文集 第 7 章

Chapter 1. The devil has in various ways set himself against the truth. At times he has aspired to shake it under the very pretence of defending it. He claims the one only Lord, the Almighty Maker of the world, that out of this 'one' he may fashion a heresy. He says that the Father Himself came down into the Virgin, that He Himself was born of her, that He Himself suffered, that He Himself, in short, is Jesus Christ. But the serpent forgot himself; for when he tempted Jesus Christ after John's baptism, he approached Him as the Son of God, being certain that God had a Son, even from those very Scriptures out of which he was then framing his temptation: 'If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread'; and again, 'If Thou be the Son of God, cast Thyself down from hence;

for it is written that He shall give His angels charge concerning Thee'—the Father, surely—'that they shall bear Thee up in their hands, lest at any time Thou dash Thy foot against a stone.' Or will he perhaps cast the reproach of falsehood upon the Gospels, saying, 'Let Matthew and Luke see to that; for my part, I approached God Himself, I tempted the Almighty Himself at close quarters—that is the very reason I both approached and tempted Him; but if He had been the Son of God, I should perhaps never have deemed Him worthy of my notice'? Yet it is rather he himself who is a liar from the beginning, even if he has suborned some man of his own kind, such as Praxeas.

For this man was the first to bring this kind of perversity from Asia to Rome—a man in other respects restless, and moreover puffed up with the boast of martyrdom for the sole, simple, and brief inconvenience of imprisonment; whereas even if he had delivered his body to be burned, he would have gained nothing, since he had not the love of God, whose spiritual gifts he also assailed. For this same man, at that time, forced the bishop of Rome—who was already acknowledging the prophecies of Montanus, Prisca, and Maximilla, and out of that acknowledgment was bringing peace to the churches of Asia and Phrygia—by asserting falsehoods about these very prophets and their churches, and by upholding the authority of his predecessors, both to recall the letters of peace already issued and to desist from his purpose of receiving the spiritual gifts.

Thus Praxeas at Rome managed two pieces of the devil's business: he drove out prophecy and brought in heresy, he put the Paraclete to flight and crucified the Father. The tares of Praxeas, sown here also over the good seed, had sprouted while many slept in the simplicity of doctrine; afterward, being exposed through him whom God willed, they even seemed to be uprooted. And indeed the former teacher had given security concerning his own amendment, and the written recantation remains among the psychics, among whom the matter was then transacted. From then on there was silence. And as for us, thereafter the acknowledgment and defence of the Paraclete separated us from the psychics. But those tares had everywhere by then shed their seed: and so for a while it lurked hidden by hypocrisy with a crafty vitality, and now it has burst forth anew.

But it shall be rooted out again, if the Lord will, in this present passage of time; or if not, on its own day all the adulterous crops shall be gathered together and, with the other stumbling-blocks, be burned with unquenchable fire. Chapter 2. And so, after a time, the Father is proclaimed to have been born and the Father to have suffered—God Himself, the Lord Almighty, is preached as Jesus Christ. But we, both always and now the more, being the better instructed through the Paraclete, that Guide, namely, into all truth, believe indeed in one only God, yet under this dispensation, which we call the Economy, that of the one only God there is also a Son, His Word, who proceeded from Himself, by whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made:

that He was sent by the Father into the Virgin and born of her—man and God, Son of Man and Son of God—and was surnamed Jesus Christ; that He suffered, that He died and was buried according to the Scriptures, and was raised again by the Father and taken back into heaven, to sit at the right hand of the Father, and shall come to judge the living and the dead; who thereafter, according to His promise, sent from the Father the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the sanctifier of the faith of those who believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. That this Rule has run down from the beginning of the Gospel, even before any of the earlier heretics, still more before Praxeas of yesterday, will be proved both by the very lateness of all heretics and by the very novelty of Praxeas of yesterday.

Whereby it is likewise, and henceforth, prejudged against all heresies alike, that whatever is first is true, whatever is later is adulterate. Yet, saving this rule of prescription, everywhere nevertheless, for the instruction and safeguarding of certain persons, a place must be given even to fuller discussions—lest any perversity should seem to be condemned unexamined and merely prejudged; and this most of all which supposes itself to possess the pure truth, while it thinks the one only God is not to be believed in otherwise than if it should call one and the same person both Father and Son and Holy Spirit:

as though the One were not in this way also all, seeing that all things are from the One—namely, through unity of substance—while nonetheless the mystery of the Economy is safeguarded, which arranges the Unity into a Trinity, setting in order three: the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—three, however, not in state but in degree, not in substance but in form, not in power but in aspect, yet of one substance and one state and one power, because there is one God from whom these degrees and forms and aspects are reckoned under the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In what manner they admit of number without division, the discussions that follow will demonstrate. Chapter 3.

For the simple folk—not to call them thoughtless and unlearned—who are always the greater part of believers, since the very Rule of Faith transfers them from the many gods of the world to the one and true God, not understanding that He is indeed to be believed as one, yet together with His Economy, take fright at the Economy. They presume that the number and disposition of the Trinity is a division of the Unity, whereas the Unity, deriving the Trinity out of itself, is not destroyed by it but administered. And so they keep bandying it about that two and three gods are preached by us, while they presume that they themselves are worshippers of the one God—as though the Unity too, irrationally collected together, did not make a heresy, and the Trinity, rationally weighed out, did not constitute the truth.

'We hold the Monarchy,' they say; and even the Latins so pronounce the very word aloud, and with such artifice that you would think they understood monarchy as well as they utter it. But while the Latins are eager to sound out 'monarchy,' they—yes, even the Greeks—refuse to understand the Economy. But as for me, if I have gleaned anything of either language, I know that 'monarchy' signifies nothing else than single and sole rule; yet monarchy does not, for the mere reason that it belongs to one, prescribe that He whose it is should either have no Son, or should have made Himself His own Son, or should not administer His own monarchy through whomever He will.

