but a true Father, who begot a true Son, that is, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, almighty from almighty, life from life, perfect from perfect, whole from whole, full from full; not created, but begotten; not from nothing, but from the Father; of one substance with the Father, which in Greek is called 'homoousion.' But the Holy Spirit we confess and venerate to be God, neither unbegotten nor begotten, neither created nor made: but proceeding from the Father and the Son, the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, always in the Father and the Son, coeternal with the Father and the Son, and coequal, and cooperating. And therefore in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit we confess one God: because God is a name of power,
not of propriety. The proper name of the Father is Father, and the proper name of the Son is Son, and the proper name of the Holy Spirit is Holy Spirit. This Trinity we believe to be one God: because that which is from the one Father is of one nature with the Father, and of one substance, and of one power. The Father begot the Son, not by will, not by necessity, but by nature. 2. The two natures of Christ. The Son, at the last time, through whom all things were made that are in the heavens and that are on earth, visible and invisible, came from the Father to save us and to fulfil the Scriptures, he who never ceased to be with the Father; whom we believe to have been conceived of the Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary;
the Word made flesh, not changed, but remaining God; born as man not in appearance, but truly; not airy, but corporeal; not phantasmal, but fleshly; having bones, blood, feeling, and a soul: this, we understand, is a perfect man, a true man, and true God; so that in no way do we doubt that he was true God and true man. For he did not lose what he was, but began to be what he was not; that he might be perfect in his own things, and true in ours. For he who was God became man; and he who was born man works as God; and he who works as God dies as man; and he who dies as man rises as God:
who, having overcome the dominion of death, with that same flesh in which he had been born and had suffered and had died, rose again, ascended to the Father, and sits at his right hand in the glory which he always had and has. In his death and blood we believe that we are cleansed, and that we shall be raised up by him on the last day in this flesh in which we now live, and which we have; and that we shall attain either life eternal as the reward of good merit, or the penalties of eternal punishment for our sins. Hold these things fast, subject your souls to this faith, and you shall obtain from Christ the Lord the rewards of the kingdom of heaven. Amen. SERMON 236. On the Catholic Faith, IV. 1. The attempts of the Arians. The author's prayers for the Church. The faith of the fathers.
Indeed the Arian heretics have often and frequently dared, against the servants of God who keep the right and catholic faith, to assert through their adulterated doctrine, and have attempted to persecute the orthodox. And they have now risen up so greatly against the faith that they have defiled many of you, and have stirred up your ears, so as to rend your souls. But they cloak the faithlessness of their wicked heresy: yet they are not permitted to do this any longer. For the Lord is the governor of his Churches, who bore death for us all. And therefore our prayer is unceasing, most beloved brethren:
first, that the holy and catholic Church of the Lord, free of all dissensions and heresies, may everywhere preserve the unity of the spirit in the bond of charity, which it is indeed just for all who call upon the Lord to hold, embrace, keep, and guard through right faith and an unblemished life, but especially for the bishops who preside over the Churches; second, that the rule of the Church and the holy tradition of the fathers and their judgments may remain firm and solid for ever. And this is the faith of our fathers. 2. On the Father, on the Son, on the Holy Spirit. We believe in God the Father almighty, the maker of all things visible and invisible.
