Demonstratio Evangelica 4 part 1/5

Since the matters proper to the incarnation of our Savior have been sufficiently worked out by us in the book before this one, the third of the Evangelical Demonstration, it is now time to lay hold also of the more secret discourses concerning the more mystical theology relating to him.

Now the discourse concerning the first and eternal God, who alone is unbegotten and the cause over all things universally, the all-ruling and all-sovereign God, is common to all mankind; but the discourse concerning Christ is, in turn, both particular and common to the Hebrews and to us — a discourse which in some respects, following the scriptures among them, they still now confess in like manner with us, but in other respects they fall far short, neither perceiving his deity, nor knowing the causes of his coming, nor indeed grasping the times at which he was foretold to come to men.

For they still even now expect him as one who is about to come; but we demonstrate that he has already come once for all, and, obeying the predictions and teachings of the God-bearing prophets, we pray to see also his second coming, with divine glory. And since the account concerning him is twofold, the one would be the more recent, introduced among men but yesterday and the day before; but the other is older than all time and all the ages.

For God, willing — inasmuch as he alone is good and the source and fountain of every good — to make many partakers of his own treasures, and being about presently to bring forth the whole rational creation: certain incorporeal, intellectual, and divine powers, angels and archangels, immaterial and wholly pure spirits; and besides these, the souls of men, endowed by nature with a freedom and liberty of self-chosen inclination toward the good or its opposite; and whatever bodily instruments were to belong to these, suited to the conduct of their various modes of life; and being about to allot to all of these their own proper regions and places — to those who remained good, the better regions, but conversely, to those for whom it was fitting, places of chastisement for their turning to the contrary — foreseeing the future, as God does, by his foreknowledge, and perceiving, before these all came into being, that they would need a head, as it were in one great body, therefore he thought it necessary to set in the forefront the steward of all creation, the leader and king of the universe — which is indeed the very thing the divine oracles mystically teach, uttered by the theologians and prophetic men of old among the Hebrews.

From these it is possible to learn that there is one principle of all things — or rather, that which is even above principle, and prior to the first, and more primal than unity itself, and greater than every name: ineffable, inexpressible, incomprehensible, good, the cause of all things, the maker, the benefactor, the provider, the savior — being himself the one and only God, from whom are all things, and through whom all things exist; for in him we live and move and have our being.

Whatever, then, he wills, this alone would be the cause of the substantiation and existence of all begotten things; for it is a matter of his willing, and he wills because he happens to be good by nature. And to what is good nothing is proper except to will good things.

And while willing these things, he is also able; wherefore, both willing and being able together, he constituted for himself, without hindrance and without obstruction, everything that is good and beneficial, both in things visible and invisible, having put forward his own counsel and power as a kind of matter and substance for the coming-to-be and constitution of all things — so that it is no longer reasonable to say that anything among existing things comes to be out of things that do not exist; for there could not be anything that comes from what is not. For how could that which is not become the cause of being for another? But everything, whatever it is, has received its being from the one who alone truly is and pre-is, who indeed also said, 'I am He who is.'

For he alone, being and ever being, himself became, by his willing and his being able, the cause of being to all who obtained their being from him, having bestowed from himself richly and ungrudgingly upon all their substance and their powers and their forms.

And indeed, of all existing things he causes to subsist first his own offspring, the firstborn Wisdom, wholly and entirely intellectual and rational and all-wise — or rather, mind itself, word itself, and wisdom itself; and whatever else it is lawful to conceive as beauty-itself and goodness-itself among begotten things, this he first puts forth from himself as the foundation for the things that would afterward come to be — the perfect work of the Perfect, the wise architectural achievement of the Wise, the good offspring of the good Father; and what else could he be but the patron and guardian, the savior and physician, and the pilot who has grasped the helm of the creation of all things, for those things which afterward received their being through him?

Whence, fittingly, the oracles, speaking theologically, declare him to be a begotten God, as bearing in himself alone the image of the ineffable and incomprehensible deity, on account of which he both is and is called God, by grace of his likeness to the First; and in this respect they say that he, being good, has been set beneath the Father as a servant, that all things might be directed by him as by one all-wise and living instrument, a skilled and scientific rule — bodies together with incorporeal things, animate together with inanimate, rational together with irrational, mortal together with immortal, and whatever else co-subsists and is interwoven with these — and that, as by a single power of the universe, by one living and animate law and word present in all things and coming through all things, all things might be fitted together and, by one all-wise bond — that is, by the very Word and Law of God — be gathered together and bound.