Nay, I say that no dominion is so much one's own, so single, so much a monarchy, that it may not also be administered through other closely related persons whom it has provided as its own officers; but if there be also a Son belonging to Him whose the monarchy is, it is not thereupon at once divided, nor does it cease to be a monarchy, if the Son also is taken up as a partaker of it, but it belongs equally and principally to Him from whom it is communicated to the Son; and while it is His, it is equally a monarchy which is held together by two so united.

Therefore, if even the divine monarchy is administered through so many legions and armies of angels—as it is written, 'Thousands of thousands ministered unto Him, and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stood before Him'—and yet it has not thereby ceased to be one, so as to cease being a monarchy because it is managed through so many thousands of powers: how is it that God should seem to suffer division and dispersion in the Son and in the Holy Spirit, who hold the second and third place, and who are so closely partakers of the Father's substance—which He does not suffer in so great a number of angels, and those too so alien from the Father's substance? Do you reckon the members and the pledges and the instruments, and the very force and whole reserve of the monarchy, to be its overthrow? Not rightly. I would rather have you exercise yourself upon the sense of the matter than upon the sound of the word.

For the overthrow of the monarchy is to be understood by you as taking place when another dominion, of its own condition and its own proper state, and therefore a rival one, is brought in over it—when another god is brought in against the Creator, as with Marcion; when there are several, according to the followers of Valentinus and Prodicus. Then there is an overthrow of the monarchy, when it goes to the destruction of the Creator. Chapter 4. But as for me, who derive the Son from no other source than from the substance of the Father, as doing nothing without the Father's will, as having obtained all power from the Father—how can I be destroying the monarchy from the faith, when I preserve it, handed down by the Father to the Son, in the Son? Let this be said by me also with regard to the third degree, since I hold that the Spirit is from no other source than from the Father through the Son.

See therefore lest it be rather you who destroy the monarchy, who overthrow its disposition and dispensation, established in as many names as God has willed. But so far does it remain in its own state, even though the Trinity be brought in, that it is even to be restored to the Father by the Son; since the Apostle writes concerning the ultimate end, 'When He shall have delivered up the Kingdom to God, even the Father. For He must reign, until God put His enemies under His feet'—namely, according to the Psalm, 'Sit Thou at My right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool. But when all things shall be subdued unto Him, except Him who did subject all things unto Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.'

We see, therefore, that the Son is no hindrance to the monarchy, although it is today in the keeping of the Son; because it is in its own state with the Son, and together with its own state shall be restored to the Father by the Son. Thus no one will destroy it on this account, if he admit the Son, to whom both it is agreed that it was handed over by the Father, and by whom it is to be restored at length to the Father. By this one little chapter of the apostolic epistle we have now been able to show that both the Father and the Son are two—apart from the very names of Father and Son—also from this, that He who delivered up the Kingdom and He to whom it was delivered up, likewise He who subjected and He to whom the subjection was made, must of necessity be two. Chapter 5.

But because they will have the two to be one, so that the same be held to be both Father and Son, the whole matter concerning the Son must be examined—whether He exists, and who He is, and in what manner He is; and thus the matter itself will vindicate its own form, the Scriptures and their interpretations acting as its advocates. Some assert that even Genesis, in the Hebrew, begins thus: 'In the beginning God made for Himself a Son.' That this may not stand firm, other arguments lead me on, drawn from the very disposition of God in which He existed before the constitution of the world, right up to the generation of the Son. For before all things God was alone, being Himself to Himself both world and place and all things. But He was alone in that there was nothing else external besides Him. Yet not even then was He alone, for He had with Him that which He had within Himself—His own Reason, namely.

For God is rational, and Reason was first in Him, and thus all things are from Him: which Reason is His own consciousness. This the Greeks call Logos, by which term we also designate 'discourse' (sermo); and therefore it is now customary among our people, through simplicity of interpretation, to say that the Discourse was in the beginning with God—whereas it would be more fitting that Reason be held the more ancient, because God was not from the beginning a speaking Being (sermonalis) but a rational one (rationalis), even before the beginning; and because the Discourse itself, subsisting by Reason, shows that Reason was prior as being its own substance. Yet even so it makes no difference.

For even though God had not yet sent forth His Discourse, He nonetheless had it, together with and within His very Reason, within Himself, while silently thinking and disposing with Himself the things which He was presently about to utter through Discourse. For while thinking and disposing with His own Reason, He was making that to be Discourse which He was handling by discourse. And that you may the more easily understand this, first recognize it from your own self, as from the image and likeness of God, in that you too have Reason within yourself, being a rational animal—made not only by a rational Artificer, but also animated out of His very substance. See, when in silence you commune with yourself by reason, this very thing goes on within you, that same reason meeting you with discourse at every movement of your thought, at every impulse of your consciousness.

Whatever you think is discourse, whatever you are conscious of is reason: you must needs speak it in your mind, and while you speak, you suffer discourse to be your fellow-talker, in which there is present this very reason with which you speak while thinking with it—through which, while speaking, you think. Thus in a way there is within you a second thing, discourse, through which you speak by thinking, and through which you think by speaking: the discourse itself is another. How much more fully, then, does this take place in God, whose image and likeness you too are reckoned, in that He has within Himself, even while silent, Reason, and in Reason, Discourse?

