so united, that is, and indivisible from itself is Christ, the Son of Man and the Son of God, that, as far as the voice of Scripture is concerned, neither can man be separated from God in time nor God from man at all in passion. For hence comes that saying: 'No one has ascended into heaven except him who descended from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven'; where, though the Son of God was speaking on earth, he testified himself to be the Son of Man in heaven, and the same Son of Man, whom he said would ascend into heaven, he testified to have also descended before from heaven. Or that other: 'If you shall see the Son of Man ascending where he was before'; where, though he names him who was born of man, he yet testifies that he had always existed in the heights.
But the apostle too, if regard be had to time, preaches all things made through Christ: 'For there is one Lord Jesus Christ,' he says, 'through whom are all things'; but if to the passion, he designates that the Lord of majesty was crucified: 'For if they had known,' he says, 'they would never have crucified the Lord of majesty.' And therefore the Creed also, teaching the only-begotten and firstborn Lord Jesus Christ, true God from true God, of one substance with the Father and Creator of all things, testifies that he was born of the Virgin Mary and afterward crucified and buried, thus incorporating, that is, the Son of God and of man, and uniting man and God, so that neither in time can any division be made nor in the pas-
— sion either, since the same Lord Jesus Christ is taught to be both God through the eternity of time and man through the endurance of the passion: and thus, although neither is the man to be called without beginning nor God passible, yet in the one Lord Jesus Christ both the man who was before everlasting and God who died are preached. You see, then, that Christ is all things, and that his name is the signification of each nature, since, being born both man and God, he so embraces all things in himself, that in his name nothing is found to be lacking. Not, then, before the Virgin's childbearing was the eternity of the man the same in the past as that of God; but because in the Virgin's womb God was united to man, it came to pass that in Christ the one can in no way be named without the other.
Whatever, then, you say of the Lord Jesus, you say the whole. For both in the Son of God you will name the Son of Man, and in the Son of Man the Son of God, by the trope, that is, of synecdoche, whereby the whole is understood from a part and a portion is named from the whole — the sacred Scriptures themselves surely teaching this, in which the Lord, often using this trope, while he teaches thus of other things, so also willed himself to be understood. For not otherwise, in the divine volumes, are days sometimes, or things, or men, or times designated: as in that instance where God foretells that Israel would serve four hundred years in Egypt, saying to Abraham:
'Know for certain that your seed shall be a stranger in a land not their own, and they shall bring them into servitude and afflict them four hundred years' — whereas, if the whole span of time from when God spoke be reckoned, it is more than four hundred years, but if only that in which they served, it is less. And unless this period be understood by this figure of speech, then perhaps — which be far from Christian minds — the word of God is telling a falsehood. But since indeed, counting from the time of the divine utterance, the whole span of their life holds more than four hundred years, while the servitude holds much less than four hundred, it comes about that either the part may be understood from the whole, or the whole from the part.
Not unlike this also is the manner of signifying that is sometimes used concerning days and nights, where, although in both spans of time one single day is understood, in a part of one span both spans are indicated. For in this very way is opened up that which seems obscure concerning the time of the Lord's Passion. For when the Lord foretold, under the example of the prophet Jonah, that the Son of Man would be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights, and yet after the sixth day of the week on which He was crucified He was among the dead for only a single day and two nights, how is the truth of the divine word to be found? By the synecdochic figure, of course — that is, so that the past night is reckoned to the day on which He was crucified, and the coming day to the night on which He rose again:
and thus, by adding both the night that preceded its own day and the day that followed its own night, nothing is found lacking to the full span of time, which is completed from a part of itself. The sacred Scriptures teem with such examples of reasoning, but it would be long to recount them all. For when the Psalm says, 'What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?' the whole is understood from a part, since by the naming of one man the fullness of the human race is shown. So too where Ahab sinned, the people is said to have sinned, since under the naming of the whole a portion is designated from the totality. John also, the Lord's forerunner, says, 'After me comes a man who was made before me, for He was before me.' How then does he point to one who is to come after him, whom he declares to have been before him?
