Against Praxeas

THE DEVIL HAS OPPOSED AND COMPETED AGAINST THE TRUTH IN MANY WAYS: Sometimes he has tried to destroy the truth by pretending to defend it. He insists that there is only one Lord, the almighty Creator of the world, so that from this teaching about God's unity he may create a heresy. He says that the Father Himself came down into the Virgin, was Himself born from her, Himself suffered, and indeed was Himself Jesus Christ. Here the old serpent has contradicted himself. When he tempted Christ after John's baptism, he came to Him as the Son of God. This clearly suggests that God had a Son, based even on the witness of the very Scriptures from which he was then shaping his temptation: "If you are the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread." Matthew 4:3 Again: "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here; for it is written, 'He shall give His angels charge concerning you'"—referring, no doubt, to the Father—"and in their hands they shall bear you up, so that you do not hurt your foot against a stone." Or perhaps, after all, he was only accusing the Gospels of lying, as if saying: Away with Matthew. Away with Luke. Why should I listen to their words? In spite of them, I declare that it was God Himself whom I approached. It was the Almighty Himself whom I tempted face to face. And I approached Him for no other reason than to tempt Him. If, on the other hand, it had been only the Son of God, I probably would never have lowered myself to deal with Him. However, the devil himself is "a liar from the beginning," John 8:44, and so is every man whom he stirs up in his own way, as for example Praxeas. For Praxeas was the first to bring this kind of heretical corruption from Asia to Rome. In other respects he was a man of restless character, and above all swollen with pride because of being a confessor, simply and only because he had for a short time endured the trouble of prison. Even if he had given his body to be burned, it would have profited him nothing, since he did not have the love of God, 1 Corinthians 13:3. Yet he resisted and destroyed God's very gifts. For after the Bishop of Rome had recognized the prophetic gifts of Montanus, Prisca, and Maximilla, and because of that recognition had granted his peace to the churches of Asia and Phrygia, Praxeas pressed false charges against the prophets themselves and against their churches. He also appealed to the authority of the bishop's predecessors in that see. By doing this, he forced the bishop to recall the letter of peace that he had issued, and also to give up his intention of recognizing those gifts. By this, Praxeas did the devil a double service at Rome: he drove away prophecy, and he brought in heresy. He put the Paraclete to flight, and he crucified the Father. Moreover, the weeds of Praxeas had also been sown here and had produced fruit, while many were asleep in the simplicity of their doctrine. But these weeds seemed to have been pulled up when they were discovered and exposed by the man whom God was pleased to use. In fact, Praxeas had deliberately returned to his former true faith and taught it after he renounced his error. There is still, as evidence, his own handwriting, kept among the carnally minded, in whose company this matter then took place. After that, nothing more was heard of him. As for us, we later separated from the carnally minded because we acknowledged and upheld the Paraclete. But the weeds of Praxeas had by then scattered their seed everywhere. That seed lay hidden for a while, with its life concealed under a mask, but now it has broken out again with fresh force. Yet it will be rooted up again, if the Lord wills, even now. But if not now, then on the day when all bundles of weeds will be gathered together and, along with every other stumbling block, will be burned up with unquenchable fire. Matthew 13:30

SO THEN: in the course of time, the Father, forsooth, was born, and the Father suffered—God Himself, the Lord Almighty—whom they declare in their preaching to be Jesus Christ. We, however, as we indeed always have done, and especially since we have been better instructed by the Paraclete, who indeed leads men into all truth, believe that there is one only God, but under the following divine arrangement, as it is called: that this one only God also has a Son, His Word, who proceeded from Himself, by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. We believe that He was sent by the Father into the Virgin, and was born of her—being both Man and God, the Son of Man and the Son of God—and that He was called by the name of Jesus Christ. We believe that He suffered, died, and was buried, according to the Scriptures, and, after He had been raised again by the Father and taken back to heaven, that He is sitting at the right hand of the Father, and that He will come to judge the living and the dead; who also sent from heaven from the Father, according to His own promise, the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, the sanctifier of the faith of those who believe in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost. That this rule of faith has come down to us from the beginning of the gospel, even before any of the older heretics, and much more before Praxeas, a pretender of yesterday, will be clear both from the lateness of date that marks all heresies, and also from the completely novel character of our new-fangled Praxeas. On this principle also, from now on, we must find a presumption of equal force against all heresies whatever: that whatever is first is true, whereas what is later in date is spurious. But while keeping this prescriptive rule unbroken, still some opportunity must be given for reviewing the statements of heretics, with a view to the instruction and protection of various persons. This is so that it may not seem that each perversion of the truth is condemned without examination, and simply prejudged. This is especially so in the case of this heresy, which supposes itself to possess the pure truth, in thinking that one cannot believe in One Only God in any other way than by saying that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are the very same Person. As if, in this way also, one were not All, in that All are of One, by unity of substance; while the mystery of the divine arrangement is still guarded, which distributes the Unity into a Trinity, placing in their order the three Persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost: three, however, not in condition, but in degree; not in substance, but in form; not in power, but in aspect; yet of one substance, and of one condition, and of one power, since He 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 Ghost. How they can be numbered without division will be shown as our treatise goes on.

THE SIMPLE PEOPLE: indeed, and I will not call them unwise or unlearned, who always make up the majority of believers, are startled at the divine arrangement of the Three in One. They do this because their very rule of faith draws them away from the world's many gods to the one only true God. They do not understand that, although He is the one only God, He must still be believed in together with His own divine arrangement. They think the numerical order and distribution of the Trinity is a division of the Unity. But the Unity, which brings the Trinity out of itself, is so far from being destroyed by this that it is actually supported by it. They are always throwing out against us that we are preachers of two gods and three gods. Meanwhile, they claim for themselves, above all, the credit of being worshippers of the One God. It is as if Unity itself, taken with irrational deductions, did not produce heresy, while the Trinity, rationally considered, constitutes the truth. "We hold to the Monarchy," they say, that is, the sole government of God. And in fact, even Latins, and ignorant ones too, pronounce the word in such a way that you would think their understanding of monarchy was as complete as their pronunciation of the term. Well then, Latins take pains to pronounce monarchy, while Greeks actually refuse to understand the divine arrangement, or dispensation, of the Three in One. As for me, if I have gathered any knowledge of either language, I am sure that monarchy has no other meaning than single and individual rule. But even so, this monarchy, because it is the government of one, does not prevent the one whose government it is from having a Son, or from having made Himself actually a Son to Himself, or from administering His own monarchy by whatever agents He wills. More than that, I maintain that no dominion belongs so much to one alone as his own dominion does. Nor is anything so singular, or so truly a monarchy, that it cannot also be administered through other persons most closely connected with it, and whom it has itself provided as its own officials. If, moreover, there is a son belonging to him whose monarchy it is, it does not immediately become divided and cease to be a monarchy if the son also is taken as a sharer in it. Rather, as to its origin, it equally belongs to him by whom it is communicated to the son. And since it is his, it is just as much a monarchy, or sole empire, because it is held together by two who are so inseparable. Therefore, since the Divine Monarchy also is administered by so many legions and hosts of angels, as it is written, "Thousand thousands ministered to Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him," Daniel 7:10, and since from this it has not ceased to be the rule of one, so as no longer to be a monarchy, because it is administered by so many thousands of powers, how is it that God is thought to suffer division and severance in the Son and in the Holy Ghost, who have the second and the third places assigned to them, and who are so closely joined with the Father in His substance, when He suffers no such division and severance in the multitude of so many angels? Do you really suppose that Those who are by nature members of the Father's own substance, pledges of His love, instruments of His might, indeed His power itself and the entire system of His monarchy, are its overthrow and destruction? You are not right to think so. I would rather have you exercise yourself on the meaning of the thing than on the sound of the word. Now you must understand the overthrow of a monarchy to be this: when another dominion is brought in over and above it, one which has a framework and a state peculiar to itself, and is therefore a rival. For example, when some other god is introduced in opposition to the Creator, as in the opinions of Marcion. Or when many gods are introduced, according to your Valentinuses and your Prodicuses. Then it does amount to an overthrow of the Monarchy, since it involves the destruction of the Creator.

BUT AS FOR ME: I derive the Son from no other source than from the substance of the Father. I present Him as doing nothing without the Father's will, and as having received all power from the Father. So how could I possibly be destroying the Monarchy in the faith, when I preserve it in the Son just as it was committed to Him by the Father? I also want this same point to be plainly made by me with respect to the third degree in the Godhead. For I believe that the Spirit proceeds from no other source than from the Father through the Son. See to it, then, that it is not you rather who are destroying the Monarchy, when you overthrow its arrangement and administration, which has been established in just as many names as it has pleased God to employ. But it remains so firm and stable in its own state, even with the introduction of the Trinity, that the Son actually has to restore it entire to the Father. As the apostle says in his epistle, concerning the very end of all: "When He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; for He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet," 1 Corinthians 15:24-25, following, of course, the words of the Psalm: "Sit on my right hand, until I make Your enemies Your footstool." When, however, all things shall be subdued to Him, with the exception of Him who did put all things under Him, "then shall the Son also Himself be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all," 1 Corinthians 15:27-28. So we see that the Son is no obstacle to the Monarchy, although it is now administered by the Son. For with the Son it is still in its own state, and with its own state it will be restored to the Father by the Son. Therefore no one will impair it by admitting the Son to it, since it is certain that it has been committed to Him by the Father, and by and by has to be delivered up again by Him to the Father. Now from this one passage in the epistle of the inspired apostle, we have already been able to show that the Father and the Son are two separate Persons. This is shown not only by the mention of their separate names as Father and the Son, but also by the fact that He who delivered up the kingdom, and He to whom it is delivered up, and likewise He who subjected all things, and He to whom they were subjected, must necessarily be two different Beings.

BUT SINCE THEY WANT THE TWO TO BE ONLY ONE: so that the Father is considered to be the same as the Son, it is right that the whole question about the Son should be examined. We must ask whether He exists, who He is, and the manner of His existence. In this way, the truth itself will secure its own support from the Scriptures and from the interpretations that guard them. Some claim that even Genesis begins this way in Hebrew: "In the beginning God made for Himself a Son." Since there is no basis for this, I am led to other arguments drawn from God's own divine arrangement, in which He existed before the creation of the world, up to the generation of the Son. For before all things, God was alone. He was, in Himself and for Himself, universe, and space, and all things. Moreover, He was alone because there was nothing outside Him but Himself. Yet even then He was not alone. For He had with Him what He possessed within Himself, that is, His own Reason. For God is rational, and Reason was first in Him. And so all things were from Himself. This Reason is His own Thought, or Consciousness, which the Greeks call logos. By this term we also mean Word or Discourse. Therefore, because of the merely simple interpretation of the term, it is now usual with our people to say that the Word was in the beginning with God. Although it would be more suitable to regard Reason as the more ancient. For God did not have Word from the beginning, but He had Reason even before the beginning. Because Word itself also consists of Reason, and thus proves Reason to have been prior in existence as its own substance. Not that this distinction is of any practical importance. For although God had not yet sent out His Word, He still had Him within Himself, both together with and included within His very Reason, as He silently planned and arranged within Himself everything that He was afterward about to speak through His Word. Now while He was thus planning and arranging with His own Reason, He was actually causing that to become Word which He was dealing with in the way of Word or Discourse. And so that you may understand this more readily, first consider this from your own self, you who are made in the image and likeness of God, Genesis 1:26. Consider for what purpose you also possess reason within yourself, since you are a rational creature, being not only made by a rational Maker, but actually animated from His substance. Observe, then, that when you are silently talking with yourself, this very process is carried on within you by your reason, which meets you with a word at every movement of your thought, at every impulse of your conception. Whatever you think, there is a word. Whatever you conceive, there is reason. You must speak it in your mind. And while you are speaking, you admit speech as one speaking with you. Involved in this is that very reason by which, while in thought you are holding conversation with your word, you are, by reciprocal action, producing thought by means of that conversation with your word. Thus, in a certain sense, the word is a second person within you, through which in thinking you utter speech, and through which also, by reciprocity of process, in uttering speech you generate thought. The word is itself a different thing from you. Now how much more fully does all this take place in God, in whose image and likeness even you are considered to be, since He has reason within Himself even while He is silent, and in that Reason His Word. Therefore I may first lay this down without rashness as a fixed principle: even then, before the creation of the universe, God was not alone, since He had within Himself both Reason and, inherent in Reason, His Word, which He made second to Himself by stirring it within Himself.

