Works 4

A BOOK TO OPTATUS. CHAPTER ONE. You have wrung from me, most beloved son, that, not unmindful of the priestly office, I should write something concerning the unity of the Trinity, which is the perfect God, ever and supreme: and this you have exacted from me in many ways, though I, conscious of my own littleness, often excused myself; asserting that the religious also receive the account of the common faith, and that priests ought not to deny it to the faithful: lest either they, while they do not receive it, begin to be easily deceived by the unbelievers, or, when those who desire it are not granted it by these priests, the heavenly treasure of Christ may seem not to be expended upon His members, but in a manner to be hidden in the earth of a barren skill.

And so I confess that I have been overcome by plausible reasons, lest I should seem to hand over unarmed men to the opposing evils, while against the unbelievers they are not equipped with the bulwark of truth. But because in questions of this kind a certain obscurity is frequently incurred by continuous discourse, therefore this has seemed best to me: that I should comprehend within the brevity of the present little book the conversation which was recently held between me and Felician, with the principal letters of the names noted beforehand for the distinction of the persons. CHAPTER II. For when, some days ago, we were sitting together, then he said:

'Among other things,' he said, 'which frequently offend me in your disputations, I think nothing worse than that you so hand over the precepts of faith to the untaught, that you prescribe to those who converse not from the reasoning of things to be understood, but rather from a certain ostentation of testimonies. That this is — not to say crafty — at least how boorish it is, no one is ignorant. First, because if he who is being instructed has already believed in the books, this man complies, he does not resist: otherwise it is necessary that he contradict not you any more than those same testimonies which are brought in for what is affirmed. And therefore this way seems to me better for teaching, by which first the reasoning of faith is rendered without testimonies: afterward, the reasoning having been established, that path is polished with the Scriptures answering to it.'

'And not without reason. For if these testimonies are approved by the fact that they are not lacking in reason, then that reason can suffice by itself, which even these testimonies seem to establish only through itself. But if the contrary: who can submit the neck of a rational faith to irrational testimonies, even though they be anointed as divine? And that way of disputing, I confess, I would tolerate in others, whom the necessity of inexperience, because they cannot stand by themselves, compels to take refuge in things outside: but in you I by no means tolerate it at all, because I see that you do not lack eloquence together with the knowledge of the faith.'

Then I said, 'Do you think me so far led by my own praises that I should do injury to the holy ones who have gone before, and presume ever to trust in the wisdom of word, lest the cross of Christ be made void (1 Cor. i, 17); but, content with the authority of the Scriptures, I strive rather to obey simplicity than pride. But you say, one is better taught by reason than by testimonies. What then? What reason can you bring forward, if you proclaim the childbirth of a virgin, if you do not deny that sight was restored to the blind, if you show that the buried have returned from the dead? If, therefore, both the incomprehensible reason and the truth of these things is at hand, then in matters of faith it is more easily believed by testimonies than the reason is investigated.'

'But because you distinguish these two not too inconsistently, since, reason being premised, you also do not omit the testimonies: therefore in this disputation I confess that I shall follow that which you yourself shall have approved.' CHAPTER III. Felician said. 'Therefore,' he said, 'since we are at leisure, let us come to the question of your homoousion, concerning which there has been frequent discussion not only among us but also among our forebears. And lest the discourse wander too far, do you yourself now, as you are wont, take up the part of one proposing it, and, as we ask from you the account of our faith, inquire in turn as one about to render it.' Then I said, 'Tell me,' I said, 'whether it is true, what I hear you say, that the Son is not at all homoousion to the Father.' Felician said.

'It is true, nor can I be persuaded that what is begotten is unbegotten, lest I should seem to proclaim the same to be Father whom I proclaim Son.' Augustine said. 'It is not so: for not even to me is it in mind that the same is unbegotten who is begotten, but rather that that is unbegotten which is begotten.' Felician said. 'And how do you say that the same is not unbegotten who is begotten, if you think each one to be, not the other, but one thing?' Augustine said. 'I observe that you have not at all attended to the force of the words: for while I say that each is one, I do not at all separate the substance of the true Father and the true Son. And while I proclaim that the Father is not the same as the Son, I distinguish the person of each, the property of each one being preserved. And so, if you ask for substance, the Trinity itself is one God:'

'if you ask for person, the Son is another.' Felician. 'And how do you say both that He is the same, and that the Son is another?' Augustine. 'The same,' I said, 'by the communion of substance; another, by the property of person.' Felician. 'I know not in what manner one substance is believed to be, when one person is not said to be.' Augustine. 'It is not,' I said, 'one person, because one is said to have begotten, and another to have been begotten: and yet the substance of the born and the begetting is not diverse, because the one arisen is taught to be not unlike the one generating.' Felician. 'I would wish, I pray, that you would make your words clear to me by an easier example.' Augustine. 'In incomprehensible matters, indeed, examples are not at hand to the one disputing; nevertheless, as far as it can be done, even in this part I shall not be wanting. Behold, then, a man as father has a man as son.'

'It is common to both that he is a man; yet to the one it seems proper that he is a son, to the other that he is a father. For in each the person is so distinguished that the common humanity is not denied; while the one begets, the other is begotten: but equally is he said to be a man both who begot and he who is begotten.' CHAPTER IV. Felician. 'I would wish that you would surely say this: whether the begotten is separated from the unbegotten by a beginning, or not?' Augustine. 'Not even that is received by the truth of spiritual understanding, that the Father should be separated from the Son by the interval — I do not say of time, which consists of days and nights, but of any age or span of years whatever.' Felician. 'If this is so, you confess two unbegotten ones.'