Since the Father is one, the Son also must be one, and not many; and there must be one perfect only-begotten God from God, and not more. For among many there would be otherness and difference, and the introduction of what is worse. Wherefore, one God is the Father of one perfect and only-begotten Son, and not of more gods or sons.

Since, the substance of light being one, it is altogether necessary to hold that the perfect radiance generated from it is likewise one.

For what other offspring of light could be conceived, except only the ray that fills and illumines all things from it? For everything alien to this would be darkness, and not light. In this way, then, of the Father who is above all, being ineffable light, no example could be found that is akin or proper to him, except this one thing alone, which indeed one may say concerning the Son: for he is 'the radiance of eternal light,' and 'the spotless mirror of the working of God,' and 'the image of his goodness.'

Wherefore it is said, 'who, being the radiance of his glory and the very stamp of his substance.' But whereas the ray of sensible light is inseparable from the light, the Son subsists distinctly by himself apart from the Father; and while the ray of light occupies the place of an activity of the light, the Son is something other than a mere activity, having substantial existence in his own right.

And again, the ray co-exists with the light, being in a sense complementary to it — for without ray, light could not subsist; it subsists together with and in itself at once. But the Father pre-exists the Son, and existed before his generation, inasmuch as he alone was unbegotten.

And the one, in himself, is perfect and first, as Father, and the cause of the Son's constitution, receiving nothing from the Son toward the completion of his own deity; but the other, as a Son who has come to be from a cause, stands as second to him whose Son he is, having received both his being and his being such as he is from the Father.

And again, the ray shines forth not according to a choice of the light, but as an inseparable accident of its substance; but the Son subsisted as the image of the Father according to will and choice. For God, having willed it, became the Father of a Son, and constituted a second light, made like himself in all things.

The unbegotten and eternal light, then, being one, how could there be another as a kind of image of it, other than a ray, which, being light, preserves in every respect the likeness to its archetype? And how could it be the image of that One, unless it were itself one and the same? — so that it might bring about likeness not only in the substance of the First, but also in respect of numerical quantity; so that of the one eternal light there is one perfect offspring, and not diverse and many, but the first and only-begotten offspring — that very thing which is theologically spoken of by us as the perfect Good, coming first after the unoriginate and unbegotten substance.

The Son, then, must be one, of the one Father. For indeed, when a single fragrance proceeds from a certain underlying substance, it is fitting to acknowledge that there is one and the same sweet scent poured forth to all, and not diverse and many. Since, then, the first and only Good, who is the all-sovereign God, has given subsistence to a divine and life-giving fragrance apprehensible by mind and understanding, it is lawful to conceive of this as one, and not as many.

For what other thing could there be, likened to the Father in every respect, except something inferior and worse? — which we must in no way admit into our theology of the Son. For 'she is a vapor of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty.'

For from a fragrant body — say, some ointment, or the flowers and spices flourishing from the earth — a certain fragrant breath pours forth from the primary substrate into the whole surrounding exterior, and fills the air, spreading out broadly, yet in no way by deprivation or diminution or cutting or division of that which underlies it.

For while that substrate remains in its own place and preserves its identity with itself, generating the fragrant power, that which is generated — the fragrance — is in no way inferior to the prior thing, but has its own proper subsistence, having imitated through its own nature that which most closely resembles the nature of that which generated it. Yet still, these are earthly and mortal things, and parts of the lower, corruptible and earthly nature.

The things, however, belonging to the theology we have set before us, being beyond every example, introduce nothing at all like things drawn from bodies; but with the keenest understanding they picture a begotten Son, not one who at certain times did not exist and afterward at some point came to be, but one who existed and pre-existed before ages eternal, and has been present with the Father as Son through all time, and is not unbegotten, but is begotten of an unbegotten Father, being only-begotten, Word and God from God, not put forth from the Father's substance by way of extension or cutting or division, but ineffably and beyond our reckoning, from eternity — or rather, before all ages — receiving substance from the Father's ineffable and incomprehensible counsel and power, as scripture teaches. For it says, 'Who shall declare his generation?' And just as no one knew the Father except the Son, so also no one knew the Son except the Father alone who begot him.