For if this be understood of the man who was born afterward, how was He before him? If of the Word, how does a man come after me — except that in the one Lord Jesus Christ is shown both the later origin of the man and the ancientness of the Word? And thus it comes about that one and the same Lord both was before him and came after him, because according to the flesh He is later than John, and according to the divinity prior to all; and therefore, by naming Him a man only, John shows both the man and the Word, since, as the Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, was consummated both as man and as Word, in saying one thing of Him he showed all. And what more? The day will fail me, I think, if I should attempt to gather or narrate all that could be said of this:
and enough are these things which we have now said, at least in this part of the business, both for the exposition of the Creed and for the duty of the case and for the measure of the book. What is wont to befall those who, when they have already escaped the open sea, yet dread either the sandbanks stretched before the harbours or the rocks near the shores — this has very much happened to me: that, having reserved to the last certain calumnies of the heretics, now that I have come to the end of my finished labour, I begin to fear that very end at which I had longed to arrive. But, as the prophet says: 'The Lord is my helper; I will not fear what man may do unto me.'
Let us not fear the pits set before us by the ambushing heretics, nor the ways beset with bristling thorns on every side; for since these roughen the paths more than they close them, our labour is rather one of clearing than a dread of impossibility. For since, as we press on the right road, they oppose themselves feebly and bristle at the walkers more than they hinder them, our office and work has more to do in cleansing than to fear from difficulty. Therefore, setting our hand to that monstrous head of the death-bearing serpent, and desiring to handle all the members of its twisted body coiled together in huge folds, we entreat Thee — whom we have ever besought — again and again, O Lord Jesus, that Thou wouldst give us a word in the opening of our mouth for the destruction of strongholds, casting down reasonings and every height that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, that we may bring into captivity every understanding unto Thine obedience; for he truly becomes free
who has begun to be Thy captive. Be present, therefore, to Thy office, to Thy work, to those who strive for Thee beyond the measure of their strength. Grant us to crush the gaping jaws of the new serpent and its neck swollen with such venoms — Thou who makest the feet of believers tread unharmed upon serpents and scorpions, and walk over the asp and the basilisk, and trample the lion and the dragon; and who grantest, through the fearless boldness of a steadfast innocence, that the infant may delight at the breast over the hole of the asp, and that he who is weaned may put his hand into the den of the cockatrice.
Grant to us also, therefore, to put unharmed hands into the dens of this most monstrous and most wicked cockatrice; and if in certain holes already — that is, in the lurking-places of human senses — it has made its lair, or laid its eggs, or left the track of its scaly trail, take away from all souls the foul and deadly contagion of this most pernicious serpent; draw out the impurities of perfidy that have been brought in, and cleanse with the winnowing-fan of sacred purgation the souls beset with reeking mire, that the dens of robbers may become houses of prayer, and that in those lodging-places where now, as it is written, dwell the monsters of the hedgehog and the wild-ass-centaur and the hairy satyr and of sundry prodigies, in these the gifts of Thy Holy Spirit — that is, the ornaments of faith and religion — may shine resplendent.
And just as, when of old the worship of idols was cast out and the images exterminated, Thou didst make out of the shrines of demons temples of virtues, inserting into the dens of serpents and scorpions the shining rays of Thy light, and out of the lairs of errors and vileness didst render houses of adornments and beauties, so also in all whose eyes the darkness of heretical perversity has beset, pour in the light of Thy mercy and truth, that, at length beholding the great and saving sacrament of Thine Incarnation by an unveiled and pure light, they may so understand Thee, brought forth into the world from that most holy womb of the immaculate Virgin, to be true man, that yet they may acknowledge Thee always to have been true God.
And before I begin to speak of those matters which I have not yet touched upon in the earlier books, I think it fair to strive to discharge what I have already promised before, so that, the pledge being fully fulfilled, I may set out more freely to treat of the untouched matters once I have satisfied my promises. The new serpent, therefore, hissing in the Church of God, says, to overthrow the faith in the sacred Nativity: 'No one begets one prior to himself.' First, then, I judge that you know not only what you say, but also from what ground you say it.
For if you knew or understood on what ground you spoke, you would by no means judge the Nativity of the only-begotten God by the reasoning of a mortal's paltry opinion, nor would you attempt to prejudge by petty human definitions Him who was born outside the compass of human origin, nor cast earthly impossibilities against the omnipotence of the Godhead — if you had known that nothing is impossible to God. 'No one,' you say, 'begets one prior to himself.' Tell me, I pray, concerning what causes you think you speak, concerning the natures of what living creatures you deem you are defining? Do you suppose you are laying down a law for men or for beasts, for birds or for cattle? For it is of these, and of other things of this sort, that such things can be said.