'And how is the one thought to be the person of the Father, the other of the Son, when, through the signification of the common unbegotten, each seems to be confounded?' Augustine. 'In this matter, indeed, a sophism of no slight calumny is woven by your forebears; nevertheless, through the help of the Trinity itself, it must needs be solved by catholic simplicity. For I say the Father unbegotten, the Son begotten, and yet I do not therefore not proclaim the begotten coeternal with the unbegotten; teaching the Father unbegotten only in this, that He did not proceed from another; the Son begotten in this, that He did not exist from Himself. For it is not common to both to be born, it is not common not to be begotten: and yet it is common that the one is not torn away from the other by the interval of an intervening time.'

'And so, if we seek the property of the Father, it suffices that He alone does not have a Father; if of the Son, it is enough that He does not have offspring; but we say the deity of the Father and the Son to be one and coeternal.' Felician. 'As far as concerns me, I do not see what you are now gathering. For although you should contend with me with Aristotelian subtlety, yet it cannot come about that you distinguish Him who is begotten from Him who begot, by no antiquity of an intervening age.' Augustine. 'I know indeed, as he says, in how difficult a place the discourse is engaged: yet we have nothing to fear, who through the aid of the Holy Spirit bear witness to God. What then shall we say? Is there anything in the Father which is denied to be unbegotten, or not?'

'If there is, let Him be said to be unbegotten not in the whole, but rather in part; otherwise the Son did not begin to be from time. For if the paternity of the Father did not begin, the beginning of the offspring cannot be found. If a beginning is granted to the offspring, the paternity of the Father will not be taught to be eternal. And how will it stand, that you teach the whole in the Father to be unbegotten, you who think that the name of paternity itself has a beginning, since you say that the Son began from time, who cannot be said to have been named when the Father did not yet exist?' Felician. 'I am not so foolish as to set time before the Son, but it is certain that a beginning is given to the begotten.' Augustine. 'What then? Do you say that there was nothing in the middle between the Father and the Son?' Felician. 'Quite so.' CHAPTER V. Augustine.

How then do you deny that the Son is coeternal with the Father, you who confess that there is nothing intermediate between the Father and the Son, lest that very 'non-intermediate' should be established to be nothing other than a third? Fel. Since you box me in by the art of disputation, I will briefly explain what was said by our elders. For they say, whenever the beginning of the Son and the eternity of the Father is treated: 'There was a time when he was not, and before he was born he was not.' Aug. As far as I observe, the error of evil belief remaining, only the words have been changed. For you said, 'There was when he was not.' Did you mean that 'was' to pertain to the age, or to the Son?

If to the age — that is, as it were to a certain span of eternity before the Son's nativity — behold, you slide of necessity into the earlier blasphemy, since between Father and Son you insert a third something, time; and you say that before the Son there was God the Father and time. After these two, the Son. After these three, fourth the Spirit. But if we admit that the Son could not be begotten without time, see how widely these things we say extend. For if the Son is not without time, surely he must be said to be begotten only in a place. This being admitted, before the Son and the Spirit, time and place are taught to be in a manner coeval with the Father.

But if it is so, that the Son could not be born without place and time, in what place, or in what time, do you say place and time were made? If in none, behold, time and place could come to be without time and place. If in some, that very thing seems to be time and place, in whose origin likewise place and time are required. But if to that extent something could come to be without time and place, that you teach neither a place made in a place, nor a time made in time, I know not by what rashness you would contend that the Son could not be born without these — he who, as far as pertains to sound faith, is taught to have made both place and time. But enough of this. Now let us consider what you proclaim was said by your elders. 'There was,' you say, 'when he was not.'

If you refer that 'was' to time, behold, time is before the Son; if to the Son, the Son never was not — for the Son already was when there was not time, by whom time is said to be made. 'But before he was born,' you say, 'he was not.' Who, I ask, was not before he was born? If the Son, behold, by that very understanding time is said to have been before the Son. But if before the Son was born there was not time, it follows that the Son is said to be coeternal with the Father, between whom and the Father there is said to have been no time — especially since, among other things, with the evangelists attesting, the Son is said even to have made time. But perhaps someone may think it said of the Father: 'There was, when the Son was not.'

With which statement the following words do not harmonize, by which it is said: 'And before he was born he was not.' For according to you the Father, always existing, cannot even by you be said to be born — he who is not taught to have arisen from a beginning, and cannot fall under [the words]: 'There was when he was not begotten.' CHAPTER VI. Fel. Since you weary me not a little, contending with words of, as I think, unexpected subtlety, I therefore ask that, if it can be done, by the example of any thing you show that what you attempt to teach is possible. For I cannot otherwise believe, though crushed by the force of your speech, that the begotten is coeternal with the Father, unless you say either that both are begotten, or that both are each a Father to themselves. Aug.

Since you compel me to examples of incomparable things, let us therefore see what is the power of fire, from which there is always splendor, always heat. Each is born of it, nor yet is fire ever found in any degree without either of these. These three mutually beget one another, because not from splendor are fire and heat, nor from heat are fire and splendor, but from fire are splendor and heat always begotten. Since these things are so, do you not see that even in creatures something can be born, nor yet is there shown any time when that from which it is born could be found without the begotten?