We believe also in our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things were created, true God, only-begotten, true Son of God, not made nor adopted, but begotten, of one substance with the Father, which the Greeks call 'homoousion': and thus in all things equal to God the Father, so that he can be inferior neither in time, nor in rank, nor in power: and we confess that he who is begotten is as great as he who begot. But it is not because we say that the Son is begotten of the Father that we ascribe any time to the divine and ineffable generation. But neither do we say that the Father ever began, nor the Son. For we cannot otherwise confess the Father to be eternal, unless we also confess the Son to be coeternal. From the Son he is called Father:
and he who was always Father always had a Son. We believe also in the Holy Spirit, true God, proceeding from the Father, in all things equal to the Father and the Son, in nature, will, power, eternity, substance. 3. They are one by nature, but are distinguished by their properties. Nor is there at all any rank in the Trinity, nothing that could be called lower or higher. Therefore the whole deity is equal in its perfection; so that, apart from the terms which indicate the propriety of the persons, whatever is said of one person can most worthily be understood of the three. And so, refuting Arius, we say that there is one and the same substance of the Trinity, and we confess one God in three persons:
so, avoiding the impiety of Sabellius, we distinguish three persons expressed by their own propriety: not saying that the Father is himself to himself, himself the Son, himself the Holy Spirit; but that the person of the Father is one, that of the Son another, that of the Holy Spirit another. For we confess not only the names, but also the properties of the names, that is, the persons. Nor does the Father ever exclude the person of the Son or of the Holy Spirit; nor again does the Son or the Holy Spirit take on the name and person of the Father: but the Father is always Father, the Son always Son, the Holy Spirit always Holy Spirit. And so by substance they are one; by persons and names they are distinguished. 4. On the mystery of the Incarnation. The error of certain men: of Photinus and Apollinaris:
and of others. But the very Son of God, who without beginning possesses eternity with the Father and the Holy Spirit, we say, at the end of the ages took up a man of our perfect nature from Mary ever-virgin, and that the Word was made flesh; but by assuming the man, not by changing the deity. Nor, as some most wickedly opine, do we say that the Holy Spirit was in place of seed, but that he wrought by the power and virtue of the creator. And so we confess that in Christ there is one person of the Son, in such a way that we say there are two perfect and entire substances, namely of deity and of humanity, which latter consists of a soul and a body. And just as we condemn Photinus, who confesses in Christ only a mere and naked man;
so we anathematize Apollinaris and those like him, who say that the Son of God took up something less of human nature, and that the man assumed, whether in flesh, or in soul, or in mind, was unlike, in these respects, to those for whose sake he was assumed; whereas we confess that he was conformed to us, except for the stain of sin alone (which is not natural). Likewise we also execrate the blasphemy of those who with a novel notion attempt to assert that, from the time of the assumption of the flesh, all things that were of the divinity migrated into the man; and again that the things that were of the humanity were transfused into God:
so that, what no heresy ever dared to say, by this confusion both substances would seem to be emptied out, namely of deity and of humanity; and, having lost their proper state, to be changed into something else: so that we who confess in the Son both perfect God and man might be believed to hold neither truly God nor truly man. 5. Christ suffered truly, but according to his manhood. The faith of the resurrection. The rewards of the just, and the punishments of the unjust, are diverse. But we say that our passible nature was taken up by the Son of God in such a way that God nevertheless remained impassible. For the Son of God suffered not in appearance, but truly, all the things that Scripture testifies, that is, hunger, thirst, weariness, pain, death, and other things of this kind:
but he suffered according to that which was able to suffer; that is, not according to that substance which assumed, but according to that which was assumed. For the Son of God himself, according to his deity, is impassible as the Father, invisible as the Father, unchangeable as the Father, incorruptible as the Father. And although properly the person of the Son, that is, the Word of God, took up a passible man, yet by his indwelling, according to his own substance the deity of the Word suffered nothing, so that the whole Trinity, which it is necessary to confess as impassible, suffered nothing. The Son of God therefore died in that same nature of the flesh in which he was born and suffered, in which also he rose again.
For the substance of humanity was not emptied out, but glorified, destined to abide for ever with the deity. He shall come to the judgment of the living and the dead, that he may both reward the just and punish sinners. We so believe in the resurrection of the flesh, that we say we are to be restored in the same truth of members in which we now are; and that, once we have been made such after the resurrection, we shall abide so for ever. That there is one life of all the saints, but rewards diverse according to labour; and, on the contrary, that there are also punishments of sinners according to the measure of their offences. We hold one baptism, which we say is to be celebrated with the same words of the Sacrament in infants as also in adults.
We believe that a man, if he has fallen after Baptism, can be saved: first through reconciliation, then through penance. Errors concerning the substance and origin of souls; concerning the precepts of God; the errors of the Manichees and the Cataphrygians concerning marriage; of others concerning Christ; of Jovinian concerning merits; of Manes and Jovinian concerning free will. We receive the New and the Old Testament in that number of books which the authority of the holy catholic Church hands down. We believe that souls are given by God, since we say they were made by Him; and we anathematize those who say that the soul is, as it were, a part of God and of the divine substance. We likewise condemn the error of those who say that souls sinned before, or dwelt in heaven, before they were sent into bodies.