THIS POWER AND ORDERING OF THE DIVINE INTELLIGENCE IS ALSO SET FORTH IN THE SCRIPTURES UNDER THE NAME OF SOPHIA: that is, Wisdom. For what could better be called Wisdom than the Reason, or the Word, of God? Listen, therefore, to Wisdom herself, presented in the character of a Second Person: "At the first the Lord created me as the beginning of His ways, with a view to His own works, before He made the earth, before the mountains were settled; moreover, before all the hills did He beget me." Proverbs 8:22-25 That is to say, He created and generated me in His own intelligence. Then again, notice the distinction between them implied in the companionship of Wisdom with the Lord. Wisdom says, "When He prepared the heaven, I was present with Him; and when He made His strong places upon the winds, which are the clouds above; and when He secured the fountains, and all things which are beneath the sky, I was by, arranging all things with Him; I was by, in whom He delighted; and daily, too, did I rejoice in His presence." Proverbs 8:27-30 Now, as soon as it pleased God to put forth into their proper substances and forms the things that He had planned and ordered within Himself, in conjunction with His Wisdom's Reason and Word, He first put forth the Word Himself, having within Him His own inseparable Reason and Wisdom. He did this in order that all things might be made through Him, through whom they had been planned and disposed, yes, and already made, insofar as they were in the mind and intelligence of God. This, however, was still lacking to them: that they should also be openly known, and kept permanently in their proper forms and substances.

THEREFORE: the Word Himself also takes on His own form and glorious clothing, His own sound and spoken utterance, when God says, "Let there be light," in Genesis 1:3. This is the perfect nativity of the Word, when He proceeds forth from God. First, He was formed by God to devise and think out all things under the name of Wisdom: "The Lord created or formed me as the beginning of His ways," in Proverbs 8:22. Then afterward, He was begotten to carry all into effect: "When He prepared the heaven, I was present with Him." Thus He makes Him equal to Himself. For by proceeding from Himself, He became His first-begotten Son, because begotten before all things, as Colossians 1:15 says. He is also His only-begotten, because He alone was begotten of God, in a way peculiar to Himself, from the womb of His own heart. As the Father Himself testifies: "My heart," He says, "has emitted my most excellent Word." The Father took pleasure evermore in Him, who also rejoiced with corresponding gladness in the Father's presence: "You are my Son, today I have begotten You," and, "even before the morning star did I beget You." The Son likewise acknowledges the Father, speaking in His own person under the name of Wisdom: "The Lord formed Me as the beginning of His ways, with a view to His own works; before all the hills did He beget Me." For if Wisdom in this passage seems to say that She was created by the Lord with a view to His works, and to accomplish His ways, yet another Scripture gives proof that all things were made by the Word, and without Him nothing was made, as John 1:3 says. Again, in another place it is said, "By His word were the heavens established, and all the powers of it by His Spirit"—that is, by the Spirit, or Divine Nature, that was in the Word. Thus it is clear that it is one and the same power which in one place is described under the name of Wisdom, and in another place under the name of the Word, which was initiated for the works of God in Proverbs 8:22, which strengthened the heavens, by which all things were made, as John 1:3 says, and without which nothing was made, as John 1:3 says. Nor do we need to dwell any longer on this point, as if this were not the very Word Himself who is spoken of under the name both of Wisdom and of Reason, and of the whole Divine Soul and Spirit. He also became the Son of God, and was begotten when He proceeded forth from Him. Do you then, you ask, grant that the Word is a certain substance, constructed by the Spirit and the communication of Wisdom? Certainly I do. But you will not allow Him to be truly a substantive being, having a substance of His own, so that He may be regarded as an objective thing and a person. And so He would be able, as one constituted second to God the Father, to make two: the Father and the Son, God and the Word. For you will say, "What is a word except a voice and sound of the mouth and, as the grammarians teach, air when struck, intelligible to the ear, but otherwise a sort of void, empty, and incorporeal thing?" I, on the contrary, contend that nothing void and empty could have come forth from God, since it is not put forth from that which is void and empty. Nor could that possibly be without substance which has proceeded from so great a substance, and has produced such mighty substances. For all things that were made through Him, He Himself personally made. How could it be that He Himself is nothing, without whom nothing was made? How could He who is void have made things that are solid? And He who is empty have made things that are full? And He who is incorporeal have made things that have body? For although a thing may sometimes be made different from him by whom it is made, yet nothing can be made by that which is a void and empty thing. Is the Word of God, then, a void and empty thing, when He is called the Son, and is Himself designated God? "The Word was with God, and the Word was God," in John 1:1. It is written, "You shall not take God's name in vain," in Exodus 20:7. This certainly is He who, "being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God," as Philippians 2:6 says. In what form of God? Of course, in some form, not in none. For who will deny that God is a body, although "God is a Spirit," as John 4:24 says? For Spirit has a bodily substance of its own kind, in its own form. Now even if invisible things, whatever they may be, have both their substance and their form in God, by which they are visible to God alone, how much more will that which has been sent forth from His substance not be without substance? Whatever, then, was the substance of the Word, I designate that a Person. I claim for it the name of Son. And while I recognize the Son, I assert His distinction as second to the Father.

If anyone should think from this that I am introducing some προβολή — that is, some prolation of one thing out of another, as Valentinus does when he sets forth Æon from Æon, one after another — then this is my first reply to you. Truth should not, therefore, refuse to use such a term, and the reality and meaning of it, just because heresy also uses it. In fact, heresy has taken it from Truth in order to shape it into its own counterfeit. Was the Word of God put forth, or not? Take your stand here with me, and do not draw back. If He was put forth, then acknowledge that the true doctrine has a prolation. And never mind heresy when, in any point, it imitates the truth. The question now is in what sense each side uses a given thing and the word that expresses it. Valentinus divides and separates his prolations from their Author, and places them so far from Him that the Æon does not know the Father. He does long to know Him, but cannot. Indeed, he is almost swallowed up and dissolved into the rest of matter. With us, however, the Son alone knows the Father, Matthew 11:27, and has Himself unfolded the Father's bosom, John 1:18. He has also heard and seen all things with the Father. And what He has been commanded by the Father, that also He speaks, John 8:26. And it is not His own will, but the Father's, that He has accomplished, John 6:38, which He had known most intimately, even from the beginning. For what man knows the things that are in God except the Spirit that is in Him? 1 Corinthians 2:11. But the Word was formed by the Spirit, and, if I may so express myself, the Spirit is the body of the Word. Therefore, the Word is always in the Father, as He says, "I am in the Father," John 14:11. And He is always with God, according to what is written, "And the Word was with God," John 1:1. And He is never separate from the Father, or other than the Father, since "I and the Father are one," John 10:30. This will be the prolation taught by the truth, the guardian of the Unity. In it we declare that the Son is a prolation from the Father without being separated from Him. For God sent forth the Word, as the Paraclete also declares, just as the root puts forth the tree, and the fountain the river, and the sun the ray. For these are προβολαί, or emanations, of the substances from which they proceed. Indeed, I would not hesitate to call the tree the son or offspring of the root, and the river of the fountain, and the ray of the sun. For every original source is a parent, and everything that comes from the origin is an offspring. How much more is this true of the Word of God, who has actually received as His own special designation the name of Son. But still, the tree is not cut off from the root, nor the river from the fountain, nor the ray from the sun. Nor, indeed, is the Word separated from God. Therefore, following the form of these comparisons, I confess that I call God and His Word — the Father and His Son — two. For the root and the tree are clearly two things, but they are joined together. The fountain and the river are also two forms, but indivisible. In the same way, the sun and the ray are two forms, but coherent ones. Everything that proceeds from something else must be second to that from which it proceeds, without on that account being separated. But where there is a second, there must be two. And where there is a third, there must be three. Now the Spirit is indeed third from God and the Son, just as the fruit of the tree is third from the root, or as the stream out of the river is third from the fountain, or as the apex of the ray is third from the sun. Yet nothing is alien from that original source from which it derives its own properties. In the same way, the Trinity, flowing down from the Father through intertwined and connected steps, does not at all disturb the Monarchy, while at the same time it guards the state of the divine arrangement.

ALWAYS KEEP IN MIND THAT THIS IS THE RULE OF FAITH THAT I PROFESS: By it I testify that the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit are inseparable from each other. In this way you will know in what sense this is said. Now observe. My assertion is that the Father is one, and the Son one, and the Spirit one, and that They are distinct from Each Other. Every uneducated person, as well as every perversely disposed person, takes this statement in the wrong sense, as if it taught a diversity in such a way as to imply a separation among the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit. I am, moreover, obliged to say this when, extolling the Monarchy at the expense of the divine arrangement, they contend for the identity of the Father and Son and Spirit: the Son differs from the Father, not by way of diversity, but by distribution. He is different, not by division, but by distinction. For the Father is not the same as the Son, since They differ from one another in the mode of Their being. For the Father is the entire substance, but the Son is a derivation and portion of the whole, as He Himself acknowledges: "My Father is greater than I." John 14:28. In the Psalm His inferiority is described as being a little lower than the angels. Thus the Father is distinct from the Son, being greater than the Son, since He who begets is one, and He who is begotten is another. He, too, who sends is one, and He who is sent is another. And He, again, who makes is one, and He through whom the thing is made is another. Happily the Lord Himself uses this expression about the person of the Paraclete, so as to signify not a division or severance, but a disposition of mutual relations in the Godhead. For He says, "I will pray the Father, and He shall send you another Comforter...even the Spirit of truth," John 14:16, thus making the Paraclete distinct from Himself, even as we say that the Son is also distinct from the Father. So He showed a third degree in the Paraclete, as we believe the second degree is in the Son, by reason of the order observed in the divine arrangement. Besides, does not the very fact that they have the distinct names of Father and Son amount to a declaration that they are distinct in personality? For, of course, all things will be what their names represent them to be. And what they are and ever will be, that will they be called. And the distinction indicated by the names does not at all admit of any confusion, because there is none in the things which they designate. Yes is yes, and no is no; for what is more than these comes of evil. Matthew 5:37

SO: it is either the Father or the Son, and day is not the same as night. In the same way, the Father is not the same as the Son, so that both of them would be one, and one or the other would be both. That is the view held by the most arrogant Monarchians. They say that He made Himself a Son to Himself. But a father makes a son, and a son makes a father. When persons are related to each other in that way, they cannot somehow become related to themselves by themselves. So the Father cannot make Himself a Son to Himself, and the Son cannot make Himself a Father to Himself. And the relations God establishes, He also preserves. A father must have a son in order to be a father. In the same way, a son must have a father in order to be a son. However, having something is one thing, and being something is another. For example, to be a husband, I must have a wife. I can never be my own wife. In the same way, to be a father, I have a son, because I can never be a son to myself. And to be a son, I have a father, because it is impossible for me ever to be my own father. These relations make me what I am when I come to possess them. I will be a father when I have a son, and a son when I have a father. Now if I am to be one of these relations to myself, then I no longer have what I myself am supposed to be. I do not have a father, because I am to be my own father. I do not have a son, because I am to be my own son. Moreover, since I must have one of these relations in order to be the other, if I am to be both at once, I will fail to be one because I do not possess the other. For if I must be my own son, while I am also a father, then I stop having a son, because I am my own son. But if I do not have a son, because I am my own son, how can I be a father? I must have a son in order to be a father. Therefore I am not a son, because I do not have a father, who makes a son. In the same way, if I am my own father, while I am also a son, then I no longer have a father, but am myself my father. But if I do not have a father, because I am my own father, how can I be a son? I must have a father in order to be a son. Therefore I cannot be a father, because I do not have a son, who makes a father. Now all this must be the devil’s scheme. He excludes and separates one from the other. By putting both together into one under the pretense of the Monarchy, he causes neither to be held and acknowledged. So He is not the Father, since He does not have the Son. Neither is He the Son, since in the same way He does not have the Father. For while He is the Father, He will not be the Son. In this way they hold to the Monarchy, but they hold neither the Father nor the Son. Well then, they say, with God nothing is impossible. Matthew 19:26. True enough. Who could be ignorant of that? And who does not know that the things impossible with men are possible with God? Luke 18:27. God has also chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise things. 1 Corinthians 1:27. We have read all that. Therefore, they argue, it was not hard for God to make Himself both Father and Son, even though that is contrary to the way things are among men. It was no difficulty for God that a barren woman should have a child against nature, nor that a virgin should conceive. Of course, nothing is too hard for the Lord. Genesis 18:14. But if we choose to use this principle in such a wild and harsh way, according to our own random imaginations, then we can make God out to have done anything we want, simply because it was not impossible for Him to do it. However, we must not suppose that because He is able to do all things, He has actually done what He has not done. We must ask whether He really did it. God could, if He had wanted, have given man wings to fly, just as He gave wings to kites. But we must not rush to conclude that He did this, just because He was able to do it. He could also have destroyed Praxeas and all other heretics at once. Yet it does not follow that He did so, simply because He was able. For it was necessary that there should be both kites and heretics. It was necessary also that the Father should be crucified. In one sense, there will be something difficult even for God, namely, what He has not done; not because He could not do it, but because He would not do it. For with God, to be willing is to be able, and to be unwilling is to be unable. Yet whatever He has willed, He has been able to accomplish, and He has shown His power in doing it. Therefore, if God had wanted to make Himself a Son to Himself, He had the power to do so. And if He had the power, He would have carried out His purpose. So then, you will prove His power and His will to do even this only when you prove to us that He actually did it.

