Exposition of the Faith 1 part 1/15

These are the contents of this book.

1. That the Divine is incomprehensible, and that we must not seek out and meddle with things not handed down to us by the holy prophets, apostles, and evangelists. 2. On things utterable and unutterable, and things knowable and unknowable. 3. A demonstration that God exists. 4. On what God is: that He is incomprehensible. 5. A demonstration that God is one and not many. 6. On the Word of God. 7. On the Holy Spirit. 8. On the Holy Trinity. 9. On the things said concerning God. 10. On the divine union and distinction. 11. On the things said of God in a bodily manner. 12. Still concerning the same. 13. On the place of God, and that the Divine alone is uncircumscribed. 14. The properties of the divine nature. 15. On the age. 16. On creation. 17. On angels. 18. On the devil and the demons. 19. On visible creation. 20. On heaven. 21. On light, fire, and the luminaries—the sun, moon, and stars. 22. On air and the winds. 23. On the waters. 24. On the earth and the things from it. 25. On Paradise. 26. On man. 27. On pleasures. 28. On grief. 29. On fear. 30. On anger. 31. On the faculty of imagination. 32. On sensation. 33. On the faculty of thought. 34. On the faculty of memory. 35. On the inner and the uttered word. 36. On passion and activity. 37. On activity. 38. On the voluntary and the involuntary. 39. On that which is in our power, that is, free will. 40. On things that come to pass. 41. For what cause we were made with free will. 42. On things not in our power. 43. On providence. 44. On foreknowledge and predestination. 45. On the divine economy, and on the care taken for our sake, and on our salvation. 46. On the manner of the conception of God the Word and of His divine incarnation. 47. On the two natures. 48. On the manner of the communication (of properties). 49. On the number of the natures. 50. That the whole divine nature in one of its hypostases was united to the whole human nature, and not part to part. 51. On the one composite hypostasis of God the Word. 52. Against those who say:

'The natures of the Lord are brought under continuous quantity or under discrete quantity.' 53. A reply to the objection: 'If there is no nature without hypostasis.' 54. On the Trisagion. 55. On the nature contemplated in the species and in the individual, and on difference, union, and incarnation; and how we are to understand 'the one incarnate nature of God the Word.' 56. That the holy Virgin is Theotokos (Mother of God). 57. On the properties of the two natures. 58. On the wills and free choices of our Lord Jesus Christ. 59. On the activities in our Lord Jesus Christ. 60. Against those who say:

'If man is of two natures and activities, it is necessary to speak of three natures in Christ and as many activities.' 61. On the deification of the nature of the Lord's flesh and of His will. 62. Still on the wills and free choices, minds, knowledges, and wisdoms. 63. On the theandric (divine-human) activity. 64. On the natural and blameless passions. 65. On ignorance and servitude. 66. On progress. 67. On cowardice (timidity). 68. On the Lord's prayer. 69. On appropriation. 70. On the suffering of the Lord's body and the impassibility of His divinity. 71. That the divinity of the Word remained inseparable from the soul and the body even in the death of the Lord, and that one hypostasis remained. 72. On corruption and dissolution. 73. On the descent into Hades. 74. On the things after the resurrection. 75. On the sitting at the right hand of the Father. 76. Against those who say:

'If Christ is of two natures, then either you serve creation by worshipping a created nature, or you say that one nature is to be worshipped and one is not.' 77. Why the Son became man and not the Father nor the Spirit, and what He accomplished by becoming man. 78. To those who ask whether the hypostasis of Christ is created or uncreated. 79. On when He was called Christ. 80. To those who ask whether the holy Theotokos gave birth to two natures.

(Did the holy Theotokos give birth to two natures, and did two natures hang upon the cross?) 81. How the only-begotten Son of God is called firstborn. 82. On faith and baptism. 83. On faith. 84. On the cross, in which there is still more about faith. 85. On worshipping toward the east. 86. On the holy and undefiled mysteries of the Lord. 87. On the genealogy of the Lord and on the holy Theotokos. 88. On the saints and the honor of their relics. 89. On icons. 90. On Scripture. 91. On the things said concerning Christ. 92. That God is not the cause of evils. 93. That there are not two principles. 94. For what reason God, foreknowing those who would sin and not repent, created them. 95. On the law of God and the law of sin. 96. Against the Jews, concerning the Sabbath. 97. On virginity. 98. On circumcision. 99. On the Antichrist. 100. On the resurrection. An accurate exposition of the Orthodox Faith by the holy Abba John, presbyter of Damascus. That the Divine is incomprehensible, and that we must not seek out and meddle with things not handed down to us by the holy prophets, apostles, and evangelists. No one has ever seen God.

