man is also God shone forth especially from that testimony which John the Evangelist bore witness to, saying: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was made nothing that was made' (John 1:1-3); by which it is declared that he was not only God with God before the ages, but also the author of all creation. Many other testimonies as well, similar to these, were brought forward, as the body of the discourse retains and as the cited testimonies attest.

By these it clearly appeared that this Word, who is God, begotten of the Father's womb before the ages, did at the end of times, out of love for men, take up the nature of our kind; in which, with his own nature preserved, yet in one and the same person, he underwent all the sufferings of human frailty. IV. Therefore, Photinus too being excluded and his error rejected by my interjections, the whole weight of the matter and the safe basis of the faith hung upon the contest of the dispute between Arius and Athanasius. And when I had granted them opportunity to enter the contest, Athanasius laid open this path of his faith: that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit are of one essence and of one and the same nature.

On the contrary, Arius maintained that they are so far from being of one substance that the Father far surpasses the Son in dignity, power, and honor; while he said that the Son subsists within these limits and far beneath. He also declared that the word 'homoousios' must be utterly repudiated as foreign and alien to the divine Scriptures, and as recently devised at Nicaea by argument rather than by authority; or else he demanded that it be shown to him to be contained in the divine letters. Otherwise he most stubbornly argued that the very name must at the same time be cast away. But when Athanasius inquired whether he took offense at the novelty of the name or at the force of the word, Arius answered that both displeased him.

From this it appeared that he was unwilling to accept the 'homoousion' not because it was new, but because it overthrew the contrivances of his faith. But when he again and ever more frequently demanded the proper sense of the word as set down purely and specifically in the Scriptures, Athanasius alleged that it is a matter of ecclesiastical custom: that whenever the insolent and reckless audacity of heretical fraud had overstepped the bounds of the apostolic faith, it should be bound inextricably by these chains of propositions, by which he thought to hold the very liberty of the catholic understanding entangled within the snares of its own treachery. V. And that Athanasius might fortify himself with the authority of the ancients, he brought forth such examples of ancient custom.

These Arius could not only not deny, but would even defend with the same reasoning of faith as Athanasius. He therefore set forth, to demonstrate the rule of ancient usage concerning the novelty of names, that against Sabellius, who asserted that the Father was begotten, it had been decreed by past councils that catholics ought to profess him 'unbegotten' and 'unborn'; even though this very thing, more plainly set down, could not be shown by the authority of the divine Scripture, but both the very truth of the matter and the necessity of the heretical profession demanded that it be professed. Likewise, that the bishops of the religion which Arius handed on to his followers had, in the Synod of Sirmium, handed down that the Son must be confessed 'God of God, light of light.'

And that this very thing too could not be found simply and specifically set down in the divine Scriptures; and he brought forward as many other proofs similar to these as are recorded in the series of the proceedings; by which it is shown that, in order to expose the insolences of the heretics, the terms of new names were assumed; nor yet must it be believed that they acted contrary to the prohibition of the apostolic decree, which commanded that profane novelties of words be avoided. But 'profane,' he says, not 'religious.' For it is religious to call the Father 'unbegotten,' and the Son 'God of God, light of light'; and to be named 'true Christian catholics' is also shown to be a term of a new name. In like manner, then, said Athanasius, it happened also to the Council of Nicaea.

And just as Arius, against the truth of things, introduced 'triousion,' that is, three substances, so the bishops judged that 'homoousion' must be confessed, that is, that the Son is of one substance with the Father. And it was altogether consistent that, if the profession of 'homoousion' be reckoned as foreign to the law, the invention of 'triousia' too should by the same reasoning be frustrated. Or else let Arius show that 'triousion' is specifically written in the law, just as he was compelling Athanasius regarding the propriety of 'homoousion.' But when he was utterly unable to show this, it became clear that he had demanded of Athanasius superfluous things which he himself could in no way demonstrate. VI.

And when he recognized himself constrained by the same bond of the question, at length he finally bent his assent to the resolution of the proposal: that, setting aside the proof of bare words, they should by realities and reasons teach whether the natures of the Father and the Son were one or diverse. But hence Athanasius gave a clearer and more open indication of one substance, by which he showed that the Father had begotten the Son from himself and not from without; and that it could not be that he had brought forth anything other than what he himself is, since both the truth of the divine generation, out of reverence for its own honor, demanded that this be believed, and the authority of the custom of natural things invited it, that parents cannot beget children of an unlike nature.

And therefore, according to the opinion of Arius, who asserted that the Son was of another substance than the Father is, he left it to be understood by human sense that, if the Son truly exists in a diversity of nature, he would seem to be made rather than begotten; and the appellation of 'Son' and 'Father' would be empty and vain, while in appearance rather than in truth either the one is said to have begotten or the other to have been born. Or if indeed he is asserted to be truly born of the Father, yet is not believed to be of one and the same substance with him, it is fitting to profess him as degenerate and, like some monster, brought forth otherwise than the paternal nature dictated.