If therefore we perceive these things by visible examples, why should we not proclaim similar things concerning the Father and the Son, or the Holy Spirit, at least as far as the common and undifferentiated eternity is concerned? For it is not therefore necessary that we call the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit equally unbegotten, because we say that none is separated from another by an intervening age — since even from other things certain things are begotten, nor yet are they taught either to be equally begetting, or to exist without one another. But what profit is it to gather many of these, when by the testimonies of a few the rest also may be estimated? Fel. Since by a new art of disputation you disturb my opinion, founded on the authority of the preceding Fathers:

therefore I would have you tell me concerning the nature of the Son of God, that is, what you think of the substance itself. For if, as you are wont to say, he is of one substance (homoousios) with the Father, then he is in a manner Father to himself; otherwise he cannot be consubstantial with his begetter. For a certain one of us used to mock the doctrine of the Homoousion thus, saying: 'If the Son was brought forth not from without, but from the very same, then the one is in a manner divided into two, since the begetter is said to be no other than the begotten.' CHAPTER VII. Aug. While you say that we contend by Aristotelian art, you yourself seem to have fled to the snares of the dialecticians. But these things can in no way terrify us, who trust in the truth of faith. What therefore do you say? '[I believe] that the Son could not be born from the substance of the Father;

lest we should seem to divide the unbegotten Father by the generation of the Son.' But if it is so, then the Son is wrongly believed, who is proclaimed as not from the Father — that is, not begotten from the very same — but as made from without among other things. That this may be easier to understand, I will explain it as far as I can. For of sons, some are adoptive, others natural. Those who are begotten are from the beginning always sons and proper to him; the others are first strangers, afterward sons, when through adoption they seem to be received into the family. To which then is the Son of God to be compared? If to the adoptive, he will be with the Father similar to us. If to the proper, he must be said to have subsisted from the substance of his begetter. 'But,' you say, 'the paternal substance is divided into two, if the Son is substantially begotten from the Father alone.'

How foolish this is, even visible things themselves teach us. For who ever, even of carnal fathers, was divided by begetting? But if that division does not fall even within the condition of the body, and no one so begot a son that he lost half of himself, do you say the Son could not be born with the integrity of the Father preserved? But why more? To those examining the nativity and origin of the Son of God, these possibilities, unless I am mistaken, occur: namely, that he is either from the Father, or from nothing, or from another, or from himself. Let us, I pray, see the consequence of these. If from himself, he is not rightly called Son, who is proclaimed not as born but as unbegotten. If from nothing, he is shown to be a creature with the rest, not the author of creation. If from another,

then he is proclaimed the son not of him in whom we believe, but of some unknown father I know not whom. But if besides these four no fifth can be found, and of these four, three cannot at all be predicated because of the evident blasphemy, it remains that he was substantially begotten of the Father — because, as we said, neither can a fifth be found, nor besides the first can any mode of these be taught; as is clear, since he is neither a creature, nor the son of another father, nor, like the Father, called unbegotten. CHAPTER VIII. Fel. As if indeed I had either predicated a fifth besides these, or predicated something of these three — I who so say that the Son did not exist from the substance of the Father, that I nevertheless do not deny that he was begotten of his will. Aug.

By that very consequence you are thrust into one of the aforesaid. For when we inquire concerning the substance of the Son, whom you do not confess to be substantially begotten of the Father, you without doubt contend that he was made from nothing among other things — since we do not say that even corruptible creatures subsisted otherwise than that God both willed them through ineffable dispensation and was able to effect them through his singular power, inasmuch as we know there was both the will by which it pleased God, and the power by which to be able lies subject to the Lord. Fel. Then is the paternal power not sufficient for the existence of the Son? Aug. As if I were contending about the power of the Father, and not about the very truth of his fatherhood.

Or did he prefer to be called the Father of one whom he willed to be conformed not to himself, but to creatures? And therefore you must confess that the Son existed from the substance of the Father, if he is both born and God; or else deny equally that he is Son and God, if he was created not from the paternal substance but from nothing, only the will and power of the Father operating, as also in other creatures. Fel. Since you compel me by necessity to such a confession, I will not be silent about what is wont to be said by our elders. For they say that the Son is a creature, but a perfect one, and one able to have dominion over all creatures. Aug. I rejoice indeed that by manifest confession you have betrayed the inmost poison of an irreligious proclamation;

yet you bring forward nothing that may seem worthy of belief. For a creature is a substance made — from the fact that it either does not yet exist, or at some time was not — of some corruptible thing, as far as in it lies, through the will of the omnipotent God. Let us see whether this definition falls upon the Son of God. For the Son, in that which he is, has been brought forth in the truth of an identical nature, because from him who is, that is, from his begetter, he is born not dissimilar; and therefore between the Son and the creature this, unless I am mistaken, is the first distinction: that he is substantially begotten of the Father, whereas the creature is perfected not from the substance of its maker, but from will and power alone. The latter is corruptible by nature, unless it be preserved by grace.

The former is incorruptible, who by being born seems to have an incorruptible substance from the incorruptible Father. The Son is in all things similar to the Father, the creature dissimilar to its maker. The former comes not from that which is not into that which is, and therefore never from that which is into that which is not. The latter comes from that which is not into that which is, and therefore, as far as pertains to itself, returns from that which is into that which is not, by the condition of its own origin. CHAPTER IX. Fel. I do not see in what region of this obscurity you involve yourself; and therefore you will do rightly if you will explain more intelligibly what has been said by you, as I think, incomprehensibly. Aug. I said, I say, concerning the Son, when I was distinguishing him from the definition of a creature,

that he is not from that which is not into that which is — which is as if I should say, he was not made from nothing. And therefore never from that which is into that which is not; that is, he is never to be dissolved into nothing from that very thing which he is, by the property of his nature. But the creature is from that which is not into that which is, whereby it is shown to have been brought forth from nothing. And therefore, as far as pertains to itself, it is from that which is into that which is not, that is, into nothing — unless perpetual grace should have brought it about otherwise — it being subject to turning by the quality of its nature. Therefore the Son will never not be, who is taught to be substantially perpetual; and this, as by his own property, he is known not unjustly to be separated from the condition of all creatures which were made through him.