The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has made Him known.

The Divine, therefore, is unutterable and incomprehensible.

For no one knows the Father except the Son, nor the Son except the Father.

And the Holy Spirit likewise knows the things of God, as the spirit of man knows the things within him.

After the first and blessed nature, no one ever knew God except the one to whom He Himself revealed it—and that not only among men, but not even among the supramundane powers, I mean the Cherubim and Seraphim themselves.

Yet God did not leave us in utter ignorance;

for the knowledge that God exists has been sown by Him naturally in all.

And creation itself, together with its maintenance and governance, proclaims the majesty of the divine nature.

And first through the law and the prophets, and afterwards also through His only-begotten Son, our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, He revealed the knowledge of Himself to us according to our capacity.

All things, therefore, that have been handed down to us through the law and the prophets and the apostles and the evangelists we receive and acknowledge and revere, seeking nothing beyond these;

for God, being good, is the giver of every good, subject to no envy nor to any passion;

for envy is far from the divine nature, which is impassible and alone good.

So then, knowing all things and providing what is beneficial for each, He revealed what it was profitable for us to know, but kept silent about what we could not bear.

Let us be content with these things and remain in them, neither removing the everlasting boundaries nor overstepping the divine tradition.

On things utterable and unutterable, and things knowable and unknowable. He, then, who wishes to speak or to hear about God must clearly understand that not all things are unutterable nor all things utterable—whether the things of theology or of the economy—nor again are all things unknowable nor all knowable;

for the knowable is one thing and the utterable another, just as to speak is one thing and to know another.

Many things, therefore, among those dimly conceived concerning God cannot be fittingly expressed; rather we are compelled to speak of what is above us in terms drawn from ourselves, as when concerning God we speak of sleep and anger and negligence, and hands and feet and the like.

That God exists, then—without beginning, without end, eternal and everlasting, uncreated, unchangeable, immutable, simple, uncompounded, incorporeal, invisible, intangible, uncircumscribed, infinite, unbounded, incomprehensible, inconceivable, good, just, almighty, the Creator of all created things, the Ruler of all, the Beholder of all—

the Provider, Sovereign, and Judge of all—this we both know and confess.

And that there is one God, that is, one essence (ousia); and that He is known and exists in three hypostases—I mean the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one in all things except in being unbegotten, being begotten, and proceeding; and that the only-begotten Son and Word of God and God, through the bowels of His mercy, for our salvation, by the good pleasure of the Father and the cooperation of the Holy Spirit, was conceived without seed and was born without corruption of the holy Virgin and Theotokos Mary through the Holy Spirit, and became from her a perfect man; and that the same is at once perfect God and perfect man, of two natures, divinity and humanity, and in two natures—intellectual, possessed of will and activity and free choice, and, to speak simply, perfect in accordance with the definition and principle proper to each, namely divinity and humanity—yet in one composite hypostasis; and that He hungered and thirsted and grew weary and was crucified, and underwent the experience of death and burial, and rose on the third day, and ascended into the heavens, whence He came to us and will come again hereafter—of all this the divine Scripture is witness, as is the whole choir of the saints.

But what the essence of God is, or how He is in all things, or how God was begotten of God or proceeded, or how the only-begotten Son and God, having emptied Himself, became man of virginal blood, fashioned by another law contrary to nature, or how He walked upon the waters with unwetted feet—this we do not know and cannot tell.

It is not possible, then, to say or even to conceive anything at all about God beyond what has been divinely declared, that is, spoken and manifested to us by the divine oracles of the Old and New Testaments.

A demonstration that God exists. That God exists, then, is not doubted by those who accept the holy Scriptures—I mean the Old and New Testaments—nor indeed by most of the Greeks (pagans);

for, as we have said, the knowledge that God exists has been sown in us naturally.

But since the wickedness of the evil one so prevailed against the nature of men that it dragged some down into the most irrational and worst of all evils—the abyss of perdition—namely, into saying that there is no God, it was their folly that David the hierophant exposed when he said:

The fool has said in his heart:

'There is no God.' Now the disciples and apostles of the Lord, made wise by the all-holy Spirit and working signs of God by His power and grace, by the net of miracles drew them up out of the depth of ignorance and led them to the light of the knowledge of God, catching them alive.