Since this does not befit that holy, most blessed, and ineffable majesty—especially since he has even rendered the animals free from this monstrosity of the worst condition, that they may not beget anything other than what they themselves are—it is clearly proved that the Son is of the same nature of which the Father is. VII. But against these things Arius especially objected that the Father could not have begotten the Son from himself, lest by this he should seem to be subject to the fault of some division or corruption. For if, as he said, he be believed to have begotten the Son from his very self, that is, from that which he himself is, he would surely be thought to have separated from himself some portion of his own substance.

By which, doubtless, he would seem to fall very far from the fullness of his perfection, and to be indeed divided and diminished. This head of his objection Athanasius removed by such a reasoning of truth: saying that it is impossible for God, who is incorporeal, invisible, and impalpable, to receive into himself or to possess anything that is subject to the fault of division or corruption, since indeed it belongs to tangible and corporeal materials to be divided or diminished. But God, who is in none of these, can in no way suffer any such thing; and on this account it must be believed that he begot, because he testifies that he begot. Yet that he was corrupted by this very generation is in no way to be admitted, because he is always incorrupt.

Especially since very many things are found in corporeal things subject to corruption to be so produced or born that they bring no detriment to the materials whence they are generated—just as light taken from light, whether by accession or ministered through a certain birth of increase, can bring no loss of diminution to the original material. This even the divine childbearing of the most sacred Virgin demonstrates to have been some such thing in itself, by a marvelous and inexplicable mystery of the sacraments: when, without loss of modesty, the womb full of God is emptied. And if virginal integrity, if a nature liable to corruption, is not corrupted in bearing God, how should the incorruptible nature of the Father be believed able to be corrupted in begetting the same God? VIII.

But again Arius strove to show that the nature of the Father and the Son was far unequal and unlike, on the ground that the Son said he was less than the Father, and that he did not his own will but in all things the Father's. And he asserted that the Son had confessed many other things to this effect concerning himself, which seem to me quite feeble and very incongruous as a demonstration of an unlike nature. As if, indeed, if any son who is a man does the will of his father who is a man, and confesses him to be superior and greater than himself, he could therefore be of a different nature from him—since, although the father may be preferred in honor, he is nevertheless not distinguished in nature. This indeed I would say according to the law and condition of human nature.

Furthermore, Athanasius, with a clearer judgment, opened to us the way of this understanding, in which, all the mist of hesitation being dispelled, he brought forth the clear light of truth. For what could be said or believed more plainly, to put to flight the clouds of all error, than that, just as in the one Christ we believe there are two natures, namely of God and of man, so we recognize that there is in his words and acts a twofold power of these realities? So that those things, indeed, which he speaks more sublimely, that is, 'I and the Father are one' (John 10:30), and the rest similar to these, are referred to the nature of the deity; but those which are more humble, that he spoke according to the man? Concerning the Holy Spirit too a fitting disputation was held.

Arius supposed the Holy Spirit to be far separated and alien from the communion of the nature of the Father and the Son through the confession of a creature. But that he is of one and the same substance Athanasius especially demonstrated, when he thoroughly taught that the Spirit speaks and acts those things which it is possible for God alone to do or to speak, and that such things are related of him as befit no creature. And therefore that he cannot be foreign or divided from the unity of the deity of the Father and the Son, whom a like and equal power of works demonstrated to be equal. He who, in very truth, by a detestable error of depravity, is thought alien to the fellowship of the Father and the Son, is shown to obtain an equal honor of name and power with them. IX.

That difficult and (as Arius asserted) insoluble question too, which he had raised—that three cannot be called one God, nor the same be distinguished by three persons—Athanasius so resolved by the authority of the divine Scripture that it was untangled with a greater release of truth than that with which it had been wrapped up by the folds of crafty syllogisms. For it shone forth more plainly that in the Trinity there is one God according to the union of nature, not according to the distinction of persons. And therefore the three are one God, because the nature of the three is one. For just as many souls are called one soul, and all men one man, it is asserted according to the condition of nature, which is one to all, not according to the diversity of persons.

Therefore he who by nature is one God is the same in persons three: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. If, then, you should ask the common name of these three, it is 'God'; in which one and singular name the mystery of baptism is celebrated. 'Baptize,' he says, 'the nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit' (Matt. 28:19). According to which communion of name, both the Father is called God, and the Son God, and the Holy Spirit is called God. And although each of them is singularly God, yet the unity of nature does not permit them to be called 'gods' in the plural. For the name of the nature, which is 'God,' is not private and peculiar to each one, but common. And what is common and one cannot be many.

