Exposition of the Christian Faith.
Chapter 13
‸‸79. It will be asked: “In what sort was the Son begotten?” As one who is for ever, as the Word, as the brightness of eternal light, for brightness takes effect in the instant of its coming into existence. Which example is the Apostle’s, not mine. Think not, then, that there was ever a moment of time when God was without wisdom, any more than that there was ever a time when light was without radiance. Judge not, Arian, divine things by human, but believe the divine where thou findest not the human.
80. The heathen king saw in the fire, together with the three Hebrew children, the form of a fourth, like as of an angel, and because he thought that this angel excelled all angels, he judged Him to be the Son of God, Whom he had not read of, but in Whom he believed. Abraham, also, saw Three, and adored One.
81. Peter, when he saw Moses and Elias on the mountain, with the Son of God, was not deceived as to their nature and glory. For he enquired, not of them, but of Christ, what he ought to do, inasmuch as though he prepared to do homage to all three, yet he waited for the command of one. But since he ignorantly thought that for three persons three tabernacles should be set up, he was corrected by the sovereign voice of God the Father, saying, “This is My dearly beloved Son: hear ye Him.” That is to say: “Why dost thou join thy fellow-servants in equality with thy Lord?” “This is My Son.” Not “Moses is My Son,” nor “Elias is My Son,” but “This is My Son.” The Apostle was not dull to understand the rebuke; he fell on his face, brought low by the Father’s voice and the glorious beauty of the Son, but he was raised up by the Son, Whose wont it is to raise up them that are fallen. Then he saw one only, the Son of God alone, for the servants had withdrawn, that He might be seen to be Lord alone, Who alone was entitled Son.
82. What, then, was the purpose of that vision, which signified not that Christ and His servants were equal, but betokened a mystery, save that it should be made plain to us that the Law and the Prophets, in agreement with the Gospel, revealed as eternal the Son of God, Whom they had heralded. When we, therefore, hear of the Son coming forth of the womb, the Word from the heart, let us believe that the Son was not fashioned with hands but begotten of the Father, not the work of a craftsman but the offspring of a parent.
83. He, therefore, Who said, “This is My Son,” said not, “This is a creature of time,” nor “This being is of My creation, My making, My servant,” but “This is My Son, Whom ye see glorified.” This is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, Who appeared to Moses in the bush, concerning Whom Moses saith, “He Who is hath sent me.” It was not the Father Who spake to Moses in the bush or in the desert, but the Son. It was of this Moses that Stephen said, “This is He Who was in the church, in the wilderness, with the Angel.” This, then, is He Who gave the Law, Who spake with Moses, saying, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.” This, then, is the God of the patriarchs, this is the God of the prophets.
84. It is of the Son, therefore, that we read, thy mind understandeth the reading, let thy tongue make confession. Away with arguments, where faith is required; now let dialectic hold her peace, even in the midst of her schools. I ask not what it is that philosophers say, but I would know what they do. They sit desolate in their schools. See the victory of faith over argument. They who dispute subtly are forsaken daily by their fellows; they who with simplicity believe are daily increased. Not philosophers but fishermen, not masters of dialectic but tax-gatherers, now find credence. The one sort, through pleasures and luxuries, have bound the world’s burden upon themselves; the other, by fasting and mortification, have cast it off, and so doth sorrow now begin to win over more followers than pleasure.
85. Let us now see how far Arians and pagans do differ. The latter call upon gods, who are different in sex and unequal in power; the former affirm a Trinity where there is likewise inequality of power and diversity of Godhead. The pagans assert that their Gods began to exist once upon a time; the Arians lyingly declare that Christ began to exist in the course of time. Have they not all dyed their impiety in the vats of philosophy? But indeed the pagans do extol that which they worship, the Arians maintain that the Son of God, Who is God, is a creature.
Chapter 14
‸‸86. It is now made plain, as I believe, your sacred Majesty, that the Lord Jesus is neither unlike the Father, nor one that began to exist in course of time. We have yet to confute another blasphemy, and to show that the Son of God is not a created being. Herein is the quickening word that we read as our help, for we have heard the passage read where the Lord saith: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to all creation.” He Who saith “all creation” excepts nothing. How, then, do they stand who call Christ a “creature”? If He were a creature, could He have commanded that the Gospel should be preached to Himself? It is not, therefore, a creature, but the Creator, Who commits to His disciples the work of teaching created beings.
87. Christ, then, is no created being; for “created beings are,” as the Apostle hath said, “given over to vanity.” Is Christ given over unto vanity? Again, “creation”—according to the same Apostle—“groans and travails together even until now.” What, then? Doth Christ take any part in this groaning and travailing—He Who hath set us miserable mourners free from death? “Creation,” saith the Apostle, “shall be set free from the slavery of corruption.” We see, then, that between creation and its Lord there is a vast difference, for creation is enslaved, but “the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”
88. Who was it that led first into this error, of declaring Him Who created and made all things to be a creature? Did the Lord, I would ask, create Himself? We read that “all things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made.” This being so, did He make Himself? We read—and who shall deny?—that in wisdom hath God made all things. If so, how can we suppose that wisdom was made in itself?