I may therefore, not rashly, have already established that God, even before the constitution of the universe, was not alone, since He had within Himself both Reason and, in Reason, Discourse, which He made second to Himself by setting it in motion within Himself. Chapter 6. This power and this disposition of the divine mind is shown in the Scriptures under the name of Wisdom (Sophia) also. For what is wiser than the Reason of God, or than His Discourse? Therefore hear Wisdom too, as a second Person founded: first, 'The Lord created me as the beginning of His ways for His works, before He made the earth, before the mountains were settled; moreover before all the hills He begot me'—establishing and begetting me, namely, in His own thought. Then recognize her as standing beside Him by the very act of separation:

'When He prepared the heavens,' she says, 'I was present with Him; and how He made strong the clouds that are above the winds, and how He set fast the fountains that are under the heaven, I was with Him arranging them, I was that in which He delighted; and daily I took delight in His presence.' For as soon as God willed to bring forth into their own substances and forms those things which He had disposed within Himself together with Wisdom and Reason and Discourse, He first put forth the Discourse itself, having within it His own inseparable Reason and Wisdom, that all things might be made through Him through whom they had been thought out and disposed—nay, already made, as far as concerned God's thought: for this was lacking to them, that they should also be openly known and held in their own forms and substances. Chapter 7.

Then, therefore, does the Discourse itself take on its appearance and adornment, its sound and voice, when God says, 'Let there be light.' This is the perfect nativity of the Discourse, while it proceeds forth from God: founded by Him first for thought under the name of Wisdom—'The Lord founded me as the beginning of His ways'; then begotten for effect—'When He prepared the heavens I was present with Him'; from thence making Him a Father to Himself, from whom, by proceeding, He was made Son, the Firstborn, as begotten before all things, and the Only-begotten, as alone begotten of God, properly from the womb of His own heart, according to what the Father Himself testifies, 'My heart hath poured forth the best Word'; toward whom thereafter, rejoicing, He likewise rejoicing in His Person, 'Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee,' and 'Before the day-star I begat Thee.'

Thus also the Son, out of His own Person, professes the Father under the name of Wisdom: 'The Lord founded me as the beginning of His ways for His works, and before all the hills He begot me.' For if here Wisdom indeed seems to say that she was founded by the Lord for His works and ways, yet elsewhere, through Discourse, it is shown that all things were made and without Him nothing was made—as again likewise, 'By His Word were the heavens established, and by His Spirit all the powers of them' (that Spirit, surely, which was in the Discourse)—it appears that it is one and the same power, now under the name of Wisdom, now under the appellation of Discourse, which received the beginning of the ways for the works of God, and which established the heaven; through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made.

Nor need we linger longer on this—as though He were not Himself the Discourse under the name both of Wisdom and of Reason and of every divine mind and spirit—He who was made the Son of God, of whom, by coming forth, He was begotten. 'Therefore,' you say, 'you grant that the Discourse is a certain substance, constructed of Spirit and Wisdom and Reason?' Plainly. For you are unwilling that He should have substantive being in reality through a property of substance, so that He may be seen as a thing and a certain Person, and thus, being constituted second from God, may bring it about that there are two—Father and Son, God and Discourse. For what, you will say, is Discourse but voice and sound of the mouth, and, as the grammarians teach, air struck so as to be intelligible to the hearing—but otherwise something I know not what, empty and void and incorporeal?

But I say that nothing empty and void could have come forth from God, as not being put forth from what is empty and void, nor could that lack substance which proceeded from so great a substance and made such great substances; for He too made the things that were made through Him. How is it that He should Himself be nothing, without whom nothing was made—that the empty should have wrought solid things, the void full things, the incorporeal corporeal things? For although something may sometimes be made different from that through which it is made, yet nothing can be made through that which is empty and void. Is the Discourse of God an empty and void thing—He who was called the Son, who Himself was surnamed God, 'And the Word was with God, and the Word was God'? It is written, 'Thou shalt not take the name of God in vain.'

This is surely He who, being constituted in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God. In what form of God? Surely in some form, not in none: for who will deny that God is a body, even though God is a spirit? For a spirit is a body of its own kind, in its own form. But even if those invisible things, whatever they are, have with God both their own body and their own form, through which they are visible to God alone—how much more will that which was sent forth from His very substance not be without substance? Whatever, therefore, was the substance of the Discourse, that I call a Person, and to it I claim the name of Son; and while I acknowledge the Son, I maintain Him to be second from the Father. Chapter 8.

If any one should think, on this account, that I am introducing some 'projection' (probolē)—that is, the bringing forth of one thing out of another, as Valentinus does when he produces one aeon after another out of an aeon—I will first say to you: it is not for that reason that the truth does not use this term and this thing and its reckoning, merely because heresy also uses it; nay rather, heresy has borrowed from the truth what it might build up unto its own lie. Was the Discourse of God projected forth, or not? Here fix your step with me. If it was projected, acknowledge the projection of the truth, and let heresy look to it, whether it has imitated anything of the truth. It is now asked who uses any given thing and its term, and in what manner. Valentinus severs and separates his projections from their author, and so places them far from him that the aeon does not know the Father;

in short, it longs to know Him and cannot; nay, it is almost swallowed up and dissolved into the remaining substance. But with us the Son alone knows the Father, and Himself has declared the bosom of the Father, and has heard and seen all things with the Father, and what He was commanded by the Father, that He also speaks; and He has accomplished not His own but the Father's will, which He knew from close at hand, nay, from the beginning. For who knoweth the things that are in God, save the Spirit which is in Him? But the Discourse is built up of Spirit, and, so to speak, the Spirit is the body of the Discourse. The Discourse, therefore, is always in the Father, as He says, 'I am in the Father'; and always with God, as it is written, 'And the Word was with God'; and never separated from the Father, or otherwise than from the Father, because 'I and the Father are one.'

This will be the projection of the truth, the guardian of unity, whereby we say that the Son was projected forth from the Father, but not separated. For God projected forth the Discourse, even as the Paraclete also teaches, as the root the shrub, and the fountain the river, and the sun the ray: for these species too are projections of those substances from which they proceed. Nor should I hesitate to call the Son both the shrub of the root and the river of the fountain and the ray of the sun, because every origin is a parent, and everything which is brought forth from an origin is offspring—much more the Discourse of God, who has also properly received the name of Son: yet neither is the shrub severed from the root, nor the river from the fountain, nor the ray from the sun, even as neither is the Discourse from God.