We also abhor the blasphemy of those who say that something impossible has been commanded to man by God; and that the commandments of God cannot be kept by individuals but only by all in common; or who condemn first marriages with the Manichee, or second marriages with the Cataphrygians. We likewise anathematize those who say that the Son of God feigned the necessity of the flesh, and that on account of the man He assumed He could not do all that He willed. We also condemn the error of Jovinian, who says that there will be no difference of merits in the world to come, and that we shall possess there those virtues which here we have neglected to possess. We so confess free will that we say we always stand in need of God's help;
and that those err who, with the Manichee, say that a man cannot avoid sin, just as those err who, with Jovinian, assert that a man cannot sin: for each takes away the freedom of the will. But we say that a man is always able both to sin and not to sin, so that we may confess ourselves to be of free will. This is the faith, beloved brethren, which we have learned in the catholic Church, which we have always held and hold, and which we believe can henceforth be held by your Goodness. SERMON 237. On the Creed, I: and on the deity and omnipotence of the Father. 1. The omnipotence of God is proved. From the greatness of His works.
We have shown, most beloved brethren—as your Charity surely remembers—that the God in whom you have promised to believe is, as you believe, true God, and likewise true Father, and this same One is also almighty. For this is shown to be the order of the Creed. For although by this very thing whereby He is proved true God He is without doubt understood to be almighty, yet it profits the faith the more when His omnipotence is asserted, as it is in the Holy Scriptures. For the greatest confidence arises in believers when they recognize that He whom they believe can do all things.
That our Lord and God is almighty His very works bear witness above all: He who made this whole world out of nothing, and composed all that great beauty—the fair forms of things, as it were—out of no pre-existing matter. For concerning Him the divine Scripture says: In the beginning God made heaven and earth (Gen. 1:1); and again: For the sea is His, and He made it (Ps. 94:5). Who then would deny Him to be almighty, whom he acknowledges to have wrought works so manifest? 2. From the ease with which they were made. From the creation of invisible things. But he will confess Him to be almighty far more when he has recognized how easily He wrought these very things. The prophet speaks in the Psalm: He spoke, and they were made;
He commanded, and they were created (Ps. 32:9). Without any labour, without any difficulty, He established the things that are by a word: whatever human reason marvels at, God fashioned not by toil, but by command. At His bidding there came into being all the things that before did not exist: when out of nothing such great things proceed, they proclaim their author almighty. Nor indeed were these things alone created by God which we see; but His invisible works bear witness to the greater riches of the divine power: since by Him were created all the angelic Powers, which, although they are not seen by us, yet, as we acknowledge in the divine Scriptures, wage war for God and serve Him—the Thrones, the Dominations and all the Virtues, and the Powers of spiritual substance.
Who makes His angels spirits, and His ministers a burning fire (Ps. 103:4). Whence the prophet, describing the angelic host of so great a King, says: Thousands of thousands ministered to Him, and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stood before Him (Dan. 7:10). 3. From the governance of the world. From its dissolution. From the raising of men. If then you have briefly recognized the omnipotence of God from this creation of things visible and invisible, now also acknowledge that same power of His from His administration.
For when, under Noah as the whole world was sinning, He brought on the flood; when He consumed Sodom and Gomorrah with a rain of fire; when He furnished a dry way in the sea for His people delivered from the servitude of the Egyptians—what else did He testify but that He is almighty, and that He Himself is the One who made the sea, and who also dried it up in that part where He willed? And when for forty years He fed that same people in the wilderness with heavenly food, that is, with manna, did He not assert the ineffable power of His divinity, so as to show that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Deut. 8:3)?