Fel. Although you press my understanding with the new subtlety of these matters, yet I know not by what manner you say that the Son is coeternal with the Father, since by the common manner of speaking and by the law of nature the begetter seems to be prior to the begotten. CHAPTER X. Aug. If we estimate the author of nature by the laws of creatures, while we proclaim the Father to be prior to the Son, why do we not by the same law of nature say the Son to be stronger than the Father through the advance of time — since increases are not lacking to this one being born, and old age inflicts the injury of weakness upon the Father? But if reason itself does not accept this, let us set aside in God the law of corporeal understanding, lest we say the maker is similar to his works;

especially since from what is evident among us, we are able to show also that which is hidden. For just as without precedent a mother bore her own author, so ineffably must the Father be believed to have begotten the coeternal Son. Of a mother was born he who already existed before; of the Father, he who at no time was lacking. Let faith believe this, let understanding not seek it out, lest it either think incredible what it does not find, or not believe singular what it does find. For behold, Christ was born of a mother, nor yet was the mother's modesty diminished by the contact of a man. The Virgin bore, because the Virgin conceived; and, the order of nature not being preserved, Christ took an intact body from the intact body of his mother.

If therefore in a new manner, with no precedent, he is taught to be born according to the flesh from a body, what wonder if he proceeded from the Father not according to the custom of human birth? The son begotten from her alone did not diminish the substance of the mother, and without harm to the body of the bearer we know the body of the offspring was born; and is the incorporeal substance of the Father then believed to have been diminished, when, brought forth from the very same substantially and incorporeally, he is said to be begotten? Therefore if we weigh the nature of things with understanding as guide, let us grant a beginning, if we do not deny an end. Otherwise let us say that the Son has no beginning, precisely because we confess him to be perpetual not through grace but through nature. In sum, greater and lesser can be said in three ways:

that is, by age, by form, by power. By age the elder is greater than the boy; by form the taller than the small; by power the stronger than the weak. Let us see whether any of these befalls the Son. For he is not lesser by age, who is established to have arisen as a beginning from the Father the beginning; nor by form, whom it is not lawful to proclaim other than God; nor by power, by whom we know all to be made perfect. CHAPTER XI. Fel. I desire to know by what manner the dignity of the Father passes to the Son, and the lowliness of the offspring does not recur to the Father. Aug. That these things are now said not according to nature, the daily examples of things teach us.

For behold, let us suppose some king and king's son who, having laid aside the insignia of royal majesty, take up the garments of a subject soldier, and on account of a certain dispensation of the father and the safety of his comrades, endure the insults of rebels. Now, because it is certain that a share of royal power descends to this son by nativity, is it therefore certain that the son's injury reaches him who begot — not by the affection of compassion, but by the very property of the suffering? It is not so, because it is certain that the father is not born of the son, but the son of the father. And therefore we say that all is similar between them which pertains to the communion of nature; that is proper which is known to have befallen one person by accident.

Therefore the Son by being born has with the Father all that the Father is, but the Father does not have it from the Son. Whatever he himself specially suffered is not common to both. That he was born a man from man is a special accident, which for the most part, without prejudice to the common nature, neither is taught to have in the other. One is the substance of the Father, one the person. This person, when it begot, brought forth from itself one without doubt known to be not diverse, but another — which is taught to be no other than the first, since it is taught both common and proper: common, I say, by the unity of substance, proper by the distinction of person. When therefore that which is born exists in itself, not whatever befalls this one necessarily passes to the begetter;

just as whatever proper and substantial belongs to the begetter, established by itself, comes to the one being born. For not as the divinity of the Father was conferred on the Son by the very generation, so are the sickness, poverty, death, and lowliness of the offspring referred to the Father. This does not happen because, although it was begotten similar from one substance, that is the father's, yet because it already exists in itself, whatever things are brought into this one from within are not said to be common, but proper. If therefore this is the condition of the human race — that the substance of a son is not so far changed into another from him who begot, that it cannot be the same but becomes another; while, with many things befalling the son from without, the common nature nonetheless remains —

what is it worthy for us to believe concerning God and his Son, what is fitting to proclaim? Of whom, although according to the simple glory of the undivided majesty their nature is not dissimilar, specially by the Son a body was assumed, that he might be humbled in the weakness of our flesh — he who could suffer nothing in the substance of the common divinity. The man, the Son of man, did not assume another nature. And although he suffers in the same nature which is common with the Father, yet he does not transmit the injury to the Father; nor is God the Father believed to be passibly humbled in the Son, since not in that very nature which is common to both, but rather in ours, which he alone assumed, he is believed to have endured the perfidy of the Jews.

In sum, what, I pray, is that which hung upon the cross? What is that which the lance is said to have wounded? Passible flesh, or the substance of deity? If, a profane preacher of the incorporeal, you should take it to be the majesty, you will be seen to believe a corruptible God. If passible flesh, this is not common with the Father, so that through it that cross could touch him. CHAPTER XII. Fel. While, in the manner of a torrent, you sweep away all the things said by us, you proclaim two Christs indeed, not one. And not without reason; for if the divinity suffered nothing at all in him, then Christ according to the man was another; otherwise, through the affection of the common deity, that passion also reached the Father. Aug. It is not so.