And therefore the Trinity is called not 'gods' in the plural, but 'one God.' But where there is something peculiar, which is not interchanged with another, there both plurality and distinction can be had. Because, therefore, the Father is properly so called, and the Son is properly named, and the Holy Spirit is distinguished by his own proper appellation, and the Father cannot be understood as the Son, nor the Son as the Father, nor the Holy Spirit as either Son or Father, they are most rightly named three according to the distinction of persons—who nevertheless cannot be numbered according to the union of nature. And therefore there are three names in the persons, Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit; one name in nature, 'God'; and on this account the three are one God.

Therefore neither confusion in the three, nor diversity in the one name, is admitted; and thus the Trinity is one God according to the union of nature, and the one God is a Trinity according to the distinction of persons. These things, according to the sense of Athanasius, anyone can yet discourse upon still more truly and fully; whose assertion of faith is supported by so great an authority of truth and so great a corroboration of probable matters that, by a new and unusual kind of procedure, it is the more confirmed by the testimony of its own adversaries, and stands and subsists by those very other reasonings by which it is thought it could be destroyed. X. For the same Athanasius said that there are three persons and that their nature is one. Which opinion is confirmed also by the testimony of Sabellius and Arius.

For so far are the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit of one power and one nature, that Sabellius, beholding such force of truth, supposed there to be one single person. But so far is there not one person, but three distinct, that Arius says they are unequal and diverse in nature. Therefore the inequality of Arius indicates the distinction of persons; the confusion of Sabellius shows more openly the union of nature. Again, when Photinus, for the confirmation of his opinion—by which he supposes Christ to be a mere man—repeats those testimonies which the same Christ, conscious of his human nature, either spoke or performed:

that is, when he says that the Father is greater than himself, and that he does not his own will but the Father's, and the rest similar to these, which are more fully expressed in the body of the disputation, he most evidently confirms the faith of Athanasius, by which he asserted that Christ spoke all these things not according to the nature of the deity, but according to the humanity which the same one bore.

But also when Arius, from the weakness of his words or deeds, wishes him to be understood as a creature (judging it unworthy, that is, that the nature of the omnipotent God should be present in one whom he sees to have been subject to such great conditions of necessity), not only does he by these things the more strongly confirm the opinion of Athanasius, by which he defined that in Christ whatever he weakly spoke or performed must be received according to the dispensation of the flesh; but he is also held bound by a like bond of treachery with Photinus, since he too, by a like opinion, dared to define the Son of God a creature.

But although they differ in this, that Arius supposed the Son of God to be a heavenly creature and better than the rest, while Photinus supposed him earthly, yet both of them are joined under the name of 'creature,' since whether they have called him heavenly or earthly, they nevertheless in no way depart from the confession of a creature, both taking away from the Son that which is born of the Father; and in this very kind of assertion alone both are fit witnesses for Athanasius. But also, while they confess Christ a creature, they are found equal in a like error. XI. The faith of Athanasius, therefore, appeared probable and supported by every assertion of truth, inasmuch as it was fortified by apostolic traditions, coming from their rules. For more evidently, according to the rule of the catholic faith, it showed us one God.

It shows us one God, not tripartite, not singular, not confused, not divided, not composed of diversity, not united by some composition: but the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit so exist and are distinguished by their own persons, that nevertheless, according to the union of the common nature, there is one God. Those figments of old wives' fables too, by which Arius and Photinus, and likewise Sabellius, attributed dubious terms of words to the Father and the Son—while the one most emptily boasted that the Son was made for himself, and the others that he had not so much begotten as created him—gave way, their assertion being destroyed by the assertion of truth. For although they advanced by their various paths, yet they arrived at one and the same crossroad.

For all of them said that the Father did not beget. Indeed Sabellius and Photinus strove to build this up with open impiety. Arius, however, in the first front of the disputation thought it must be more subtly evaded, but in the course of the contest defended this very thing with stubborn shamelessness, asserting that the Father did not beget from himself, but created the Son from without. And by this, according to their nefarious errors, the Father is vainly so called if he did not beget; in vain is the Son named, whom heretical impiety has defined not to have been begotten. But that these things were the inventions of a most empty superstition, Athanasius thoroughly taught with the most manifest truth, showing that the Father truly begot, and that the Son, by the very truth of the paternal name, was truly begotten.

XII. Therefore falsehood gave way to truth, and every disguise of adulterous dogma, the integrity of the faith being made manifest, at length finally vanished; and the whole murky gloom of cloudy assertion, which with the gross veil of treachery had overspread human minds, was so dispelled to purity by the splendor of the shining faith that it could not leave even a trace of its error.