Therefore, according to the form of these examples, I profess that I hold there to be two—God and His Discourse, the Father and His Son; for the root and the shrub too are two things, but conjoined; and the fountain and the river are two species, but undivided; and the sun and the ray are two forms, but cohering. Everything that proceeds from something must of necessity be second to that from which it proceeds, yet it is not therefore separated. But where there is a second, there are two; and where there is a third, there are three. For the Spirit is third from God and the Son, just as the fruit from the shrub is third from the root, and the stream from the river is third from the fountain, and the point of light from the ray is third from the sun: yet nothing is estranged from that matrix from which it derives its own properties.

Thus the Trinity, running down by joined and connected degrees from the Father, in no way clashes with the monarchy, and safeguards the state of the Economy. Chapter 9. Hold everywhere fast to this rule, which I have professed, whereby I testify that the Father and the Son and the Spirit are inseparable from one another; and so you will recognize how each thing is said and in what sense. For lo, I say that the Father is one, and the Son another, and the Spirit another (every uninstructed or perverse person has taken this saying amiss, as though it sounded of diversity and, out of diversity, stretched forth a separation of the Father and the Son and the Spirit:

but I say this of necessity, when they contend that the same is Father and Son and Spirit, flattering the monarchy against the Economy)—yet the Son is other than the Father not by diversity but by distribution, and another not by division but by distinction, because the Father and the Son are not the same, being also in a measure other, the one than the other. For the Father is the whole substance, but the Son is a derivation and portion of the whole, as He Himself professes, 'Because the Father is greater than I'; by whom also He is sung as made less, 'A little lower than the angels.' So too the Father is other than the Son, in that He is greater than the Son, in that one is He who begets, another He who is begotten, in that one is He who sends, another He who is sent, in that one is He who makes, another He through whom it is made.

It is well that the Lord too, using this word in the person of the Paraclete, signified not division but disposition: 'For I will ask,' He says, 'the Father, and He shall send you another Advocate, the Spirit of truth.' Thus He showed the Paraclete to be another from Himself, just as we show the Son to be another from the Father, so that He might display a third degree in the Paraclete, as we display a second in the Son, for the sake of observing the Economy. The very fact that they are called Father and Son—is it not one thing other than another? Surely all things will be what they are called, and what they are they shall be called; and the diversity of the names cannot mingle itself together at all, because neither can the diversity of the things whose names they will be. 'Let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than this is of evil.' Chapter 10.

Thus it is either Father or Son; and neither is the day the same as the night, nor the Father the same as the Son, so that both should be one and each be the other—which these most empty-headed Monarchians wish. 'He made Himself a Son to Himself,' they say. But the Father makes the Son, and the Son the Father; and those who come into being from one another can in no way come into being from themselves for themselves, so that the Father should make Himself a Son to Himself, and the Son should furnish Himself a Father to Himself. The relations which God has instituted, He Himself also keeps. The Father must needs have a Son, in order to be a Father, and the Son a Father, in order to be a Son. But it is one thing to have, another to be: for example, that I may be a husband, I must have a wife; I shall not be a wife to myself. So likewise, that I may be a father, I have a son; I shall not be a son to myself:

and that I may be a son, I have a father; I shall not be a father to myself. For these relations make me what I am: if I shall have had one, then I shall be—a father, if I have a son; I shall be a son, if I have a father. Moreover, if I myself shall be either of these, then I no longer have that which I myself shall be—neither a father, because I myself shall be the father; nor a son, because I myself shall be the son. But inasmuch as it behooves me to have the one of these and to be the other, in so far, if I shall have been both, I shall not be the one while I do not have the other. For if I myself shall be the son who am also the father, then I no longer have a son, but am myself the son. But having no son, while I myself am the son, how shall I be a father? For I must have a son in order to be a father: I am not, therefore, a son, because I have no father who makes a son.

Likewise, if I myself am the father who am also the son, then I no longer have a father, but am myself the father. But having no father, while I myself am the father, how shall I be a son? For I must have a father in order to be a son: I shall not, therefore, be a father, because I have no son who makes a father. This will be the whole cunning of the devil, to exclude the one by means of the other, while, by shutting up both into one under favour of the monarchy, he causes neither to be held—so that neither should He be Father who has no Son, nor should He be Son who likewise has no Father: for while He is Father, He will not be Son. Thus do they hold the monarchy who hold together neither Father nor Son. But nothing is difficult to God. Who does not know this? And who is ignorant that things impossible with the world are possible with God?

And, 'God hath chosen the foolish things of the world, that He may confound the wise'—we have read all these things. 'Therefore,' they say, 'it was not difficult for God to make Himself both Father and Son, contrary to the form handed down to human affairs: for even to make the barren bear, contrary to nature, was not difficult for God, as neither the virgin.' Plainly nothing is difficult to God: but if we should use this maxim so abruptly in our presumptions, we shall be able to fabricate whatever we please concerning God, as though He had done it, because He could have done it. But not, because He can do all things, is it therefore to be believed that He has done even what He has not done; rather, whether He has done it, must be inquired into. God could, had He willed, have furnished man with wings for flying, which He has bestowed even on kites: yet not, because He could, has He straightway also done it.

He could also have straightway extinguished both Praxeas and all heretics alike: yet not, because He could, has He extinguished them. For it was needful that there should be both kites and heretics; it was needful too that the Father should be crucified. On this principle, then, there will be something even difficult to God—namely, whatever He has not done, not because He could not, but because He would not. For with God, to be able is to will, and to be unable is to be unwilling: but what He willed, that He both was able to do and has shown. Therefore, since, if He willed, He could make Himself a Son to Himself, and since, if He could, He did it—you will then prove that He both could and would, if you shall have proved that He did it. Chapter 11. But you will have to prove it as plainly from the Scriptures as we prove that He made His own Discourse a Son to Himself.