Nevertheless, it seemed necessary to the all-good Father that a single only-begotten and beloved Son should pre-exist the creation of all begotten things, since indeed he was also about to bring forth, well nigh at once, a single world — as it were, one great body composed of many different members and parts — this Son not ruling over it merely from above, as one attached to a greater head, namely the deity of the Father (for the Father is head of Christ), but rather leading and pre-existing all things that come after it, and indeed also enduring both for the Father's command and for the creation that follows thereupon.

Wherefore, indeed, we have said that he was put forth by the Father before all things, as a kind of single, uniform instrument of all substance and nature, animate and living — or rather divine, life-giving, and all-wise: generative of good things, provider of light, framer of heaven, fashioner of the world, maker of angels, ruler of spirits, a saving instrument of souls, increaser of bodies, provident and governing over all things, healing, kingly, judging, and declarer of the Father's piety.

Wherefore, over all creatures universally, one must marvel at a single divine power, and not consider there to be many. For the world-making power in general is one, and the Word who is the maker of all things is one, 'in the beginning, with God'; 'in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.'

Whom truly we must not be ignorant of, but must worthily reverence and honor, since indeed all things came into being through him, not only at the beginnings of all things, but continually have come to be and are coming to be, and without him not even one thing came into being.

For whether there is any life among existing things, 'that which has come to be, in him was life'; for from him and through him comes the vivification and ensoulment of all things — or whether it be rhythm, or beauty, or harmony, or order, or blending, or substance, or quality, or magnitude — over all these one Word holds together and orders all things, and one world-making power of God governs the whole.

For just as, in the case of our own body, there is a great and varied difference among the members, yet the creative power of the whole is one — for the nature of the head did not come to be by one power of God, and that of the eyes by another, and that of the ears by yet another, and that of the feet by another — so also, in the case of the entire world, the one universal divine power presiding over it would be the very same maker of both heaven and the stars, of the creatures in air and on earth and in the sea, of the elements both universal and particular, and further of all kinds of natures, both generic and specific.

Nor is there one creative power for fire, and another for water, and again another for earth and another for air; but the artificing wisdom of all things is one and the same, and this very world-making Word of God is theologically declared by us to be the maker of all things.

And to these things the mutual friendship of the elements bears witness, showing by the intermixture of their blendings that the nature of the universe is kindred and sisterly, and, as it were, the work of one architect. For the earth, the heavy element, being borne upon the waters, and not being drawn down to the depths by the solidity of its nature, but always being carried aloft and not sinking, bears witness to the Word of God and to the counsel and power of God.

And again, the fellowship of the moist substance with the dry, showing no destruction, nor flooding the whole all at once, but being restrained by the ineffable nod of God, again in this way presents the same Word of God.

What then? Fire, though of a burning and destructive nature, yet nesting in wood and mingled with the bodies of all kinds of creatures, joined together with earth and water and air as one of the elements, and then, by word and measure, supplying to all what is needful, as much as would prove beneficial to each, while forgetting its own destructive power — does this not seem to you, again, to be in servitude to the Word and power of God? And when you behold the alternating movements of day and night, the waxings at one time and wanings at another of seasons and times, the cycles of years and the periods of times, the revolutions of the stars, the courses of the sun and the turnings of the moon, the sympathies and antipathies of all things, and one world composed out of all of these — is it lawful for you to declare that irrationality and randomness and chance are the cause of all things, or rather to sing the praises of the Word who is truly of God, and the Wisdom of God, and the Power of God, and this as one, and not as many?

Since indeed, in a human being, one soul and one rational power might become the maker of very many things at once, and the same power, having learned many arts, might set itself to farming and shipbuilding and piloting and building; and the mind and reasoning in a man might one day receive the knowledge of countless sciences — the same person will practice geometry and astronomy, and impart the principles of grammar and of medicine, and take the lead both in the sciences and in the manual crafts; yet no one has ever supposed that there are therefore many souls in one body, nor has anyone marveled at 'many powers' of a man on account of his reception of many branches of learning.

And if someone, having found shapeless matter of clay, then softening it with his hands, imposes upon it the form of a living creature — shaping a head in one form, hands and feet in another manner, and eyes yet again differently, and cheeks likewise, and ears and mouth and nose, chest and shoulders, by the plastic art — is it necessary, since many shapes and members and parts have been fashioned in a single body, to suppose that there are just as many makers? Or rather to praise the single craftsman of the whole, who with one reasoning and one power has fashioned the whole at once?