IT WILL BE YOUR DUTY: however, to bring your proofs from the Scriptures as plainly as we do, when we prove that He made His Word a Son to Himself. For if He calls Him Son, and if the Son is no other than He who has proceeded from the Father Himself, and if the Word has proceeded from the Father Himself, then He will be the Son, and not He Himself from whom He proceeded. For the Father Himself did not proceed from Himself. Now you, who say that the Father is the same as the Son, really make the same Person both to have sent forth from Himself, and at the same time to have gone out from Himself as, that Being which is God. If it was possible for Him to have done this, even so He did not do it. You must bring forth the proof that I require from you, one like my own. That is, you must prove to me that the Scriptures show the Son and the Father to be the same, just as on our side the Father and the Son are shown to be distinct. I say distinct, but not separate. For as I produce the words of God Himself, "My heart has emitted my most excellent Word," so in the same way you ought to bring forward against me some text where God has said, "My heart has emitted myself as my own most excellent Word," in such a sense that He is Himself both the Emitter and the Emitted, both He who sent forth and He who was sent forth, since He is both the Word and God. I ask you also to observe that on my side I put forward the passage where the Father said to the Son, "You are my Son, this day have I begotten You." If you want me to believe that He is both the Father and the Son, show me some other passage where it is declared, "The Lord said to Himself, I am my own Son, today have I begotten myself." Or again, "Before the morning did I beget myself." And likewise, "I the Lord possessed Myself the beginning of my ways for my own works; before all the hills, too, did I beget myself," and whatever other passages are to the same effect. Why, moreover, could God, the Lord of all things, have hesitated to speak thus of Himself, if the fact had been so? Was He afraid of not being believed, if He had in so many words declared Himself to be both the Father and the Son? Of one thing He was at any rate afraid: lying. Of Himself too, and of His own truth, was He afraid. Believing Him, therefore, to be the true God, I am sure that He declared nothing to exist in any other way than according to His own dispensation and arrangement, and that He had arranged nothing in any other way than according to His own declaration. On your side, however, you must make Him out to be a liar, and an impostor, and a tamperer with His word, if, when He was Himself a Son to Himself, He assigned the part of His Son to be played by another, when all the Scriptures testify to the clear existence of, and distinction in, the Persons of the Trinity, and indeed give us our Rule of faith: that He who speaks, and He of whom He speaks, and to whom He speaks, cannot possibly seem to be One and the Same. So absurd and misleading a statement would be unworthy of God: that, when it was Himself to whom He was speaking, He speaks rather to another, and not to His very self. Hear, then, other sayings also of the Father concerning the Son through the mouth of Isaiah: "Behold my Son, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom I am well pleased: I will put my Spirit upon Him, and He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles." Isaiah 42:1 Hear also what He says to the Son: "Is it a great thing for You, that You should be called my Son to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the dispersed of Israel? I have given You for a light to the Gentiles, that You may be their salvation to the end of the earth." Isaiah 49:6 Hear now also the Son's sayings about the Father: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach the gospel to men." He likewise speaks of Himself to the Father in the Psalm: "Forsake me not until I have declared the might of Your arm to all the generation that is to come." Also to the same purpose in another Psalm: "O Lord, how are they increased that trouble me!" But almost all the Psalms which prophesy of the person of Christ present the Son as speaking with the Father. That is, they present Christ as speaking to God. Observe also the Spirit speaking of the Father and the Son, in the character of a third Person: "The Lord said to my Lord, Sit on my right hand, until I make Your enemies Your footstool." Likewise, in the words of Isaiah: "Thus says the Lord to the Lord mine Anointed." Isaiah 45:1 Likewise, in the same prophet, He says to the Father concerning the Son: "Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? We brought a report concerning Him, as if He were a little child, as if He were a root in a dry ground, who had no form nor comeliness." Isaiah 53:1-2 These are a few testimonies out of many. For we do not claim to bring forward all the passages of Scripture, because we have a fairly large collection of them under the various heads of our subject, as in our several chapters we call them in as our witnesses in the fullness of their dignity and authority. Still, in these few quotations the distinction of Persons in the Trinity is clearly set forth. For there is the Spirit Himself who speaks, and the Father to whom He speaks, and the Son of whom He speaks. In the same way, the other passages also establish each one of several Persons in His special character. They are addressed in some cases to the Father or to the Son respecting the Son, in other cases to the Son or to the Father concerning the Father, and again in other instances to the Spirit.

IF THE NUMBER OF THE TRINITY ALSO OFFENDS YOU: as if it were not connected with the simple Unity, I ask you this: how can a Being who is only and absolutely One and singular speak in the plural, saying, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" in Genesis 1:26? He ought instead to have said, "Let me make man in my image, after my likeness," if He were a unique and singular Being. In the next passage, however, He says, "Behold, the man has become like one of us" in Genesis 3:22. If He is only One and singular, then He is either misleading us or speaking playfully when He uses the plural. Or was He speaking to the angels, as the Jews explain the passage, because they also do not acknowledge the Son? Or was it because He was at once the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, that He spoke to Himself in plural terms, making Himself plural for that very reason? No, it was because He already had His Son near Him as a second Person, His own Word, and also a third Person, the Spirit in the Word. That is why He deliberately used the plural phrases, "Let us make," and, "in our image," and, "like one of us." For with whom did He make man? And to whom did He make man like? The answer must be: to the Son on the one hand, who would one day put on human nature, and to the Spirit on the other hand, who would sanctify man. With these, then, He spoke in the Unity of the Trinity, as with His ministers and witnesses. In the next text also, He distinguishes among the Persons: "So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him" in Genesis 1:27. Why does it say, "image of God"? Why not simply, "His own image," if there were only one Maker, and if there were not also One in whose image He made man? But there was One in whose image God was making man, that is, Christ's image. Christ, who was one day to become Man, more certainly and more truly, had already caused the man who was then going to be formed from clay to be called His image, the image and likeness of the true and perfect Man. But regarding the earlier works of the world, what does Scripture say? Its first statement is made before the Son has yet appeared: "And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light" in Genesis 1:3. Immediately the Word appears, that true light, which gives light to man coming into the world, according to John 1:9, and through Him light also came upon the world. From that point on, God willed creation to be brought about in the Word, with Christ present and ministering to Him, and so God created. "And God said, 'Let there be a firmament,' ... and God made the firmament" in Genesis 1:6-7. God also said, "Let there be lights in the firmament," and so God made a greater light and a lesser light. In the same way, He made all the rest of created things, He who made the first ones. I mean the Word of God, through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made, according to John 1:3. Now if He too is God, according to John, who says, "The Word was God" in John 1:1, then you have two Beings: One who commands that a thing be made, and the Other who carries out the order and creates. But in what sense you should understand Him to be another, I have already explained. It is on the basis of Personality, not of Substance; by way of distinction, not of division. But although I must everywhere hold to one substance only in three coherent and inseparable Persons, still I am required, by the necessity of the case, to acknowledge that He who gives a command is different from Him who carries it out. For He would not be giving a command if He were at the same time doing the work Himself, while ordering it to be done by the second. Yet He did give the command. He would not have meant to command Himself if He were only one; otherwise, He would have worked without any command, because He would not have waited to command Himself.

WELL THEN: you reply, if He was God who spoke, and He was also God who created, then one God spoke and another created. And so two Gods are declared. If you are so bold and harsh, think for a while. So that you may think better and more carefully, listen to the psalm in which Two are described as God: "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; the scepter of Your kingdom is a scepter of righteousness. You have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore God, even Your God, has anointed You," or made You His Christ. Now since He here speaks to God, and says that God is anointed by God, He must have declared that Two are God, because of the royal power of the scepter. Accordingly, Isaiah also says to the Person of Christ: "The Sabaeans, men of stature, shall pass over to You; and they shall follow after You, bound in fetters; and they shall worship You, because God is in You: for You are our God, yet we knew it not; You are the God of Israel." For here too, by saying, "God is in You," and "You are God," he sets forth Two who were God: in the former expression, "in You," he means in Christ, and in the other he means the Holy Ghost. That is an even greater statement, which you will find plainly made in the Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John 1:1 There was One who was, and there was another with whom He was. But I also find in Scripture that the name Lord is applied to Them both: "The Lord said to my Lord, Sit on my right hand." And Isaiah says this: "Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?" Isaiah 53:1 Now he certainly would have said, "Your Arm," if he had not wanted us to understand that the Father is Lord, and the Son also is Lord. We also have a much older testimony in Genesis: "Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrha brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven." Genesis 19:24 Now either deny that this is Scripture, or else let me ask what sort of man you are, that you do not think words should be taken and understood in the sense in which they are written, especially when they are not spoken in allegories and parables, but in definite and simple statements. If indeed you follow those who at that time could not endure the Lord when He showed Himself to be the Son of God, because they would not believe Him to be the Lord, then call to mind with them the passage where it is written, "I have said, You are gods, and you are children of the Most High"; and again, "God stands in the congregation of gods." So if Scripture has not been afraid to call human beings gods, who have become sons of God by faith, you may be sure that the same Scripture has, with greater propriety, given the name of Lord to the true and only Son of God. Very well, you say, from now on I shall challenge you, on the authority of these same Scriptures, to preach two Gods and two Lords, consistently with your views. God forbid, I reply. For we, who by the grace of God understand both the times and the occasions of the Sacred Writings, especially we who follow the Paraclete and not human teachers, do indeed definitively declare that Two Beings are God, the Father and the Son, and, with the addition of the Holy Spirit, even Three, according to the principle of the divine arrangement, which introduces number, so that the Father may not, as you wrongly infer, be believed to have Himself been born and to have suffered. That is not lawful to believe, since it has not been handed down in that way. However, that there are two Gods or two Lords is something that never at any time comes out of our mouth. Not as though it were untrue that the Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, and each is God; but because in earlier times Two were actually spoken of as God, and two as Lord, so that when Christ should come He might be both acknowledged as God and called Lord, being the Son of Him who is both God and Lord. Now if there had been found in the Scriptures only one Personality of Him who is God and Lord, Christ would justly enough be inadmissible to the title of God and Lord. For in the Scriptures no other had been declared than One God and One Lord. And it must have followed that the Father Himself would seem to have come down to earth, since only One God and One Lord had ever been read of in the Scriptures. And His whole divine arrangement would be left obscure, even though in His providence it had been planned and arranged with such clear foresight for our faith. But as soon as Christ came, and was recognized by us as the very One who from the beginning had caused plurality in the divine arrangement, being second from the Father, and with the Spirit third, and Himself declaring and revealing the Father more fully than before, then the title of Him who is God and Lord was at once restored to the Unity. This was also because the Gentiles had to pass from the multitude of their idols to the One Only God, so that a clear difference might be established between the worshipers of One God and the followers of polytheism. For it was only right that Christians should shine in the world as children of light, worshiping and calling on Him who is the One God and Lord as the light of the world. Besides, if, from that full knowledge which assures us that the title of God and Lord is suitable both to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, we were to call on a plurality of gods and lords, we would put out our torches, and we would become less courageous to endure the martyr's afflictions, from which an easy escape would everywhere lie open to us, as soon as we swore by a plurality of gods and lords, as various heretics do, who hold more gods than One. I will therefore not speak of gods at all, nor of lords, but I will follow the apostle. So that if the Father and the Son are alike to be invoked, I shall call the Father God, and invoke Jesus Christ as Lord. Romans 1:7 But when Christ alone is mentioned, I shall be able to call Him God, as the same apostle says: "Of whom is Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever." Romans 9:5 For I would give the name of sun even to a sunbeam, considered in itself. But if I were mentioning the sun from which the ray comes, I would at once withdraw the name of sun from the mere beam. For although I do not make two suns, still I count both the sun and its ray as two things and two forms of one undivided substance, as God and His Word, as the Father and the Son.