For if He names a Son, and the Son shall be none other than He who proceeded from Him, and the Discourse proceeded from Him—this shall be the Son, not He from whom He proceeded: for He did not Himself proceed from Himself. Furthermore, you who say that the same is Father and Son, you also make the same both to have brought forth from Himself and to have proceeded forth—that which is God. Granted He could have done it, yet He did not do it. Either produce the proof which I demand, like to my own—that is, that the Scriptures show the same to be Son and Father in the same way as, with us, the Father and the Son are distinctly demonstrated: distinctly, I say, not dividedly.

As I bring forward the saying spoken by God, 'My heart hath poured forth the best Word,' do you, on the contrary, oppose to this that God has somewhere said, 'My heart hath poured forth Me, the best Word,' so that He Himself is both He who poured forth and that which was poured forth, and He Himself both He who brought forth and He who was brought forth—if He Himself is both Discourse and God. Behold, I set forth that the Father said to the Son, 'Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee': if you would have me believe that He Himself is both Father and Son, show me that it was pronounced thus elsewhere: 'The Lord said unto Himself, I am My own Son, this day have I begotten Myself'; and likewise, 'Before the day-star I begat Myself'; and, 'The Lord founded Me as the beginning of My ways for My works, and before all the hills I begat Myself'; and any other things there may be after this manner.

But whom did God, the Lord of the universe, fear, that He should speak thus, if the matter were so? Or did He fear that He would not be believed if He had declared Himself plainly to be both Father and Son? One thing indeed He did fear: to lie, being Himself the Author of truth and His own truth. And therefore, believing God to be truthful, I know that He pronounced nothing otherwise than He arranged it, nor arranged it otherwise than He pronounced it.

You, moreover, would make Him a liar and a deceiver, and a defrauder of this faith of ours, if, when He Himself was His own Son, He assigned to another the person of the Son—whereas all the Scriptures set forth both the demonstration and the distinction of the Trinity, from which our own rule is also derived: namely, that one and the same cannot be seen to be He who speaks, and He of whom He speaks, and He to whom He speaks; since neither perversity nor deceit befits God, that, when He Himself were the one to whom He was speaking, He should rather speak to another and not to Himself. Take, then, still other utterances of the Father concerning the Son through Isaiah: 「Behold my Son whom I have chosen, my beloved in whom I am well pleased; I will place my Spirit upon Him, and He shall announce judgment to the nations.」 Take also those addressed to the Son Himself:

「It is a great thing for you to be called my Son, to establish the tribes of Jacob and to turn back the dispersion of Israel; I have set you as a light of the nations, that you may be salvation to the ends of the earth.」 Now take also the Son's utterances concerning the Father: 「The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, wherefore He has anointed me to bring good tidings to men.」 Likewise in the Psalm, addressed to the Father concerning the same One: 「Do not forsake me, until I announce your arm to all the generation that is to come.」 Likewise in another: 「Lord, why are they multiplied who press upon me?」 And indeed almost all the Psalms which sustain the person of Christ represent the Son as making His words to the Father—that is, Christ to God. Observe also the Spirit speaking in the third person concerning the Father and the Son:

「The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.」 Likewise through Isaiah: 「Thus says the Lord to my Lord, Christ.」 Likewise through the same, addressed to the Father concerning the Son: 「Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? We announced concerning Him as a little child, as a root in a thirsty land, and there was no form in Him nor glory.」 These are a few out of many; for we do not aim to unroll all the Scriptures, since even in single chapters, attesting the full majesty and authority, we shall have a greater encounter in our detailed treatments. By these few, then, the distinction of the Trinity is plainly set forth:

For there is the Spirit Himself who makes the pronouncement, and the Father to whom He makes it, and the Son concerning whom He makes it. So too the rest, which are now pronounced by the Father concerning the Son or to the Son, now by the Son concerning the Father or to the Father, now by the Spirit—these establish each person in His own property. CHAPTER 12. If the number of the Trinity still scandalizes you, as though it were not knit together in a simple unity, I ask how it is that One who is unique and single speaks in the plural: 「Let us make man to our image and likeness,」 when He ought to have said, 「I will make man to my image and likeness,」 as being unique and single.

But also in what follows: 「Behold, Adam has become as one of us,」—is He deceiving or jesting, that being one and alone and single He should speak in the plural? Or was He perhaps speaking to angels, as the Jews interpret, because they too do not acknowledge the Son? Or was it because He Himself was Father, Son, and Spirit, that, presenting Himself as plural, He spoke to Himself in the plural? Nay rather, because the Son was already adhering to Him, the second person, His own Word, and the third, the Spirit in the Word, therefore He pronounced in the plural 「Let us make」 and 「Our」 and 「Us.」 For with whom was He making man, and to whom was He making him like?

With the Son indeed, who was to put on man, and with the Spirit truly, who was to sanctify man, He spoke as with ministers and assessors out of the unity of the Trinity. Finally, the following Scripture distinguishes between the persons: 「And God made man; to the image of God He made him.」 Why not to His own image, if there were only one who was making, and there were not another to whose image He made him? But there was One to whose image He was making him, namely the Son, who, being about to become man—the more certain and true—had caused His own image to be called man, the man who was then to be formed of clay, the image of the True One and His likeness. But also in the preceding works of the world, how is it written? First indeed, the Son not yet appearing: 「And God said, Let there be light, and it was made.」

The Word Himself immediately is the true light which enlightens every man coming into this world, and through Him the world's light also. But thereafter, in the Word, with Christ assisting and administering, God willed that it be made, and God made it: 「And God said, Let there be a firmament, and God made the firmament」; 「And God said, Let there be lights, and God made the greater and lesser light.」 But the rest also assuredly He made who made the former things, that is, the Word of God through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made. And if He Himself is God, according to John—「the Word was God」—you have two: one saying that it be made, another making it. But in what sense you ought to understand 「another,」 I have already professed: by the name of person, not of substance; for distinction, not for division.