For none of these is able to beget one prior to itself, since things that have already come into being cannot again return to that state so as to be generated by a new creation; and therefore no one begets one prior to himself, because he cannot even beget one prior, since the cause of begetting does not come except from the possibility of generating. Do you then think that in the Nativity of Almighty God that is to be considered which is considered in the birth of earthly animals, and do you cast the nature of the human condition against Him who is Himself the Author of nature? You see, then, as I said above, that you know not from what ground or of whom you speak, you who compare the thing made to its Maker, and, in order to estimate the omnipotence of God, use the example of those things which surely would not themselves exist at all, unless they were from God the very thing that they are.
God, therefore, came as He willed, when He willed, and from whom He willed. Neither time, nor person, nor the custom of men, nor the examples of things prejudged Him, because the law of created things could not withstand Him who is Himself the Creator of all; and for Him it was ready to be able to do what He willed, because power was at hand to His will. Do you wish to know, in some measure, how great the omnipotence of God is? I believe that God can do even to His creatures that which you do not believe He could do to Himself. For all living creatures that beget those later than themselves can, if only God command it, much more easily beget those earlier than themselves. For even foods themselves and drinks, if the will of the Godhead so wills, can be turned into certain conceptions and offspring.
The very waters, in short, which from the beginning of things flow forth and which all living creatures alike use, can, if God command it, be embodied and begotten in the womb. For who has set a limit to the sacred works, or circumscribed the divine power, or who, as it is written, shall say to Him, 'What hast Thou done?' If you deny that God can do all things, deny that one prior could be born of Mary, seeing that God was being born. But if nothing is impossible to God, why do you cast impossibility against Him in His very own coming, whom you acknowledge to have nothing impossible in all things? Now the second of your perversities is either a blaspheming calumny or a calumnious blasphemy, in which you say: 'The nativity ought to be of one substance (homoousios) with her who bears' — not unlike the former:
for it differs in words rather than in reality and kind. For when it is a question of the Nativity of God, you say the same thing — that a more powerful one could not be born of Mary — as you said above, that one prior could not be generated. And therefore either reckon that what was said above is also answered concerning this, or consider that what is now to be said is answered also concerning that. You say, then: 'The nativity ought to be of one substance with her who bears.' If you regard earthly creations, it happens especially so; but if you regard the birth of God, why do you consider examples of nature in His Nativity, since ordinances are subject to the Ordainer, not the Ordainer to ordinances?
But do you wish to know more fully how these calumnies of yours are not only impious but also inept, and how they are the ditties of one who does not at all see the omnipotence of God? Tell me, I pray, you who suppose that only like is born of like — whence did that once-inexplicable countless multitude of quails arise suddenly in the desert for the feeding of the people of Israel? For we do not read that they were previously brought forth by their mothers in some place, but that they were brought in by a sudden arrival. Then that heavenly food itself — whence did it flow down for forty years into the camp of the Hebrews? Did manna generate manna? But these are among the ancient miracles of things. What of the new?
With a few loaves and little fishes the Lord Jesus Christ fed in the desert, not once, the countless throngs of the following peoples. The cause of satiety was not in the food. What invisible and hidden cause satisfied the hungry, especially since much more remained over for satiety than had been set out for hunger? By what reasoning was this whole thing, from what cause was it done, that, while those eating took satiety, the food itself grew richer by ineffable increases? We read that wine was born of waters in Galilee. Tell me:
how did a nature unlike itself generate a substance unlike its own quality, especially since — that which most befits the Lord's Nativity — the origin of the nobler thing proceeded from a lowlier one? Tell me, then, how out of that simplicity of water there was born the finer and more admirable taste of wine? How was the drawn thing one thing, and the poured thing another? Did that cistern or well have this nature, that it should change into the finest wines the waters drawn from it? Or did the quality of the vessels do this, or the industry of the servants effect it? Surely none of these did. And how is the reason of the deed not comprehended by the thought of the heart, when nevertheless the truth of the deed is preserved by the firmness of conscience?
In the Gospel, clay was placed over the eyes of a blind man, and, that being washed off, eyes were born. Did the water have this nature, that it should produce eyes, or the clay, that it should create light? Surely none of these — especially since water confers nothing on a blind man, while clay can even harm those who see. And how did a thing having in itself the power of harming exhibit the office of a remedy and of health, and that which is wont to injure the sound become, as it were, then the handmaid of health?