Why, then, in the case of the universe, which is one, though composed of very many parts, should it be necessary to suppose many creative powers and to name many gods, rather than to confess the one power of God, truly so called, and the wisdom of God — which, by one power and one virtue, gives subsistence to and animates all things at once, and provides for all things a varied supply out of itself? So too, the one and the same impact of the sun's light, at once and in the same moment, illumines the air, gives light to the eyes, warms the sense of touch, fattens the earth, causes plants to grow, gives subsistence to time, leads the stars, revolves around the heaven, brightens the world, establishes the manifest power of God in the universe, and accomplishes all these things by a single inclination of its nature.

And the nature of fire purifies gold, but melts lead; it dissolves wax, but dries clay, and roasts matter — accomplishing so many things by a single burning power. In this same way, too, the heavenly Word of God, who is the maker of the sun and heaven and the whole world, being present to all things with active power and coming through all things, rains down light upon sun and moon and stars from his own everlasting power; and having given subsistence at the beginning to heaven, the most fitting image of his own greatness, he sustains it forever; and the powers beyond heaven and the world — of angels and spirits, of intellectual and rational substances — he fills with life together with light and wisdom and every virtue and all that is fair and good, out of his own treasures, by one and the same creative art; and to the elements he never ceases supplying substance, and mixtures and blendings, and kinds and shapes and forms, and countless qualities, in animals and plants and souls and bodies both rational and irrational, diversifying them now in one way, now in another, and supplying all things to all at once by a single power, and bestowing upon all mankind a mind capable of discernment and of contemplating his wisdom — thereby directly and expressly showing to all that the world is the work of one world-making Word.

Such, then, is the skillful only-begotten Son of his own counsel and the maker of all things, whom the God and Father who is above even this maker himself begot first of all, giving subsistence, through him and in him, to the creative principles of the things that were to be, and laying down in him the seeds of the constitution and administration of all things.

Do you not see with your own eyes the whole world, which one heaven encompasses, and the countless choruses and revolutions of the stars around it? Again, there is one sun, and not more, which by the surpassing excess of its light hides the twinklings of all the others.

So then, the Father being one, the Son too had to be one. And if someone should find fault because there are not more sons, it is time for such a one also to blame God for not establishing many suns and moons and worlds and countless other things — behaving in the manner of a madman who attempts to pervert what is right and well-ordered in nature.

In this way, then, just as among visible things one sun illumines the whole sensible world, so also among intelligible things, the one perfect Word of God shines upon the immortal and incorporeal powers, and countless intellectual and rational substances, as though they were stars and luminaries. For it was necessary that there be one universal law over all things, and one Word of God present in all things and coming through all things, so that in this too the likeness of the image to the Father might be preserved in every respect — in virtue, in power, and in substance, and according to the number belonging to unity and oneness — even though the substance of begotten things that was about to come into subsistence would otherwise be manifold and various.

— that substance being subject to countless and various changes, now one and now another, on account of its own weakness, and being left behind by the highest power of the Father because of the excess of that nature which is ineffable and boundless in magnitude to all — being also unable, being itself begotten, to partake of the unbegotten and incomprehensible deity, or to look up and gaze directly at the ineffable, sparkling flashes of the eternal light. It was, then, fitting and necessary that the all-good Father and Savior of all things —

— lest the nature of the things about to come into being should be wholly bereft, deprived of communion with him in the greatest goods, should interpose in the midst a certain divine, all-mighty, and all-virtuous power belonging to his only-begotten and firstborn — a power most exactly and most closely of all in intimate communion with the Father, and perhaps partaking even of his ineffable mysteries; but condescending most gently, and in some manner conforming itself to those who fall short of the highest, on account of their own weakness needing the improvement and benefit that comes from what is second — that we should behold the sun's rays coming down to us gently and mildly, since we are not otherwise able, on account of the weakness of the body, to enjoy the unmixed power of the light.

If, then, as in a hypothesis of reasoning, the all-radiant sun should let itself down from heaven and dwell among men on earth, none of those on earth would remain uncorrupted, since all things without exception, animate and inanimate alike, would be destroyed by the sudden onrush of its light.

It would rather quickly render blind the eyes of those who behold it, becoming for all a cause much more of harm and destruction than of benefit — not that it is such by nature, but that it becomes such a thing to those who, on account of their own weakness, are unable to bear the enjoyment of its surpassing brightness.