For the rest, even though everywhere I hold one substance in three who cohere, nevertheless I must, from the very necessity of the sense, call Him who commands and Him who does 「another.」 For He would not even command, if He Himself were doing it while He commanded it to be done. Yet He commanded through Him, not being about to command Himself if He were one, nor about to do it without a command; because He would not have waited to command Himself. CHAPTER 13. Therefore, you say, if God spoke and God made, if one God spoke and another God made, then two Gods are proclaimed. If you are so obstinate, suppose it so for the moment. And that you may suppose this all the more, take also in the Psalm that two are called Gods: 「Your throne, O God, is for ever; the rod of direction is the rod of your kingdom; you have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, therefore God, your God, has anointed you.」

If it speaks to God, and of God anointed by God, here too it affirms two Gods. Thence also Isaiah says, addressed to the person of Christ: 「And the Sabeans, men of stature, shall pass over to you and shall follow after you, bound in their hands, and shall worship you, because God is in you; for you are our God, and we knew it not, the God of Israel.」 For here too, by saying 「God is in you」 and 「You are God,」 it sets forth two: He who was in Christ, and Christ Himself. There is more, which in the Gospel you will find just as many: 「In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God」: one who was, and another with whom He was. But I also read the name of Lord in two: 「The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand.」

And Isaiah says this: 「Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?」 For he would not have said 「your arm」 rather than 「the Lord's,」 if he did not wish both the Father as Lord and the Son as Lord to be understood. Even still more ancient is Genesis: 「And the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah sulphur and fire from heaven, from the Lord.」 Either deny that these things are written, or who are you to think they are not to be received just as they are written—especially those which have their sense not in allegories and parables, but in definite and simple statements? But if you are among those who then would not endure the Lord when He showed Himself to be the Son of God, lest they should believe Him to be Lord, remember that it is written, together with them: 「I said, You are gods, and sons of the Most High;」

and, 「God stood in the assembly of gods」: so that if Scripture did not fear to pronounce as gods men made sons of God through faith, you may know that it much more rightly conferred the name of God and of Lord upon the true and only Son of God and Lord. Therefore, you say, I will challenge you, that even today, on the authority of these Scriptures, you should consistently proclaim two Gods and two Lords. Far from it. For we, who by God's grace examine both the times and the causes of the Scriptures—being disciples especially of the Paraclete, not of men—do indeed define two, the Father and the Son, and now three with the Holy Spirit, according to the principle of the economy which produces number; lest, as your perversity infers, the Father Himself be believed to have been born and to have suffered, which it is not lawful to believe, since it has not been so handed down.

Nevertheless, we never bring forth from our mouth two Gods and two Lords: not as though the Father were not God and the Son God and the Holy Spirit God, and each one God, but because formerly both two Gods and two Lords used to be proclaimed, so that when Christ should come, He might be acknowledged as God and called Lord, because He is the Son of God and of the Lord. For if one person of both God and Lord were found in the Scriptures, Christ would rightly not have been admitted to the name of God and Lord—for no other besides one God and one Lord was proclaimed—and it would have come about that the Father Himself would seem to have descended, because one God and one Lord was read, and His whole economy would have been overshadowed, which was foreseen and dispensed as the material of faith.

But when Christ came and was recognized by us as being the very One who had formerly made up the number, having been made second from the Father and, with the Spirit, third—the Father also being more fully manifested through Him—then the name of God and of Lord was brought back into a union: so that, because the nations were passing over from the multitude of idols to the one God, a difference too might be established between the worshippers of one and of manifold divinity. For it behoved Christians also to shine in the world as sons of light, worshipping and naming as the light of the world one God and Lord.

For the rest, if out of the awareness by which we know the name of God and of Lord to belong both to the Father and to the Son and to the Spirit, we were to name them Gods and Lords, we would have extinguished our torches, becoming even more timid toward martyrdoms, since an occasion of escaping would open on every side for those who swear at once by gods and lords—as certain heretics do, whose gods are many. Therefore I will not at all say Gods nor Lords, but I will follow the Apostle, so that if the Father and the Son are to be named together, I may call the Father God and name Jesus Christ Lord. But Christ alone I shall be able to call God, just as the same Apostle says: 「Of whom is Christ, who is,」 he says, 「God over all, blessed unto every age.」 For I will also call a ray of the sun, by itself, the sun:

but naming the sun, whose the ray is, I will not straightway also call the ray the sun. For even if I make two suns, nevertheless I will reckon both the sun and its ray as two things and two species of one and undivided substance, just as God and His Word, just as the Father and the Son. CHAPTER 14. There stands by us also that rule which vindicates two, the Father and the Son, which defined God to be invisible. For when Moses in Egypt had desired the sight of the Lord, saying, 「If then I have found grace before you, manifest yourself to me, that I may see you knowingly」: 「You cannot,」 He said, 「see my face; for man shall not see my face and live」—that is, whoever sees it shall die.

For we find that God was seen by many, and yet that none of those who had seen Him died: God being seen indeed according to men's capacities, not according to the fullness of the divinity. For the patriarchs are reported to have seen God, as Abraham and Jacob, and the prophets, as Isaiah, as Ezekiel, and yet they did not die. Therefore either they ought to have died if they had seen Him—for no one shall see God and live; or if they saw God and did not die, the Scripture lies in saying that God said, 「If a man see my face he shall not live」; or the Scripture lies when it sets forth God either as unseen or as seen. Now therefore it will be another who was being seen, because the same who was being seen cannot be defined as invisible:

and it will follow that we understand the Father to be invisible according to the fullness of majesty, but acknowledge the Son to be visible according to the measure of derivation—just as it is not permitted us to contemplate the sun as regards the very sum of its substance which is in the heavens, but we endure its ray with our eyes according to the tempered portion which is thence extended to the earth. Here, on the contrary, someone will wish to contend that the Son also is invisible, as being the Word, as being the Spirit, and, while he vindicates one condition of the Father and the Son, to establish rather one and the same Father and Son. But we have said that the Scripture supports the difference through the distinction of the visible and the invisible.

For they add this also to their argumentation: that if the Son was then speaking to Moses, He would pronounce His own face visible to no one, because forsooth the invisible Father Himself was under the name of the Son. And through this they wish Him to be so understood as both visible and invisible, in the same way as the same Father and Son, since, a little above—before He had denied His face to Moses—it was written that the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as when a man speaks to his own friend; no less than Jacob also says, 「I saw the Lord face to face」: therefore the visible and the invisible are the same; and because both are the same, therefore the Father Himself is invisible, in the same respect as the Son is visible.

As if the exposition of Scripture which is made by us did not suit the Son, the Father being set apart in His own invisibility. For we say that the Son too, in His own name, is thus far invisible, in so far as He is the Word and Spirit of God, by the condition of substance even now; but that He was visible before the flesh in the manner in which He says to Aaron and Miriam, 「Even if there be a prophet among you, I will be known to him in a vision, and I will speak to him in a dream, not as with Moses will I speak to him mouth to mouth in appearance (that is, in truth) and not in an enigma (that is, not in a figure)」: just as the Apostle also says, 「Now we see as through a mirror in an enigma, but then face to face.」

Therefore, since He reserves for Moses the sight of Himself and the colloquy face to face for the future (for this was afterward fulfilled in the retirement of the mountain, as we read in the Gospel that Moses was seen conversing with Him in a vision), it appears that in the past God (that is, the Son of God) was always seen in a mirror and an enigma and a vision and a dream, both by the prophets and patriarchs and by Moses himself as yet: and even if the Lord perhaps spoke openly face to face, yet not so that man, as he is, might see His face, except perhaps in a mirror and in an enigma. Finally, if the Lord had so spoken to Moses that Moses too knew His face close at hand, how is it that at once and in the same place he desires to see His face, which, because he had seen it, he would not desire?

How likewise does the Lord too deny that His face can be seen, which He had shown—if indeed He had shown it? Or what is the face of God whose sight is denied? If there was one that was seen—「I saw,」 says Jacob, 「God face to face, and my soul was saved」—there must be another face which, if it be seen, slays. Or was the Son indeed being seen—even face to face, but this very thing in a vision and dream and mirror and enigma, because the Word and Spirit cannot be seen except in an imaginary form—while He calls His own face the invisible Father? For who is the Father? Will He not be the face of the Son, by the name of the authority which, begotten by the Father, He obtains?

For it is not fitting, even concerning some greater person, to say, 「That man is my face,」 and 「He furnishes me a face.」 「The Father,」 He says, 「is greater than I」: therefore the Father will be the face of the Son. For what does the Scripture also say? 「Christ the Lord is the Spirit of His person.」 Therefore, if Christ is the Spirit of the paternal person, rightly did the Spirit, whose person He was—that is, the Spirit of His Father—declare His own face out of unity, of course. It is plainly a wondrous thing whether the Father can be understood to be the face of the Son, who is His head: for the head of Christ is God. CHAPTER 15. If I do not resolve this point by questions of the Old Scripture, I shall take confirmation of our interpretation from the New Testament, lest you should defend against the Father in like manner whatever I ascribe to the Son.

For behold, both in the Gospels and in the Apostles I detect a visible and an invisible God, under a manifest and personal distinction of each condition. John exclaims, as it were, 「No one has ever seen God」: not even in the past, of course; for he removed the question of time by saying that God was never seen. The Apostle too confirms concerning God, 「Whom no one of men has seen, nor even can see」: namely because whoever shall see Him will die. Yet these same Apostles testify both that they have seen Christ and have handled Him. Moreover, if Christ Himself is both Father and Son, how has He been both seen and unseen?

To bring together into one this diversity of the seen and the unseen, whoever will argue against us from the opposite side will say that both are rightly affirmed: visible indeed in the flesh, but invisible before the flesh, so that the same is the invisible Father before the flesh who is also the visible Son in the flesh. But if the same is invisible before the flesh, how is He found to have been seen even in the past before the flesh? Likewise, if the same is visible after the flesh, how is He also now pronounced invisible by the Apostles—unless because there is one whom, even seen in the past in an enigma, the flesh made more fully visible, namely the Word who was also made flesh; and another whom no one ever saw, namely the Father whose the Word is? Finally, let us inspect whom the Apostles saw.

「What we have seen,」 says John, 「what we have heard, we have seen with our own eyes, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life.」 For the Word of life was made flesh, and was heard and seen and handled because flesh; who before the flesh was Word only, in the beginning with God the Father—not Father with Himself. For even though the Word was God, yet with God, because God of God, because He was with the Father in the Father's presence. 「And we saw His glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father,」 that is, of the Son, of course, visible, glorified by the invisible Father.