And that I may pass over the innumerable powers of God by recalling but a few, God then also showed His omnipotence when He raised from the dead His own Son, whom according to His humanity He willed to die for our salvation, loosing the laws of the underworld: that in Christ He might show Himself to be the One by whom mortal men were created, He who also made immortal one who had died. It belongs to the power of His very omnipotence that this world, which He once made out of nothing, He should dissolve at the end of the ages. Whence the prophet says: The heaven shall be folded up like a book rolled together, and all the stars shall fall like leaves from the vine, and as leaves fall from the fig tree (Isa. 34:4):
and the Saviour in the Gospel: For heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away (Matt. 24:35). By that same omnipotence He shall also raise up, on the day of judgment, all men who have died and who shall die unto the end, as the prophet says: He shall render to every one according to his works (Ps. 62:12): and some indeed He shall join in the kingdom of heaven to the fellowship of the Angels, but others He shall unite in the torment of hell to the devil. 4. Faith in so great a God ought to strike fear. Believing, most beloved brethren, in this God who is almighty, just, severe, and benign only to those who here, fearing His severity, have shunned sins:
believing, I say, in this God, work out your salvation with all fear and trembling, as the Apostle says (Phil. 2:12); and withdrawing from every sin, and from all crimes and vices, hasten to the works of justice alone; walking, as the Saviour says, in the light while you have the light, lest the darkness overtake you (John 12:35). Beware of the company and conversations of the wicked, and let the hearing of the faithful be prepared to hear the words of God alone, and let the tongue of readers be moved to speak of holy things alone, so that good works may follow upon good hearing and good speech. May our Lord Jesus Christ deign to accomplish this in us according to the zeal of His good will:
to whom be honour and glory with the Father and the Holy Spirit unto ages of ages. Amen. SERMON 238. On the Creed, II: or concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, that He is without beginning with the Father according to His deity, who according to His humanity was born for us from a fixed beginning of a virgin. 1. In Christ there is one person, though two natures. Thus far, most beloved brethren, we have spoken of God the Father, in whom you believe; and that He Himself is true God, that He is true Father, that He is almighty, is shown by the authority of the divine Scriptures: but now, according to the order of the Creed, we pass on to the Son. After we have said in the Creed, I believe in God the Father almighty;
there follows: And in Jesus Christ His Son, who was born of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary. Here now let the attentive hearer take heed, that he may know the one and same person of the Son of God, according to the truth of the humanity He assumed. For when we say here that we believe in Christ the Son of God, who was born of the Virgin Mary, we do not say it in such a way that we confess ourselves to have faith in a mere true man, but in the true God who assumed a true man. For one and the same is our Lord Jesus Christ, who is both the Word of God, begotten of the Father without beginning, and true man born of a Virgin at the end of the ages. 2. Apollinaris and Arius assail this faith.
For a twofold heresy strives in this matter to assail us with contrary opinions: on the one side Apollinaris, on the other Arius. Arius so takes on in Christ a perfect man that he denies Him to be perfect God: while he attempts to enclose the very Word of God within the beginning of time, and confesses Him to be not the Creator but a creature. But Apollinaris, on the contrary, so believes the Son of God to be perfect God that he fears to join to Him a true man; while he dreads lest the infirmity of the man assumed should obscure the dignity of the One who assumes. But we Catholics, fortified against both by the authority of the divine Scriptures, defend against Arius the true and perfect deity of the Word;
against Apollinaris we defend the perfect truth of the man in Christ. And so, just as against Arius in the preceding discourse we asserted the perfection of the deity, so now against Apollinaris we establish the perfect man. 3. Christ is proved true man against Apollinaris. In what sense Christ is said to have been made of seed. Most luminous for us is the authority of the Apostle who says: God sent His Son, made of a woman (Gal. 4:4). By saying first made, he distinguishes the human substance from the divinity of the Word. For the Word of God can in no way be called made or created, through whom all things were made, as blessed John says: All things were made through Him, and without Him was made nothing (John 1:3).
God sent, he says, His Son, made of a woman. When therefore he says made, he shows that he is not here treating of the divinity. But when he added of a woman, he expressed the substance of a true man: so that this may be the nature of the man who was made, which was the nature of that from which He was made; that is, that the nature of Christ, who was made of the Virgin, may be believed to be the nature of the Virgin, of whom Christ was formed and born. Hence it is that elsewhere the same Apostle says of the Son of God: Who was made to Him of the seed of David according to the flesh (Rom. 1:3). For although the seed of man did not intervene in the conception of the Virgin, yet because Christ was formed from that flesh which consists of seed, He is said to be made of seed.