89. We read that the Son is begotten, inasmuch as the Father saith: “I brought thee forth from the womb before the morning star.” We read of the “first-born” Son, of the “only-begotten” —first-born, because there is none before Him; only-begotten, because there is none after Him. Again, we read: “Who shall declare His generation?”
“Generation,” mark you, not “creation.” What argument can be brought to meet testimonies so great and mighty as these?
90. Moreover, God’s Son discovers the difference between generation and grace when He says: “I go up to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God.” He did not say, “I go up to our Father,” but “I go up to My Father and your Father.” This distinction is the sign of a difference, inasmuch as He Who is Christ’s Father is our Creator.
91. Furthermore He said, “to My God and your God,” because although He and the Father are One, and the Father is His Father by possession of the same nature, whilst God began to be our Father through the office of the Son, not by virtue of nature, but of grace—still He seems to point us here to the existence in Christ of both natures, Godhead and Manhood,—Godhead of His Father, Manhood of His Mother, the former being before all things, the latter derived from the Virgin. For the first, speaking as the Son, He called God His Father, and afterward, speaking as man, named Him as God.
92. Everywhere, indeed, we have witness in the Scriptures to show that Christ, in naming God as His God, does so as man. “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” And again: “From My mother’s womb Thou art My God.” In the former place He suffers as a man; in the latter it is a man who is brought forth from his mother’s womb. And so when He says, “From My mother’s womb Thou art My God,” He means that He Who was always His Father is His God from the moment when He was brought forth from His Mother’s womb.
93. Seeing, then, that we read in the Gospel, in the Apostle, in the Prophets, of Christ as begotten, how dare the Arians to say that He was created or made? But, indeed, they ought to have bethought them, where they have read of Him as created, where as made. For it has been plainly shown that the Son of God is begotten of God, born of God—let them, then, consider with care where they have read that He was made, seeing that He was not made God, but born as God, the Son of God; afterward, however, He was, according to the flesh, made man of Mary.
94. “But when the fulness of time was come, God sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the Law.”
“His Son,” observe, not as one of many, not as His in common with another, but His own, and in saying “His Son,” the Apostle showed that it is of the Son’s nature that His generation is eternal. Him the Apostle has affirmed to have been afterwards “made” of a woman, in order that the making might be understood not of the Godhead, but of the putting on of a body—“made of a woman,” then, by taking on of flesh; “made under the Law” through observance of the Law. Howbeit, the former, the spiritual generation is before the Law was, the latter is after the Law.
Chapter 15
‸95. To no purpose, then, is the heretics’ customary citation of the Scripture, that “God made Him both Lord and Christ.” Let these ignorant persons read the whole passage, and understand it. For thus it is written. “God made this Jesus, Whom ye crucified, both Lord and Christ.” It was not the Godhead, but the flesh, that was crucified. This, indeed, was possible, because the flesh allowed of being crucified. It follows not, then, that the Son of God is a created being.
96. Let us despatch, then, that passage also, which they do use to misrepresent,—let them learn what is the sense of the words, “The Lord created Me.” It is not “the Father created,” but “the Lord created Me.” The flesh acknowledgeth its Lord, praise declareth the Father: our created nature confesseth the first, loveth, knoweth the latter. Who, then, cannot but perceive that these words announce the Incarnation? Thus the Son speaketh of Himself as created in respect of that wherein he witnesseth to Himself as being man, when He says, “Why seek ye to kill Me, a man, Who have told you the truth?” He speaketh of His Manhood, wherein He was crucified, and died, and was buried.
97. Furthermore, there is no doubt but that the writer set down as past that which was to come; for this is the usage of prophecy, that things to come are spoken of as though they were already present or past. For example, in the twenty-first psalm you have read: “Fat bulls (of Bashan) have beset me,” and again: “They parted My garments among them.” This the Evangelist showeth to have been spoken prophetically of the time of the Passion, for to God the things that are to come are present, and for Him Who foreknoweth all things, they are as though they were past and over; as it is written, “Who hath made the things that are to be.”
98. It is no wonder that He should declare His place to have been set fast before all worlds, seeing that the Scripture tells us that He was foreordained before the times and ages. The following passage discovers how the words in question present themselves as a true prophecy of the Incarnation: “Wisdom hath built her an house, and set up seven pillars to support it, and she hath slain her victims. She hath mingled her wine in the bowl, and made ready her table, and sent her servants, calling men together with a mighty voice of proclamation, saying: ‘He who is simple, let him turn in to me.’” Do we not see, in the Gospel, that all these things were fulfilled after the Incarnation, in that Christ disclosed the mysteries of the Holy Supper, sent forth His apostles, and cried with a loud voice, saying, “If any man thirst, let him come to Me and drink.” That which followeth, then, answereth to that which went before, and we behold the whole story of the Incarnation set forth in brief by prophecy.
99. Many other passages might readily be seen to be prophecies of this sort concerning the Incarnation, but I will not delay over books, lest the treatise appear too wordy.