For I neither confound nor divide our Savior. I do not confound, lest I should proclaim either incorporeal and imaginary flesh, or carnal and mortal deity. I do not separate, lest I should seem to introduce one offspring of God the Father according to the flesh, and another according to majesty; because the same Son of God both proceeded without beginning from the Father, and according to time deigned to be born of the Virgin. Impassible in his own, suffering in ours, while he deigned to clothe his incomprehensible majesty as with a certain garment of flesh. From both is one person of the mediator, not one substance. One person, I say, lest he be less than Christ;

not one substance, lest, the dispensation of the mediator being removed, he be called either of God only, or the Son of man only. Therefore I do not extend the flesh assumed in Christ by the perpetuity of the divine generation, nor do I enclose the immense deity within the age of corporeal origin; because the same is in divinity the author of all things, who in the flesh is the Redeemer of men — the same impassible in himself, who suffered in the body — while he so truly expressed the property of each nature, born from both, similar to his begetter, that it is established both that he assumed true flesh from the mother, and that he has identical deity from the Father.

These being joined into one person by the incomprehensible dispensation of the mediator, he preserved to each its own properties, but joined to the proper the qualities foreign to them. He preserved the proper, since he neither lost the immensity of divinity, nor rejected the weakness of the flesh. He joined the foreign to the proper, since the same and inseparable Christ is both slain by the property of the flesh, and by the property of deity is not held among the dead. By the property of the flesh he tasted a violent death; and by the property of deity he restored the flesh to perpetuity. Therefore it is not rightly said that the Father suffered in the Son, since in the flesh, which is not common to him with the Father, the Son suffered. And so the flesh was glorified by the majesty, while the majesty is taught to be humbled in the flesh.

But both of these are predicated, not of two Christs as you think, but of one and the same, whom after the birth of the Virgin we know to be God and man — this it is certain we proclaim. CHAPTER XIII. Fel. If therefore Christ was born of the Virgin, how is he said to be coeternal with God the Father? Aug. Concerning this indeed we have diverse contention even against others; and therefore, lest the explanation of the truth be more difficult, let us first set forth the cause of the error. For having begun from one beginning of evil belief, they pour out, in a manner, into two dissimilar ravings of understanding. For it is common to both to proclaim one nativity of Christ, not two.

But some receive, by the definition of their own dogma, that principal nativity by which before all things God was born of God; others receive only this, by which from the Virgin this Lord proceeded. Through the consequence of badly cast seed, they fell into the abyss of a similar blasphemy. For behold, those who do not believe that he was born of the Virgin subvert, as by a certain blindness of Jewish incredulity, all the faith of the Gospels, all the usefulness of baptism, all the preaching of the apostles, and in sum all the authority of the New Testament. And therefore they are not even to be thought to have known the majesty itself in the Son of God, because they cast away the sacrament of the mediator, by which the Father willed to make himself known to the nations.

But truly those who contend that he was born not from the Father before all beginning, but in time by the birth of the Virgin, have not learned that he is the creator of all, the Lord similar to the Father in omnipotence and majesty. For how will he be thought to have made all things, before whose origin it is certain that all things existed? Or how is his divinity to be professed, when, he being not yet born, the individual things were made? Or how is his divinity believed to be perpetual, when it is proclaimed to have been produced not always as the Father's, but from time? Therefore these too in a manner deny, by the necessity of consequent things, the mystery of the mediator; because they proclaim Christ not God and man, not from eternity but from time, not from power but from weakness,

not the Son from the Father before all things, similar to the Father, but from the mother among all things; not a true, but an imaginary son of man; born in the open, not through the likeness of truth — such a Christ they proclaim. Whence it happens that they are not even to be thought to know him as God in the flesh, whom before the assumption of the flesh they do not think to have been begotten of the Father. CHAPTER XIV. You see therefore by what manner among these men, though with differing means, yet the same beginning and the same outcome of error is taught? We on the contrary so defend both nativities, that we take away neither by the affirmation of the other. For we neither condemn the temporal nativity by the perpetuity of that first one, nor do we enclose the eternal nativity by the brevity of this temporal one;

knowing the inseparable offspring of the true God, and afterward the most true flesh of this true offspring. We do not confess that the divinity of Christ began when the Virgin conceived; nor that the flesh then began when, by a certain ineffable birth, that Monad — without the interval of any intervening time, in nothing differing from the Monad, save that it is called Monad — begot. The omnipotent majesty of Christ did not shrink from his voluntary weakness, nor did corporeal weakness extinguish his omnipotence. I know that the divinity of the Son of God descended to the lower regions by the property of the flesh; I know that the flesh ascended to heaven by the merit of deity. It is not proper to God that he felt hunger; but it is proper to God that with a few loaves he satisfied so many thousands of men.

It is not proper to the flesh that he walked with dry feet over the raging waves; but it is proper to the flesh that he endured spittle, slaps, and scourges. Yet one and the same is Christ, who both bore so many injuries and did not sink his limbs in the deep. And in this way, in the mediator of God and men, I confess the deity to have been affected by the injury of its body, just as we know the flesh to have been glorified by the majesty of deity. Therefore Christ died, who also rose again; nor yet is each done by one nature, but the individual things by individual natures. Yet in both he himself, perfect, accomplished them, since one and inseparable he accomplished things so diverse: by the one he tasted death, by the other he raised the dead.

And thus he showed himself God and man, the true mediator of both, neither with doubled person nor with confused substance. The Son of God entered the womb of the Virgin, that he, already begotten before, might be born again; and he took on the whole man, who already had from the Father the fullest deity. Not dissimilar to his begetter when he was born, perpetual from the eternal; not dissimilar to man, when from a mother he was born, about to die. Yet the same, both eternal in his own nature, and about to die in ours, while he contains both from himself, and loses neither from the other. And thus from God and man Christ was born not imperfect, but most full in the diverse property; just as from soul and body each of men is taught to be perfect.