Just as therefore according to the divinity there is one nature of the Father and the Son, so also according to the humanity there is the same nature of the mother and the son, that is, of Mary and of Christ. Of both substances, both of the divinity and of the humanity, one and the same is the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, as true God, so also true man: with the Apostle bearing witness and saying: Of whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all things, God blessed unto the ages (Rom. 9:5); and elsewhere: For there is one God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim. 2:5). 4. In Christ God is not changed into man, but man is joined to God. And this, and all that He did, was for us.
Proving therefore one and the same, our Lord Jesus Christ, both true God and man, both from other apostolic sayings and from these. Who, although He possesses equal impassibility and immortality with the Father, yet on account of our salvation He assumed a passible and mortal man: not that the divinity might be changed into humanity, but that the humanity might be joined to the divinity. According therefore to the truth of this man, the Son of God was born for our redemption of a Virgin and of the Holy Spirit. For thus does the angel speak to Mary in the Gospel: The Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you; and therefore that which shall be born of you, the Holy, shall be called the Son of God (Luke 1:35).
This wondrous nativity the prophet Isaiah of old foretold: The Lord Himself, he says, shall give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive in her womb, and shall bear a son, and His name shall be called Emmanuel (Isa. 7:14), which is interpreted by the evangelist, God with us (Matt. 1:23). For this name too our Lord Jesus Christ received from the effect of things: He who, having assumed a man of our nature, deigned to be with us; who did all things for us; who suffered all things for us—hunger, thirst, weariness, weeping, sorrow, and at the last even death; who was scourged and crucified by Pontius Pilate the governor, and died and was buried. For the just One was condemned for the unjust, and the penalty which
was owed to sinners He Himself, being without sin, took upon Himself; that He might take away from them, for whom He was punished, their penalty, and blot out their sins. He died a brief and temporal death, lest we should undergo eternal death. 5. Christ's resurrection also was for us. But up to this order of events let the infirmity of human nature be understood in Christ. For He who was passible even unto death received the glory of incorruption from the time of His death: since this was already the price in the flesh of Christ, that, according to the prophecy of David, His lifeless flesh, though buried even until the third day, nevertheless remained incorrupt. For thus we read in the Psalm, from the person of Christ speaking to the Father:
For you will not leave my soul in the underworld, nor will you allow your Holy One to see corruption (Ps. 15:10). Whence also blessed Peter: Jesus, he says, of Nazareth, a man approved by God among you by powers and wonders and signs which God did through Him in the midst of you, as you yourselves know; this man, delivered up by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God, you, fastening Him up by the hands of the wicked, slew: whom God raised up, having loosed the sorrows of the underworld, according as it was impossible that He should be held by it (Acts 2:22-24). Jesus Christ died for us: but for us also He rose again on the third day. For if His death too was accomplished for us, how much more is His life for us?
Who after the resurrection, having received from the Father power over all things, consoles His disciples and says: Behold, all power is given to me in heaven and on earth (Matt. 28:18); and elsewhere: Going, He says, into the whole world, preach the Gospel to every creature: he who shall believe and be baptized shall be saved; but he who shall not believe shall be condemned (Mark 16:15-16). After these things He deigned to be among the disciples for forty days, and though immortal He did not disdain to have fellowship with mortals: assuredly that by teaching the Apostles He might fill them with faith and truth, which might reach even to us also by their testimony. 6. The last judgment.
And when the disciples were confirmed, He was taken up into heaven, and ascended to the Father as victor both over sins and also over death: which we plainly read in the Gospel: And the Lord Jesus indeed, after He had spoken to them, ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God (Mark 16:19). By which saying no human members are signified in God; but the honour with which the Father received Christ is expressed. Whence we believe that He shall come down to the judgment of the living and the dead, not now in the infirmity which He had, but in the sublimity which He possesses. For He who came in infirmity to redeem, shall come in power to judge. For thus we read in the Acts of the Apostles: