But who among the catholics is ignorant that the Father is truly the Father, the Son truly the Son, and the Holy Spirit truly the Holy Spirit? As the Lord Himself says to His apostles: 'Go, baptize all nations in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit' (Matt. XXVIII, 19). This is the perfect Trinity subsisting in unity, which indeed we profess to be of one substance. For we do not make a division in God according to the condition of bodies; but according to the power of the divine nature, which is not in matter, we believe both that the persons of the names truly subsist, and we testify that there is a unity of divinity. Nor do we call the Son of God an extension of some part from the Father (as certain men have supposed):
nor do we receive a word without substance, like the mere sound of the voice; but we believe three names and three persons to be of one essence, of one majesty and power. And therefore we confess one God, because the unity of majesty forbids that gods be named by the term of a plurality. Finally, we catholicly name the Father and the Son; but we neither can nor ought to say two gods — not because the Son of God is not God, nay rather He is true God of true God; but because we have come to know the Son of God to be from no other source than from the one Father Himself, we accordingly say one God. For this the prophets, this the apostles handed down; this the Lord Himself taught, when He says: 'I and the Father are one' (John X, 30). The 'one' refers (as I have said) to the unity of divinity:
but the 'we are' assigns it to the persons. But the Apostle also says: 'There is,' he says, 'one God the Father, from whom are all things, and we in Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through Him: but there is not in all men knowledge' (1 Cor. VIII, 6). On which point, these words being explained — words which brought a scruple, not to me who know what I have said, but to others — I think the occasion for evil interpretation has been removed. For both the profession of the faith is manifest, and the person stands together with its names, and one divinity has been assigned. Or if there still seems to be something in the words ambiguous to the readers, they ought to be brought to the true meaning; because it is not the simplicity of words, but the obstinacy of an evil understanding, that smells of fault.
But since our meaning agrees with the truth, the words too ought to agree with the most sincere reason. Wherefore let the academic disputant depart from Christian simplicity. 'Many indeed and grievous heresies,' etc. (which you have above, from page 506). After those words: 'Whose kingdom is eternal, immortal, has neither beginning nor end: to whom be honor and glory unto the ages of ages. Amen': these things Vigilius added in this second edition of the same little work: You who read these things, I beseech you by God, that you do not twist the simplicity of my meaning into ambiguity, nor draw it otherwise than it was said;
because we confess the Father to be the true Father, and the Son of God to be the true Son of God, and we believe the Holy Spirit to be truly the Holy Spirit, confessing three persons of one substance and of one divinity. But the sect of Sabellius and of Photinus, and likewise of Arius, and if there be any others that come against the rule of truth, we condemn. But preserving with all effort of mind from our whole faith the doctrinal statement of the Council of Nicaea, we embrace it; for we know this statement to have been set against all heresies with invincible truth. As a corollary to the works of Vigilius of Thapsus, take finally certain objections of the Arians, and their solutions, which in the manuscripts
the codices of Cluny, Paris, Poitiers, and Pontigny appended to the dialogue against the Arians, with Athanasius, Arius, and Probus as judge being the only interlocutors: which it is reasonable to suppose were added by Vigilius to his first dialogue under the name of Athanasius against the Arians, before he set about its second edition, in which he also refuted the Photinians and Sabellians together with the Arians. HERE BEGIN THE SOLUTIONS OF THE OBJECTIONS OF THE ARIANS. Their first objection is that by which they say it is impossible that God the Father, who is incorporeal and invisible, should beget from His own substance. Of these men this must first be asked: whether it was by His will restraining Him that the Father was unable to beget:
and if indeed He did not beget by His will, then He had it in His nature that He could beget, but His will held back from the effect of generation; and thus their superfluous objection, overcome, yields and is hissed off the stage — the objection by which they say it was impossible for the Lord to beget from His own substance, since it is certain that the divine nature is free from the defect of impossibility. But if they should say that by a natural impossibility He could not beget, they fall into the open abyss of blasphemy, asserting Him to be incapable who is omnipotent. Then further they will convict God of falsehood, as though He had deceived men by His proclamation, saying 'I have begotten,' when according to these men He had an impossibility of begetting.
For in order to teach that He had begotten His own Son from the ineffable substance of His nature, He drew the term of earthly birth into an example of the divine generation, so as to beat down the madness of the unbelievers, saying: 'From the womb before the day-star I begot Thee' (Ps. CIX, 3). What could the Godhead utter more clearly, what more lucidly? By what signs, by what examples of existing things, could He intimate the propriety of the generation, save that He even compared Himself to the appellation of a womb? Not because He is composed of corporeal members, or distinguished by any outlines of limbs, but because we could not otherwise perceive by the hearing of the mind the truth of the divine generation, unless we were prompted by the example of the human womb;
so that it could no longer be doubted that He was born of the substance of God, who is acknowledged to have proceeded from the womb of the Father. Moreover these men, as far as I see, wish to give a great shortcut to the matter: for if they confess that God did not beget, there is no reason why they should not confess that the Son was born; and thus all our contention will be cast down. While they openly deny, while they pretend to confess, again they object: 'When He was, was He born, or when He was not?' They would rightly object, if they did not utterly deny the nativity of the Son: only the question concerning times would remain, whether He was born before time or out of time — yet it was established that He was born.
But since they take away altogether the truth of the paternal generation, why do they inquire concerning Him when He took the origin of His nativity, whom they altogether deny to have been born? Nevertheless, lest we seem to put forward these things from poverty of response, let us, returning to the solution of the question by this beginning of order, in like manner first set forth our own question: whether, when the Father was God, He begot the Son, or when He was not Father. If when He was Father; then He begot the Son too, when there was a Son: and if when He was not Father, then He received an increase of honor, and thus was not perfect in Himself — He who, in order to enjoy perfection, afterward by begetting the Son added to Himself the paternal name; and through this is mutable in His substance:
He will be one who passed over from the dignity of deity to the effect of paternal honor. What, I pray, delights you in these torments of questions? Why are you not ashamed to be bound by the insoluble knots of objections, while you yourself stretch out the snare, and do not perceive that you are being entangled? You say therefore: 'When He was, He was born.' And where, you will say, was He? In the heart of the Father, in the womb of the Father, in the bosom of the Father, that is, in the secret hidden places of His nature. From there He proceeded by being born, He did not depart by withdrawing. 'I,' He says, 'proceeded from the mouth of the Most High' (Sirach XXIV, 5): 'I,' He says, 'came forth from the Lord the Father' (John XVI, 28). Behold, you have the procession of His being born; hear the abiding, of Him who does not depart from whence He had proceeded. 'I,' He says, 'am in the Father, and the Father in me' (John XIV, 11).
Again they say: the Father is unbegotten, the Son begotten. It cannot be that there is one substance of the begotten and the unbegotten. If, just as the Father is unbegotten, the Son too were unbegotten, then the substance could rather be diverse; because each one, subsisting of himself, would not have communion of substance with the other. But since the unbegotten Father, from His very self, that is, from that which He Himself is — whatever that be — begot the Son, it appears that there is one nature of the begetter and the begotten. Behold, I have briefly resolved what he said: let him by whatever art dissolve my proposition, if he can. He says, 'The Father is unbegotten,' in order by this very thing to assert the Father to be unbegotten; which indeed he will nowhere be able to show to be written;
I, however, wish to call God the Father a begetter; which I shall most easily show to be written. Let him therefore answer me whether the unbegotten and the begotten can have a diverse nature — which he will not be able to demonstrate even in Adam, who was not begotten, and in him who was born of him. But if he should be willing to confess this, I should wonder if he does not succumb to the testimony of all nature crying out against him, which generates nothing other than that which it itself is. But let them not falsely charge that we wished to use an example of earthly origin: let us have recourse to the magisterium of the divine authority itself; although he the more measures the ineffable nativity of the omnipotent God by the custom of human generation, objecting to the Son that, if He was born, He was not before He was born.
Therefore, as I have said, it is to be proved by divine testimonies that the Father and the Son are of one nature. Of God the Father we certainly read, the apostle John testifying: 'God,' he says, 'is light, and in Him there are no darknesses at all' (1 John I, 5). But the Son says of Himself: 'I am the light' (John VIII, 12). If therefore the Father is light and the Son is light, it appears that they are of one substance, since there cannot be a diverse nature of light and light — namely of that which begets of itself, and that which exists of the begetter. Finally, lest by any rash presumption he should introduce a diversity of natural light between the Father and the Son, Scripture has handed down that the Son is the splendor of the paternal light, saying:
'He is,' it says, 'the splendor of eternal light, and the spotless mirror of God's majesty, and the image of His goodness' (Wisd. VII, 26): in which He is more evidently taught to be coeternal with the Father, and inseparable from the Father, and of one nature with Him. For in this brief little verse the whole profession of the catholic faith is contained, since the splendor is always coeternal with the light, since the splendor is never separated from the light, since the splendor can never be diverse in nature and substance from the light. This is why we, on the straight path of faith, profess the Son to be indivisible and of one substance with the Father. They say: 'To the prophets the Son alone appeared, and He must be called lesser who appeared to no one.'
But if we shall have taught that the Father too appeared to men, then either let them confess equal those who were alike seen, or at least let them seek for themselves someone to whom they may make the Father lesser, if appearing makes the one who appears lesser. And lest I delay the proof of the Father appearing to men, I will bring forward the very testimonies in the midst. In Genesis, then, it is clearly related of Jacob, when he was going to Mesopotamia of Syria, fleeing Esau his brother, that he saw the Lord leaning over a ladder and saying to him: 'I am the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac; fear not' (Gen. XXVIII, 13). Again, after the course of much time, when he had returned to his father, God appeared to him, saying:
'Arise, and go up to Bethel, and dwell there, and make there an altar to God who appeared to thee when thou wast fleeing from the face of Esau thy brother' (Gen. XXXV, 1). Let these men therefore choose for themselves what they will: either that the Father appeared to the one fleeing, and the Son to the one returning; or the Son to the one fleeing, and the Father no less to the one coming back. They find no way out from this, because divine Scripture testifies that both appeared. Likewise the prophet Daniel describes himself as having seen God the Father in the form of a man: 'I beheld,' he says, 'till thrones were set; and the Ancient of days sat: His garment white as snow: the hairs of His head like clean wool: His throne a flame of fire: His wheels a burning fire: a fiery stream issued forth from before His face:'
'thousands of thousands ministered to Him, and ten times a hundred thousand stood before Him' (Dan. VII, 9-10). That we may show this more manifestly — that it was God the Father who was seen by Daniel in the appearance of an aged man — in what follows he speaks thus also of the Son: 'Behold, in the clouds of heaven the Son of man was coming, and He came even to the Ancient of days' (Ibid., 13). It appears therefore, according to the faith of the present testimony, that both the Father and the Son appeared also to Daniel the prophet. Likewise they object: 'I,' He says, 'live because of the Father'; so that thereby He may seem inferior, in that He lives not because of Himself but because of another. But let them read again the chapter above: 'As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father' (John VI, 58).
That is like to this which He says elsewhere: 'As the Father has life in Himself' (John V, 26). This thing does not indicate inequality, but shows the unity of substance, and that the Son subsists not of Himself, but of the Father.