Likewise also those who succeeded to their grace and worth, the shepherds and teachers, having received the illuminating grace of the Spirit, by the power of miracles and by the word of grace enlightened those darkened and turned back those who had gone astray.

But we, who have received neither the gift of miracles nor that of teaching—for we have made ourselves unworthy through our attachment to pleasures—come, let us discuss a little, concerning this matter, of the things handed down to us by the interpreters of grace, having first called upon the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

All existing things are either created or uncreated.

If, then, they are created, they are altogether also mutable;

for things whose being began from change will certainly be subject to change, either perishing or being altered by choice.

But if they are uncreated, then by the principle of consistency they are also altogether immutable;

for of things whose being is opposite, the principle of how they exist—that is, their properties—is also opposite.

Who, then, will not agree that all existing things that fall under our perception, and indeed even the angels, change and are altered and move and are transformed in many ways? The intelligible beings—I mean angels, souls, and demons—change according to choice, by advance in the good and departure from the good, intensifying and slackening; while the rest change according to generation and corruption, increase and decrease, change in quality, and local motion.

things that exist are therefore altogether also created.

And being created, they were certainly fashioned by someone.

And the Creator must be uncreated;

for if He too were created, He was certainly created by someone, until we come to something uncreated.

Being uncreated, then, the Creator is also altogether unchangeable.

And what else could this be but God? And the very maintenance, preservation, and governance of creation teach us that there is a God who has set up this universe and holds it together and preserves it and ever provides for it;

for how could the opposing natures—I mean of fire and water, of air and earth—have come together with one another to complete a single world and remain undissolved, unless some almighty power both joined them and ever keeps them undissolved? What ordered the heavenly things and the earthly, and all that is in the air and all that is in the water—or rather, what existed before these: heaven and earth and air and the nature of fire and water? Who mingled and distributed these? What set them in motion and drives them in their unceasing and unhindered course? Is it not the Artificer of these things, who has implanted in all a principle by which the universe is borne along and governed? And who is the Artificer of these things? Is it not the One who made them and brought them into being? For we shall not grant such power to chance.

For grant that their coming into being were by chance;

whose work is the ordering? And let us grant this too, if it seems good;

whose work is it to preserve and guard them according to the principles by which they first came to subsist? Clearly of another besides chance.

And what else is this but God? On what God is: that He is incomprehensible. That God exists, then, is clear;

but what He is in His essence and nature is altogether incomprehensible and unknowable.

For that He is incorporeal is clear.

For how could that which is infinite and unbounded and shapeless and intangible and invisible and simple and uncompounded be a body? How could it be venerable if it were circumscribed and passible? And how could that which is composed of elements and is again dissolved into them be impassible? For composition is the beginning of conflict, conflict of division, division of dissolution;

but dissolution is altogether foreign to God.

And how would the truth be preserved that God pervades all things and fills all things, as the Scripture says:

'Do I not fill heaven and earth?' says the Lord. For it is impossible for a body to pass through bodies without cutting and being cut, intertwining and being set against them, as do those liquids that mix and are blended together.

And even if some say there is an immaterial body, such as the so-called 'fifth body' among the Greek sages—which is impossible—it would certainly be in motion, like the heaven;

for they call this the fifth body.

Who, then, moves this? For everything that is moved is moved by another.

And who moves that? And so on to infinity, until we arrive at something unmoved;

for the first mover is unmoved, and this is the Divine.

And how is that which is moved not circumscribed in place? Only the Divine, then, is unmoved, moving all things by its unmovedness.

We must therefore suppose the Divine to be incorporeal.

But neither does this express the essence, just as neither do 'unbegotten' and 'without beginning' and 'unchangeable' and 'incorruptible' and whatever else is said concerning God or about God;

for these do not signify what He is, but what He is not.

He who wishes to state the essence of anything must say what it is, not what it is not;

yet in the case of God it is impossible to say what He is, in respect of essence.

It is more fitting, rather, to frame our discourse by the removal of all things;

for He is none of the things that exist—not as not existing, but as existing above all the things that exist and above being itself.

For if knowledge is of things that exist, then what is above knowledge will certainly also be above being; and conversely, what is above being will also be above knowledge.

The Divine, then, is infinite and incomprehensible, and this alone is comprehensible of it: its infinity and incomprehensibility.

But whatever we say of God affirmatively signifies not the nature, but the things about the nature.