MOREOVER: this guiding principle helps us when we insist that the Father and the Son are Two. It is the principle that has determined God to be invisible. When Moses in Egypt wanted to see the face of the Lord, saying, "If, therefore, I have found grace in Your sight, show Yourself to me, that I may see You and know You," Exodus 33:13, God said, "You cannot see my face; for no man shall see me and live." In other words, whoever sees me shall die. Now we find that God has been seen by many people, and yet no one who saw Him died at the sight. The truth is that they saw God according to the capacity of men, but not according to the full glory of the Godhead. For the patriarchs are said to have seen God, such as Abraham and Jacob, and the prophets also, such as Isaiah and Ezekiel, and yet they did not die. Either, then, they ought to have died, since they had seen Him, for the sentence says, "No man shall see God and live." Or else, if they saw God and yet did not die, Scripture is false when it says that God said, "If a man sees my face, he shall not live." Either way, Scripture misleads us when it makes God invisible and when it presents Him to our sight. So then, He who was seen must be a different Being, because of one who was seen it could not be said that He is invisible. It will therefore follow that by Him who is invisible we must understand the Father in the fullness of His majesty, while we recognize the Son as visible because of the divine arrangement of His derived existence. It is just as we are not allowed to look at the sun in the full amount of its substance as it is in the heavens, but can only bear with our eyes a ray, because this portion projected from it to the earth is tempered. Here, however, someone on the other side may be ready to argue that the Son also is invisible, since He is the Word and also the Spirit. And while claiming one nature for the Father and the Son, he may say that the Father is really one and the same Person as the Son. But Scripture, as we have said, maintains their difference by the distinction it makes between the Visible and the Invisible. Then they go on to argue in this way: if it was the Son who then spoke to Moses, then He must mean it of Himself that His face was visible to no one, because He Himself indeed was the invisible Father under the name of the Son. By this means they want the Visible and the Invisible to be one and the same, just as the Father and the Son are the same. They maintain this because, in a passage before He had refused Moses the sight of His face, Scripture tells us that "the Lord spoke face to face with Moses, even as a man speaks to his friend," Exodus 33:11. Just as Jacob also says, "I have seen God face to face," Genesis 32:30. Therefore the Visible and the Invisible are one and the same. And since both are thus the same, it follows that He is invisible as the Father and visible as the Son. As if Scripture, according to our explanation of it, did not apply to the Son, when the Father is set apart in His own invisibility. We declare, however, that the Son also, considered in Himself as the Son, is invisible, since He is God, and the Word and Spirit of God. But before the days of His flesh He was visible in the way that He says to Aaron and Miriam, "And if there shall be a prophet among you, I will make myself known to him in a vision, and will speak to him in a dream; not so with Moses, with whom I shall speak mouth to mouth, even apparently," that is to say, in truth, "and not enigmatically," that is to say, in image, Numbers 12:6-8. As the apostle also says, "Now we see through a glass, darkly," or enigmatically, "but then face to face," 1 Corinthians 13:12. Since, therefore, He reserves for some future time His presence and speech face to face with Moses, a promise afterward fulfilled in the retirement of the mount of transfiguration, when, as we read in the Gospel, Moses appeared talking with Jesus, it is evident that in early times it was always in a glass, as it were, and an enigma, in vision and dream, that God, I mean the Son of God, appeared to the prophets and the patriarchs, and also to Moses himself. And even if the Lord did perhaps speak with him face to face, yet it was not as man that he could behold His face, unless indeed it was in a glass, as it were, and by enigma. Besides, if the Lord so spoke with Moses that Moses actually discerned His face, eye to eye, how does it happen that immediately afterward, on the same occasion, he desires to see His face, which he ought not to have desired, because he had already seen it? And how, in the same way, does the Lord also say that His face cannot be seen, since He had shown it, if indeed He really had, as our opponents suppose? Or what is that face of God, the sight of which is refused, if there was one that was visible to man? "I have seen God," says Jacob, "face to face, and my life is preserved," Genesis 32:30. There ought, then, to be some other face which kills if it is only seen. Well then, was the Son visible? Certainly not, although He was the face of God, except only in vision and dream, and in a glass and enigma, because the Word and Spirit of God cannot be seen except in an imagined form. But, they say, He calls the invisible Father His face. For who is the Father? Must He not be the face of the Son, because of that authority which He obtains as the begotten of the Father? For is there not a natural propriety in saying of some greater person, "That man is my face; he gives me his countenance"? "My Father is greater than I," says Christ, John 14:28. Therefore the Father must be the face of the Son. For what does the Scripture say? "The Spirit of His person is Christ the Lord." As therefore Christ is the Spirit of the Father's person, there is good reason why, by virtue indeed of the unity, the Spirit of Him to whose person He belonged, that is, the Father, pronounced Him to be His face. Now this, to be sure, is an astonishing thing: that the Father can be taken to be the face of the Son, when He is His head; for "the head of Christ is God," 1 Corinthians 11:3.

IF I FAIL TO SETTLE THIS ARTICLE OF OUR FAITH BY PASSAGES FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT THAT MAY BE DISPUTED: I will take from the New Testament a confirmation of our view, so that you may not at once assign to the Father every possible relation and condition that I assign to the Son. Look, then. In both the Gospels and the writings of the apostles, I find a visible God and an invisible God revealed to us, under a clear and personal distinction in the condition of both. John has a certain emphatic saying: “No man has seen God at any time,” John 1:18, meaning, of course, at any previous time. But he has indeed taken away all question of time by saying that God had never been seen. The apostle confirms this statement. Speaking of God, he says, “Whom no man has seen, nor can see,” 1 Timothy 6:16, because the man who should see Him would indeed die. But those same apostles testify that they had both seen and handled Christ, 1 John 1:1. Now if Christ is Himself both the Father and the Son, how can He be both the Visible and the Invisible? However, to reconcile this difference between the Visible and the Invisible, will not someone on the other side argue that the two statements are quite correct: that He was visible indeed in the flesh, but was invisible before His appearance in the flesh; so that He who as the Father was invisible before the flesh is the same as the Son who was visible in the flesh? If, however, He is the same one who was invisible before the incarnation, how is it that He was actually seen in ancient times before coming in the flesh? And by the same reasoning, if He is the same one who was visible after coming in the flesh, how is it that He is now declared to be invisible by the apostles? How, I ask again, can all this be, unless it is that He is one who in ancient times was visible only in mystery and enigma, and became more clearly visible by His incarnation, even the Word who was also made flesh; while He is another whom no man has seen at any time, being none other than the Father, even Him to whom the Word belongs? Let us, in short, examine who it is whom the apostles saw. “That which we have seen with our eyes,” says John, “which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life,” 1 John 1:1. Now the Word of life became flesh, and was heard, and was seen, and was handled, because He was flesh who, before He came in the flesh, was the Word in the beginning with God the Father, John 1:1-2, and not the Father with the Word. For although the Word was God, yet He was with God, because He is God of God. And being joined to the Father, He is with the Father. “And we have seen His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,” John 1:14. That is, of course, the glory of the Son, even Him who was visible and was glorified by the invisible Father. And therefore, since he had said that the Word of God was God, in order that he might give no help to the presumption of the adversary, which pretended that he had seen the Father Himself, and in order to draw a distinction between the invisible Father and the visible Son, he makes the additional assertion, as if in fuller measure: “No man has seen God at any time,” 1 John 4:12. What God does he mean? The Word? But he has already said, “Him we have seen and heard, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life.” Well then, what God does he mean? It is, of course, the Father, with whom was the Word, the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, and has Himself declared Him, John 1:18. He was both heard and seen and, so that He might not be thought to be a phantom, was actually handled. Paul also saw Him, and yet he did not see the Father. “Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord?” he says, 1 Corinthians 9:1. Moreover, he plainly called Christ God, saying, “Of whom are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever,” Romans 9:5. He also shows us that the Son of God, who is the Word of God, is visible, because He who became flesh was called Christ. Of the Father, however, he says to Timothy, “Whom none among men has seen, nor indeed can see.” And he adds to the description in even fuller terms: “Who only has immortality, and dwells in the light which no man can approach to,” 1 Timothy 6:16. It was of Him also that he had said in an earlier passage, “Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, to the only God,” 1 Timothy 1:17, so that we might apply even the opposite qualities to the Son Himself: mortality and accessibility. Of Him the apostle testifies that He died according to the Scriptures, 1 Corinthians 15:3, and that He was seen by himself last of all, by means, of course, of the light that was accessible, although it was not without danger to his sight that he experienced that light, Acts 22:11. A similar danger also happened to Peter, and John, and James, though they did not encounter the same light, without risking the loss of their reason and mind. And if they, who were unable to endure the glory of the Son, had merely seen the Father, they would have died then and there. For “no man shall see God, and live,” Exodus 33:20. Since this is so, it is clear that He was always seen from the beginning who became visible in the end, and that He was not seen in the end who had never been visible from the beginning, and that accordingly there are two: the Visible and the Invisible. It was the Son, therefore, who was always seen, and the Son who always conversed with men, and the Son who has always worked by the authority and will of the Father, because the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do, John 5:19, do, that is, in His mind and thought. For the Father acts by mind and thought, while the Son, who is in the Father’s mind and thought, gives effect and form to what He sees. Thus all things were made by the Son, and without Him was not anything made, John 1:3.

BUT YOU MUST NOT SUPPOSE THAT ONLY THE WORKS RELATED TO THE CREATION OF THE WORLD WERE MADE BY THE SON: You must also understand that whatever God has done since that time has also been done by the Son. For the Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand. He has indeed loved Him from the beginning, and from the very first has handed all things over to Him. Therefore it is written, "From the beginning the Word was with God, and the Word was God," John 1:1. And to Him the Father has given all power in heaven and on earth, Matthew 28:18. "The Father judges no man, but has committed all judgment to the Son," John 5:22, and this has been so from the very beginning. For when He speaks of all power and all judgment, and says that all things were made by Him, and that all things have been delivered into His hand, He allows no exception of time. They would not be all things unless they were the things of all time. It is the Son, therefore, who has from the beginning been administering judgment. He threw down the haughty tower and divided the tongues. He punished the whole world by the violence of waters. He rained on Sodom and Gomorrha fire and brimstone, as the Lord from the Lord. For He was the One who at all times came down to hold converse with men, from Adam on to the patriarchs and the prophets, in vision, in dream, in mirror, in dark saying. From the beginning He was always laying the foundation of the course of His divine arrangements, which He meant to carry out to the very last. Thus He was always learning, even as God, to converse with men upon earth, being no other than the Word who was to be made flesh. But He was thus learning, or rehearsing, in order to level for us the way of faith. He did this so that we might more readily believe that the Son of God had come down into the world, if we knew that in past times also something similar had been done. For just as these events are described in the Scriptures for our sake and for our learning, so they were also done for our sakes, even ours, I say, upon whom the ends of the world have come, 1 Corinthians 10:11. In this way, even then, He knew full well what human feelings and affections were, since He always intended to take upon Himself man's actual component substances, body and soul. So He asked Adam, as if He were ignorant, "Where are you, Adam?" Genesis 3:9. He repented that He had made man, as if He had lacked foresight, Genesis 6:6. He tempted Abraham, as if ignorant of what was in man. He was offended with persons, and then reconciled to them. And there are whatever other weaknesses and imperfections the heretics seize upon as unworthy of God, in order to discredit the Creator. They do not consider that these things are suitable enough for the Son, who was one day to experience even human sufferings: hunger and thirst, tears, actual birth, and real death. And in respect of such a divine arrangement made by the Father, He was made a little less than the angels. But the heretics, you may be sure, will not allow that these things are suitable even to the Son of God, while you are imputing them to the very Father Himself, when you pretend that He made Himself less than the angels on our account. Yet Scripture informs us that He who was made less was so affected by another, and not by Himself. What again if He was One who was crowned with glory and honour, and He Another by whom He was so crowned, the Son, in fact, by the Father? Moreover, how does it come to pass that the Almighty Invisible God, whom no man has seen nor can see, who dwells in light unapproachable, 1 Timothy 6:16, who does not dwell in temples made with hands, Acts 17:24, before whose sight the earth trembles and the mountains melt like wax, who holds the whole world in His hand like a nest, Isaiah 10:14, whose throne is heaven and earth His footstool, Isaiah 66:1, in whom is every place, but who Himself is in no place, who is the utmost bound of the universe, how does it happen, I say, that He, though the Most High, should yet have walked in paradise toward the cool of the evening, in search of Adam, and should have shut up the ark after Noah had entered it, and at Abraham's tent should have refreshed Himself under an oak, and should have called to Moses out of the burning bush, and should have appeared as the fourth in the furnace of the Babylonian monarch, although there He is called the Son of man, unless all these events had happened as an image, as a mirror, as an enigma of the future incarnation? Surely even these things could not have been believed of the Son of God unless they had been given to us in the Scriptures. Perhaps these things could not even have been believed of the Father, even if they had been given in the Scriptures, since these men bring Him down into Mary's womb, and set Him before Pilate's judgment seat, and bury Him in the sepulchre of Joseph. Hence, therefore, their error becomes clear. For, being ignorant that the entire order of the divine administration has from the very first had its course through the agency of the Son, they believe that the Father Himself was actually seen, and held converse with men, and worked, and was thirsty, and suffered hunger, in spite of the prophet who says, "The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, shall never thirst at all, nor be hungry," Isaiah 40:28. Much more, He shall neither die at any time, nor be buried. And so they think that it was always one God, even the Father, who at all times Himself did the things that were really done by Him through the agency of the Son.