The body is not one man, the soul another, although the soul is one thing and the body another; yet one and the same man is taught to be both body and soul. Again, the body and the soul are not one and the same thing, because from both one man was made. For these things neither confound the substance in the truth of the person, nor double the person by the diversity of substance, since from these one man is known to have existed. They do not lose their own properties, but because they came together into one and inseparable thing, from being proper they are seen to have become common. The mind is affected in the body by the pains of the body; the body is wearied by the thoughts of the mind; and yet one of these is proper to the body, the other to the mind.

Which, when it befalls one man, seems common both to the body and to the mind. So after the birth of the Virgin there was not one Son of God and another of man, but the same Christ was the Son of God and of man. And just as in one man the soul is one thing, the body another, so in the mediator of God and men, one thing was the Son of God, another the son of man; yet one Christ the Lord from both there was. Another thing, I say, by the distinction of substance, not another person by the unity of person. CHAPTER XV. Fel. In the foregoing you had indeed compelled me to believe the nativity of Christ from the mother, with his perpetuity preserved; but because things arisen against reason by the force of speech cannot remain lasting in us,

therefore, when with anxious attention I look back to my proposition, I do not yet seem to myself to have found in the things said by you what I seek. For I know not in what manner you teach that he was born in time, whom you say to have already been coeternal with the Father. For to be born is, as it were, a certain motion of a thing not existing before it is born, accomplishing this by the benefit of nativity, that it should be. Whence it is gathered that Christ, who already was, could not be born; and if he could be born, he was not. Aug. By a new curiosity of questioning you compel us to the inquiry of incomprehensible things; and therefore what you seek can be explained only by certain outlines of examples. Allow me therefore to bring forward, in place of an affirmed thing, the matter of another question:

because, since I now bring it forward not for belief in itself, but for the demonstration of another thing, do not cast me into explaining within it what I believe; but think me for the present to believe thus, that you may more easily understand the things I shall say. Let us imagine therefore, as very many wish, that there is in the world a universal soul, which by an ineffable motion so vivifies all seeds, that it is not concreted with the things begotten, but itself furnishes life to the things to be begotten. Now when this soul comes into the womb, to form the passible matter for its own uses, it makes there to be with itself the person of that thing, which is established not to have the same substance; and there comes to be, the soul operating and the matter undergoing, from two substances one man — since the soul is taught to be one thing, the flesh another:

and thus we confess that the soul is born from the womb, the soul which, coming to the womb, we say conferred life on the conceived. It is said, I say, to be born from the mother, because from her it acquired for itself a body in which it could be born — not because, before it was born, as far as pertains to itself, it utterly did not exist. And here, if as an observer of daily speech you attend to the force of words, we propose contraries, we proclaim opposing things; and yet in these it is established that what we say is true. We know that the soul is born from the mother's womb together with the body, but we also see the soul proclaimed prior to the mother. In the son the mother begets the soul, but yet even in the mother herself nothing but the soul lives, without which not even she herself who begot can exist.

And so, if we seek the origin of the living power, it is prior to the mother, and again it seems to be born from her together with her offspring. Prior, I say, is the soul, by which the mother is animated; prior is the mother, through whom in the son both the soul too seems to be born. Yet the mother did not turn the soul into flesh, nor did she change the flesh into soul; rather, the one Creator of flesh and of soul and of the whole man brought forth, out of the mother's womb, flesh already ensouled. He, by the dispensation of an analogy that joins diverse things, in one and the same man both joined the two by an indissoluble unity, and confounded neither through participation in the other. CHAPTER XVI.

Thus then—nay, far more incomprehensibly and sublimely—the Son of God was born of his mother by the assumption of a perfect man, He who by his singular omnipotence is to all that are begotten not merely the means but also the cause of their being born. According to his manhood, I say, God was born of the Virgin, in that same manner whereby the soul too is taught to be born together with the body: not because there is one substance of the two, but because of the two one person is made. The body is not one man and the soul another, but the body and soul are one man. So after the Virgin's childbearing, the Son of God is not one and the Son of man another, but the same Christ is Son of God and of man. And just as in one man the body is one thing and the soul another, so in the one Mediator the Son of God is one thing, the Son of man another:

yet the same, and no other, is the Son of God than the Son of man—although in one respect Son of God and in another Son of man. We do not say that the Son of God began from the beginning of the flesh, lest anyone believe in a deity that is temporal. We do not acknowledge the flesh of the Son of God to be from eternity, lest we suppose he assumed not the truth of a human body but some sort of image. For the truth of the flesh does not consume the majesty of the Son of God, nor does the immensity of the deity consume the truth of the flesh; while the one shines forth in its own powers, the other is taught in our infirmities. But the one and inseparable Christ is both humbled in what he has assumed and glorified in what is his own, since he does not disdain to be afflicted by injuries and yet keeps his equality with the Father.

Mary therefore both bore and did not bear the Son of God. She bore him, when from her, according to the flesh, Christ was given; she did not bear him, when from the Father, without beginning, the Son existed. She bore him, when from her the Word came forth as flesh, that he might dwell among us; she did not bear him, when in the beginning the Word was God, which gave origin to all things. Do not, then, by the Virgin's childbearing set a limit to the origin of God the Word. Do not call the body begotten of the Virgin coeternal with the deity; for the Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim. 2:5), by his first nativity is coeternal with the Father, and by the second a sharer in our time: in the former the author of time, in the latter a sharer of an age. CHAPTER XVII. Felician.