Whether you say good, or just, or wise, or whatever you may say, you are not stating the nature of God, but the things about the nature.

There are also some things said of God affirmatively that have the force of an eminent negation, as when, in saying 'darkness' of God, we do not mean darkness, but that He is not light but above light.

A demonstration that God is one and not many. That God exists has been sufficiently demonstrated, and that His essence is incomprehensible.

But that He is one and not many is not doubted by those who are persuaded by the divine Scripture.

For the Lord says at the beginning of the giving of the law:

'I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.

You shall have no other gods besides Me.' And again:

'The Lord your God is one Lord.' And through Isaiah the prophet:

'For I,' He says, 'am the first God, and I am after these things, and besides Me there is no God.'

'Before Me there was no other god, and after Me there will be none, and besides Me there is none.' And the Lord too, in the holy Gospels, says thus to the Father:

'This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God.'

But with those not persuaded by the divine Scripture we shall reason thus.

The Divine is perfect and lacking in nothing, in goodness, in wisdom, and in power—without beginning, without end, everlasting, uncircumscribed, and, to put it simply, perfect in all respects.

If, then, we say there are many gods, it is necessary that a difference be observed among the many.

For if there is no difference among them, there is rather one and not many.

But if there is a difference among them, where is the perfection? For whether He falls short of the perfect in goodness, or in power, or in wisdom, or in time, or in place, He would not be God.

But identity through all things shows rather one and not many.

And how, if there are many, will uncircumscribedness be preserved? For where the one is, there the other could not be.

And how would the world be governed by many and not be dissolved and destroyed, when conflict is observed among the governors? For difference introduces opposition.

And if someone should say that each rules a part, what is it that ordered and made the distribution to them? For that would rather be God.

There is, therefore, one God: perfect, uncircumscribed, the Maker of the universe, its Sustainer and Governor, transcendently perfect and perfect before all.

Moreover, there is also a natural necessity that the monad be the beginning of the dyad.

On the Word of God. This one and only God, then, is not without Word (reason).

And having a Word, He will have one not without hypostasis, not having begun to be nor destined to cease;

for there never was a time when God was without Word.

But He always has His own Word, begotten of Him—not like our word, which is without hypostasis and is poured out into the air, but enhypostatic (having its own subsistence), living, perfect, not going outside Him but ever being in Him;

for where could He be, if He came to be outside Him? Since our nature is perishable and easily dissolved, for this reason our word too is without hypostasis.

But God, being ever-existent and perfect, will have His own Word perfect and enhypostatic, ever-existent and living and possessing all that the Begetter possesses.

For just as our word, proceeding from the mind, is neither wholly the same as the mind nor altogether other—for being from the mind it is other than it, yet bringing the mind itself into manifestation, it is no longer altogether other than the mind, but being one according to nature it is other in respect of the subject—so also the Word of God, by subsisting in Himself, is distinct from Him from whom He has His hypostasis; yet by displaying in Himself the very things that are contemplated concerning God, He is the same as He according to nature;

for just as the perfection in all things is contemplated in the Father, so also it will be contemplated in the Word begotten of Him.

On the Holy Spirit. The Word must also have Spirit;

for indeed our word too is not devoid of breath (spirit).

But with us the breath is foreign to our essence;

for it is a drawing in and discharge of the air, inhaled and poured forth for the constitution of the body, which at the moment of utterance becomes the voice of the word, manifesting in itself the power of the word.

But in the case of the divine nature, which is simple and uncompounded, we must reverently confess that there is a Spirit of God, because the Word of God is not more deficient than our word; yet it is not reverent to reckon the Spirit as something alien entering into God from outside, as it is also with us, who are composite.

But just as, on hearing of the Word of God, we did not think it to be without hypostasis, nor

acquired by instruction, nor brought forth through the voice, nor poured out into the air and dissolved, but subsisting essentially, possessed of free choice, active and almighty—so also, having been taught of the Spirit of God that accompanies the Word and manifests its activity, we do not conceive of an impersonal breath—for thus the majesty of the divine nature would be brought low to baseness, if the Spirit in God were supposed to be after the likeness of our own spirit—but a substantial power, contemplated in itself in its own particular hypostasis, proceeding from the Father and resting in the Word and being its manifester; a power that can neither be separated from God, in whom it is, nor from the Word, which it accompanies, nor be poured out into nonexistence, but exists after the likeness of the Word according to hypostasis, living, possessed of free choice, self-moved, active, ever willing the good, and having in everything its power running together with its will, having neither beginning nor end;

for the Father was never without the Word, nor the Word without the Spirit.