They were more ready to think that the Father acted in the Son's name than that the Son acted in the Father's name. Yet the Lord Himself says, "I have come in my Father's name," John 5:43. And He also says to the Father, "I have revealed your name to these men," John 17:6. Scripture likewise says, "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord." That means the Son comes in the Father's name. As for the Father's names, such as God Almighty, the Most High, the Lord of hosts, the King of Israel, and the One who is, we say, because Scripture teaches us this, that these names also rightly belong to the Son. The Son came under these names, has always acted under them, and in this way has shown them in Himself to men. He says, "All things that the Father has are mine," John 16:15. Then why not the Father's names also? Therefore, when you read about Almighty God, and the Most High, and the God of hosts, and the King of Israel, and the One who is, consider whether the Son is also meant by these names. In His own right, He is God Almighty, because He is the Word of Almighty God and has received power over all. He is the Most High, because He is exalted at the right hand of God, as Peter declares in Acts, Acts 2:22. He is the Lord of hosts, because the Father has made all things subject to Him. He is the King of Israel, because the destiny of that nation has been especially entrusted to Him. He is likewise the One who is, because there are many who are called sons, but are not. As for their claim that the name of Christ also belongs to the Father, they will hear what I have to say at the proper place. Meanwhile, let this be my direct answer to the argument they bring from the Revelation of John: "I am the Lord who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty," Revelation 1:8, and from all other passages which, in their opinion, make the title of Almighty God unsuitable for the Son. It is as if the One who is to come were not almighty. Yet even the Son of the Almighty is just as much almighty as the Son of God is God.

But what keeps them from easily seeing that the Father's titles are shared with the Son is this statement of Scripture, whenever it declares that God is only one, as if that same Scripture had not also presented two as both God and Lord, as we showed above. Their argument is this: since we find two and one, both must be one and the same, both Father and Son. But Scripture does not need anyone's argument to help it, as if it might seem to contradict itself. It has its own way, both when it presents only one God and also when it shows that there are two, Father and Son. And it is consistent with itself. It is clear that Scripture does mention the Son. For without taking anything away from the Son, it is completely possible for Scripture to rightly declare that God is only one, to whom the Son belongs. Since the one who has a Son does not, because of that, stop existing as one himself, that is, in his own right, whenever he is named without the Son. And he is named without the Son whenever he is described as the source of Deity in the role of its first Person, who had to be mentioned before the name of the Son. Because the Father is recognized first, and after the Father the Son is named. Therefore there is one God, the Father, and besides Him there is no one else. Isaiah 45:5 And when He Himself makes this declaration, He does not deny the Son, but says that there is no other God. And the Son is not different from the Father. Indeed, if you carefully look at the passages that follow statements like this, you will find that they almost always refer directly to the makers of idols and the worshipers of them. The purpose is that the many false gods may be driven out by the unity of the Godhead, which nevertheless has a Son. And since this Son is undivided and inseparable from the Father, He is to be counted as being in the Father even when He is not named. The fact is, if He had named Him openly, He would have separated Him by saying in so many words, "Besides me there is no one else, except my Son." In short, He would have made His Son actually another, after excluding Him from others. Suppose the sun were to say, "I am the sun, and there is no other besides me, except my ray." Would you not notice how unnecessary such a statement would be, as if the ray were not itself counted as being in the sun? So then, He says that there is no God besides Himself with respect to the idolatry of both the Gentiles and Israel. Yes, and even because of our heretics also, who make idols with their words just as the heathen do with their hands. That is, they make another God and another Christ. When, therefore, He affirmed His own unity, the Father also protected the Son's interests, so that Christ would not be supposed to have come from another God, but from Him who had already said, "I am God and there is no other beside me," who shows us that He is the only God, but together with His Son, with whom He stretches out the heavens alone. Isaiah 44:24

BUT THEY WILL QUICKLY TWIST THIS VERY STATEMENT OF HIS INTO AN ARGUMENT FOR HIS SINGLENESS: He says, "I have stretched out the heaven alone." Certainly, alone in relation to all other powers. In this way He gives a warning beforehand against the guesses of the heretics. They say that the world was made by different angels and powers. They also make the Creator Himself either an angel or some lower agent sent to form outward things, such as the parts of the world, while at the same time being ignorant of the divine purpose. If, then, this is the sense in which He stretched out the heavens alone, how is it that these heretics take their position so perversely as to make the singleness of that Wisdom unacceptable, the Wisdom that says, "When He prepared the heaven, I was present with Him"? Proverbs 8:27 Even though the apostle asks, "Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor?" Romans 11:34 He means, of course, not including that Wisdom which was present with Him. Proverbs 8:30 At any rate, in Him and with Him, Wisdom built the universe, and He was not ignorant of what she was making. Now "except Wisdom" has exactly the same sense as "except the Son," who is Christ, the Wisdom and Power of God, according to the apostle in 1 Corinthians 1:24, and who alone knows the mind of the Father. For "who knows the things that are in God, except the Spirit which is in Him?" 1 Corinthians 2:11 Notice, not without Him. Therefore there was One who caused God not to be alone, though He was alone from all other gods. But if we are to follow the heretics, then the Gospel itself must be rejected, because it tells us that all things were made by God through the Word, and without Him nothing was made. John 1:3 And if I am not mistaken, there is also another passage where it is written, "By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all their host by His Spirit." Now this Word, the Power of God and the Wisdom of God, must be the very Son of God. So if He did all things by the Son, then He must have stretched out the heavens by the Son, and so not have stretched them out alone, except in the sense in which He is alone, apart from all other gods. Accordingly He says, concerning the Son, immediately afterwards: "Who else is it that frustrates the tokens of the liars, and makes diviners mad, turning wise men backward, and making their knowledge foolish, and confirming the words of His Son?" Isaiah 44:25 As for example, when He said, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear Him." Matthew 3:17 By thus attaching the Son to Himself, He explains His own meaning in saying that He stretched out the heavens alone. He means alone with His Son, just as He is one with His Son. Therefore, in the same way, the statement, "I have stretched out the heavens alone," Isaiah 44:24 will also be the Son's statement, because by the Word the heavens were established. Since, then, the heaven was prepared when Wisdom was present in the Word, and since all things were made by the Word, it is quite correct to say that the Son also stretched out the heaven alone, because He alone ministered to the Father's work. He must also be the One who says, "I am the First, and to all futurity I AM." The Word, no doubt, was before all things. "In the beginning was the Word," John 1:1 and in that beginning He was sent forth by the Father. The Father, however, has no beginning, since He proceeds from none. Nor can He be seen, since He was not begotten. He who had always been alone could never have had order or rank. Therefore, if they have decided that the Father and the Son must be regarded as one and the same, for the express purpose of defending the unity of God, that unity is still kept whole. For He is one, and yet He has a Son, who is equally included with Him in the same Scriptures. Since they are unwilling to allow that the Son is a distinct Person, second from the Father, lest, being thus second, He should cause two Gods to be spoken of, we have shown above that Scripture actually describes Two as God and Lord. And to keep them from being offended at this, we give the reason why they are not called two Gods and two Lords, but are two as Father and Son. This is not by a severing of their substance, but from the divine arrangement itself, by which we declare that the Son is undivided and inseparable from the Father, distinct in degree, not in state. And although, when named separately, He is called God, He does not thereby make two Gods, but one. And this is from the very fact that He is entitled to be called God through His union with the Father.

BUT I MUST WORK A LITTLE MORE TO ANSWER THEIR ARGUMENTS: when they pick out parts of Scripture to support their view and refuse to consider the other passages. Those other passages clearly uphold the rule of faith, without any violation of the unity of the Godhead and with full acceptance of the Monarchy. For in the Old Testament Scriptures, they seize on nothing except this: "I am God, and besides me there is no God," Isaiah 45:5. In the Gospel also, they look only at the Lord's answer to Philip: "I and my Father are one," John 10:30; and, "He that has seen me has seen the Father"; and, "I am in the Father, and the Father in me," John 14:9-10. They want the whole revelation of both Testaments to be controlled by these three passages. But the right way is to understand the few statements in the light of the many. In this argument, they are only acting by the same principle as all heretics. Since only a few testimonies can be found in the whole body of Scripture that seem to support them, they stubbornly set the few against the many, and the later statements against the earlier ones. However, the rule that has been established from the beginning for every case gives its judgment against later claims, just as it also does against fewer ones.

CONSIDER: therefore, how many passages in this very Gospel already present their binding authority to you, even before Philip asked this question, and before any discussion on your part. First of all, there immediately comes to hand the opening of John's Gospel. It shows us what He was before He became flesh. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him nothing was made." John 1:1-3 Now, since these words cannot be taken in any other way than as they are written, they clearly show that there is One who was from the beginning, and also One with whom He always was: one, the Word of God; the other, God. Although the Word is also God, He is God regarded as the Son of God, not as the Father. There is One through whom all things were made, and Another by whom all things were made. But in what sense we call Him Another, we have already often explained. In calling Him Another, we must mean that He is not identical. He is not identical, yet not as if separate. He is Other by divine arrangement, not by division. Therefore, He who became flesh was not the very same as He from whom the Word came. "His glory was seen, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father." John 1:14 Notice: not "as of the Father." He alone declared what was in the bosom of the Father. The Father did not reveal the secrets of His own bosom. For this is preceded by another statement: "No man has seen God at any time." Then again, when John the Baptist designates Him as "the Lamb of God," John 1:29 he is not described as being Himself the same as Him whose beloved Son He is. He is certainly always the Son of God, yet not Himself the one of whom He is the Son. Nathanael at once recognized this in Him, John 1:49 just as Peter did on another occasion: "You are the Son of God." Matthew 16:16 And He Himself affirmed that they were right in their convictions. For He answered Nathanael, "Because I said, I saw you under the fig tree, do you therefore believe?" John 1:50 In the same way, He pronounced Peter blessed, since flesh and blood had not revealed it to him. That is, he had not perceived the Father, but the Father who is in heaven had revealed it. Matthew 16:17 By asserting all this, He established the distinction between the two Persons: the Son then on earth, whom Peter had confessed to be the Son of God; and the Father in heaven, who had revealed to Peter what he had discovered, that Christ was the Son of God. When He entered the temple, He called it His Father's house, John 2:16 speaking as the Son. In His address to Nicodemus He says, "So God loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16 And again: "For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God." John 3:17-18 Moreover, when John the Baptist was asked what he happened to know of Jesus, he said, "The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand. He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him." John 3:35-36 Whom, indeed, did He reveal to the woman of Samaria? Was it not the Messiah who is called Christ? John 4:25 And so He showed, of course, that He was not the Father, but the Son. Elsewhere also He is expressly called the Christ, the Son of God, John 20:31 and not the Father. Therefore He says, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent me, and to finish His work." John 4:34 While to the Jews He says, concerning the healing of the helpless man, "My Father works until now, and I work." John 5:17 "My Father" and "I" — these are the Son's words. And for this very reason the Jews sought all the more to kill Him, not only because He broke the Sabbath, but also because He said that God was His Father, thus making Himself equal with God. Then He answered them and said, "The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever things He does, these also the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does. And He will also show Him greater works than these, that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom He will. For the Father judges no man, but has committed all judgment to the Son, that all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who has sent the Son. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my words, and believes in Him who sent me, has everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but has passed from death to life. Truly I say to you, that the hour is coming, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and when they have heard it, they shall live. For as the Father has eternal life in Himself, so also He has given to the Son to have eternal life in Himself. And He has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of man." John 5:19-27 That is, according to the flesh, even as He is also the Son of God through His Spirit. Afterward He goes on to say, "But I have greater witness than that of John; for the works which the Father has given me to finish — those very works bear witness of me that the Father has sent me. And the Father Himself, who has sent me, has also borne witness of me." John 5:36-37 But He immediately adds, "You have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His form," thus affirming that in former times it was not the Father, but the Son, who used to be seen and heard. Then at last He says, "I have come in my Father's name, and you have not received me." It was therefore always the Son of whom we read under the title of the Almighty and Most High God, and King, and Lord. Also, to those who asked what they should do to work the works of God, John 6:29 He answered, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent." He also declares Himself to be the bread which the Father sent from heaven. And He adds that all whom the Father gave Him should come to Him, and that He Himself would not cast them out, because He had come down from heaven not to do His own will, but the will of the Father. And the will of the Father was that everyone who saw the Son, and believed in Him, should receive everlasting life, and the resurrection at the last day. No man indeed was able to come to Him unless the Father drew him. Whereas everyone who had heard and learned from the Father came to Him. John 6:37-45 He then goes on expressly to say, "Not that any man has seen the Father," thus showing us that men were instructed and taught through the Word of the Father. Then, when many departed from Him, and He turned to the apostles and asked whether they also would go away, what was Simon Peter's answer? "To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we believe that You are the Christ." Tell me now, did they believe Him to be the Father, or the Christ of the Father?