You say, then, that it was the power of God that bestowed this, that it was God who furnished the medicine, and that all these things which we have mentioned the divine omnipotence utterly wrought — which is surely able both to make new things out of unwonted ones, and to constitute wholesome things out of contrary ones, and to change those things which are set among impossibilities and inefficacies into the possibilities and effects of things. Confess, therefore, the same concerning the birth of the Lord Himself as concerning all things. Believe that God was born as He willed, whom you do not deny to have been able to do what He willed — unless perhaps you reckon that the power which was present to Him for all other things was lacking to Him for Himself, and that His own omnipotence, which proceeding from Him penetrated the universe, was lacking to Him for His own Nativity. Do you cast against me in the Lord's Nativity:
'No one begets one prior to himself,' and in the birth by which Almighty God was born do you say, 'The nativity ought to be of one substance with her who bears'? — as though indeed you were dealing with some man by human laws, against whom you might cast his own impossibility, whom you might shut in by earthly infirmity. You say that the condition of being born is common to all, that the law of generating is the same, that it could by no means happen to one man only in the whole totality of the human race, that which God had forbidden to befall all. You do not understand of whom you speak, you do not see of whom you talk:
because the Author, surely, of all conditions whatsoever is the law of natures, through whom exists both whatever man can do and whatever he cannot, since He Himself utterly established the measure of each thing — both how far capacity might reach and beyond which infirmity should not advance. How madly, then, do you cast human impossibility against Him to whom possibility itself is owed! If you should estimate the person of the Lord by earthly infirmities, and measure the omnipotence of God by human reasonings, you will surely find nothing that, according to His bodily sufferings, may seem befitting to God. For if it can seem probable that Mary could not bear a God prior to herself, how will it be probable that a God was crucified by men?
And yet the same God who was crucified foretold this very thing: 'If a man shall crucify his God, because you crucify Me.' If therefore the Lord shall not be thought to have been born of a Virgin because He who was being born was prior to her who bore Him, how shall a God be believed to have had blood? And yet to the elders of the Ephesians it is said: 'Rule the Church of God, which He purchased with His own blood.' Finally, how shall the Author of life be thought to have been deprived of life? And yet Peter says: 'You slew the Author of life.' No one placed on earth can be in heaven. And how does the Lord Himself say: 'The Son of Man who is in heaven'?
Finally, if you therefore do not think God was born of a Virgin because 'the nativity ought to be of one substance with her who bears,' how will you believe that unlike things have subsisted from unlike natures? Then, according to you, neither did a sudden wind bring in the quails, nor did the manna fall down, nor did wine come forth from water, nor were many thousands of men fed with scanty food, nor did light appear to a blind man after the clay. But if all these things surely seem incredible and against reason unless they be believed to have been done by God, why in His Nativity do you deny what in His works you confess? Or was He unable to bestow upon His own origin and coming that which He did not deny to human remedies and benefits? It would be long, and almost fabulous, to say more of this matter.
But nevertheless, to refute your ineptitude and madness, whereby you say that the nativity ought to be of one substance with her who bears — that is, that any creature cannot bear one unlike itself — I will bring forth even examples of earthly things, whereby I may prove that many are born of unlike things: not that in such a matter any comparison either can be made or ought to be, but that you may not doubt that in the sacred origin that could exist which you see occur even in these earthly and perishable things. Bees — creatures as very small as they are most prudent and most skillful — we read are produced and come forth from the most diverse natures. For, being creatures of wondrous ingenuity and abounding not only in sense but even in prudence, they are procreated from certain culled flowers of herbs.
What greater example do you think ought to be adduced or taken up? From inanimate things animals, from insensible things sensible beings are born. Who is the craftsman there, who is the fabricator, who is the shaper of bodies, who is the inbreather of souls? Who, finally, gave the very sound by which they as it were converse among themselves? Who fashioned and composed the harmony of their feet, the ingenuity of their mouths, and the elegance of their wings? Who — by whose teaching, by whose gift, by whose instilling and instructing — did they take up their ingenuity, their anger, their foresight, their motion, their placidity, their concord, their dissension, their wars, their peace, their ordination, their disposition, their offices, their principalities — all, in short, that they have in common, as it were, with the human race?