Thus, through the natural unity, the polytheistic error of the Greeks is done away, while through the acceptance of the Word and the Spirit, the dogma of the Jews is overthrown; and from each heresy what is useful remains: from the Jewish supposition, the unity of nature; from Hellenism, the distinction according to hypostases alone.

But if the Jew should contradict the acceptance of the Word and the Spirit, let him be refuted and silenced by the divine Scripture.

For concerning the Word David says:

'Forever, O Lord, Your word abides in heaven.' And again:

'He sent forth His word and healed them.'

But an uttered word is not sent forth, nor does it abide forever.

And concerning the Spirit, the same David says:

'You will send forth Your Spirit, and they shall be created.' And again:

'By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the breath of His mouth all their host.' And Job also says:

'The divine Spirit it is that made me, and the breath of the Almighty that sustains me.' But a Spirit that is sent forth and makes and establishes and sustains is not a breath that dissolves, just as the mouth of God is not a bodily member;

for both are to be understood in a manner befitting God.

On the Holy Trinity. We believe, therefore, in one God: one principle, without beginning, uncreated, unbegotten, indestructible and immortal, eternal, infinite, uncircumscribed, unbounded, of infinite power, simple, uncompounded, incorporeal, without flux, impassible, unchangeable, immutable, invisible, the fountain of goodness and justice, intellectual light, unapproachable; a power known by no measure but measured only by its own will—for it can do all that it wills—the maker of all created things visible and invisible, holding all together and preserving all, providing for all, ruling and governing and reigning over all with an endless and immortal kingdom, having nothing opposed to it, filling all things, contained by nothing, but rather itself containing and holding together and surpassing all things; undefiledly pervading all essences, beyond all and removed from all essence as superessential and being above the things that exist, more than God, more than good, more than full; defining all principalities and orders and itself set above all principality and order, above essence and life and word and thought; itself light, itself goodness, itself life, itself essence, as having its being from no other, nor anything of what it is, but being itself the fountain of being to those that are, of life to the living, of word to those that partake of word, the cause of all good things to all; knowing all things before their generation; one essence, one Godhead, one power, one will, one activity, one principle, one authority, one lordship, one kingdom, known and worshipped in three perfect hypostases with one worship, believed in and adored by every rational creature, united without confusion and divided without separation—

divided—which is indeed paradoxical.

(We believe) in Father and Son and Holy Spirit, into whom also we have been baptized;

for so the Lord commanded the apostles to baptize, saying:

'Baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.'

(We believe) in one Father, the principle and cause of all, begotten of none, alone existing as uncaused and unbegotten, the Maker of all, but by nature Father of one only, His only-begotten Son, our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, and the Producer of the all-holy Spirit.

And (we believe) in one Son of God, the only-begotten, our Lord Jesus Christ, begotten of the Father before all ages, light of light, true God of true God, begotten not made, of one essence (homoousios) with the Father, through whom all things came to be.

By saying 'before all ages' we show that His begetting is timeless and without beginning;

for the Son of God was not brought into being from nonbeing—He who is the brightness of the glory, the impress of the Father's hypostasis, the living wisdom and power, the enhypostatic Word, the essential and perfect and living image of the invisible God—but He always was with the Father and in Him, eternally and without beginning begotten of Him;

for there never was a time when the Father was and the Son was not, but together the Father, together the Son begotten of Him;

for the Father could not be called Father apart from the Son.

And if He existed without having a Son, He was not a Father; and if afterwards He acquired a Son, then afterwards He became a Father, not being a Father before this, and He changed from not being a Father to becoming a Father—which is more grievous than all blasphemy.

For it is impossible to say that God is destitute of natural generative power;

and generative power is the begetting from oneself—that is, from one's own essence—of one like in nature.

In the case of the begetting of the Son, then, it is impious to say that time intervened, or that the existence of the Son came to be after the Father;

for we say that the begetting of the Son is from Him—that is, from the nature of the Father.

And if we do not grant that the Son coexisted with the Father from the beginning, begotten of Him, we introduce a change in the hypostasis of the Father—namely, that not being a Father, He afterwards became a Father;

for creation, even though it came to be afterwards, did not come from the essence of God, but was brought from nonbeing into being by His will and power, and no change touches the nature of God.