AGAIN: whose teaching was He announcing, at which all were astonished? Was it His own or the Father's? So, when they were in doubt among themselves whether He was the Christ, not of course as being the Father, but as the Son, He says to them, "You are not ignorant from where I am. And I have not come of myself. But He who sent me is true, whom you do not know. But I know Him, because I am from Him." He did not say, "Because I myself am He," and, "I have sent my own self." But His words are, "He has sent me." Likewise, when the Pharisees sent men to arrest Him, He says, "Yet a little while I am with you, and then I go to Him who sent me." When, however, He declares that He is not alone, and uses these words, "but I and the Father who sent me," John 8:16, does He not show that there are Two, Two and yet inseparable? Indeed, this was the sum and substance of what He was teaching them, that they were inseparably Two. Since, after quoting the law when it affirms the truth of two men's testimony, He adds at once, "I am one who bears witness of myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness of me." Now if He were one, being at once both the Son and the Father, He certainly would not have quoted the sanction of the law, which requires not the testimony of one, but of two. Likewise, when they asked Him where His Father was, He answered them that they had known neither Himself nor the Father. And in this answer He plainly told them of Two, whom they did not know. Granted that if they had known Him, they would have known the Father also, this certainly does not imply that He was Himself both Father and Son. Rather, by reason of the inseparability of the Two, it was impossible for one of them to be either acknowledged or unknown without the other. "He who sent me," says He, "is true; and I am telling the world those things which I have heard of Him." John 8:26. And the Scripture narrative goes on to explain in an open manner that they did not understand that He spoke to them concerning the Father, although they certainly ought to have known that the Father's words were uttered in the Son, because they read in Jeremiah, "And the Lord said to me, 'Behold, I have put my words in your mouth,'" Jeremiah 1:9, and again in Isaiah, "The Lord has given to me the tongue of learning, that I should understand when to speak a word in season." Isaiah 50:4. In accordance with this, Christ Himself says, "Then shall you know that I am He and that I am saying nothing of my own self. But as my Father has taught me, so I speak, because He who sent me is with me." John 8:28-29. This also amounts to a proof that they were Two, although undivided. Likewise, when He was reproaching the Jews in His discussion with them because they wished to kill Him, He said, "I speak that which I have seen with my Father, and you do that which you have seen with your father." But now, "you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth which I have heard of God." And again, "If God were your Father, you would love me, for I proceeded forth and came from God." Still, they are not hereby separated, although He declares that He proceeded forth from the Father. Some persons indeed seize the opportunity given them in these words to put forward their heresy of His separation. But His coming out from God is like the ray's procession from the sun, and the river's from the fountain, and the tree's from the seed. Again, "I do not have a devil, but I honor my Father." Again, "If I honor myself, my honor is nothing. It is my Father who honors me, of whom you say that He is your God. Yet you have not known Him, but I know Him. And if I should say, 'I know Him not,' I shall be a liar like you. But I know Him, and keep His saying." John 8:54-55. But when He goes on to say, "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad," He certainly proves that it was not the Father who appeared to Abraham, but the Son. In like manner He declares, in the case of the man born blind, that He must do the works of the Father who sent Him, John 9:4. And after He had given the man sight, He said to him, "Do you believe in the Son of God?" Then, when the man asked who He was, He went on to reveal Himself to him as that Son of God whom He had announced to him as the right object of his faith. In a later passage He declares that He is known by the Father, and the Father by Him, John 10:15, adding that He was so wholly loved by the Father that He was laying down His life, because He had received this commandment from the Father. When the Jews asked Him if He were the very Christ, meaning, of course, the Christ of God, for to this day the Jews expect not the Father Himself, but the Christ of God, since it is nowhere said that the Father will come as the Christ, He said to them, "I am telling you, and yet you do not believe. The works which I am doing in my Father's name, they bear witness of me." Witness of what? Of that very thing, to be sure, of which they were making inquiry, whether He was the Christ of God. Then again, concerning His sheep, and the assurance that no man should pluck them out of His hand, He says, "My Father, who gave them to me, is greater than all," adding immediately, "I and my Father are one." Here, then, they take their stand, too infatuated, nay, too blind, to see in the first place that there is in this passage an indication of Two Beings, "I and my Father"; then that there is a plural predicate, "are," not fit for one person only; and lastly, that the predicate ends in an abstract, not a personal noun: we are one thing, Unum, not one person, Unus. For if He had said one Person, He might have given some help to their opinion. Unus, no doubt, indicates the singular number. But here Two are still the subject in the masculine gender. He accordingly says Unum, a neuter term, which does not imply singularity of number, but unity of essence, likeness, conjunction, affection on the Father's part, who loves the Son, and submission on the Son's, who obeys the Father's will. When He says, "I and my Father are one in essence," Unum, He shows that there are Two, whom He puts on an equality and unites in one. He therefore adds to this very statement that He had showed them many works from the Father, for none of which did He deserve to be stoned. John 10:32. And to prevent their thinking Him deserving of this fate, as if He had claimed to be considered as God Himself, that is, the Father, by having said, "I and my Father are one," representing Himself as the Father's divine Son, and not as God Himself, He says, "If it is written in your law, 'I said, You are gods,' and if the Scripture cannot be broken, do you say of Him whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world, 'He blasphemes,' because He said, 'I am the Son of God?' If I do not do the works of my Father, do not believe me. But if I do, even if you will not believe me, still believe the works, and know that I am in the Father, and the Father in me." It must therefore be by the works that the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father. And so it is by the works that we understand that the Father is one with the Son. All along, therefore, He strongly aimed at this conclusion, that while they were of one power and essence, they should still be believed to be Two. Otherwise, unless they were believed to be Two, the Son could not possibly be believed to have any existence at all.

AGAIN: when Martha later acknowledged Him to be the Son of God, in John 11:27, she was no more mistaken than Peter in Matthew 16:16 and Nathanael in John 1:49. And yet, even if she had been mistaken, she would at once have learned the truth. For look, when He was about to raise her brother from the dead, the Lord looked up to heaven and addressed the Father, of course as the Son. He said, "Father, I thank You that You always hear me. It is because of these crowds standing by that I have spoken to You, so that they may believe that You have sent me," in John 11:41-42. But later, in the trouble of His soul, He said, "What shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. But for this cause I have come to this hour. Only, Father, glorify Your name," in John 12:27-28. In this He spoke as the Son. At another time He said, "I have come in my Father's name," in John 5:43. Accordingly, the Son's voice alone was indeed enough when it was addressed to the Father. But look, with abundant witness the Father replies from heaven, in order to testify to the Son: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him," in Matthew 17:5. So again, in that declaration, "I have both glorified, and will glorify again," in John 12:28, how many Persons do you find, obstinate Praxeas? Are there not as many as there are voices? You have the Son on earth. You have the Father in heaven. Now this is not a separation. It is nothing but the divine dispensation. We know, however, that God is in the bottomless depths, and exists everywhere. But then it is by power and authority. We are also sure that the Son, being indivisible from Him, is everywhere with Him. Nevertheless, in the Dispensation itself, the Father willed that the Son should be regarded as on earth, and He Himself in heaven. There the Son also looked up, and prayed, and made supplication to the Father. There also He taught us to lift ourselves up and pray, "Our Father who art in heaven," in Matthew 6:9, although indeed He is everywhere present. The Father willed this heaven to be His own throne. While doing so, He made the Son a little lower than the angels by sending Him down to the earth, but at the same time He meant to crown Him with glory and honor, even by taking Him back to heaven. This He now made good to Him when He said, "I have both glorified You, and will glorify You again." The Son offers His request from earth. The Father gives His promise from heaven. Why then do you make both the Father and the Son liars? If either the Father spoke from heaven to the Son when He Himself was the Son on earth, or the Son prayed to the Father when He Himself was the Son in heaven, how is it that the Son made a request to His own very self by asking it of the Father, if the Son was the Father? Or, on the other hand, how is it that the Father made a promise to Himself by making it to the Son, if the Father was the Son? Even if we were to maintain that they are two separate gods, as you are so fond of throwing out against us, that would be a more tolerable assertion than your teaching of a God so shifting and changeable as yours. Therefore, in the passage before us, the Lord declared to the people present, "This voice has not addressed me for my own sake, but for your sakes," in John 12:30, so that these too may believe both in the Father and in the Son, separately, in their own names and persons and positions. Then again, Jesus cries out and says, "He that believes in me, believes not on me, but on Him that sent me," in John 12:44. This is because it is through the Son that men believe in the Father, while the Father also is the authority from where belief in the Son springs. "And he that sees me, sees Him that sent me." How so? Because, as He later says, "I have not spoken from myself, but the Father who sent me: He has given me a commandment what I should say, and what I should speak," in John 12:49. "For the Lord God has given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know when I ought to speak," in Isaiah 50:4, the word that I actually speak. "Even as the Father has said to me, so I speak," in John 12:50. Now, in what way these things were said to Him, the evangelist and beloved disciple John knew better than Praxeas. Therefore he adds, concerning his own meaning, "Now before the feast of the Passover, Jesus knew that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God, and was going to God." Praxeas, however, would have it that it was the Father who came forth from Himself and returned to Himself. So then what the devil put into the heart of Judas was the betrayal, not of the Son, but of the Father Himself. But in that matter, things did not turn out well either for the devil or for the heretic. Because even in the Son's case, the treason which the devil worked against Him contributed nothing to his advantage. It was, then, the Son of God, who was in the Son of man, that was betrayed, as the Scripture says afterward: "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in Him." Who is meant here by God? Certainly not the Father, but the Word of the Father, who was in the Son of man, that is, in the flesh, in which Jesus had already been glorified by the divine power and word. And, He says, "God shall also glorify Him in Himself." That is to say, the Father shall glorify the Son, because He has Him within Himself. And even though laid low to the earth and put to death, He would soon glorify Him by His resurrection, and by making Him conqueror over death.