Have they gained this from a father's seed, or learned it in a generative womb and in maternal flesh? They surely know no womb, they know no seed: only the flowers, having been fed upon, are gathered into the hives, from which by an inestimable craftsmanship the bees come forth. There the wombs of mothers confer nothing on the offspring, nor are bees produced from bees: they are only workers, not procreators. From the little flowers of herbs living creatures come forth: what is there similar between herbs and living creatures? Who, then, is the fabricator of these things, I believe you understand. Go now and doubt whether the Lord could bestow upon His own Nativity that which you see Him to have bestowed even upon the least of created things. It would perhaps be superfluous after these things to add anything further:
but nevertheless let even unnecessary things be added to the example as a heaping-up. We see the air suddenly interwoven with locusts, the lands filled with them. Produce their seeds, produce their origin, produce their mothers. For from thence, as you see, they come forth, whence they are born. Prescribe to all these things that a nativity ought to be of one substance with her who bears, and you will be found as ridiculous in these prescriptions as you are now furious in denying the Lord's Nativity. And what after this? Do you yourself think we ought to proceed further? Yet we still add something. It is beyond doubt that from the eggs of birds which in Egypt they call 'ibises,' basilisk serpents are begotten. What is akin and congruous between a bird and a serpent? Why is its nativity not of one substance with her who bears?
And yet all these things neither do the begetters accomplish knowingly nor do the born ones know, but they come to pass by hidden causes and by a certain inexplicable and manifold law of nature that begets. And do you cast against His Nativity the petty prescriptions of earthly opinions — you who cannot even render the reason of those very births which are born at His nod and command, whose will accomplishes all, whose command effects all, against whom nothing could go, nothing could resist, and for whom, to accomplish by His power all that was to be accomplished, to will sufficed? But it is time at last that we uncover your remaining, more hidden and more insidious blasphemies as well — since, what we would have preferred, we can now no longer be ignorant of them — at least lest, being unknown, they ensnare the ignorant.
You have set down in a certain pestilent treatise of yours, saying: 'Since man is the image of the divine nature, and the devil cast this into corruption, God grieved for His image as an emperor for his statue, and He repairs the corrupted image; and without seed He formed a nature from the Virgin, after the pattern of him who was born without seed, Adam; and through a man He raises up human nature: for since through a man came death, therefore also through a man came the resurrection of the dead.' This, as they say, is the custom of certain poisoners: that in the cups which they concoct they mingle honey with the venoms, so that the harmful things may be hidden by the sweet ones, and while one is captivated by the sweetness of the honey, he is destroyed by the plague of the poison. So then you also, saying:
'Man is the image of the divine nature, and the devil cast this into corruption, God grieved for His image as an emperor for his statue.' You in a manner smear the rims of the pestilent cup with a certain sweetness and, as it were, with honey, so that men, drinking the proffered cup, while they taste the alluring things, may not perceive the pernicious ones. You cast forward the name of God, that under the name of religion you may lie; you send sacred things before, that you may persuade to perverse ones, and, by confessing God, you effect this — that you may deny the very One whom you confess. For who does not see whither you go, what you devise? For you say indeed: 'God grieved for His image as an emperor for his statue, and He repairs the corrupted image:'
and without seed He formed a nature from the Virgin, after the pattern of him who is born without seed, Adam; and through a man He raises up human nature: for since through a man came death, therefore also through a man came the resurrection of the dead.' This, then, with such zeal, with such effort, you, the deceitful ambusher, wrought by flattering preludes, that, naming God in what precedes, you might arrive at man in what follows, and might afterward afflict with the contumely of a mere man the very One to whom, by the office of a crafty humility, you before rendered the honor of God. You say, then, that the image of God, which the devil cast into corruption, the divine mercy repaired: 'for,' you say, 'He repairs the corrupted image.'
Now how craftily is that which you say, 'He repairs the corrupted image' — namely, that you may persuade that there was nothing more in Him in whom the image was being repaired than there was in that very image to which the repair was being furnished. And through this you wish the Lord to be only the same as Adam, the repairer of the image nothing more than the falling image itself. Finally, what you are doing, what you are devising, you prove by what follows, saying: 'Without seed He formed a nature after the pattern of him who is born without seed, Adam, and through a man He raises up human nature.' You assert that the Lord Jesus was like Adam in all things and equal to him: the one, of course, without seed and this one without seed; the one a mere man and this one a solitary man.
And through this you see that you have diligently taken care and made provision lest the Lord Jesus Christ be thought in anything greater than Adam or perhaps better; since you have so compared them to each other by equal measures, that you would believe you were in some way derogating from Adam something, if you had preferred God in any respect to him. 'For since,' you say, 'through a man came death, therefore also through a man came the resurrection of the dead.' Do you strive to prove your perversity and crime even by apostolic testimony, and defame the vessel of election by the contagion of your impiety — namely, so that, because the Author of your salvation is not understood by you, therefore even the Apostle may seem to have denied God?