Felician: Since you have treated the mystery of the Mediator with clear reasoning and sufficiently for anyone's belief, therefore I ask you to bid it be explained to me what also ought to be thought concerning the soul of Christ. For it has always been handed down by our forefathers that Christ's body, in place of a common soul, was animated by the very habitation of the Son of God; nor did it stand in need of the accession of a vital spirit, since the indwelling fount of life could bestow upon it the fact that it lived. Augustine: We could indeed teach by the testimonies of the divine volumes that which in this question is prescribed by the definition of catholic authority; but since it has now pleased us to discuss everything not by the evidence of books, but by reason alone:

therefore, reserving the records of the Scriptures for another time, as was done above, so also shall we treat of the inquiry concerning the soul. That this may be done the more easily, let us briefly inquire—with only a single reading of the Apostle set before us—what was the cause for our Savior of assuming manhood; once that is found, we shall without any difficulty pass on also to these matters that follow from what precedes. From the beginning, therefore, God made man of body and soul; and he, transgressing the precepts of the law, after his usurpation of the forbidden tree, received in a manner the sentence of capital punishment. To that state from which he had fallen, restored only by the grace of his author, he could in a manner return by the right of postliminy:

just as one who has cast himself headlong from a height by his own will, indeed had in his own power what he did, but it is certain that what falls is no longer subject to its own choice. And so he who fell by his own act rises by another's benefit. Nor is he therefore to be said not to have fallen by his own act, because he is known to rise by another's; nor on that account to have risen by his own, because it is certain he did not fall by another's. But of this elsewhere; now let us return to the point proposed. CHAPTER XVIII. The venerable Paul therefore says that for this reason Christ was born according to the flesh: That as through one man sin entered into this world, and through sin death; and so it passed unto all men, in whom all have sinned (Rom. 5:12). And a little after:

But not as the offense, so also is the grace. For if by the offense of one many died, much more has the grace of God and the gift, in the grace of the one man Jesus Christ, abounded unto many. And not as it was by one sin, so also is the gift: for the judgment was from one unto condemnation, but grace is from many offenses unto justification. For if by the offense of one death reigned through one, much more shall they who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of justice reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ. Therefore, as by the offense of one, unto all men unto condemnation, so also by the justice of one, unto all men unto justification of life. For as by the disobedience of one man many were made sinners,

so also by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous (Rom. 5:15–19). Christ therefore came to save that which had perished (Luke 19:10). First, then, let us see what it was that perished by the transgression of the first-formed man, and we shall easily be able to know this: what the Lord by his coming could save. We must therefore inquire who it was that received the Creator's law. For he without doubt sinned, because he despised the precepts; he despised the precepts, who committed what was forbidden. Now the Scripture says: The Lord commanded Adam, saying: Of every tree that is in paradise you shall eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat of it. For in whatever day you shall eat of it, you shall die the death (Gen. 2:16–17).

Let us therefore now ask whether the whole man received this law. For if, as is contained in the book of Genesis, he received it already perfect, consisting of body and soul, then the whole man sinned in transgressing; and if the whole sinned in transgressing, the whole then perished by the fault of its own sin. But if the whole perished, the whole stood in need of the Savior's benefit. And if the whole stood in need of the Savior's benefit, Christ by his coming saved the whole; and if by coming he saved the whole, he assumed not body without soul, but body and soul—of which the whole man is seen to consist, and to have sinned before. For if, when the whole man sinned, Christ assumed only his flesh, the soul would have remained even now subject to the penalty of that first transgression without any hope.

But if this is so, I do not know what the person of the Mediator has conferred upon us, who, not redeeming our better part in its entirety, assumed brute flesh by itself—flesh which, without soul, could not even feel his benefit. CHAPTER XIX. I would, however, ask of preachers of this sort why the dispensation of the Mediator, having taken flesh, omitted the soul. Unless perhaps either, knowing it to be guiltless, he did not believe it to be in need of medicine; or, deeming it foreign to himself, he did not endow it with the benefit of redemption; or, judging it wholly incurable, he was unable to heal it; or, as worthless and seeming fit for no uses, he cast it away. Two of these, by the unbelief of a blasphemous spirit, rave senselessly against the very Creator of the whole man.

For the first held him impossible, the second held him not the God of all. For how is he taught to be almighty, if he could not heal what was despaired of? Or how is he the God of all, if he himself did not make our soul? But by the other two, in the one the cause of the soul is not known, in the other its merit does not appear. Or is he to be thought to understand the cause of the soul, who strives to separate it—instructed by the habit of innate reason for the receiving of the law—from the sin of a voluntary transgression? Or how does he know its nobility, who says it has been despised through the defect of ignobility, preferring the flesh, which it is agreed was molded not by the breath of God like the soul, but from the slime of the earth?

But if none of these things is rightly thought concerning the soul, let us believe that our Redeemer assumed the whole man, lest we should seem in some way to let the eternal benefit lapse from our soul. Alas! they say, Christ assumed only the flesh, he did not seek the soul. Here, if you attend as a contemplator skilled in the origin of both, the substance of the soul is the more precious; if as to the fault of transgression, on account of its understanding the soul's case is the worse. But I know Christ to be perfect in wisdom, and I do not doubt that he is most loving: of these, by the first he did not despise the better part, capable of prudence; by the second he assumed that which had been the more deeply wounded. For it neither befits wisdom, of two things equally its own, to love the more foolish the more;

nor does it befit perfect piety not to have helped the more needy. CHAPTER XX. Felician: All the things that have been said by you not only reasonably but also truly, I confess that I have understood in what precedes, and I do not deny that I have approved them; but in what manner the divinity of Christ is said to have felt death, I do not know. Whether about this you have said something obscurely, or I, by the slowness of my wit, could not sufficiently grasp what was said, I know not. For I would not dare to believe that that fount of life, from which all things have what they live by, fell so far away from the property of its own nature during the three days that the body lay in the tomb—that, if it is right to say so, with its senses buried, it lost all motion of vital substance;

and that, for the redemption of the human race, it forsook not only the Father, but also all the ornaments of spiritual glory. Augustine: Far, far be from the faithful this suspicion, that Christ so felt our death as to lose—inasmuch as he is life in himself—life itself. For if this were so, how do we say that during those three days anything could live, if we believe that the fount of life had dried up? The divinity of Christ therefore felt death by participation in the human affection which it had of its own accord assumed; it did not lose the power of its own nature, by which it gives life to all things. So in the tomb it did not forsake its own flesh in dying-together, just as in the Virgin's womb it formed it in being-born-together.