BUT THERE WERE SOME WHO EVEN THEN DID NOT UNDERSTAND: For Thomas, who had been unbelieving for so long, said, "Lord, we do not know where You are going; and how can we know the way?" Jesus says to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. If you had known me, you would have known the Father also. But from now on you know Him and have seen Him." John 14:5-7 And now we come to Philip. He was stirred up with the expectation of seeing the Father, and he did not understand what it meant to see the Father. So he says, "Show us the Father, and it is enough for us." Then the Lord answered him, "Have I been with you so long, and yet have you not known me, Philip?" Now whom does He say they ought to have known? For this is the only point under discussion. Was it as the Father that they ought to have known Him, or as the Son? If it was as the Father, Praxeas must tell us how Christ, who had been with them so long, could possibly ever have been, I will not say understood, but even supposed to have been, the Father. He is clearly defined for us in all Scripture: in the Old Testament as the Christ of God, and in the New Testament as the Son of God. In this role He was predicted long ago. In this role He was also declared, even by Christ Himself; yes, by the Father Himself also, who openly confesses from heaven that He is His Son, and as His Son glorifies Him. "This is my beloved Son; I have glorified Him, and I will glorify Him." In this role too, He was believed in by His disciples and rejected by the Jews. It was also in this role that He wished to be accepted by them whenever He named the Father, and gave preference to the Father, and honored the Father. Since this is so, it was not the Father of whom they were ignorant after His long time with them, but the Son. And so the Lord, while reproving Philip for not knowing Himself, since He was the one of whom they were ignorant, wished indeed to be acknowledged as that Being whom He had reproached them for being ignorant of after so long a time; in a word, as the Son. And now it can be seen in what sense it was said, "He that has seen me has seen the Father," John 14:9. It is in the same sense in which it was said earlier, "I and my Father are one." John 10:30 Why? Because, "I came forth from the Father, and have come into the world," John 16:28 and, "I am the way: no man comes to the Father but by me;" John 14:6 and, "No man can come to me, except the Father draw him;" John 6:44 and, "All things are delivered to me by the Father;" Matthew 11:27 and, "As the Father gives life to the dead, so also does the Son;" John 5:21 and again, "If you had known me, you would have known the Father also." John 14:7 For in all these passages He had shown Himself to be the Father's Commissioner. Through Him even the Father could be seen in His works, and heard in His words, and recognized in the Son's carrying out of the Father's words and deeds. The Father indeed was invisible, as Philip had learned in the law, and at that moment ought to have remembered: "No man shall see God, and live." Exodus 33:20 So he is reproved for desiring to see the Father, as if He were a visible Being, and is taught that He becomes visible only in the Son through His mighty works, and not in the manifestation of His person. If indeed He meant the Father to be understood as the same as the Son by saying, "He who sees me sees the Father," how is it that He adds immediately afterward, "Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?" John 14:10 He ought rather to have said, "Do you not believe that I am the Father?" For what other reason did He dwell so strongly on this point, unless it was to make clear what He wished men to understand, namely, that He was the Son? And then again, by saying, "Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me," John 14:11 He laid even greater stress on His question for this very reason: so that, because He had said, "He that has seen me has seen the Father," He might not be supposed to be the Father. For He had never wished to be regarded as such, since He had always professed Himself to be the Son, and to have come from the Father. And then He also set the connection of the two Persons in the clearest light, so that no desire might be entertained to see the Father as if He were visible separately, and so that the Son might be regarded as the representative of the Father. Yet He did not fail to explain how the Father was in the Son and the Son in the Father. "The words," He says, "which I speak to you are not mine," John 14:10 because they were indeed the Father's words; "but the Father who dwells in me, He does the works." Therefore it is by His mighty works, and by the words of His teaching, that the Father who dwells in the Son makes Himself visible. He does so by those very words and works by which He abides in Him, and also by Him in whom He abides. The distinct properties of both Persons are made clear by this very fact, that He says, "I am in the Father, and the Father is in me." Accordingly He adds: "Believe"—what? That I am the Father? I do not find that it is written so, but rather, "that I am in the Father, and the Father in me"; or else, "believe me for my works' sake," meaning those works by which the Father showed Himself to be in the Son, not indeed to man's sight, but to his understanding.

What follows Philip's question, and the Lord's whole treatment of it, to the end of John's Gospel, continues to give us statements of the same kind. They distinguish the Father and the Son, with the properties of each. Then there is also the Paraclete, or Comforter, whom He promises to pray for to the Father, and to send from heaven after He had ascended to the Father. He is indeed called another Comforter, in John 14:16. But we have already shown in what way He is another. “He shall receive of mine,” Christ says in John 16:14, just as Christ Himself received of the Father's. Thus the connection of the Father in the Son, and of the Son in the Paraclete, produces three coherent Persons, who are yet distinct one from another. These Three are one essence, not one Person. As it is said, “I and my Father are One,” in John 10:30, in respect of unity of substance, not singularity of number. Go through the whole Gospel, and you will find that He whom you believe to be the Father is described as acting for the Father. Although you, for your part, of course, suppose that the Father, being the husbandman in John 15:1, must surely have been on earth, He is once more recognized by the Son as in heaven. When He lifted up His eyes there in John 17:1, He commended His disciples to the safe-keeping of the Father in John 17:11. We have, moreover, in that other Gospel a clear revelation of the Son's distinction from the Father: “My God, why have You forsaken me?” in Matthew 27:46. And again, in the third Gospel, “Father, into Your hands I commend my spirit,” in Luke 23:46. But even if we did not have these passages, we still meet with satisfactory evidence after His resurrection and glorious victory over death. Now that all the restraint of His humiliation was taken away, He might, if possible, have shown Himself as the Father to so faithful a woman as Mary Magdalene, when she approached to touch Him, out of love, not from curiosity, nor with Thomas' incredulity. But not so. Jesus says to her, “Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father; but go to my brothers”—and even in this He proves Himself to be the Son. For if He had been the Father, He would have called them His children, instead of His brothers—“and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God,” in John 20:17. Now, does this mean, “I ascend as the Father to the Father, and as God to God”? Or, “as the Son to the Father, and as the Word to God”? Therefore why does this Gospel, at its very end, say that these things were written, if it is not, in its own words, “that you might believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God,” in John 20:31? Whenever, therefore, you take any of the statements of this Gospel and apply them to prove the identity of the Father and the Son, supposing that they serve your view in that matter, you are contending against the definite purpose of the Gospel. For these things certainly were not written so that you may believe that Jesus Christ is the Father, but the Son.

In addition to Philip's conversation, and the Lord's reply to it, the reader will observe that we have gone through John's Gospel to show that many other passages of clear meaning, both before and after that chapter, agree exactly with that one chief statement. That statement must be interpreted in a way that agrees with all the other places, rather than against them, and indeed with its own proper and natural sense. I will not here make large use of support from the other Gospels, which confirm our belief by the Lord's birth. It is enough to note that He who had to be born of a virgin is plainly announced by the angel himself as the Son of God: "The Spirit of God shall come upon you, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow you; therefore also the Holy Thing that shall be born of you shall be called the Son of God." Luke 1:35. Even on this passage they will want to raise an objection. But truth will prevail. Of course, they say, the Son of God is God, and the power of the Highest is the Most High. And they do not hesitate to suggest what, if it had been true, would have been written. Of whom was he so afraid that he did not plainly declare, "God shall come upon you, and the Highest shall overshadow you"? Now by saying "the Spirit of God"—although the Spirit of God is God—and by not directly naming God, he wished that portion of the whole Godhead to be understood which was about to retire into the designation of the Son. In this passage, the Spirit of God must be the same as the Word. For just as, when John says, "The Word was made flesh," John 1:14, we understand the Spirit also in the mention of the Word, so here too we acknowledge the Word likewise in the name of the Spirit. For both the Spirit is the substance of the Word, and the Word is the operation of the Spirit, and the Two are One, and the same. Now John must mean One when he speaks of Him as having been made flesh, and the angel Another when he announces Him as about to be born, if the Spirit is not the Word, and the Word the Spirit. For just as the Word of God is not actually He whose Word He is, so also the Spirit, although He is called God, is not actually He whose Spirit He is said to be. Nothing that belongs to something else is actually the very same thing as that to which it belongs. Clearly, when anything proceeds from a personal subject, and so belongs to him, since it comes from him, it may perhaps be exactly such in quality as the personal subject himself is, from whom it proceeds and to whom it belongs. And so the Spirit is God, and the Word is God, because He proceeds from God. Yet He is not actually the very same as He from whom He proceeds. Now that which is God of God, although He is an actually existing thing, yet He cannot be God Himself exclusively. But He is so far God as He is of the same substance as God Himself, and as being an actually existing thing, and as a portion of the Whole. Much more, then, will the power of the Highest not be the Highest Himself, because it is not an actually existing thing, as being Spirit—in the same way as the wisdom of God and the providence of God is not God. These attributes are not substances, but the accidents of the particular substance. Power is incidental to the Spirit, but cannot itself be the Spirit. Therefore these things, whatever they are—I mean the Spirit of God, and the Word, and the Power—having been conferred on the Virgin, that which is born of her is the Son of God. He Himself also testifies in those other Gospels that He had been this from His very boyhood: "Did you not know," He says, "that I must be about My Father's business?" Luke 2:49. Satan likewise knew Him to be this in his temptations: "Since You are the Son of God." The devils also acknowledge Him to be this: "We know You, who You are, the Holy Son of God." He Himself adores His Father. When Peter acknowledges Him as the Christ, the Son of God, Matthew 16:17, He does not deny the relation. He exults in spirit when He says to the Father, "I thank You, O Father, because You have hid these things from the wise and prudent." Matthew 11:25. He also affirms that no man knows the Father except His Son. And, as the Son of the Father, He promises that He will confess before His Father those who confess Him, and deny before His Father those who deny Him. Matthew 10:32-33. He also sets forth a parable of the mission to the vineyard of the Son, not the Father, who was sent after so many servants, Matthew 21:33-41, and was slain by the husbandmen, and avenged by the Father. He is also ignorant of the last day and hour, which is known to the Father only. Matthew 24:36. He awards the kingdom to His disciples, as He says it had been appointed to Himself by the Father. Luke 22:29. He has power to ask, if He wills, for legions of angels from the Father for His help. Matthew 26:53. He exclaims that God had forsaken Him. Matthew 27:46. He commends His spirit into the hands of the Father. Luke 23:46. After His resurrection, He promises as a pledge to His disciples that He will send them the promise of His Father. Luke 24:49. And lastly, He commands them to baptize into the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, not into a unipersonal God. And indeed, it is not once only, but three times, that we are immersed into the Three Persons, at each several mention of Their names.

BUT WHY SHOULD I SPEND TIME ON THINGS THAT ARE SO CLEAR: when I should be attacking the points where they try to hide the plainest proof? They have been refuted from every side on the distinction between the Father and the Son, which we maintain without destroying their inseparable union, as shown by the examples of the sun and its ray, and the fountain and the river. Yet, by using their idea of an indivisible number, with the results of two and three, they try to explain this distinction in a way that still fits their own opinions. So, while keeping all things in one Person, they divide that one into two, Father and Son. They understand the Son to be flesh, that is, man, that is, Jesus; and the Father to be spirit, that is, God, that is, Christ. In this way, while they argue that the Father and the Son are one and the same, they actually begin by dividing them rather than uniting them. For if Jesus is one thing and Christ another, then the Son will be different from the Father, because the Son is Jesus and the Father is Christ. I suppose they learned this kind of monarchy in the school of Valentinus, making two, Jesus and Christ. But this idea of theirs has in fact already been refuted by what we said earlier, because the Word of God or the Spirit of God is also called the power of the Highest, whom they make to be the Father. Yet these relations are not themselves the same as the One whose relations they are said to be. Rather, they proceed from Him and belong to Him. However, another refutation is waiting for them on this point of their heresy. “See,” they say, “it was announced by the angel: ‘Therefore that Holy Thing which shall be born of you shall be called the Son of God.’ Luke 1:35” Therefore, they argue, since it was the flesh that was born, it must be the flesh that is the Son of God. No, I answer, this is spoken about the Spirit of God. For it was certainly by the Holy Spirit that the virgin conceived, and what she conceived, she brought forth. Therefore, what had to be born was what had been conceived and was to be brought forth, that is, the Spirit, whose name would be called Emmanuel, which means, “God with us.” Matthew 1:23 Besides, the flesh is not God, so it could not have been said about the flesh, “That Holy Thing shall be called the Son of God.” It could be said only about that divine Being who was born in the flesh, of whom the psalm also says, “Since God became man in the midst of it, and established it by the will of the Father.” Now what divine Person was born in it? The Word, and the Spirit which became incarnate with the Word by the will of the Father. The Word, therefore, became incarnate, and this must be the point of our inquiry: How did the Word become flesh? Was it by being changed, as it were, into flesh, or by truly clothing Himself in flesh? Certainly it was by truly clothing Himself in flesh. For we must believe that God is unchangeable and incapable of form, since He is eternal. But a change of form is the destruction of what existed before. For whatever is changed into something else stops being what it had been, and begins to be what it had not been before. God, however, neither stops being what He was, nor can He be anything other than what He is. The Word is God, and “the Word of the Lord remains forever,” even by continuing unchangeably in His own proper form. Now, if He does not admit of being changed in form, it follows that He must be understood to have become flesh in this sense: that He came to be in the flesh, and was manifested, and was seen, and was handled by means of the flesh, since all the other points also must be understood in this way. For if the Word became flesh by a change and transformation of substance, then it follows at once that Jesus must be a substance made up of two substances, flesh and spirit, a kind of mixture, like electrum, made of gold and silver. Then it begins to be neither gold, that is, spirit, nor silver, that is, flesh. One is changed by the other, and a third substance is produced. Therefore, on this view, Jesus cannot be God, for He has stopped being the Word, which was made flesh. Nor can He be Man incarnate, for He is not truly flesh, and it was flesh that the Word became. Being made up of both, then, He is actually neither one. He is rather some third substance, very different from either. But the truth is that we find Him clearly presented as both God and Man. The very psalm we quoted indicates, concerning the flesh, that God became man in the midst of it. “He therefore established it by the will of the Father.” Certainly, then, He is in every respect both the Son of God and the Son of Man, being God and Man. No doubt they differ according to each substance and its own special property, since the Word is nothing other than God, and the flesh is nothing other than Man. In this way the apostle also teaches about His two substances, saying, “who was made of the seed of David,” Romans 1:3 and in these words He is Man and Son of Man. And, “who was declared to be the Son of God, according to the Spirit”; in these words He is God, and the Word, the Son of God. We plainly see the twofold condition, not confused but joined in one Person, Jesus, God and Man. As for Christ, I am postponing what I have to say. I remark here that the property of each nature is so fully preserved that the Spirit, on the one hand, did in Jesus all things suitable to itself, such as miracles, mighty deeds, and wonders. And the Flesh, on the other hand, showed the feelings that belong to it. It was hungry under the devil’s temptation, thirsty with the Samaritan woman, wept over Lazarus, was troubled even to death, and at last actually died. If, however, He were only a third thing, some combined essence formed out of the two substances, like the electrum I mentioned, then there would be no clear proofs of either nature. Instead, by a transfer of actions, the Spirit would have done things belonging to the Flesh, and the Flesh things worked by the Spirit. Or else there would have been things suited neither to Flesh nor Spirit, but confusedly of some third kind. More than that, on that supposition either the Word underwent death, or the flesh did not die, if indeed the Word was changed into flesh. Because either the flesh was immortal, or the Word was mortal. Since, however, the two substances acted distinctly, each in its own character, there necessarily came to each of them its own operations and its own results. Learn then, together with Nicodemus, that “that which is born in the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.” John 3:6 Neither does the flesh become Spirit, nor the Spirit flesh. In one Person, however, they are certainly able to exist together. Jesus consists of them both: as Man, of the flesh; as God, of the Spirit. And the angel called Him the Son of God, Luke 1:35 with respect to that nature in which He was Spirit, while reserving for the flesh the name Son of Man. In the same way, the apostle again calls Him “the Mediator between God and Men,” 1 Timothy 2:5 and so declares His sharing in both substances. Now, to finish the matter, you who interpret the Son of God to mean flesh, please show us what the Son of Man is. Will He then, I want to know, be the Spirit? But you insist that the Father Himself is the Spirit, on the ground that “God is a Spirit,” as if we did not also read that there is “the Spirit of God,” in the same way that we find that just as the Word was God, so also there is the Word of God.