Why then do you marvel when you learn such things about God, whose work indeed the sun and the whole heaven and world are? If, then, none of existing things has any share in that ineffable and inexpressible power and substance, except communion with the One alone whom the Father himself, by his providence for the universe, constituted before all others, so that the nature of begotten things might not fall away entirely, being separated, on account of its own weakness and incapacity, from the unbegotten and incomprehensible paternal substance, but might remain, and grow, and be nourished, enjoying the supply that comes through the intermediary — which the only-begotten Word of God never ceases to furnish sufficiently to all, but, penetrating everywhere and going about through all things, provides equally for the salvation of all — rational together with irrational, mortal together with immortal, heavenly together with earthly, divine and invisible powers alike, and, to speak comprehensively, of all things whatsoever that have obtained being through him — yet far more, and in a distinctive way, for the intellectual and rational nature; on account of which he did not disdain even the human race, but honored it exceedingly and cared for it, for the sake of its kinship and continuity with the Word, in accordance with which it is declared in the sacred oracles to have been formed after his image.

But he, as the Word of God, established his own image, wholly intellectual and rational, at the very beginnings of the creation of the universe, and on this account constituted man as ruler and king over all the creatures on earth, and left him free and self-determining as regards his inclination toward the good or the contrary.

But man, not using his self-determination well, turned aside from the right path and rushed toward the opposite one, no longer taking into account God or the Lord, nor indeed anything holy and pious, but, after the manner of irrational beasts, setting his hand to every kind of savage and licentious deed.

The all-good and all-sovereign One himself, the Most High and God of all things, doing then what was fitting for himself, so that men on earth might not be without a ruler and without oversight, like irrational cattle, appointed for them protectors and overseers — divine angels, like certain herd-leaders and shepherds — having set before all, and placed in charge over all, his only-begotten and firstborn Word.

To him, as a special portion, he set apart the very angels and archangels, and the divine powers, the immaterial and supercelestial spirits, and indeed also, among the men on earth, those God-beloved souls who are called by the Hebrew names Jacob and Israel.

This, the greatest of mysteries, Moses, first among theologians, taught in secret to the Hebrews of old, saying: 'Ask your father, and he will declare to you; your elders, and they will tell you: when the Most High divided the nations, when he scattered the sons of Adam, he set the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God; and the Lord's portion became his people Jacob, Israel the line of his inheritance.'

By these words, then, he names 'the Most High' as the God who is above all and over all things; and 'the Lord' as his Word, who is indeed spoken of by us properly as 'lord' in the second place after the God of all things. For he says that all the nations and the sons of men — called sons of Adam — were, by the judgment of the Most High God and by words ineffable to us, distributed to the invisible protectors of the nations, namely, the angels themselves; but to the most excellent of all, the leader and king of all things — Christ himself, as the only-begotten Son — was handed over, from among mankind, Jacob and Israel, that is, the whole race that is clear-sighted and God-fearing.

For the one who has taken up the contest of the exercise of virtue, and is still striving and wrestling in the exercises of piety, is called, in the Hebrew appellation, 'Jacob'; but the one who has already been deemed worthy of victory and of the prizes that come from God is proclaimed 'Israel' — such as was that famous forefather of the whole Hebrew nation, and his genuine children, and their descendants and forefathers, all the prophets and men beloved of God. For do not suppose that by this name the multitude of the Jews is here meant, but only those in ancient times who had been made perfect in virtue and piety.

These, then, the Word of God, the leader and protector of all, took under his care, and called them back to the worship of the Father alone — the Most High himself — who is above all things visible, and beyond heaven and every begotten substance, gently and mildly recalling his subjects, and delivering to them only the unbegotten Most High God, the maker of all things, as the one whom they should worship.

But the angels and shepherds set over the other nations, since these could not by their minds contemplate the invisible one, nor ascend so high on account of their own weakness, thought it right that they should attend to the things visible in heaven — the sun and moon and stars.

These things, indeed, being conspicuous in the visible nature of the universe, above and as near as possible, as it were in the very forecourts of the all-sovereign King, called back the sight of those who beheld them, manifesting, from the greatness and beauty of the visible creatures, a contemplation proportionate to him who is the begetter of all things. For, as the apostle says, 'his invisible things are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, from the creation of the world' — even 'his eternal power and divinity.'

And this too, again, the great Moses teaches mystically. For, exhorting the Lord's portion to reach with a clear mind and a purified soul toward things intelligible and incorporeal, he restrains them from being struck with astonishment at the things visible in heaven, adding, 'for these the Lord your God has apportioned to all the nations.' It is necessary to consider why he said that they had been apportioned.