And therefore, because he had called the Word of God 「God,」 lest he should aid the presumption of the adversaries, as though he had seen the Father Himself, in order to distinguish between the invisible Father and the visible Son, he adds superabundantly, 「No one has ever seen God.」 What God? The Word? But no—「We have seen and heard and handled concerning the Word of life,」 has been said before. But what God? The Father, of course, with whom the Word was God, the only-begotten Son, who Himself expounded the bosom of the Father. He Himself was both heard and seen, and, lest He be believed a phantasm, also handled. Him also Paul beheld, yet did not see the Father: 「Have I not,」 he says, 「seen Jesus?」 And Christ too he himself surnamed God:

「Whose are the fathers, and from whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all, blessed unto every age.」 He shows also the visible Son of God Himself, that is, the Word of God, because He who was made flesh was called Christ. But concerning the Father, to Timothy: 「Whom no one of men has seen, nor even can see」; exaggerating still further: 「Who alone has immortality and dwells in inaccessible light」; concerning whom he had also said above: 「To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God」; so that we should ascribe the contraries to the Son Himself: mortality, accessibility. Whom he attests to have died according to the Scriptures, and to have been most recently seen by himself, through an accessible light, of course:

although even that light neither he himself experienced without peril to his eyesight, nor did Peter and John and James experience it without something of reason and near-madness; who, if they had seen not the glory of the Son who was to suffer, but the Father, would, I believe, have died there on the spot: for no one shall see God and live. If these things are so, it is established that He was always seen from the beginning who was seen in the end, and that He was not seen even in the end who was not seen from the beginning either, and thus that there are two, the seen and the unseen. The Son therefore was always seen, and the Son was always conversant, and the Son always operated, by the authority and will of the Father; because 「the Son can do nothing of Himself unless He sees the Father doing」—doing in thought, of course.

For the Father acts in thought, but the Son, seeing what is in the Father's thought, brings it to completion. Thus all things were made through the Son, and without Him nothing was made. CHAPTER 16. And do not think that only the works of the world were made through the Son, but also those which have been done by God ever since. For the Father who loves the Son and has delivered all things into His bosom, loves Him surely from the beginning and has delivered all from the beginning. From the time when from the beginning the Word was with God and the Word was God, to whom all power was given by the Father in heaven and on earth, the Father judges no one but has delivered all judgment to the Son—yet from the beginning:

for by saying 「all power,」 and 「all judgment,」 and 「all things made through Him,」 and 「all things delivered into His hand,」 it allows no exception of time, because they will not be 「all」 if they have not been of all time. It is therefore the Son who from the beginning judged, dashing down the most arrogant tower and scattering the tongues, punishing the whole world with the violence of the waters, raining upon Sodom and Gomorrah fire and sulphur, a Lord from the Lord. For He Himself also always descended to converse with humans, from Adam even to the patriarchs and prophets, in vision, in dream, in mirror, in enigma, foreordaining His own order from the beginning, which He was always to carry through to the end.

Thus God was always learning to converse on earth with men—no other than the Word who was to be flesh. And He was learning it in order to pave for us the way of faith, that we might the more easily believe that the Son of God had descended into the world, if we recognized that something of such a kind had also been done in the past. For it is on our account that, just as things were written, so also they were done—on us upon whom the ends of the ages have run down. So too He already knew human affections even then, being about to take on the very substances of man, flesh and soul, when He questioned Adam as if not knowing, 「Where are you, Adam?」

repenting that He had made man as if not foreknowing, tempting Abraham as if ignorant of what is in man, offended and reconciled with the same persons—and whatever the heretics seize upon as unworthy of God, to the destruction of the Creator, being ignorant that these things belonged to the Son, who was also to undergo human sufferings, and thirst and hunger and tears and birth itself and death itself, having on this account been made a little lower than the angels by the Father. But the heretics indeed will not even reckon that those things befit the Son of God which you bring in upon the Father Himself, as though He had lessened Himself for our sake, whereas Scripture says that one was lessened by another, not that He lessened Himself by Himself.

What if He too who was being crowned with glory and honour was one, and He who crowned was another—the Father crowning the Son, of course?

For the rest, what sort of thing is it that God—that Almighty, invisible One whom no one of men has seen nor can see, He who dwells in inaccessible light, He who dwells not in things made by hands, at whose sight the earth trembles and the mountains melt like wax, who grasps the whole world in His hand like a nest, whose throne is heaven and whose footstool is the earth, in whom is every place, He Himself not in a place, who is the outermost boundary of the universe, that Most High One—should have walked in paradise toward evening seeking Adam, and should have closed the ark after Noah's entrance, and should have refreshed Himself with Abraham under the oak, and should have called Moses out of the burning bush, and should have appeared as the fourth in the furnace of the Babylonian king—although He was called the Son of man?

And in image and mirror and enigma, of course—and even these things ought not to have been believed of the Son of God had they not been written, and perhaps ought not to be believed of the Father even though written—whom these men bring down into the womb of Mary and set upon the tribunal of Pilate and shut up again in the tomb of Joseph. Hence, therefore, their error appears. For, being ignorant that from the beginning the whole order of the divine dispensation ran its course through the Son, they believe the Father Himself to have been both seen and met with and to have operated, and to have suffered thirst and hunger—against the prophet who says, 「The eternal God shall not thirst nor hunger at all」—how much more shall He neither die nor be buried—and thus that one God, that is the Father, always did the things which were done through the Son.

the Son acting in the Father's name, the Lord Himself saying, 「I have come in my Father's name」; likewise to the Father Himself, 「I have manifested your name to men」; the Scripture also agreeing, 「Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord」—the Son, of course, in the Father's name. And the name of the Father is God Almighty, the Most High, the Lord of hosts, the King of Israel, He Who Is. In so far as the Scriptures thus teach, we say that these things too were shared in by the Son, and that in these the Son came, and in these He always acted, and thus manifested them in Himself to men. 「All things,」 He says, 「that are the Father's are mine」: why not the names also?

When therefore you read of God Almighty and the Most High and the God of hosts and the King of Israel and Him Who Is, see whether through these the Son too be not shown, in His own right, to be God Almighty inasmuch as He is the Word of Almighty God, and inasmuch as He received all power; the Most High inasmuch as He was exalted at the right hand of God, as Peter proclaims in the Acts; the Lord of hosts because all things were subjected to Him by the Father; the King of Israel because to Him properly fell the lot of that nation; likewise Him Who Is, since many are called sons and are not. But if they wish the name of Christ also to be the Father's, they shall hear in its own place.