AND SO: most foolish heretic, you make Christ to be the Father, without even considering the actual force of this name. For Christ, if indeed it is a name, is not so much a proper name as a surname or designation. For it means Anointed. But Anointed is no more a proper name than Clothed or Shod. It is only something added to a name. Suppose now that by some means Jesus were also called Vestitus, that is, Clothed, just as He is in fact called Christ from the mystery of His anointing. Would you in the same way say that Jesus was the Son of God, and at the same time think that Vestitus was the Father? Now then, concerning Christ, if Christ is the Father, the Father is an Anointed One, and of course receives the anointing from another. But if He receives it from Himself, then you must prove that to us. But we learn no such thing from the Acts of the Apostles, in that cry of the church to God: "Truly, Lord, against Your holy child Jesus, whom You have anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together." Acts 4:27 These words testify both that Jesus was the Son of God, and that, being the Son, He was anointed by the Father. Christ therefore must be the same as Jesus who was anointed by the Father, and not the Father, who anointed the Son. To the same effect are the words of Peter: "Let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made that same Jesus, whom you have crucified, both Lord and Christ," that is, Anointed. Acts 2:36 John, moreover, brands that man as a liar who denies that Jesus is the Christ. On the other hand, he declares that everyone is born of God who believes that Jesus is the Christ. Therefore he also exhorts us to believe in the name of His (that is, the Father's) Son Jesus Christ, that our fellowship may be with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. 1 John 1:3 Paul, in the same way, everywhere speaks of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ. When writing to the Romans, he gives thanks to God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 1:8 To the Galatians he says that he is an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father. Galatians 1:1 You do indeed have all his writings, which plainly testify to the same effect, and set forth Two: God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father. They also testify that Jesus is Himself the Christ, and under one or the other name, the Son of God. For by the same right that both names belong to the same Person, even the Son of God, either name alone without the other also belongs to the same Person. Consequently, whether it is the name Jesus that appears alone, Christ is also understood, because Jesus is the Anointed One. Or if the name Christ alone is given, then Jesus is identified with Him, because the Anointed One is Jesus. Now, of these two names, Jesus Christ, the first is the proper one, which was given to Him by the angel. The second is only something added, said of Him because of His anointing. This suggests the point that Christ must be the Son, not the Father. How blind, to be sure, is the man who fails to see that by the name of Christ some other God is implied, if he gives the Father this name of Christ! For if Christ is God the Father, then when He says, "I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God," John 20:17 He plainly shows that above Himself there is another Father and another God. If, again, the Father is Christ, He must be some other Being who strengthens the thunder, and creates the wind, and declares to men His Christ. And if "the kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against His Christ," then that Lord must be another Being, against whose Christ the kings and the rulers were gathered together. And if, to quote another passage, "Thus says the Lord to my Lord Christ," then the Lord who speaks to the Father of Christ must be a distinct Being. Moreover, when the apostle prays in his epistle, "That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ may give to you the spirit of wisdom and of knowledge," Ephesians 1:17 He must be other than Christ, who is the God of Jesus Christ and the giver of spiritual gifts. And once for all, so that we may not wander through every passage, He who raised up Christ from the dead, and is also to raise up our mortal bodies, Romans 8:11 must certainly, as the giver of life, be different from the dead Father, or even from the Father brought to life, if Christ who died is the Father.

Silence! Silence on such blasphemy. Let us be content with saying that Christ died, the Son of the Father. Let this suffice, because the Scriptures have told us so much. For even the apostle, when he declares that Christ died, a statement he does not make without feeling its weight, immediately adds, “according to the Scriptures,” 1 Corinthians 15:3. He does this so that the authority of the Scriptures may lessen the harshness of the statement and remove offense from the reader. Now, although two substances are said to be in Christ, namely, the divine and the human, it clearly follows that the divine nature is immortal, and that the human nature is mortal. So it is plain in what sense he declares that Christ died. He means that Christ died in the sense that He was flesh and Man and the Son of Man, not in the sense that He was the Spirit and the Word and the Son of God. In short, since he says that it was Christ, that is, the Anointed One, who died, he shows us that what died was the nature that was anointed, in a word, the flesh. Very well, you say. Since we also state our doctrine in exactly the same terms that you use about the Son, we are not guilty of blasphemy against the Lord God. For we do not maintain that He died according to the divine nature, but only according to the human. No, but you do blaspheme, because you claim not only that the Father died, but that He died the death of the cross. For “cursed are they who are hanged on a tree,” Galatians 3:13. This curse, after the law, applies to the Son, since Christ has been made a curse for us, but certainly not to the Father. Since, however, you turn Christ into the Father, you are guilty of blasphemy against the Father. But when we say that Christ was crucified, we do not insult Him with a curse. We only repeat the curse pronounced by the law, Deuteronomy 21:23. Nor did the apostle speak blasphemy when he said the same thing as we do, Galatians 3:13. Besides, there is no blasphemy in saying about a subject what fairly applies to it. But on the other hand, it is blasphemy to say about a subject what is unsuitable to it. By this same principle, the Father was not associated in suffering with the Son. The heretics, indeed, fearing to fall into direct blasphemy against the Father, hope to lessen it by this device. They grant us this much, that the Father and the Son are Two. But then they add that, since it is the Son who suffers, the Father is only His fellow-sufferer. But how absurd they are even in this idea! For what does fellow-suffering mean except enduring suffering along with another? Now if the Father is incapable of suffering, He is incapable of suffering together with another. Otherwise, if He can suffer with another, then of course He is able to suffer. In fact, by this excuse of your fears, you gain nothing for Him. You are afraid to say that He is capable of suffering, while at the same time you make Him capable of fellow-suffering. Then again, the Father is as incapable of fellow-suffering as the Son is incapable of suffering under the conditions of His existence as God. But, you ask, how could the Son suffer if the Father did not suffer with Him? My answer is this: the Father is separate from the Son, though not from Him as God. For even if a river is soiled with mire and mud, although it flows from the fountain, identical in nature with it, and is not separated from the fountain, still the injury that affects the stream does not reach the fountain. And although it is the water of the fountain that suffers down in the stream, still, since it is not affected at the fountain but only in the river, the fountain suffers nothing, but only the river that comes from the fountain. In the same way, the Spirit of God, whatever suffering it might be capable of in the Son, still, since it could not suffer in the Father, the fountain of the Godhead, but only in the Son, it clearly could not have suffered as the Father. But it is enough for me that the Spirit of God suffered nothing as the Spirit of God, since all that It suffered, It suffered in the Son. It was quite another matter for the Father to suffer with the Son in the flesh. We have also dealt with this. And no one will deny this, since even we ourselves are unable to suffer for God unless the Spirit of God is in us. He also speaks through us whatever relates to our own conduct and suffering. Yet He Himself does not suffer in our suffering. He only gives us the power and capacity to suffer.

HOWEVER: if you persist in pushing your views further, I shall find ways to answer you with greater force. I shall meet you with the Lord's own cry, and challenge you with this question: What is your inquiry and reasoning about that? For you have Him crying out in the midst of His passion, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" Matthew 27:46 Either, then, the Son suffered, being forsaken by the Father, and the Father therefore suffered nothing, since He forsook the Son. Or else, if it was the Father who suffered, then to what God was it that He addressed His cry? But this was the voice of flesh and soul, that is, of man; not of the Word and Spirit, that is, not of God. And it was spoken to prove the impassibility of God, who forsook His Son, in that He handed over His human substance to the suffering of death. The apostle also saw this truth when he writes, "If the Father spared not His own Son." Romans 8:32 Isaiah likewise saw it before him, when he declared, "And the Lord has delivered Him up for our offenses." In this manner He forsook Him: in not sparing Him; in delivering Him up. In all other respects the Father did not forsake the Son, for it was into His Father's hands that the Son commended His spirit. Luke 23:46 Indeed, after commending it, He immediately died. And since the Spirit remained with the flesh, the flesh could not undergo the full extent of death, that is, corruption and decay. For the Son, therefore, to die amounted to His being forsaken by the Father. The Son, then, both dies and rises again, according to the Scriptures. 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 It is also the Son who ascends to the heights of heaven, John 3:13 and who descends to the inner parts of the earth. Ephesians 4:9 He sits at the Father's right hand, not the Father at His own. He is seen by Stephen, at his martyrdom by stoning, still sitting at the right hand of God, Acts 7:55 where He will continue to sit until the Father makes His enemies His footstool. He will come again on the clouds of heaven, just as He appeared when He ascended into heaven. Meanwhile He has received from the Father the promised gift, and has shed it forth, even the Holy Spirit—the Third Name in the Godhead, and the Third Degree of the Divine Majesty; the Declarer of the One Monarchy of God, but at the same time the Interpreter of the divine arrangement, to everyone who hears and receives the words of the new prophecy; and the Leader into all truth, John 16:13 such as is in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, according to the mystery of the doctrine of Christ.

BUT THIS DOCTRINE OF YOURS IS LIKE THE JEWISH FAITH: Its substance is this: to believe in One God in such a way as to refuse to reckon the Son besides Him, and after the Son, the Spirit. Now what difference would there be between us and them, if there were not this distinction which you are trying to break down? What need would there be of the gospel, which is the substance of the New Covenant, laying down, as it does, that the Law and the Prophets lasted until John the Baptist, if from then on the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are not both believed in as Three, and as making One Only God? God was pleased to renew His covenant with man in such a way that His Unity might be believed in, in a new manner, through the Son and the Spirit. This was so that God, who in ancient times was not plainly understood, though declared through the Son and the Spirit, might now be openly known in His proper Names and Persons. Away, then, with those Antichrists who deny the Father and the Son. For they deny the Father when they say that He is the same as the Son. And they deny the Son when they suppose Him to be the same as the Father, by assigning to Them things which are not Theirs, and taking away from Them things which are Theirs. But whoever confesses that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, not the Father, God dwells in him, and he in God. 1 John 4:15. We believe God's testimony, in which He testifies to us of His Son. He that has not the Son, has not life. 1 John 5:12. And that man does not have the Son, who believes Him to be any other than the Son.