And so in both—to be born and to die—the Lord willed it not as compelled by another, but of his own accord, so that it is established that he endured that which he himself did: he is not therefore not-suffering, because he himself was doing it; nor not-doing, because no other was bearing it. For if you consider the mystery of the Lord's incarnation, with the cooperation of the indivisible Trinity preserved, in this humiliation he is to himself both author and work: the same author, because of his own accord he is born, of his own accord he suffers; the same work, because, though none other compels, he alone yet endures both. He made the flesh in the mother's womb—there you have the author of the work; he himself deigned to be born in it—there you have the work of the author:

yet there is one person, the property of each substance being preserved, both of the author and of the work. So then he died with life not departing, just as he suffered with power not perishing. No one takes his soul from him, for he has the power to lay it down and the power to take it up again (John 10:18). Here you have the author of the work. He lays down his soul for his friends—there you have the work of the author. To conclude this with a general definition: as often as Christ suffers anything in the flesh, it is the work of the author. But because he endures that very thing by his own power, none other compelling, he himself is the author of the work. CHAPTER XXI.

Therefore the divinity did not come to Mary by local motion, but by the ineffable manifestation of its own power, and it filled the womb that was to bring forth, and did not deprive of any part the whole that belongs to its substance in its fullness. He did not leave the Father when he came to the Virgin. Everywhere whole, everywhere perfect; for an incorporeal simplicity admits no division, and fullness knows no parts. He was therefore at one and the same time wholly even in hell, wholly in heaven. There suffering the injury of the flesh, here not relinquishing the glory of the deity. He was among the dead the resurrection of the dead; he was above the heavens the life of the living. Truly dead, truly alive; in whom both the assumption of mortality received death, and the deity, being preserved, did not lose life.

Whenever, therefore, you consider these things that were humbly endured by Christ, recognize him as the very author of his voluntary passion. So it will come to pass that, while humility is ascribed to the sufferer and power to the doer, the same Christ is at one and the same time taught to be weak when he suffers, almighty when he acts. But lest you should believe that we admit any insensibility in the death of the Son of God, it is not unfitting to investigate the things that are felt concerning death: in which, without doubt, our life forsakes the body, but does not perish; while the departing soul does not lose its own power, but lays down what it had quickened, and, as far as in it lies, itself causes the death of another, it does not receive it. It causes it, I say, by not quickening that which it forsakes—not by losing that which lives.

And so man's death is nothing other than the setting of the flesh: from which, when the force of the quickening power has withdrawn, it returns into the earth from which it was taken, having lost the senses which it did not possess through itself. CHAPTER XXII. "But," you say, "death is the contrary of life." I confess it; yet not from that kind of contraries which destroy one another by the opposition of an existing substance, but rather from those which, while they befall anything, indeed cannot exist together, but are produced by the possession and privation of one substance only. As, for example, we teach of night and day. For these too are taught to be contraries of the same kind, since there seems to be a substance not of both, but of one only. For lo, we say it is day when the sun is above the earth:

but it is agreed that the sun is a substance. When this, the course of the daytime being finished, has withdrawn from the contemplation of human sight, it presently makes night by departing. It makes it, I say, by subtracting the abundance of light, not by receiving into itself the substance of night. And so one substance of light seems to make both night and day; but not in one way. For when it comes, it produces day; when it recedes, it produces night. Whence also the not merely irreligious but even foolish division of the Manichees—by which they strive to separate good things from evil as from equally existing substances—we very often confound: showing them the greater luminary, by which we know day is made;

and compelling them likewise to teach us in turn what would be—if it is right to say so—the darksome greater light, by which we might believe night too is substantially made. But of these things elsewhere—of those who, through the folly of a blasphemous dogma, seem to affirm either non-existent things for existent, or consequent things for primal, or common things for contrary. If anyone not deprived of the eyes of faith should sift these things, he confounds all their devices by easy reasoning. Therefore, as we had begun to say, the soul no otherwise than the sun bestows life upon the flesh when it comes, and causes death when it recedes. And lest anyone think it is consumed by the body's death, let him hear what the Lord defines concerning this in the Gospels by his general authority:

Do not, he says, fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; but rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in the hell of fire (Matt. 10:28). Therefore it is agreed that the body is killed while the soul survives; and on that account it is not consequent nor necessary that souls be consumed by the slaughter of bodies. If this is so, then even after the death of the body life is nonetheless lived in the minds. And if this is rightly thought concerning each one of us, how is the fount of life boasted to have lost the power of giving life on account of its participation in the human mind? "But," you say, "both soul and body can be killed in the hell of fire."

This first of all makes nothing against us, because that death is seen to be not of nature's condition, but of crime. For with the fault removed, we are bidden not to fear men, who, though they can kill the body, are yet said to be unable to kill the soul. Next, because this is said to be possible to God only—of whom we do not believe that his only-begotten Son merited this, both by the communion of nature and by equality of power. The Savior therefore assumed the condition of our death, but not so as to make it worse, since contrary to custom he permitted it to lord it over the soul; but rather so that he might prove that it in no way harms the soul, equally of all the righteous and of life. CHAPTER XXIII. But let us suppose—though the Gospels cry out against it—that souls perish.